Published by Finn Hayden Creating a children's room often starts with choosing colours, furniture, and decorations. Increasingly, however, parents are thinking beyond aesthetics and asking a different question: How can a child's environment support their development? This idea sits at the heart of the Montessori concept known as the "prepared environment" – a space intentionally designed to help children explore, learn, and develop independently. Originally developed for educational settings, the concept is now finding its way into family homes as more parents seek practical ways to encourage confidence, responsibility, and self-directed learning. And with a little help from vidaXL, you can easily implement the method into your own home. What…

At least in the Western world, the wellness economy is continuing to expand. The Global Wellness Institute (GWI) projected growth to nearly $9 trillion by 2028, from $6.3 trillion in 2023. That is unbelievable.  For the year past, and looking forward into 2026, it seems there are a few key technology advancements that are starting to influence the way we think about wellness. From AI-driven mental health applications to hormonal tracking, sleep optimisation tips, workplace changes and the wider access to smart homes, wellness in 2026 is evolving on multiple fronts. More Personalised but less personal | AI-driven tech & health support Technology has changed a lot recently. Thanks to AI,…

Reading about the Liver King story now, his downfall almost seems like it was always inevitable - a muscle-bound, shouty man who claimed to have achieved his bodybuilder physique only by ingesting liver and bull testicles and nothing else. Really? The answer is yes, people really believed this. But why wouldn't they? After all, some of the biggest podcasts in the world got Liver King on to tell his "inspirational" story, with very little pushback on his outlandish claims. For example, the very cool (we mean very cool) 'No Jumper' podcast got Liver King on to talk about his fitness journey, which was as embarrassing as it sounds. There was…

This blog uses a lot of writers from all over the place, and one of our close friends moved to Edinburgh this month to start a master's course at University in Scotland. They asked me (who lives about 30 miles from Edinburgh) if I knew of any local Edinburgh Rugby Clubs that they could join (or at least what I recommended). I didn't have an answer, and a quick Google search didn't us help either. We even tried on the Scottish Rugby Website, which didn't seem to work. So, I've done some research and I am writing this post to help anybody in the same situation. What Edinburgh Rugby Club…

Africa is a huge continent - and it is almost always overlooked as somewhere to travel to. Most people head there for their gap year with a tour company or never leave the hotel compound. This is sad because many countries in Africa are home to some of the most enriching life experiences and most interesting history in the world. We in the west just don't know it yet. After travelling for years to Africa, I thought I would write down a few of the best places to visit. It is better you get advice from somebody who has travelled there, right? So, let me walk through the best places…

Imagine that a retired zoologist wrote her first novel and become a best seller? And the book has a strange name like Where the Crawdads Sing. Well, that is what happened to Delia Owens. The story is set in 1950's North Carolina and follows Kya, a 6-year old who's family abandons her. She fends for herself and becomes known as 'The Marsh Girl' - a lonesome stranger who has managed to conquer a solitary way of life, and womanhood. The novel jumps to the 1960's when a body of a young man is found, and Kya is the main suspect by way of finger-pointing from the local people. The novel…

The Percy Jackson Saga by Rick Riordan has been purchased over 180 million times since the first book publication in 2005. It makes the 5 supplementary books (also available as graphic novels) one of the best-selling book series ever written. I'm expecting that if you are reading this post, then you've already read the book - but for those who haven't: the book (Percy Jackson & the Olympians) is the first novel series of the Camp Half-Blood Chronicles. Percy is a young demigod who fights to prevent the Titans from destroying the world. It is the mount Olympus of adventure novels - the peak of the mountain of other books…

If you've just finished reading It Ends With Us, then your heart will be breaking and burning for more nerve twisting, beautifully written books that keep you asking 'will they ever get together!?' Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us is a multi-award winning, highly acclaimed masterpiece, so it has been very difficult to find anything that may come up to standard. We've searched long and hard through our library and researched a lot of new books to write this post. So, here are some books like It Ends With Us that you should think about reading. One Day - David Nicholls I remember reading this one summer, on a couch…