5* Luxury in a Dog (and Cat) Friendly Modern Mansion

Hey there Phileas Phans, Willow here – long time no sniff. I’ve been very busy this last year – we bought a house so now I have my very own place. (Hannah wouldn’t let me be on the mortgage but everyone knows it’s my house really.) And so many people have been coming to visit that it’s been exhausting. Plus I’ve been a BIG help with all the decorating, especially the gardening – I definitely have green paws!

Anyway, I just had to make time out of my busy schedule to tell you all about our latest holiday – it was totes amaze-bones! We were having a big family get-together with 14 people so we booked Hartcliffe View near Penistone, in the Peak District. But, when we arrived, we realised ‘house’ did not do our holiday home justice – it was more like a CELEBRITY MANSION. With granite floors throughout, a huge staircase complete with chandelier and floor-to-ceiling mirror, a massive Jacuzzi bath and a games room, it was a palace fit for an A-list pooch – that’s me, by the way – and my whole entourage.

Dogs are only allowed on the ground floor but that wasn’t a problem as the stairs were too steep and slippery for my little paws and besides, it gave me easy access to the garden which was doggy heaven! It was HUGE – like having a park transported to our back door – and perfect for playing fetch and running round and round (and round).

What’s more, the owners of Hartcliffe View obviously realise that us canine visitors are just as important as human ones and there was a whole dedicated doggy cupboard, with bowls, toys and treats just for me. And the information booklet contained a lovely letter from the owner’s dog addressed to holidaying hounds, as well as suggestions for some local walks.  As for the basket that was provided, it was big enough for a Great Dane!

So I was in my element – and so were my family. They were SO excited at the sight of the pool table, table tennis and football tables, as well as the massive TV and PlayStation. And they were in awe of the double fridge with ice dispenser – and the four ovens. (Sometimes I just don’t get humans. I mean, we had a PARK for a GARDEN and they were excited about ovens – priorities all wrong!) They were also very pleased about the welcome bottle of wine that had been left for them, though they’d certainly got the worse end of the deal compared to all my treats I had in my doggy cupboard.

There were great views too, especially, they told me, from the games room and bedroom at the top of the spiral staircase that led to the top floor. Apparently guests could even look out over the hills whilst relaxing in the tub in a bathroom with floor-to-ceiling windows – not for the shy human!

The owners of Hartcliffe View were really nice, keeping in touch all week by email and even calling us from their home in Germany to check we had everything we needed. Well, I had thought they must be nice even before we arrived as they allowed my cousin to bring his CAT to the family gathering! Now, who takes a cat on holiday I ask you?! I was less than impressed: a dog having to spend her holiday with a CAT? The indignity of it all!

(Still, after a few words from Hannah, I was ordered to be polite to the CAT so was on my best behaviour and even tried to be friends with her. But she had the cheek to not want anything to do with me. That’s the last time I extend the paw of friendship to a stupid feline!)

Although we would have been happy to stay in our mansion all week, we did get out and about, exploring some of the Peak District. We visited Holmfirth, home of Last of The Summer Wine; had a drink in the dog-friendly Bridge pub and walked around Langsett Barn reservoir.

Our favourite pub of the week, though, was The Strines Inn. We first went there after doing a HUUUGE 11 mile walk (we were promised it was only six miles so this was a very sore point) and the Strines Inn was the most welcome sight imaginable. It’s one of the oldest pubs in Britain, there are loads of peacocks in the grounds, and I’m told by my humans, it does good real ales and food. Most importantly it’s carpeted so I could lie down and sleep comfortably after my 11-mile ordeal. (I only have little paws!)

And, back in the luxury of Hartcliffe View, I soon recovered – the utility room was turned into my pampering parlour and all the mud washed out of my beautiful fur.

Another place that deserves a mention is the Blacksmith’s Arms, just a two-minute walk from Hartcliffe and very dog friendly if your humans tire of using their four ovens. The staff there really looked after us the night we went – we’d booked a table for 14 and they even set it up in the bar area so that I could go too.

At the end of a week in our mansion we all felt like celebrities – even the CAT – and none of us wanted to leave and return to a four-ovenless, park-gardenless existence. So we’re already thinking about organising another trip, and if you are taking all of your human pack on holiday, you should definitely visit Hartcliffe View too.

Phileas Phacts: Hartcliffe View, the Peak District

• Hartcliffe View, Millhouse Green near Holmfirth, Peak District – book through Sykes Cottages. Telephone: 01244 356666; http://ift.tt/MVnYUi
• The Bridge, Woodhead Rd, Holmbridge, Holmfirth, West Yorkshire HD9 2NQ Tel: 01484 687652; www.thebridgeholmbridge.co.uk
• The Strines Inn, Bradfield Dale, Bradfield, Sheffield, S6 6JE Tel: 0114 2851247; www.the strinesinn.webs.com
• The Blacksmith’s Arms, Manchester Road, Millhouse Green, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S36 9NQ Tel: 01226 762211; http://ift.tt/2btbGKR

 

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3 Ways to Remove Bathroom Odours

Content originally published and Shared from http://perfectbath.com

Need help on how to remove bathroom odours at home? If so, you will want to consider these 3 ways to remove bathroom odours outlined below, including: ventilating your bathroom, looking into air purifiers and making a homemade air freshener.

