In a technology heavy world, we now live in, it’s no surprise that handwriting skills in younger children is on the decline. It’s a not something that it used a lot at home or indeed in schools for a lot of the time, yet it’s such an important skill to take on into adulthood. Some statistics around handwriting include 60% of teachers saying they would be able to teach handwriting more effectively in school if they had more support from parents at home.

National Pen have put together some tips and advice on how you can help encourage your child to spend some time practising this skill and help develop this vital skill. There are many benefits to developing this skill which include improving focus and relaxation. Why not try taking some time out to help your children practise, maybe you could set some fun challenges or activities such as sending letters or writing handwritten creative stories at home.

Whether you live in the countryside or in one of the biggest cities, there are always good reasons to bring nature indoors. This means having flowers, it means having ferns, and other plants, and it even means having vegetables and herbs. It means bringing the beauty and bounty of nature from the outside inside. When you do this, you don’t have to despair in winter, because your home is the perfect environment for them to thrive in. The benefits, however, don’t just start and end in winter, these benefits are available all year around:

• Fresher Air

One of the biggest reasons to bring nature indoors is the increase in air quality. Not only is this good for those who live in rural areas during the winter, it’s imperative for those who live in cities. Pollution can cause serious lung conditions, and while you can’t necessarily escape it outdoors, you can absolutely improve your air when you are inside. Some plants, of course, are better for air quality than others, but first and foremost you need to make sure that the plants you get can survive. This means knowing what kind of sunlight they will need, and knowing how to water them.

• Improved Sleep

Another unexpected benefit of bringing nature indoors is that the improved air quality can help you achieve a deeper and better sleep. Combine this improved air quality with a proper night time routine so that you can sleep deeply and wake up refreshed.

• Added Colour

Aesthetically, plants are just gorgeous, and bringing plants in to your home is a great way to add a burst of colour. Some homeowners have even taken to transforming their home into an urban jungle, and the effect is just beautiful. Don’t be afraid to add more nature to your décor; it looks great and helps you breathe.

• Can Provide Food

Not all plants are just there to help improve the air and look great, some are even perfect for kicking your cooking up a notch. You can have a simple herb garden next to your window, or you can even try your hand at cultivating a vertical garden if you have an outdoor garden or balcony. That way you can benefit from having plants and fresh food.

• Act as a Great Focal Point

Not all nature will come in a pot, either. Indoor aquariums are excellent focal points and can bring life and beauty into any home. Your aquarium could be small enough to fit on a shelf, or it can be a wall-sized focal piece. Regardless of its size, it is a great way to add life into your home. Visit water-garden.co.uk and pick up all your aquarium needs today.

Plants are beautiful. They also improve the air quality, meaning that we can be more alert, sleep better, and generally just feel great. You can have a few along your windowsill, or you can completely transform your flat into an urban jungle, there is no too little or too much.

Look after your employees and they will look after your customers, your business and, of course, you. Being a boss is a hefty responsibility, but it doesn’t need to be as hard as you might think it is. Keeping employees happy is simply a matter of giving them a comfortable, happy, interesting working environment, and offering that perfect work/life balance that everyone craves. If you can get that right, you’ve got it made.

To begin with, your office needs to be somewhere that people want to go to; you want them to get out of bed in the morning and look forward to getting into work. It’s the first step to happy employees, so how can you help your employees start their day right?

Breakfast

Even though we all know that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, around half of the British population skip it. The reasons behind missing out and getting to work hungry are numerous, ranging from lack of time to not finding an appetite until later on. Getting into the office and ploughing straight on with work without having any food is a bad idea – productivity will be lower, and people will need to take a break sooner due to hunger and fatigue.

So why not provide a breakfast for your employees? It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but laying out a selection of cereals and pastries that they can help themselves to means better concentration levels and happier employees. If people are health conscious, then provide an array of milk (full-fat, semi-skimmed, coconut, almond, etc.) and have a large bag of porridge oats they can heat up in the kitchen microwave.

Coffee

Having a quality coffee machine in your office is something that employees will really appreciate. Make sure you include good coffee grounds too, so your staff can pour themselves a cup of delicious coffee whenever they feel the need. Free coffee is incredibly important, and is a great way for your employees to take a break while replenishing their mugs. There are even specific online shops such as office-coffee.co.uk that can help you work out exactly which machine is best.

