Uncover what lurks in the darkness of your garden at night with some amazing night vision goggles from the Online Spy Shop, they offer a wide range of available goggle, binoculars and monoculars for a range of prices, here are just a few they have on offer:

Are you a scuzzy singleton, an obsessive cleanliness freak or a houseproud entertainer? Your tableware (that’s your plates, cups, knives and forks) can say a lot about you and your life.

The Scuzzy Singleton:
Generally they live on their own, although it is quite common to find several of these types sharing a communal property. Their tableware is characteristically piled high in the kitchen sink waiting to be washed. Tea and coffee cups are all stained a horrible shade of brown acting as a deterrent towards anyone who might be inclined to accept the offer of a tea or coffee. Nothing matches anything else. Ceramic cups, mugs and plates will often be chipped or cracked and the knives and forks will tend to be bent after having been used to change the tyres on their bicycles.

The Obsessive Cleanliness Freak:
Often characterised by a combination of plain white and stainless steel tableware. Everything smells of bleach, as if it has been washed in a swimming pool. The kitchen is spotlessly clean, including the inside of the oven, which looks as if it has never been used. They will often be painfully thin, due to never actually cooking anything fattening in their pristine kitchens.

The Houseproud Entertainer:
This type of person will often have a vast selection of tableware for various occasions. They will have unbreakable plates and beakers for picnics and barbecues, a formal dinner service for Christmas and special dinner parties and then there will be the day-to-day tableware which will be a matching set of plates, cups, bowls and condiments. They will regularly add new set of table mats to their extensive collection saying something like ‘Aunty Mary will love these when she comes to visit’.

So what does your collection of tableware say about you?

I found this great video of tips and techniques to help you restore and refinish your wood furniture, it includes some great tips on sanding wooden furniture. These tips are always useful if you ever want to restore and refinish some of your favorite wooden furniture like, bookcases, desks, bedroom furniture.

The hand-made furniture company New England Lifestyle has started a fantastic summer offer, they are offering 10% off on desks, bookcases, coffee tables and side tables.

Here are some examples of the great deals that you can pick up:

This hand-made New Hampshire Bookcase is included in the summer offer, was £348.00, now £313.20 a saving of over £30!

The New Hampshire bookcase is perfect for storing books, it has plenty of room allowing you to store large quantities of books in a range of sizes.

Another superb piece of furniture available in the summer sale is the New England Coffee Table, with a solid oak top and white painted legs this coffee table will brighten any living room. Was £398.00, now £358.20, a saving of over £35!

Yes, it is posible, you can get cheaper heating oil. And no, you do not have to find a supply of oil in your back garden in order to do this.

So if you use oil based heating (and there are over a million homes in the UK that do) all you hav to do is get involved with a heating oil buying group.

Easier said then done you might say?

Well, you could not be further from the truth - There is a website that is committed to getting buyers of heating oil cheaper prices, but I’d be suprised if you had heard of it.

Well let me introduce you to the world of BoilerJuice (quite a catchy name). So how will BoilerJuice save you money? Easy, you work together in buying groups.

The bigger your sepecific buying group, the bette the discount you will receive from the oil supplier. Buying from BoilerJuice will get  as your own little co-operative.

The image to the left shows how the buying group works - Where you may have four households all buying oil seperately they are incurring extra costs. By combining the power of the four households you have a buying community, and more essentially, cheaper heating oil prices.

Nice Thinking
So how do you get mucked-in with a buying group? The system BoilerJuice have built lets others in your area know there are other people looking to buy heating oil - hey presto - a buying group can be formed. With heating oil buying groups it really is the more the merrier!

There is quite a lot of feedback about BoilerJuice on MoneySavingExpert, plus you can also find more information from the main BoilerJuice - UK site and BoilerJuice - Ireland site.

Have you got green algae in your swimming pool? Here are four top tips to prevent this pesty algae from happening.

Green Algae Prevention - Tip 1
Chlorine levels must be kept to an acceptable level. For prevention it is always better to be on the high side of the normal PH range to prevent green algae.

Green Algae Prevention - Tip 2
Give your swimming pool the schock treatment! Use highly concentrated chemicals for this task. You can use simple baking soda if you ever run out of chemicals for the pool. Baking soda is an inexpensive alternative and handy solution that many households would naturally have.

Green Algae Prevention - Tip 3
Save money and place a solar cover on your pool every night. Ensuring your swimming pool is covered properly will prevent rubbish from getting into the water, making it easier to keep the swimming pool clean.

Green Algae Prevention - Tip 4
Test thoroughly! When testing water go down at least 12 inches when testing the chlorine levels. Testing surface water is not as accurate. Always ensure you follow the instructions on the chlorine test kit you have purchased.

