Rob and his family we’re suprised live on air on Viking FM 96.9 this morning when Rosie from the Paul Foster Breakfast Show turned up on their doorstep with a brand new Wren kitchen and a team of fitters.

The fitters have been busy all day and hope to finish later this afternoon.

Below Rob’s plea for a new kitchen, which won him the new Wren Kitchen, are photos and videos from today.

Sorry, can't think of a word to describe how brilliant it would be...

The Final 8

We’ve had hundreds of entries to our VikingFM Nightmare Kitchens competition and we just like to say a BIG thank you to all of you who entered.

The judges have read all your emails and looked at all your photos and after long deliberation they’ve picked the top, or should we say bottom 8 …

Rosie from VikingFM’s Paul Foster Breakfast Show will be visiting 4 of the finalists so we can make the final decision.

So here they are, in no particular order. Is yours one of the final 8? Or maybe someone you know?

If you have been selected, Good Luck for next week, Wren Kitchens could be visiting you. Kitchen Heaven is just around the corner for one luck winner.

Daisy Hall

Hi viking FM, I'm sending the pictures of my kitchen for the competition.

Hi viking FM, I’m sending the pictures of my kitchen for the competition.

I’d just like to say my kitchen has been like this for two years since I got the house. It didn’t have a kitchen in to start with and over the months I have just made do with a few second hand cubboards that have seen there sell by date. The work top is just two odd short pieces placed on the top of the old cubboards, I did get some cheap cubboard doors to make it look a bit decent but it’s still getting me down. I have no sink area as you can see by the pic, there are just pipes sticking out every where with two taps on the end of them. It just looks so dull and i’ve been waiting for this for so long.

It would mean so much to me to just come home and see a beautiful kitchen there, it’d be like a dream come true… please help!

Penny Day

This is my nightmare kitchen!

This is my nightmare kitchen!

I’ve lived with it for nearly seventeen years now, and it really gets me down! It was given to me by my mum, so nothing fits properly. I can’t get into some of the cupboards without doing a contortionist act and now it’s falling to pieces too!

Pleeeeeeeese HELP!!!!!!

Shane Haggie

I would love a new kitchen I am so fed up with rubble in my food...

I would love a new kitchen I am so fed up with rubble in my food ,cost a fortune at the dentist,kids would like a packed lunch that didnt contain dust and bits as you can see there are no tiles ,no flooring and only a kitchen sink very difficult to make anything nice in.

As a family it would be great to sit and eat in a kitchen that isnt cold dingy and very scruffy.Worksurface whats that Help Help Help this is a kitchen nightmare no chance of top chef coming to cook in my HELLS KITCHEN.I feel that it is not me that deserves a nice kitchen but the kids very embarrassing for them when bringing friends home, Please help and save us from this kitchen nightmare no sweet dream here.

Rob Petchey

Sorry, can't think of a word to describe how brilliant it would be...

Two years ago we moved house. Our reason for moving was to cater for our growing family’s needs. We (the wife and myself) have five sons. The property we moved to was two flats and we have restored it back to its original state of one house.

Over this period of time, my wife has cooked for our family of seven:

Firstly, out of a tiny kitchen in the upstairs flat – she moved out as the chimney came down and we had a gaping hole in the ceiling and a massive hole in the floor. Now, she is cooking for us all out of a temporary kitchen in the living room. I am to be made redundant at the end of this month so we have made no further plans for our new kitchen.

My wife has recently gone back to work, part-time, as a Skills for Life tutor and is finding working and juggling the family hard. She is also studying in the evenings for her PGCE as well as looking after us all.

I hope you will consider us for a new kitchen. It would mean a lot to me but to my wife it would be …..Sorry, can’t think of a word to describe how brilliant it would be for my wife.

Daniel Abela

I am emailing you with regard to my poor excuse for a kitchen.

I am emailing you with regard to my poor excuse for a kitchen.

We bought this house a couple of years ago with the intention of doing it up but thanks to a head on meeting with a drunk driver I have been left physicaly unable to do the work and as my boss went under soon after the accident I am far too skint to do it!

The remnants of the original units are over 40 years old and rotted through with the doors hanging off and the work surfaces are knackered, not to mention the olive green and tounge & groove decor.

