Love List: Cushions

1. Banksy Print, Debenhams - £24.50

2. Stag Tapestry, Dunelm - £9.99

3. Tweet, Dunelm - £24.99

4. Birdcage, H&M - £6.99

5. Ottil, Ikea - £9.00

6. Tartan Stag, Tesco - £12.00

7. Home Knit, Homebase - £14.99

8. Cream Glisten, Next - £20.00

Review – Foscam 3.5” Pan-Tilt Wireless Baby Monitor

Emily is 3 months old now, and getting much more active. One of her new tricks is to roll over onto her tummy, which she loves for about a minute, and then cries when she realises she’s stuck there! I spend countless hours turning to poor mite onto her back, only for her to do it all over again.

Now that she’s not so tiny, I’ve taken to putting her into her cot in the nursery for her daytime naps (she’s still in her Moses basket with me and David during the night, until she’s big enough to sleep through the whole night by herself).  When I first put her in there, I would place a blanket over her, as I did in her Moses basket, but as I couldn’t tuck it in very well, she would either pull it over her head, or roll onto her tummy and wind up with her legs poking out through the bars. Neither ideal when I can’t be with her all the time. So I had to think of a solution quickly. I bought a couple of sleeping bags, so that she was safe from pulling blankets up over her, and her legs were covered up so that they couldn’t escape through the bars of her cot. But I was still a bit worried, as the ideal solution would to be to know when she was awake, and therefore eliminate any issues of her moving around too much when I wasn’t there. What I really needed was a baby monitor.

Emily doesn’t cry straight away when she wakes up or wants feeding, so I decided to look at monitors with cameras. And the one that struck me straight away was the Foscam. 

I really liked the simplicity of both the camera and the monitor – no fancy gadgetry to clog up the design. The only button on the camera is the on/off switch, and the few keys on the monitor are neatly placed along the top. 

To set it up, you simply insert the battery into the back of the monitor, and plug it in to begin charging. You will see a message telling you the device is out of range, which means that the camera can’t be read. Once you plug in the camera, the screen will immediately show you what the camera is seeing. 

Unlike some of the baby monitors out there, you can move the camera lens via the arrow keys on the front of the monitor. My only complaint about this is that in my opinion, it doesn’t pan quite low enough – I’ve found it quite difficult to find a suitable place to put the camera, as it can’t be very much higher than the object you want to view. I wanted to be able to look down on Emily’s cot – instead, I had to put it lower down and view her through the bars. However, you could overcome that by attaching the camera to the wall via the fittings on the base.

Another great feature is the zoom. If the camera isn’t close enough to see her face, I can zoom in to make sure she is sleeping. And the quality of the image is really clear – it even switches automatically to infra-red when the room gets dark. 

When Emily makes a sound, the device picks it up really well. So well, I can even hear her breathing! You can also see when there is noise thanks to the lights on the front of the screen, so you don’t always have to have the volume up loud. And you can set something called VOX, which puts the monitor into standby until baby makes a sound, then it automatically comes back on for a few seconds. That’s really useful, as the battery life isn’t all that good.

And speaking of the battery, I found that it never fully charges up. I think that’s probably just a fault with mine, but it is a pain as I have to keep it plugged in pretty much all the time. However, I do get about 3 hours out of it just running off the battery.

Running along the keys on the top, you’ll find:

• The Power key
• The VOX key (See above for description)
• Volume – this allows you to alter the speaker volume on the monitor.
• Microphone – When you press this, you can talk to your baby. I suppose this could be useful, although I found that Emily spends a few seconds looking for ‘the voice’, and then commences fussing/crying. So I don’t use it.
• Home key – By pressing this, you are presented with 6 options:

1. Cam Select – you can add more cameras if you wish, although I believe that you can only buy them separately in the US. Might be wrong though.
2. Feed timer – You can set the device to sound an alarm at 2, 3, 4, or 5 hour intervals, to let you know it’s feeding time. Again, I don’t use this, as Emily lets me know when she’s hungry, and she doesn’t always follow such a rigid schedule.
3. Temp Setting – I find this really reassuring. You can see what the temperature of baby’s room is like.
4. Cam Setting – To set up more than one camera.
5. Brightness – To brighten the screen.
6. VOX sensitivity – This allows you to alter the microphone for the VOX, depending on how far away the device is from baby.

All in all, I’m delighted that I chose this. Despite the glitch with the battery, it does everything I need it to, and it’s made a huge difference to my stress levels when I have to put Emily down for her naps!

I rate it pretty highly, and I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending it to other mums, or carers.

And at £89.99 from Amazon*, it’s not all that expensive.

*At the time of writing, the item was no longer available on Amazon.
Note: This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.

Article - Vinyl Revival

One of my favorite things to do is scour the Internet for gorgeous interiors and figure out how I could get the look for less money. It’s surprising when you shop around what you can find to replace top-end, expensive furnishings with cheaper alternatives to give a very similar look.

Lately, I've been thinking about how much of a difference flooring can make to a room. Carpets, tiles, laminate, or hard wood floors, the right textures and colours can make a drab room look bright, warm and spacious.

Vinyl flooring, or lino as it’s sometimes called, can be a really good, cost effective option if you want the look of wood or tile but don’t want to go to the expense or upheaval of having the real thing fitted. Far from the old fashioned rolls of tacky plastic-looking stuff that used to be all the rage in your grannies day, today's vinyl flooring (or vinyl tiles, in some cases) is much nicer stuff, and if fitted with an underlay provides insulation and reduces noise. And that’s just a couple of the benefits.

It’s easy to fit, even for a novice, easy to keep clean, simple to change, and won’t warp like laminate can. And nowadays, you can get such a great variety of finishes, you can easily ‘fake’ a wood floor, laminate or tiled floor look for just a fraction of the cost. In fact, some of them look so good, I’d challenge you to spot the difference without getting down on your hands and knees and touching the surface.

And because it’s so cost-effective, if you redecorate and fancy a change, you can just rip it up and start again.

I’ll show you some examples of the types of vinyl flooring available below, but first, here’s a few handy tips on choosing and fitting:

Decide whether sheet vinyl or vinyl tiles would work best for the area you are working with. Tiles can look really effective, but bear in mind that they’ll take a bit of extra planning, and time, and fiddly cutting! Sheet vinyl can usually be fitted as one piece, unless you have an odd shaped room.
Go and have a look at some examples. Don’t rely on images in a brochure or on the Internet. You need to see and touch the material in order to make a good decision.

Consider underlay. Think about the surface you will be laying the vinyl onto. Underlay will afford you better insulation on concrete or stone, and soundproof if it’s going in an upstairs room.

Save some money by fitting it yourself. Look up tutorials on the Internet to see how. But be confident in your ability if you choose this option, as the old saying goes, measure twice, cut once!

Here are some of my favorites:

Mercury 547 Spotted Gum - £8.09 sq/m, Carpetright.

Art Deco Vinyl Tile - £5.49 sq/m, Homebase.

Black Vinyl Tile - £14.99 sq/m, Wickes.

Remember, there are plenty of options out there, but you need to shop around. Happy hunting!

Subscribe to Smart Dog

You can now subscribe to Smart Dog, and get updated by email each time a new post is published! If you want to keep up to date, simply enter your email address into the box to the right of this page, and then respond to the confirmation email.