The Material Manor

Despite being heavily into all things online, I just adore curling up with a good magazine. I like to keep one with me for convenient reading and it thrills me that they come in a topic to suit anyone and everyone. At one point, I was subscribed to over 20 magazines globally!

Anyway, as I’m sure anyone who’s read a good magazine can agree with - there’s always a dilemma. What to do when you see something you like or want to refer to later? Tear the page out? Then there’s the issue of having a loose page floating around. Fold the edges down? Then when you go back later you can’t remember what the heck you were folding the page for without re-reading the thing. Gah!

But you can stress less, petals… because Aunty Kikki has a solution for you. Kikki-K stocks these handy ‘sticky words‘ that make a great accompaniment to any magazine. Simply tab them into the pages so you know what you’re coming back for later.

If you like these, they also make financial, fashion, wedding and cooking versions.

So, if in doubt - stick it.

MS

We all know Apple kick every other label’s ass when it comes to design. Have you *ever* seen a commercial or TV show where the brand of machine wasn’t the focus and they use anything else? Of course not. Apples are downright purdy. Anyway… they now have (aesthetic) competition.

LaCie now bring us Lego-lookalike stackable hard drives. With a high speed USB 2.0 connection, two size options (320GB and 500GB) at pretty reasonable prices - what’s not to like? These things beautify your desktop like no hard drive ever had. Instead of a lump of grey nothingness you can now have something sweet to look at.

Just don’t tell your Lego men. They might get an inferiority complex.

MS

The name says it all, m’dears… Scrabulous is a Facebook application (I’m temporarily overlooking my Facebook boycott) that allows you to play multiple Scrabble games with other Facebook users at one time.

Okay, so I’m a sucker for a good game of Scrabble, so maybe I’m just biased, but who doesn’t like something that actually allows Facebook to be useful?

Here’s a list of two letter words for your future Scrabulous games. Get memorising.

Happy Scrabbling!

MS

If you’ve been thinking the Japanese must have nearly run out of oddities to bring the world, then you can’t have seen Puchi Puchi. Anyone who’s produced this wee amusement can’t be short of more ideas.

Puchi Puchi, for those playing at home, is a virtual bubble-wrap toy. That’s right, folks - you’ve experienced the joy of the real deal, but find it disappointingly unrenewable and immobile, so our forward-thinking friends at Bandai have brought us happiness that can only come with a bubble-wrap simulating keyring. One step better than the now-old e-bubblewrap, you can touch this pocketful of fun.

In a further twist that is sure to entertain, every 100 pops emits a random non-bubble-wrappy sound such as a door chime or barking dog.

Mmm… poptastic.
MS

Now, it’s been some time since I’ve been on a diet, but I’m pretty sure the first thing any dietician / nutritionist / weight-loss guru will tell you is that you gotta lose the soda. So wouldn’t it be nifty if you could drink that soda, rot your teeth to your heart’s content, and still lose the jiggly bits?

Well, Celcius Cola is just that - soda that causes you to burn calories. So yeah, it’s probably only a matter of weeks before whatever drug-approval board bans it because it’s got speed or something in it, but in the meantime… drink all the soda you want, lose some weight and increase your energy levels (that’s pretty much it’s claim, in a nutshell).

Their website tells me that the company is founded on sports nutrition and this drink in particular contains no carbs, no sugar, no corn syrup, low in sodium and has a bunch of typically good stuff (although I don’t know in what quantities) like green tea and whatnot.

So hey, if you haven’t yet worked out that everything in moderation + exercise = weightloss, then perhaps this is the drink for you!

Bottom’s up!
MS

Be honest now… you thought I’d already told you about all the desk loot you could possibly ever have, right? Well I pfft in the face of your skepticism, because here we have the ever-amusing, entirely useless, Mikro Man series.

Was ist das? Mikro Man is a species of little metal blokes that live in Mikro World, with designer Sam Buxton their god. In a nutshell, a Mikro Man is a tiny metal fold-out sculpture that comes in an assortment of different styles.

Beware though, these little folks aren’t for kiddies - they have small parts and sharpish edges. Speaking from personal experience, they’re a whole new type of bitch to put together too.

If you want to get in on the Mikro Man action and start your own colony, you can purchase them from Mikro Mart, starting at 7 british pounds a pop.

‘Til later… Mikro, Mikro man… I wanna beee a Mikro Man… (Yes, that’s to the tune of ‘macho man’. Yes, I know that makes me a dork Yes, I’m comfortable with that).

MS

So I went to Bristol for a fortnight and did a really crappy job of blogging on a regular basis (and by “on a regular basis” I of course mean “at all”). Apologies. The good news is that I now have an enormous backlog of exciting things to share with you.

Have also been messing around with the name and look and feel of the blog. If you feel like it, lemmi know what you think.

Back a little later with the first installment of things from ye olde england towne…

MS

It’s been a while since the House of Stuff (now the Material Manor, if you hadn’t noticed) has had a fashion item, and as my first post, I couldn’t resist spilling the beans on my latest little trinket discovery.

Those pretty little poppets you see above are actually designs for rings. Handmade Julz has 82 different designs to choose from that are then transformed into the delightful jule (yes, that’s a joke) you see below.

At only twenty bucks, you can have a fair bit of candy for your fingers.

Until next time, I hope you’ve enjoyed this glorious post, proudly brought to you by Madmoiselle Things, helping to fill in for Madame Stuff whilst she is on hiatus for work shenanigans and to visit the ever-lovely Monsieur Stuff.

Not so long ago, I dedicated an entire post to stuff to help you wake up. Recently, I’ve had a colleague come tell me about an item I should well have included, so here we go…

Rivalling Clocky for title as ‘most entertaining’ is the flying alarm clock you see pictured above. When this sucker goes off, the little blade you see on top shoots into the air to the tune of something that can only be adequately described as an air-raid siren. Worse yet, it doesn’t STOP going off until you get out of bed, retrieve the ‘helicopter’ part of the alarm and then insert it back into the base. Oh joy.

Beware the ceiling fan which may create a whack-and-fling reaction.

Til next time,
MS

ps - the link above is for an Australian site. For TODAY ONLY you can buy this clock for half the price from Zazz. If you live in another country, just type “flying alarm clock” into Google. Lots of places stock them in the UK and America

*And other environmentally-aware folks.

Apologies loyal readers, but Monsieur Stuff has just left again and later this week I’ll be making the glorious trek to visit him in the UK. With this in mind I have a spectacular five back-to-back weekends in his company and I’m back in nesting mode. In essence, this means you have a week of housey things to look forward to :p

Now, I’m all for the environment. It’s given a lot to us, and like rellos with old-timers disease, we owe it bigtime. That said, methinks green wallpaper might be taking things a bit far. But heck, if it’s pretty and looks good where you want it, what difference does it make?

Mod Green Pod do a great variety of vinyl-free and organic cotton wallpapers and fabrics. I’ve actually been pondering the potential recovering of my couch, and it’s fabrics like this I’d like to see in action.

‘Til tomorrow,
MS