Image Source: Flickr

Ventilating your Bathroom
Keep The Windows Open. This is definitely one of the effective home remedies to prevent bathroom smell. If you are out of your house for days, the windows and doors are kept close. Due to the lack of air circulation, your bathroom smells stinky. So, keep the windows open and let the air flow. Source: BoldSky

Looking Into Air Purifiers
If your bathroom has very poor air circulation, an odor eliminator alone may not cut it. Look into an air purifier, a plug-in device that helps increase air circulation and remove odor-causing bacteria from your bathroom’s air. You can buy an air purifier at a department store or order one online. Air purifiers range in price. Top-rate purifiers can cost as much as $250, but may be unnecessary if their intended use is for a small bathroom. You can buy a smaller, cheaper purifier for $25 to $50. Source: wikiHow

Making a Homemade Air Freshener
Step 1: Mix a paste of baking soda and lemon juice.  If you don’t have lemon juice you can use water but lemon juice is a great disinfectant and great for removing odors.  The consistency of the paste should be about that of pancake mix.
Step 2: Spread the paste all along the bottom of the toilet {where it meets the floor}, the toilet seat, and any other area that gets a lot of over spray.
Let it set for about 10-15 minutes.
Step 3: When the timer expires spray the dried paste with white vinegar and let it fizzle.  Once it is done fizzing wipe it up with a damp cloth. Source: AskAnnaMoseley

Contact:
Perfect Bath
Phone: Toll Free 1-866-843-1641
Calgary, Alberta
Email: info@perfectbath.com

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3 Summer Spa Treatments

What spa treatments should you treat yourself to this summer?  Here are three refreshing spa treatments to pamper and prettify … Continue reading →

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Matching Your Eyebrows with Your Face Shape

Thinking about how you should groom your eyebrows in a way that will flatter your face? In this short post … Continue reading →

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CACTUS

 

Nothing compares to the feeling of freedom standing in the middle of a desert, or floating in a sunrising sky in a hot air balloon. My first trip to Morocco with Cartier was a pure dream from a-z and honestly, I kept wondering during the whole time, how did I get so lucky so see, feel and experience all of this. The warmth of the colors in Morocco is incomparable. The only place it could actually slightly remind me of is India, with it’s welcoming, hot, convivial culture, the kids running around in the streets, the red walls and the sandy roads… The smell of spices in the air and a feeling of divine uplift, almost as if you suddenly connected with yourself in a different way, and saw the world from a different angle.

This trip of course was actually nothing like my trip to India. It was, first of all very short, orchestrated to perfection by the whole Cartier team, and definitely, utterly luxurious. You never get used to such things. And thank god. Because otherwise, I’d already be a spoiled little brat by know (which I truly deeply hope I am not, thanks to my closest friends for always reminding what a noob I am) and because each of such adventures wouldn’t feel so special anymore. The fact that this little Moroccan escapade was so short might have actually been a good thing, it felt like a dream. Just falling asleep and waking up in a hammock laying by a pool in an oasis lost in the middle of the desert. Needless to say, my only wish is to go back and spend more time there, explore the markets, the villages, indulge on Moroccan food and get a taste of people’s warmth and culture.

There was an unbelievable sense of serenity and spirituality that I’ve noticed quite vividly in Morocco. I don’t know if it’s just me being in this head space, but somehow it was different, I breathed, thought and felt different. More open, more serene, and in peace within myself. I’ve been trying this thing lately, which is called “going with the flow”. And don’t make fun of me. I am such a “perfectionist” (control freak in other words) that letting go of all pressures is difficult at times, and with summer at it’s peak, I can’t express how much I need to disconnect from it all and resource myself with true, meaningful, experiences, conversations, emotions. I guess it’s an endless self quest that shouldn’t only be good as a summer experiment, but more a state of mind to live and grow with.

I had such a feeling of peace while floating in the air, on a hot air balloon, at 5 in the morning. It’s as if time stopped and we were just observing the quite and calm of nature. It was one of the most magical experiences of my life. We get so easily stressed by so much and so quickly, we react so impulsively, we don’t take the time to think, fear and doubt guide so many of our steps and decisions… when actually when you’re up there, everything seems so simple, so tranquil. Perhaps it’s just us who make it all so complicated? Perhaps we don’t really take the time to really feel anymore. We’ve become numb to so much because we’ve been exposed to so much. We’ve developed a poker face in situations where emotions would naturally burst out, simply because we have to. Because the world we evolve in demands in. But it is so nice, to forget all that. Forget all these norms and commodities and just let go of it all. Feel what you go gotta feel, do what you gotta do, say what you gotta say. And not feel bad about it.

