Disclaimer: I haven't been paid to recommend any products or shops, just wanted to share my latest smiles from my favourite place😊
Hi Honeys,
How are you today? It's been such a beautiful sunny day here, just a tiny bit cooler, at 16C, than it has been but it felt perfect. Far better than the mini heatwaves we've been having recently, although I know I'll miss them (a lot) when winter arrives. It'll be here in no time, unfortunately and my heart sinks at the thought of it. Never mind, dear ones, only 201 days till spring 😄🌻🌹
For todays post then, I thought I'd share some of our latest Ikea finds, some of their newer products and how we're using them.
Back again dear ones? Do you have your cuppa? Me too🍵 Let's have a look at those six new products then shall we?
1. UPPFYLLD
In an effort to try to deal with rising food and utility prices, we've been trying to meal plan and batch cook recently. It's been working really well too, Hubby helps (thank you sweetheart x) and it just means that if I'm using the oven I'll make double (or more) of whatever our dinner is that night and freeze some for future meals. More on that in a future post💖
UPPFYLLD is a brightly coloured collection of kitchen utensils, from a set of paring knives to a pizza cutter. They're all very inexpensive and make up the basics of any kitchen. I spotted an interesting set of two vegetable slicers, which are actually spiralisers I'd like to try but they're not available for home delivery.
Back to the product from this series that I wanted to share then. It's a set of three bowls, two of which you can see in the photo above. Basically, you slide them under your chopping board and push prepared fruits and veggies into them. This leaves a clear work space on the chopping board to happily keep on meal prepping 😊 Filled bowls can then be used to move ingredients to your pots or oven dish.
Such a simple idea honeys and even though I haven't had them long, they arrived in our latest Ikea delivery, I'm already wondering how I've managed without them 😊 You can find details here
2. BESTÄMMA
There are no words for how much I'm loving these pretty glass dishes. They have tightly fitting lids and each holds 500 ml. This makes them ideal for make-ahead lunches such as salads, as well as for single portion meal prepping and freezing.
Why change to glass?
A few years ago, I read online about the dangers of toxins leaching into food when plasticware was used to heat it in microwaves. This absolutely appalled me honeys because I've always made sure Hubby takes a proper lunch to work with him each day. This means a great deal of the time, certainly in winter, he has to use the microwave in the office to warm his lunch. Hubby had a few of those "click and lock" containers for his lunches and since they'd been quite expensive, I assumed they were safe. Especially since they all had the microwave safe icon on them.
Maybe they were safe honeys but the same afternoon I read that article, I fetched a bin bag and all of our plasticware went into it and straight into the recycle bin. This left me looking for replacements and luckily, Ikea had the very thing! The very thing though, as it turns out, was a whole range of different shapes and sizes of containers in glass! Perfect, and also perfectly sized for Hubby's lunches.
So, over a few deliveries we invested in, and built up our collection of the Ikea +365 dishes and lids. The lids are very secure, and very similar to the "click and lock" lids Hubby had, except they are silicone, with a removeable, and replaceable gusset or seal. There are also bamboo lids too which I use when using the containers in the fridge (but not the freezer.) These glassware dishes have been, as the saying goes, a gamechanger. I can bake in them and then cool, then click on lids and freeze too. Perfect for the batch cooking I was talking about earlier.
They've been used almost daily for the past maybe three years and we still haven't had a single one break. You can imagine then, when I saw that Ikea had a new range of glassware, with only two products so far, I was curious...
Trying BESTÄMMA...
So, in my next Ikea order, I added just one of these (I think) very pretty, square glass dishes, just to see what it was like, as well as the other product in the range (more about them next.) I was very pleased to find this range is, like the dishes in the +365 collection, made from a good heavy glass.
The lids are very secure and with a capacity to hold 500ml, perfect for lunches, as well as meal prepping, batch cooking and filling the freezer. We now have six of these little square glass dishes and will be ordering more in our next shop💖 You can find details here honeys.