Green algae is not all bad; the good that green algae does
Did you know that green algae helps treat cancer?
Did you know that green algae helps with co2 emissions

For further advice on preventing the build-up of algae in a swimming pool see professional advice from a swimming pool chemicals specialist.

If you own a swimming pool you will know that the cool British weather means that you must heat your pool water to make the pool comfortable enough to use.

Conventional electric heating systems are expensive to run and, as we are all very aware these days, using electricity is bad for the environment. One way to lower your electricity bills yet maintain an adequately warm swimming pool is to use Solar Sun Rings.

Solar Sun Rings are a very simple yet effective and safe way to harness some of the suns energy and use it to heat your pool water. The are made from two sheets of heavyweight U.V. resistant vinyl. The top layer provides insulation to retain heat in the swimming pool water and the bottom layer is specially coloured blue. This layer absorbs sunlight, converting it into heat.

Each solar sun ring has 6 magnets fitted around the perimeter enabling them to be joined up across the surface of your pool. It is recommended that you cover around 70 to 80% of your swimming pool surface.

As well as heating your pool, solar sun rings provide a practical and safe swimming pool cover, minimising the ingress of debris. Solar sun rings are safer than conventional swimming pool covers as there is no danger of entrapment.

So, if you want an easy to install, environmentally friendly way to lower your swimming pool heating bills, invest in a few solar sun rings. A cheap and effective way to heat and cover your pool at the same time.

Forget the credit crunch, it’s not that which has killed the UK housing market, it’s blasted HIPS, pure and simple.

For the uneducated - HIPS, Home Information Pack

Now, I am not a cynic by nature, but isn’t the whole HIPS thing is nothing more than a money making scheme for Her Majesty’s Government?

I have no doubt that HIPS have been a major factor in the recent current collapse of the housing market. Yes a lot of people are hurting because they are coming off of cheap mortgages, but people need to realise we have been in a boom period and that like anything all good things must come to an end.

Why do we need hips?

A hip consists of a sale statement, local search information and evidence of title. A HIP also includes an Energy Performance Certificate which contains advice on reducing CO₂ emissions and utility bills.

What utter garbage, here is what the main site say about HIPS: HIPS could save you money, time and stress.

If anything the cost of getting a HIP done is more likely to increase stress.

The British people have not bought into HIPS, they are just another layer of bureacracy which we can do without. The credit crunch is the easy excuse from the goverment, but HIPS have not helped the housing market in the slightest.

New Homes Blog

HIPS

Mailboxes come in all shapes and sizes, in fact it would not surprise me if there were collectors of them given they are some really smart mailboxes about.

Do you have a mailbox? Are you considering buying a mailbox?

Have you seen the choices available? What you may think to be a simple task is not so, but why? Simply because there are so many good looking mailboxes to choose from, where does one start?

Choices, choices, choices - from traditional to contemporary, the magnitude of mail box designs available will surprise you.

In researching this blog I had a good look at a number of sites, but I have to say that I found www.mailboxixchange.com a cracking site which is easy to navigate and offers an abundance of mailbox ideas. Have a look at some of the mailboxes on offer……..

single unit mail box

multi-unit mailbox

column mail box

My message is this - do not let your mailbox get old and shabby when there are some stunning mail box designs that will look simply awesome and a prominent feature of property.

Forget the doom and gloom of the credit crunch, treat your home to a lovely new mailbox.

If you believe the hype home owners are indeed facing total meltdown, why? Easy………

• Mortgage rates are going up
• The banks have no spare cash
• Oil prices are on the up
• Food prices are on the up

Yes folks we are going to hell in a handcart. Personally speaking I don’t buy all the doom and gloom. There are still plenty of people sitting on a great deal of cash after all we have just come out of a ‘Boom’ period.

This is the element that concerns me, where has all the money gone? Yes it has been a period of spend, spend, spend, but who is looking is after all the cash that has been spent?

If as we are led to believe there is no money left in any pots then people have been very wreck less and have only themselves to blame.

Surely the banks and lenders such as Barclays, Nat West, HSBC, Halifax and Nationwide knew this was coming, of course they did, they are passing their bad management onto us.

Any household should look to have six months of reserve funds in place at the very least. Then at the very worst case scenario should all go wrong there is funding available for those rainy days which by all accounts are going to be pouring on us very soon!

So what is left for us? One word…….. EMIGRATE. According to one blog the National Office of Statistics has released figures stating that 2m Brits have left our shores in the last 10 years.

Emigration sounds like a great idea - but then you have the catch 22 situation - who at the moment is going to buy your home? After all there’s no money!

See the full blog on Emigration statistics at Land and Brand New Homes.