Please consider us for a new kitchen as we are in desperate need!

Rebecca Snowley

We really do believe our kitchen is a kitchen from hell!

We’d like to enter your kitchen from hell competition. We really do believe our kitchen is a kitchen from hell!

It all started some time ago when my husband decided to rip our kitchen to bits as it had been in a long time (from previous owners) and really needed doing. The plan was to slowly do it up when we had the cash but then my husband lost his job, so there went the new kitchen idea! With a cooker that does not work amongst other things it really isn’t a practical kitchen, which does not help with 3 young children.

Kevin Smith

Its been two years and its not quite finished yet! God our lass has some patience.

Its been two years and its not quite finished yet! God our lass has some patience.

Kevin Smith

Kitchen smells like rotting woodlice, and we can't afford a new one.

Kitchen smells like rotting woodlice, and we can’t afford a new one. Save me from the pong!

The signs, to be used in Sainsbury’s, will offer a breakdown of the alcohol units contained in the drinks, helping them to keep track of their intake.

Whereas existing labeling may tell consumers the strength of a bottle of wine or how many units are contained in the whole bottle, the new signs in Sainsbury’s will reveal the units contained in a glass.

Sainsbury’s Justin James said: “People don’t necessarily drink wine by the bottle, they drink it by the glass, and our new signs address this by breaking the bottle down into the measures in which it is likely to be consumed.

“They show, for example in the wine section 125ml, 175ml and 250ml glasses and the units per each glass, at 12.5% ABV (alcohol by volume).

“Other shelf edge labeling placed in the alcohol aisle will explain the maximum recommended daily units, so customers can cross-reference product alcohol units against the government’s guidelines.”

Copyright © Press Association 2009

Watercress has become increasingly popular as health conscious people flock to get hold of the latest “superfoods”, with sales doubling in the past decade from £30 million to £60 million.

The National Farmers’ Union Watercress Growers’ Association is becoming concerned that traditional methods of growing watercress in flowing water channelled through sloping gravel beds is being threatened by land-grown alternatives.

The new production methods are cheaper to produce and require less infrastructure.

As a result, the watercress association, which has seven members, is applying for protection for their method of growing watercress under the EU’s Protected Food Name Scheme.

The association claims the traditional crop has a superior taste to land-grown cress. Farmers also say their method of growing the semi-aquatic plant – in an industry which is concentrated in the south of England where chalk springs provide an abundant supply of clean water – helps to protect headwaters of streams.

It can be cultivated all year, without artificial heat or light, the producers added.

Copyright © Press Association 2009

Kitchen Nightmares? Win a new new Wren kitchen.

Are your old kitchen cabinets getting you down? Do you look at your kitchen as the original kitchen from hell? Why settle for hell’s kitchen when you could have a luxury Wren kitchen for FREE as part of our prize giveaway?

Wren Kitchens offer affordable luxury kitchens at prices you can afford. Wren’s range of traditional kitchens, contemporary kitchens and top end appliances ensure you’ll never have to suffer another kitchen nightmare.

One lucky winner will get a brand new set of kitchen cabinets from Wren’s range of luxury kitchens and will be given the opportunity to say goodbye to their personal kitchen nightmare forever!

Escape hell’s kitchen once and for all and enter today. To be in with a chance of winning this amazing prize, simply visit the Viking FM website for more details:

Good luck.

Partly, because as many of us have found to our cost, freezing often serves as nothing more than a half-way house en route to the bin.

Now, some timely advice should ensure that at least some of it makes it through to the winter, when garden-fresh fruit and veg is just a happy memory.

Fruit-wise, raspberries, redcurrants and blackcurrants are best frozen in single layers on metal trays, and then stored in plastic bags containing enough for one meal.

But strawberries, which usually end up a soggy mess while defrosting, are best made into a puree, which can perk up winter ice cream or be used used as a coulis with chocolate pudding.

Meanwhile, most veg freezes well, particularly dwarf French beans, garden peas, broad beans and mangetout. Again, each bag should hold just enough for a family meal.

And if they`re going to be stored for more than a month, blanch them first – colander, boiling water, three minutes – before cooling them in a bowl of iced water.

