Yoga has become one of the most popular forms of exercise today. There are many different styles to try, each with their own postures and benefits. But what is yoga, really, and why should you try it?

Yoga is a science that works best when integrated in our daily life. It works on all aspects of a person: the physical, mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual. The word yoga means ‘unity’ or ‘oneness’ and is derived from the Sanskrit word ‘yuj’ which means ‘to join’.

Most yogis (yoga practitioners) will tell you that with regular practice, the right style of yoga can have wonderful benefits for your life, both inside and outside of the yoga room.

For example, if you have a very stressful life, then yoga may help you to calm down, breathe and relax. Physically, yoga can help you gain strength, flexibility, muscle tone and an excellent posture.

Unlike a lot of gyms, yoga classes are frequented by everyone and not just the body beautiful. So why not dip a toe in the water and try a local class?

Hatha yoga is a very popular style due to its relaxed pace. You perform a series of postures, holding each one for a few seconds whilst breathing deeply.

Ashtanga yoga is sometimes known as ‘power yoga’ due to its dynamic pace. You keep moving throughout the class as you do postures such as the downward dog and the triangle. Madonna first made this style popular – it’s when she got her biceps!

Bikram yoga is like hatha yoga but practiced in a room heated to 38 degrees. It’s challenging but has devotees around the world. It’s particularly good for healing muscle injuries and preventing brittle bones and osteoporosis.

As autumn says hello and the apples start to fall from the trees, we celebrate a new season with a most appropriate recipe – apple crumble. This classic favourite is yummy served hot with anything from ice-cream to berries to crème fraiche.

Ingredients

1kg apples – peeled, cored and sliced
150g caster sugar
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
125ml water

Crumble topping:

75g porridge oats
125g plain flour
225g dark brown soft sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
125g butter, melted

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C / Gas mark 4.

2. Place the sliced apples in a 20×30cm (9×13 in) baking dish. Mix the caster sugar, 1 tablespoon flour and ground cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Pour water evenly over the mix.

3. Make the crumble topping: Combine the oats, 125g flour, brown sugar, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and melted butter. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture.

4. Bake the apple crumble for about 45 minutes.

If you’ve got an eleven year old child or grandchild, then this week is going to be one of the biggest in their lives so far. It’s the start of secondary school!

Secondary school is a massive change for schoolchildren. They’re no longer big fish in a small pond but the babies of a big school community. There will be new subjects to learn and new people to deal with as well as a new daily journey – not to mention the shock of seeing eighteen year olds walk around the corridors.

Here are our tips for you to help you smooth the transition for your child or grandchild:

1. Do the journey to school and back with your child before term starts, or on the first day of school. Make sure they know which trains or buses to get.

2. Get a copy of the timetable in advance from the school and talk through it with your child. Ensure that they know what each subject means.

3. Make sure your child feels able to talk to you about any issues that might arise. Starting a new school can be frightening and your child will need your support.

4. Ensure that your child has the right uniform and equipment for school and that everything is labelled with their name on.

So it’s goodbye to another summer as August draws to a close. We had a great summer here at Kaleidoscope – we liked wearing our shift dresses and sunglasses in the sunshine and enjoying the lovely hot weather. We hope your summer was fabulous as well.

As the seasons change, so do our wardrobes. It’s difficult to have your summer and winter clothes together, but most of us don’t have the storage space to have two separate wardrobes. The best thing to do is to clear out your summer wardrobe now so that you make space for your winter wardrobe (remember, all of those coats and jumpers take up a lot of room).

Clearing out your summer wardrobe now also means that you’ll only keep the ladies fashion you really love. It will also make it easier for you to see what you need to buy next summer.

Clearing out is easy but you need to be ruthless. You should get rid of a piece of clothing if you haven’t worn it in over six months; if it no longer fits; if it looks too dated or if you no longer have anywhere to wear it. These items can go to the charity shop. Remember to clear out your shoes and accessories as well.

If you’re not going away this bank holiday, there’s no need to stay at home in a strop with your arms folded. There are plenty of fun things to do, either alone or with friends and family, on the bank holiday weekend. Here’s our pick of the bunch:

1. London’s famous Notting Hill Carnival takes place over the bank holiday weekend. Sunday is family day, so if you have kids, check it out then. There’s something for everyone, with food stalls, floats, processions and DJs to enjoy.

2. One of the UK’s greatest resources is its outdoor swimming pools and lidos. This might be the last weekend we have the weather to go for a swim outdoor, so why not check out what lidos are near you and go for a refreshing dip?

3. Assemble friends and family together for a bank holiday picnic. You could choose to congregate in a local park or drive to the coast for a beach day out. Take food, drink, blankets and games.

4. If there’s a UK city that you’ve always wanted to visit, why not hop on the train and go there? Check out its tourism website before you go to see what’s open over the bank holiday.

5. Put your feet up! There’s nothing wrong with a good relaxation session. Get out the face mask and pedicure kits, have a cuppa or two and browse through your favourite home shopping catalogues.

“How to pack a suitcase?” Well, yours truly has a favourite answer for that. Ask somebody to do it for you! Sadly, in the absence of any willing volunteers, most of us will probably have to pack our own suitcases this August. Some of us will have to pack suitcases for the whole family. What a lot of work!

