The famous quote, “never work with animals or children”, is usually a warning for people in show-business,  but forget trying to present an episode of Blue Peter, I’ve been informed by a friend that you haven’t experienced stress until you’ve attempted to cook dinner with two pugs and two cats. The Bettacare Gate with Lockable Cat Flap could be the perfect answer to said friend’s troubles, but I do need to make it clear straight away, that Bettacare state on their website that the Gate has not been safety tested for children.

Slowly but surely, I’m installing robot servants throughout my house. As soon as I spied the Appkettle box in the office, I had downloaded the app before I got my grubby little paws on it. The Appkettle is the world’s first voice enabled kettle and works with Alexa and it connects to your Smart Home devices using IFTTT. You can link the Appkettle preferences with hundreds of smart home products and services. Starting with its general appearance, the Appkettle looks like any other kettle, which is a bit disappointing.

Being a natural night-owl, I struggle to get to sleep. I often go to bed wide awake and try to relax by either reading, or listening to audio books or music. The problem is trying to get comfortable with either over-the-ear headphones or in-ear earbuds: the Pillow Speaker from Soft Tones aims to help combat this issue.

Anyone who owns a cat knows they are not like the cat-food adverts portray. They are, in fact, furry little gits who enjoy nothing more than destroying your possessions. As a matter of fact, only yesterday did one of my litter-kickers decide to wake me by knocking over an entire pint glass of squash on my bedside table, sending an orange tsunami over my books and phone. Designer Esther van der Wurff also owns hairy little devils, which led her to design the Cat’s Trapeze when her kittens refused to stop using her curtains as a climbing frame.

Taylor’s Eye Witness has been making knives since 1838 and produce a huge variety of knives, scissors and accessories. The Brooklyn copper knife set is a midrange line that comes with a paring knife, all round knife, carving knife, bread knife, chef’s knife and an acrylic knife block. Each knife has a black blade and handle with a copper plated finger guard and look really attractive when all put together in the knife block.

The Novis Vita Juicer is a Swiss Engineered Juicer and citrus press that claims to be able to get 20% more nutrients than conventional juicers. On first look this machine can come across a bit of an intimidating monster, where the heck is that going to live? Was my partners first response, but for everything this machine can do it is actually pretty compact, if feels reassuringly solid too like you could juice a brick in there if you wanted to. It is available in 8 colours but being Swiss a bold red has a lovely appeal (ha peal!).

I am a mug for pretentious coffee (excuse the pun) and I love to go out for a tall half-skinny half-1 percent extra hot split quad shot latte as much as the next person but if I can save the trouble of taking out a mortgage for one hot drink and make it myself in the comfort of my own home even better. We already have a coffee machine at home that uses pods to make reasonable Espressos and Americano’s but it really sucks at Cappuccinos and Lattes as the milk pods are UHT, sweet, tepid and most importantly NOT FROTHY!!

Is there anything more disheartening than cutting the perfect slice of freshly baked bread only for it to become completely mangled as you try to spread rock hard butter on to it? I’m not sure there is and that is why I was so happy to discover that David Alfille had invented the temperature controlled butter dish. It automatically heats or cools to the perfect spreadable temperature so it is ready when you want it, with the same consistency every time allowing you to set it to your own preferred level of softness with the temperature gage.

I have really fond memories of power cuts when I was a kid, my dad would come out of the office, my teenage sister would creep out of her bedroom and mum would light lots of candles, make some hot chocolate on the stove and we would play cards, wonderful. Mum however remembers it rather differently, my dad tripping over his bag in the kitchen, my sister panicking because she hated the dark and wax melting all over the coffee table, not so wonderful.

I can already see my dad rolling his eyes at this one but I don’t care, there are two types of gardeners, people like my old man who can grow anything, anywhere and then people like me who can’t keep a cactus alive. The Click & Grow is aimed at the latter type, with a simple idea that can turn the gloomiest of places into a secret garden and the most hapless gardeners into a budding Alan Titchmarsh.