Positivity

Teaching your employees positivity is an excellent idea. It’s about visualising how you want your day to go, and allowing that day to happen. It may sound a little ‘out there’, but it sets the tone for the day and puts everyone in a good mood, so it certainly won’t hurt. You could even do it in the form of a morning pep talk, letting your employees know that you’re proud of their work and that you expect good things from them. It’s amazing what a bit of positive thinking and praise can do.

Exercise

Exercising before work is a good thing to do. It wakes the body and mind, and it gets the ideas flowing ready for a productive day. The only problem is, who has time to go to the gym before the working day starts? Not many people, that’s for sure! So why not bring the gym to the office? Incentivise your staff to come in a little early (or allow for a more flexible working schedule) and arrange an exercise class first thing, if space permits it. It could be anything from boxercise to yoga. Even losing 45 minutes or so of the working day to exercising can actually mean that your employees’ productivity increases, so in the end, they get more work done in less time. Alternatively, if you don’t want exercise to eat into your working hours, then offering flexi-time so employees can come in earlier (or work later) and schedule work around exercise. By doing so, you can make a huge difference to your employee’s spirits and productivity.

Being an accountant by training, it’s sometimes second nature to look at ways to save money but since we’ve both been working as the kids have been a bit older, we’ve let things go a bit in the household budgeting front.

But as consumer confidence has suddenly taken a slide, and one of the larger car dealers has issued a profit warning, the signs are now showing that we’re about to hit a sticky patch. There are arguments about whether the mooted interest rate rise will have the right effect as we head into a period of stagflation– rising prices but falling growth. It’s all looking a bit tricky really, so we’ve taken our first step into reigning things back in again by looking at our finances.

Our bank, like most, allows you to download our bank account in .csv format. If you have access to Excel, you can open it in that, if not Libre Office is a free download, and has the same functionality. Once you’ve downloaded the transactions, you can analyse them into categories (regular bills, food shopping, etc) and then have a look to see what you can change.

From our analysis I could see spend somewhere between 15% and 20% of our take home pay on food. After the mortgage, this was our largest single expense category, spread across Sainsbury, Waitrose, Tesco, Morrisons AND Asda. Rather than one large bill a week, there would be one fairly large, and two or three £50ish bills. What we were basically doing was haphazardly shopping for food, which meant we weren’t spending it to plan or efficiently. When it comes to saving on our household bills, this was obviously the area that was the most important as it was where we spent the most money

We never used to bother with menu planning when the kids were little as a lot of play dates and visits to friends happened adhoc- when wifey didn’t work a lot was scheduled on the hoof, so menu planning didn’t suit our lifestyle.

However it’s probably time to revisit this now that we both work, the kids are all at school, and thanks to after school clubs, work and everything, we pretty much know what’s going to be happening at least 5 nights a week. So we’ve bought an online delivery package from one of the supermarkets that means we pay a flat fee for all our deliveries for the year and set up a virtual trolley of staples on repeat order that we can vary as needs dictate. Getting on top of our largest variable expense is the biggest step we can easily take towards getting our expenses in order but we needed to know where all the money was going in the first place.

I have had a curiouso glance at whether we could save money on our mortgage and mitigate potential rate rises by switching to a fixed rate mortgage but to be honest, given we’re on a tracker that’s less than 1% above base rate, I don’t think we’ll do much better, which just leaves us the other utlities to look at!

There are five of us in our household and as every one of the kids gets a bit older, their interests develop and they want to do their own thing more and more. We’re now at a stage where even meal times can be fragmented; be it through work, or after school activities. Monday’s are a good example really, the kids have swimming after school, and then there is a 30 minute window to get home, feed the eldest and get him to his drumming lesson. Both swimming and drumming times are immutable, and by the time I get back from drumming with him, the other two are in their PJ’s. It doesn’t get better as you can see from the video:

Thankfully we’re all around on a Friday evening though and we all eat together and catch a movie together. Dinner goes one of two ways, we either chuck something quick in the oven like chicken drumsticks and McCain oven chips or we make a thing out of cooking something nice together- like homemade chicken nuggets or battered fish and chips (McCain french fries are the preferred option). Both my wife and I were bought up on the Friday is Fry-day principle and it’s just something we’ve carried over, much like Sunday is the day for a nice roast at lunch time!

Making Friday meal time an event, with the war cry “We are family”, helps us put the hectic week to bed and prepare for some family time at the weekend. And yes, the weekends are equally busy for us!

McCain are celebrating all family types, after research suggested people feel as though they aren’t represented in popular culture. You can see the National Portrait Gallery hosting a 2-week pop up display of the photography that’s been captured which celebrates modern families through the lens of mealtime, which runs from 19th September.