You can make packing easy and efficient though with our handy guide (top tip – bunging it all in and hoping for the best will never, ever work…)

1. Make a list of everything you want to take, making sure that you’ve looked up what the weather is going to be like at your destination first.

2. Rolling your clothes, rather than folding them, can help to maximise space. You roll clothes by only partially folding them first to make them a bit more compact and then rolling them tightly from the bottom up.

3. Put heavy ladies clothes and shoes at the bottom of your suitcase and undies and socks inside your shoes.

4. Clothes that are delicate and can’t be rolled, like smart jackets, should go at the top of your suitcase.

5. Always pack a smart black dress. You never know when you’ll need it.

6. Toiletries should be as small as possible – you can buy mini bottles to decant your goodies into in most pharmacies. Put your toiletry back inside a plastic bag in case it leaks to protect your clothes.

7. If you can bear to wear your jeans travelling, rather than packing them, do, as they can be heavy to pack.

8. Pack a number of carrier bags to store your dirty clothes in during the holiday.

We all know about walnut cake. We all know about coffee cake. But how about mixing them together – and even adding some apricots into the mix too? This is a moist and delicious cake that works well as a dessert served with ice-cream.

Ingredients

1 1/2 sticks (6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups (200 g) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground allspice
3/4 cup dried apricots, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped walnuts, lightly toasted

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Butter an 8-inch springform pan and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and white sugar until light. Stir in the eggs, then the yogurt and vanilla.

4. In another bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Fold the dry ingredients into the moist to blend them.

5. Spoon half the batter into the prepared pan, being sure to make it level.

6. In a small bowl, mix together the brown sugar, spices, apricots, and walnuts. Strew half of the mixture over the batter. Repeat with the remaining batter and the apricot mixture.

7. Insert a round-tipped knife into the batter into the layers and swirl it through. This will give that lovely marbled effect.

8. Put the cake in the oven and bake for about an hour. When it has cooled, unhinge the spring, remove the rim, and cut the cake into wedges.

The living room – a cosy, lived-in space that plays home to family activity all week long. Most of us have a lively living room where we like to spend time with friends and family, whether playing board games or enjoying dinner together.

When you spend so much time in a room, you can become so used to how it looks that you start to neglect it. Living rooms need love too, so why not freshen yours up? Here are our top five ways to freshen up your living room.

1) Cushions are a cheap and marvellous way to add new colours and textures to a room. Contrast shaggy fabrics with smooth satins for a really interesting effect. Check out your favourite home shopping catalogues for some ideas.

2) Having your carpets or wooden floors professionally cleaned can really spruce up a room. It’s worth spending the money to get that good as new effect.

3) A change is as good as a rest, so rearrange your furniture! You could even have your room feng shui’d to create new energies in your home.

4) If you’ve got the time, paint the walls. A simple lick of paint can really freshen up a room. Pick a weekend and get friends and family over to help you.

5) A big mirror can create a feeling of space in a room. Why not invest in one?

Autumn is around the corner, bringing with it colourful leaves, the start of another school year and lots of rain (probably!). Still, August has been rather damp, so at least we’re used to it already.

Don’t be sad about the end of the sunshine though. Autumn always brings some gorgeous new ladies’ fashion to enjoy. Yours truly actually loves autumn and winter clothes. It’s so easy to look stylish in the colder months – a smart shift dress, a nice hat and some knee-length boots look so sophisticated.

Dresses are a wardrobe staple when it comes to autumn fashion. Treat yourself to a couple of patterned numbers along with a black dress or two. Think day to night for dresses that you want to wear during the week – the right dress looks as good with a jacket for work as it does with a cardigan for evenings out afterwards.

Layered dressing is a good approach for autumn days, as the temperature can be changeable. Make sure you have a couple of sleeveless or short-sleeved dresses on hand for surprise warm days – you can team these with bolero jackets, or wear a blouse underneath, when it’s colder.

This might surprise you, what with us being a home shopping catalogue and all, but we would actually like to help you to spend less money!

We know that times are tight at the moment, and saving money (and spending money wisely) is at the top of the list for many of us. Until this pesky recession goes away once and for all, we’re all going to have to find ways to spend less money. Well, we’ve done some of the thinking for you – here are our top tips!

Have a night in: seeing friends needn’t mean spending loads of money in a pub or restaurant. Why not set one night a month where you and your friends get together in one of your houses? Rotate whose houses you visit and get everybody to bring a dish and a bottle so that the host doesn’t end up spending loads of cash. Make it special by getting everyone to wear their favourite dresses.

Turn off the TV: a clever psychological tip for those of you with kids, this one. We all know about pester power – the kids see an advert on TV for a toy or designer trainers and then they nag you until they buy it. Well, if they don’t see the adverts, they will nag a bit less! Switch it off and encourage other pursuits instead.

Liking Kaleidoscope on Facebook: when you ‘like’ our Facebook page (facebook.com/kaleidoscope) you can access special deals and promotions to help you save money on your favourite fashions. We’re running a one-day promotion today, so get in there quick!