Doing the dishes can be a mundane task and not matter how much you enjoy it (or say you do) it eventually will become a chore. That is precisely why something like this rubber washing up bowl brings a smile to your face. You can trust our scandinavian friends to come up with some really cool ideas around the home. So the washing up bowl from Normann of Copenhagen is no real suprise.

A great novel idea that gets rid of the need for those forsaken plastic washing up bowls forever, I mean which ultra cool modern city dweller would want to have a plastic washing up bowl in their sink, it will ruin the buzz of the place surely.

Available in various colours including Pink, Black and Red you can get your hands on one from mylivingspace.co.uk for £56.00

Want to spruce up your home? Add a splash of colour with new curtains from The Natural Curtain Company. They offer custom curtains, roman blinds, ready made curtains and matching fabric.

Custom Curtains

If you live in London, a representative can come and measure your windows for free, and help you decide which products are right for you. But you can easily do this on your own. To determine the width, simply measure between the finials of the pole you’ll be hanging your curtains on. For the width, check their website for easy directions to measure, based on inside recess, outside recess or fixed-to-frame curtain styles.
Once you’ve got the correct size, you’ll need to decide on the fabric and liner. There are 15 colours in cotton, 28 in linen, five in silk, velvet, and many more designs in cotton / linen mix.

Roman Blinds

Roman blinds are a popular and attractive alternative to curtains. These gather into gentle pleats when raised, and look softer than common vinyl mini-blinds. The Roman Blinds offered by The Natural Curtain Company are available in custom widths and lengths to fit your windows perfectly. And you can choose from all the fabrics offered in the custom curtain line, including cotton, linen, silk and velvet, in a wide variety of colours and patterns.

Ready Made Curtains

The Natural Curtain Company offers ready made curtains in cotton. Just pick the colour and they will finish them off in the length you specify at no additional charge! They are offered in three standard sizes, with three different lining choices: cotton, thermal and blackout.

Fabric

To complete your room design, purchase matching fabric to make pillow covers or other décor. You can purchase lengths of fabric in all the colours and patterns offered in their custom curtain line.

Retro seems to be the new Modern with everything going retro, from motorcycle helmets to homeware. This retro radio alarm clock is a great example of mixing the modern with the old.  Using retro design with a modern digital clock and radio you get best of both words.

It looks great from the front or the back.

This great design won’t cost you the earth either you can pick one up for £22.95 from Ochigo.co.uk who also have a great variety of other clocks in both retro or modern design.

Has there been an easier way to chop garlic then just rolling the Garlic Zoom over the top of your kitchen counter a bit like a toy car? I think not! The simplicity of this little device is perfect for easily chopping garlic on demand and it looks great too.

Simply load it with garlic and pull it back and forward a few times and you have an end product with very little fuss and no extra mess.

You can lay your hands on one of these from the colloco.co.uk website for £7.95. It was a really hard decision to pick this out from the site as there were so many other great products for sale, colloco.co.uk is a bright, funky yet functional website worth  definite look.

There has to be a mention to the designers of the product chef’n who’s mantra of Tasteful Ingenuity comes through on this product, some other great designs on the site too.

This is not the first time we have featured Salt and Pepper shakers on homecheeq, before you think it we are not obsessed by them.  This set is handmade in Stoke-on-Trent , and in keeping with Stoke’s past the outcome is a beautiful ceramic product.

The graphics are applied by hand, and they look brilliant giving a little taste of England to anyone that uses them.  The design is both functional and aesthetically pleasing, designd to fit togther side by side each pot has it’s own image.

If you want one of these then you will need to look online somewhere , a site like Bouf will sell you the set for £18.00  The actual design comes from Liverpool based designers drpd

I love a good old cuppa and who doesn’t? well ok there may be a few people out there that don’t like a cup of tea. The worst time of day is in between cups of tea especially in the morning. So the best way to remind yourself of the fragrance of your favorite cuppa is to use this Tea scented candle.

So the only smell is not tea , but this Black Tea candle has a rich and dark scent of musk, bergamot, pine and tea. That sounds lovely to me.  I wonder if they do one with milk and two sugars.

The candle complete with holder and a burning time of 40 hours can be yours for £18.00 from Utility Design

Not often we feature products from another country, but I think that maybe the way forward. There is so much design talent out there that it seems unfair not to feature it.

Doctors in the UK and around the world will tell you that we must all eat more fruit as it is good for us, and with a fruit bowl like this from New Zealand company endemicworld.com, you will want to empty the thing as quick as possible so you can fill it up again with different colours.

Coming in at about £55 + Postage it is well worth the price due to it’s unique quality.

Michelle Mason has designed these simple but elegant candle holders, they give a real sturdy feel to the whole candle holding business (if there is such as thing). What I mean is there is no sense of the candles being delicately balanced, and the design is great too, slightly space aged (because they remind me of the eggs from the Aliens films) .

The website says you can watch the candles drip like egg yolk , you would of course need yellow candles but I get the idea now , quite clever really.

Sold as a pair: Large Egg 15cm (h,) Medium Egg 12 cm (h) – £69.75 , more info here

This twisty design for a coat rack comes from UK company Headsprung , a truly unique additon to your home even a £55.00

Although design is a subjective thing with one mans great design being another’s trash , there are somethings which are just so simple they have to be given their 15 seconds of fame.

This white cross medicine cabinet is one such thing, it looks great has a simple yet bold design and may even help make you feel better.

The white cross medicine cabinet is available from purves.co.uk for £48.00