Copyright © Press Association 2009

Wickes Price Comparison

Unlike most kitchen companies, who offer discounts of up to 80%, we provide our customers with the same fair price all year round, and still manage to offer a significantly lower price than our competitors.

We compared the every day price of our kitchens against the sale / discounted price of the Wickes nearest comparable kitchen… here’s how the results came in on Thursday 23rd July 2009 …

Please note that our kitchen cabinets price comparisons are changing all the time on our website. For all the latest competitors comparison prices, please click here.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read other user updates which are known as ‘tweets’. Every tweet has a maximum length of 140 characters. Still none the wiser? Well read on and hopefully things will become a little clearer.

The best way to understand the world of Twitter is to jump right in. So the aim of this post will be to take you through the basics of setting up and personalising your Twitter account through to creating ‘Tweets’ and explaining some of the Twitter jargon.

Wren Kitchens on Twitter

So where do I start?

First of all you’ll need to visit www.twitter.com to sign-up for a free account. (You may have already done this so scroll down if you need to)

There should be a big green button somewhere on the page with ‘Get Started’ or ‘Join!’.

Step 1 - Grab yourself a Twitter account

The sign-up process is incredibly simple and Twitter will ask you for a few details:

* Full Name – This will help other people find you
* Username – Keep this as short as possible
* Password
* Email

Once you’ve entered all your details you’ll be asked if you want to find people you know on Twitter through your Gmail/AOL/Yahoo address books. If you don’t use these services simply click on the ‘Skip this step’ link at the bottom.

On the next page Twitter will give you a list of famous/popular Twitter users to follow to get you started, simply uncheck any that you don’t want to follow the click on the Finish button.

That’s it, you’ve now got an account and should be looking at your twitter page. If you chose to follow anyone on the previous screen you should see a list of the most recent tweets from those users.

Make it Personal

Now you’ve got your shiny new Twitter account you’ll want to personalise it a little. Firstly you’ll need to upload a picture be clicking on Settings then Picture then finding a good picture of yourself on your computer to upload. The file size limit is very generous at 700k so even fairly large pictures should be ok. If you need resize a picture you could always use this great online image editing application: picnik.

Now you’ve got a picture on your Twitter account you’ll have a much better chance of people following you back.

The other customisation you may want to make is to update your Twitter background image. There’s a really good article about creating Twitter backgrounds here.

Personalise your Twitter account with a picture of yourself

Follow, Follow, Follow

Twitter is about following the updates of others as well as telling other people what you’re doing so you’ll need to find some great people to follow.

From the menu bar at the top of the page click on Find People.

This screen will let you search for people using Twitter, whether they’re friends, family, colleagues, famous people or companies (like Ebuyer!).

For example, if you wanted to follow the actor and technology enthusiast Stephen Fry, type in his name and you’ll get a list of all the Stephen Frys on Twitter.

On the returned list you’ll see a little blue tick next to the top entry stephenfry this means that this is a ‘Verified Profile’ and is indeed the real Stephen Fry.

Click on the Follow button to the right and that’s it, you’ll now see every tweet that he makes almost instantaneously.

Find friends, family, colleagues or celebrities on Twitter

Another really great way to find people you may find interesting is by using the search box on the right hand side of your Twitter page. Type in any term depending on your interest and you’ll see a list of people using that term. If you see someone you would like to follow, click on there name to go to their Twitter page where you should see the Follow button beneath their picture (or Avatar for its correct term).

Use the Search box to find interesting tweets and follow those who interest you

As you start to build the amount of people you follow and the people who follow you, you’ll see the counter on your Twitter page increase. If you need to manage the lists of people you follow and people who follow you simply click on the numbers. Often people will find you from the things you talk about so it’s good to keep an eye on your Follower list and follow people back if you think they would be interesting.

As you start to follow and get followed yourself your Twitter page will be updated

Tweet, Tweet

I’ve covered a fair bit about Twitter but I haven’t covered the single most important aspect to Twitter, your tweets!

On your Twitter homepage at the very top you’ll see the question What are you doing? with an input box. This is where you write your tweets. As you begin to type in the box you will see the number on the top right decrease as it’s counting down the number of characters you have left (remember you only have 140 characters!). Try not to take the question too literally by the way, you can type whatever you like in here just try not to talk about what you had for lunch etc. as this is a sure way to lose followers!