3. BESTÄMMA
This set of three nesting bowls, with lids, is the other product in the new BESTÄMMA range. As with the small square dishes from the range, they are made of a good, heavy glass and come with secure, click on lids.
Since they all nest one inside another, they also save space in the cabinet (or in our case, a little trolley.) They have so many uses but I'm loving them for leftovers or for prepare-ahead veggies I can keep in the fridge to save time when making dinner. These lids are not spill proof though, so for more fluid items such as casseroles and soups, Hubby will still be using the glassware from the +365 collection. You can find details of these little nesting bowls here honeys.
4. HAJMAL
In addition to his lunch each day, Hubby always has his fruit and maybe a biscuit for his mid morning coffee with him. Hubby really does work hard and it's a stressful environment, so it's far better to take healthy snacks with him, than feeling peckish and only having a vending machine to rely on, don't you think?
So, you can imagine then I was pleased to spot this lovely little snack bag among Ikea's new products. It's not something he needed particularly, but it wasn't expensive, it's made from sustainable cotton and hemp and I just thought it would make a nice addition to Hubby's work bag. No longer does he have to search his bag for missing fruit.... "I know I had an orange in here somewhere...." 😄 You can find details of this little snack bag here honeys.
5. YUPPIENALLE
There has to be an element of genius in creating a product that nobody had seen a use for before. The little item above, as you can see honeys, would easily clip onto a keyring or (and here's where the genius steps in) onto a lanyard. Those lanyards that most people end up wearing at work?
When folded, it lays perfectly flat and is quite small. When opened, it can stand on your desk, or any surface, and will act as a stand for your phone! Hubby uses his all the time in the office, for his work phone and I know that my former co-workers would all have had one of these attached to their lanyards too.
This useful little item is only 50p and you can find it here (as well as a useful short video demonstrating it's use.)
6. VESKEN
How a tiny trolley became a greenhouse...
Concentrate Rosie!😊 What was I saying? Oh yes, back to the tiny VESKEN trolley. Well, yes, I can see how useful it would be as a tiny utility trolley, stored at the side of the washing machine or by the shower with shampoos and other assorted products in it but that wasn't why I ordered it honeys...
A dear friend (thank you Sarah x) bought me a box set of assorted seeds and I was so chuffed! It gave me another reason to countdown to Spring this year (as I always do, I'm so not a winter person.) Sure enough, I've had the best time growing our own herbs and being able to add them to my recipes. A fabulous alternative to the dried versions I usually use from our spice rail.
In thinking about how best to grow Sarah's herbs, I had an idea honeys, and having had this idea, I went in search of Hubby who listened and then went off, fetched his drill and.... I'll get back to that in a minute😊
An indoor greenhouse, you say Rosie?
We have a small hallway leading to our back door, which then leads out into the garden. This small hall really is a sun trap, on the (very) rare occasions we see the sun in Scotland🌞 So, I thought, after having had such success in growing our herbs there (again, more of that in a minute😊) maybe we could expand our indoor gardening project a little?
I went looking for a small shelf unit that would fit the small space, originally considering a three tier shoe rack, and then it happened! I spotted the tiny, narrow VESKEN trolley on the Ikea website and as you can see in the above (and below) photo, it very easily became a mini greenhouse🌻🌹
Fitting the space and containers to suit...
The narrow-ness (is that a word?) of the trolley made it perfect for that small hall, it isn't in the way at all, of either the back door or the door to the large storage cupboard there, but it gets the full sunshine from the large window in the middle of the back door. So, just like that honeys, we had a tiny, indoor greenhouse😍 Now, we needed planters...
I had originally planned to use a trough type planter, which Hubby bought for me (thank you sweetheart) but it just didn't sit properly. Instead, we've re-used ice cream tubs (which fit perfectly) to plant spinach, rocket and lettuce...
The tiny gnome and the busy bee hydration station🐝
The hanging herb garden...