If there’s one thing I definitely want to do, is spend more time getting lost in nature and connecting with not only myself but also, as cheesy as it may sound, listen to the world, feel the energy of the ground, of the air, of the nature evolving and growing on it’s own and let this empower you too. You can’t feel all that while sitting on an airplane or in the middle of NY with cabs all around and people running everywhere with their phones buzzing all the times… It’s too much noise. We all need from time to time to re-centre and learn to feel and be again.

Of course I have to end this by saying a h-u-g-e thank you to Cartier for this unbelievable experience that felt so truly, deeply special and that I’ll never forget. For always making us dream and for making us believe that magic does sometimes exist, or at least it feels like it. Needless to say that their new high jewelry collection “Cactus De Cartier” is purely mesmerizing and was a perfect match to this earthy, gorgeous Moroccan landscape. I will let you enjoy the images and surprise, surprise… Guess who has a secret talent? Miss Fiona Zanetti shot these images and can we just take a second to note how gorgeous they are? Who knew girl had such a thing for angles. Enjoy x.

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Beginner’s Guide to Solidcore

There are plenty of fancy workouts and flashy fitness classes to choose from these days, but one that is quickly rising to the top is Solidcore. The name sounds appealing if you want to get in shape, and — even better — the principles that guide this workout make it both unique and effective.

Solidcore offers a high-intensity, low-impact, total-body 50-minute workout that features the Lagree Fitness method. Key to this is a contraption called a Megaformer — it’s similar to a spring-loaded Pilates reformer machines but more hardcore. Each training session involves slow, controlled movements that will leave your muscles screaming for mercy. Exercises work everything from the core and legs to the upper body, with an instructor and heart-pumping music motivating you through each session.

The principles that guide the Lagree Fitness method ensure that cardiorespiratory and muscular endurance, strength, body composition, core, balance and flexibility moves are incorporated into each workout. While all of these components are important, understanding the significance of doing slow, controlled movements, training to muscle failure and mixing up the exercises you do during each training session help explain why Solidcore workouts are so effective.

While there are many approaches you can take to strength and resistance training, slow and controlled movements have been shown to be particularly impactful. The idea here is that when you do exercises at a slow pace, you don’t receive any assistance from momentum. Consider a bench-press machine — pushing the weight quickly is a lot easier than pushing it slowly.

Slower movements create more tension, which requires you to recruit a greater number of muscle fibers as you work through each movement, allowing for the force to be evenly distributed. That means fewer injuries and a safer workout on the Megaformer when compared with just knocking out a bunch of quick reps on a traditional weight machine.

Another concept upon which Solidcore workouts focus is the idea of muscle failure. Training to failure means that you reach the point of fatigue where you can’t perform another repetition of a particular exercise. When you hear about the gut-busting, quad-burning nature of a Solidcore session, the moments of muscle failure are what many fitness fanatics are recalling.

By employing super-slow movements on the Megaformer, you train your slow-twitch muscles to failure, forcing your body to then recruit the fast-twitch fibers. You don’t need to do sprints and agility training to work those fast-twitch fibers — Solidcore workouts provide a more controlled approach to strength and endurance training.

While studies hint at the fact that doing too much of this type of training can hurt performance outcomes, there is plenty of research that demonstrates that, when done correctly, training to failure is effective. In addition to helping you access the various muscle fibers, it also means your muscles will produce more lactate. Pushing to the point of extreme fatigue and accumulating lactate can help prompt increased muscle growth over time.  

Muscle confusion, muscle progression and periodization each describes an approach to fitness that varies in some ways, but they share an important truth: If you focus on the same muscle group or training component over and over again, your body eventually adapts and your fitness plateaus. Mixing up your workouts to include various intensity levels, muscle groups and exercises helps to keep your body guessing, thereby encouraging fitness gains.

Solidcore relies on this idea. Within each workout, participants work various muscle groups. Workouts also vary from one training session to the next. As you gain strength, you can challenge yourself further by adding sets, reps or resistance to prompt that upward trend of increased strength, endurance and overall fitness.

The importance of including a variety of components of fitness in your training regimen and taking a strategic approach to increasing the difficulty of your workout sessions is nothing new. Periodization has been shown to be effective when it comes to improving strength, athletic performance and body composition. Similarly, progressive overload in a resistance training program — adding incremental weight or resistance to exercises over time — has also been shown to be key in increasing strength.

In addition to helping you avoid mental and physical burnout, as well as subverting a fitness plateau, including variety in your workouts will also increase your enjoyment and the likelihood of you sticking with the workout over weeks, months and years. This is an important part of programs like Solidcore. By throwing something new at you each session, your body and mind stay engaged, eliciting better results.

While there’s no mimicking a Solidcore workout without actually signing up for a class and hopping on a Megaformer, here are several exercises that you can do at home to introduce you to this type of training. Doing these at home will give you a taste of how your body feels doing slow and controlled movements and training to failure.

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10 Simple Food Swaps to Save Calories

Whether it’s swapping heavy cream for cauliflower or avocado for butter, cutting just 50 calories per day through simple food swaps can add up to bigger weight loss wins in the long run. Here are 10 simple swaps to try:

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