When you’ve written your first tweet, hit the Update button and it will now enter into what is termed the Twitter Stream. i.e. Your followers and anyone searching will see your tweets on their pages.

What are you doing?

You Talking to Me?

Another great thing about Twitter is that you can talk to other users simply by using the @ symbol before their username. They will then be able to see the tweet that you directed at them by clicking on the @mentions button on the right of their page. Don’t forget though that Twitter isn’t a chat room or MSN so keep discussions as brief as possible and never be offended if people don’t tweet you back.

Click on this area of your Twitter page to see people talking to/about you

Sweet Retweet

When you’re reading through the many tweets from the people you follow, you may see something that really grabs you and you want to talk about it too so that your followers can see the same tweet. Twitter uses a very simple mechanism for this and it’s called a Retweet or RT (you’ll also see via a lot which is exactly the same thing). The following image shows a good example of an RT, notice that it’s been RT’d more than once!

Credit your Sources with an RT or via

Make a Hash of it!

The last piece of jargon I’ll cover is what is known as a Hashtag. Essentially it just means putting a # in front of words to make them more visible in Twitter and to allows the terms to be searched for more easily even if the content of the tweet doesn’t have the word in it. For example a tweet like this: “I’m just looking for a good currency converter app! #iPhone. would be a good use of a hashtag.

You’ll also see hashtags used for a Twitter phenomenon called #FollowFriday which involves recommending people you follow to your other followers. If you want to know more about #FollowFriday check out this great post from Richard Dewick over at Makakmedia.

Essentially you’re giving credit to the person who wrote the tweet originally and it also gives your followers the opportunity to follow them too.

A #FollowFriday tweet

My links are too long

One of the biggest problems you’ll encounter with Twitter is when you try to add a long link in your tweet. To easily solve this, you should use URL shortening services like bit.ly or is.gd

Spice up your Tweets

As Twitter has gained in popularity lots of different websites offering different Twitter services have sprung up, most notably TwitPic which allows you to upload photo’s and tweet about them at the same time. You will always engage your followers a lot more if you can offer them pictures to go along with your tweets.

TwitPic is your friend!

Don’t just use the Twitter site

Interestingly, the vast majority of Twitter users don’t actually use the Twitter page itself to publish their tweets. There are a whole host of applications that make the process of tweeting and reading tweets a lot smoother and more fun. Here is a very small selection of some Twitter applications:

* TweetDeck
* Twhirl
* Nambu
* Tweetie (iPhone)

And Remember

Well that’s it from me. I hope you found my guide useful and if you have any questions about Twitter you were too afraid to ask please feel free to leave a comment!

Enjoy Twitter and remember, “You’re only as good as your last tweet!”.

@darylsws @wrenkitchens

Wilde Kitchen Range

This year saw the launch of a new luxury kitchen brand, Wren Kitchens. With over 30 years experience in retailing, designing and supplying affordable luxury kitchens in the UK and US, Wren Kitchens offer a new approach to the tired showroom format of buying kitchens in this country. From manufacture to service, design to delivery, Wren Kitchens are different.

Based in Howden, East Yorkshire, Wren Kitchens (www.wrenkitchens.com) offers a wide selection of modern and contemporary kitchens as well as over a hundred door, drawer and worktop combinations.

Wren Kitchens large selection of affordable luxury kitchens includes the contemporary Wilde range (pictured). This solid shaker style kitchen is constructed from solid light oak and gives an air of rustic charm to any home. Whether you want to evoke the spirit of a true country kitchen in the suburbs or simply creating a vintage-looking centre for your home, the Wilde range is perfect. Wren Kitchens range of granite worktop and lighting options also allow you to create the perfect contemporary kitchen at a price you can afford.

All kitchen cabinets from Wren Kitchens come fully assembled and ready to be fitted. Wren’s in-house team of professional joiners build, check and ship your new kitchens ensuring no part is missing, everything works perfectly and your entire kitchen is ready for fitting as soon as it lands on your doorstep. Wren Kitchens also offer a wide range of optional extras and high end luxuries including 18mm solid construction, colour-coded banding and pre-fitted soft close runner and soft close hinges as standard on their entire range of cabinets and drawers. It is the end of the flat pack kitchen.