Check out this diamond mounted cooker which has been built to celebrate the diamond anniversary of Denman College – the Women’s Institute-owned Residential Adult Education College. This little beauty is set to be raffled online for charity.
This one-of-a-kind range cooker was specially commissioned by the home appliance brand in association with diamond jewellery specialist Seventy Seven Diamonds, to mark the college’s diamond anniversary.
The proceeds are being donated to Let’s Cook!, a project run by WI volunteers nationally to teach young parents in disadvantaged communities how to cook healthy family meals – it is supported by the UK’s Foods Standards Agency (FSA).
The Stoves cooker has been finished with a specially developed ‘diamond-effect’ sparkling silver paint, but its centrepiece is a spectacular, certified half-carat diamond worth around £1,400, donated by Seventy Seven Diamonds. In total, the oven is worth well over £4,000.
The diamond cooker will be showcased at the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham from 26th to 30th November on stand V120.
If you do you may like to look at this solid gold calendar that has been created by a Japanese jeweller and is on sale for around $300,000 USD. It weights 6kg and thanks to the price of gold coming down recently (due to global demand.. or lack of it!) you can pick it up for an inflation beating price!
Umm, really not sure about this one. We were tipped off about this site Thessaly Nobility which markets titles of nobility and chivalry.
All a bit of fun I guess and good luck to Thessaly, but does a bought nobility really add anything? I’m not sure… The site claims that a title is an investment that will grow in value. Given the difficult times we’re in and the paltry sums cash receive on deposit, who knows, buying a title might be a way of diversifying your portfolio…..
Thessaly offer exclusive incentives for centurion card holders.
The other day I was lucky enough to take an inside look at Bicester Village Luxury Outlet Shopping Centre situated in the south of England. It’s just been extended if you didn’t know already.
Now, I mentioned this to a couple of friends and received a surprising reaction. Disneylandish, pretentious, antiseptic, an altar to the cult of consumerism - were some of the really quite surprising adjectives used. Well I say absolute tosh to all that and here’s twenty reasons why.
1. Bicester Village is easy to find and conveniently located not too far from London.
2. Communications are excellent, Chiltern Railways operates a daily services from London Marylebone (up to 4 an hour), main hub airports such as London Heathrow and Birmingham International are less than an hour car journey away. Most importantly for me, (being a lazy soul) is that it was an easy drive from London - approximately an hour or so. If you’re really flash, you can even helicopter in using FreshAIr UK Ltd.
3. The toilet facilities were sparkling! Don’t laugh, but in a former life I used to be a surveyor and ended up inspecting alot of toilets - since then I’ve become a bit of a stickler for cleanliness, so full marks to Bicester Village on this….
4. If you’re someone who likes rubbing shoulders with celebrity shoppers, then Bicester Village is worth a visit. Check out the facebook celebrity spotting group.
5. The car parking facilities were spacious and pristine. Given that I was there on a Thursday and we’re in this credit crunchie thing, the car park was absolutely jammed - surprising to be honest. Are people still buying on thin air or what?
We recently had the opportunity to review Gaucho’s latest Smithfield restaurant (opened late October) and after our experience of Gaucho Sloane… we didn’t need to be asked twice!
Situated just a couple of minutes from Farringdon Tube, the restaurant is very well situated in London’s iconic Smithfield Market. The restaurant offers the same level of chic ambience with a Buenos Aires twist as their other restaurants, which immediately gave us the impression that the experience will measure up to our last visit to Gaucho Sloane.
We started with a couple of cocktails, which set us up perfectly for the feast to come. We started with 6 beautifully spiced oysters and some stunning scallops, after which we were joined by none other than Phil Crozier, Gauchos very own expert Somméliér (wine guru) who guided us through the rather impressive wine menu and introduced us to some of the finest wines we’ve had the pleasure to try (and we’ve had a few!) – we definitely recommend the Malbec by the way. A quick note about the wine if I may… all the wines are from Argentina and thanks to their climates and altitudes, I’m convinced that their wines are some of the best in terms of value on the market today. (Check out Gaucho’s wine boutique here)
