My wife has just bought a new Dualit hand mixer and decided to write a review about it for my blog. It is her first post so be nice:

I’ve just used my new Dualit hand mixer for the first time and I have to say I am very impressed the robust design which makes it very good to use. I decided to buy a Dualit hand mixer because I have previously bought other kitchen gadgets in the same range and I found them to be very durable also I like the retro look that Dualit offer so this mixer matches my other gadgets well.

Although it is on the higher end of the scale price wise you do get so much more for your money than other cheaper hand mixers, it comes with two multipurpose oversize flat beaters, two dough hooks and one balloon whisk ideal for a range of cooking and baking needs. It also has five different speeds, manual retractable power cord for easy storage and a convenient beater ejector lever for easy release. Also during use the beater is not too noisy compared to cheaper mixers I have had in the past, I also found the handle easy to grip and use and it was not too heavy ideal if you have a lot to mix over a long period of time.

I used my mixer to make meringues, not the easiest of things to make however I found that I managed to get plenty of air into my egg whites when using the balloon whisk attachment, something I have found hard to do in the past by hand. It didn’t take long for soft peaks to form when using the mixer and when they came out of the oven they were perfect, all in all my first use of my mixer has been very successful.

We are now in 2010 and its time to tackle a renovation project I have been putting off for some time, a new kitchen. I have decided not to rip out the old kitchen completely because the actual layout of the kitchen is ok; I have instead decided to replace all the cupboard doors and work surfaces with new ones, hopefully saving me money as well.

Me and my wife (mostly my wife!)have been designing the look of our kitchen for the last year and will be going for a more modern look with high gloss cupboard doors and granite worktops, with a tiled floor.

At the weekend we took a trip to our local kitchen store to have a look around and get a rough quote on what it would cost to renovate the kitchen. We looked at various different styles of cupboard doors, but decided that a simple flat design with chrome handles would suit our design best.

We then looked at some granite worktops; I didn’t know there were over 20 different granite styles so we took some samples to compare to our existing kitchen accessories. Being stupid, I only took some simple measurements of the kitchen before we came out so we couldn’t get quote; I will be measuring all the cupboards and worktops this week and we will go back at the weekend.

This is something that has been bugging me the past few weeks since the weather has been a bit colder.

Underfloor heating, i probably should of taken the plunge a few month back and bought a bespoke diy kit, but the problem is always worse than you imagine, i dream of waking up on a morning and not having to stand on cold laminate flooring.

When Laminate flooring was first put on to the market a few years, back i did my entire bedroom with it. So needles to say that its now starting to look a little bit tired and its that awful colour that you see in council houses, I’d like to get a darker coloured flooring like Walnut.

Since I’m on economy 7 for my electricity tariff I’m hoping to have it wired up to this meter so that it makes the most of the cheap rate electricity.

I’m hoping to have it all completed over the space of a weekend this includes moving furniture out pulling up the old laminate, laying the underfloor heating and then putting the new laminate down and moving the furniture back.