Jenerally Speaking,

Life at Bramleys Part I

So we moved house. We'd been planning it a while really. Not actively planning so much as having discussed and accepted that eventually we would want a bigger house with more outside space, but we'd want to stay in our village. So for a couple of years we'd been keeping our eye on the market. Our village has quite a few larger houses with big gardens, but they don't also come up for sale, so we didn't want to miss the ideal one coming up.

And then it did. It was a Friday in Lockdown Number 1, and Rachel sent me a link to this house. I'd only scrolled through half of the photos when I told her to phone the estate agent. We hadn't been to visit a single other house at this point, although we'd been looking seriously since the stamp duty was reduced. This was the first house that Fit The Bill.

I mean look at it! How could we not fall in love with that? We went to visit soon after (before our house was even on the market) and discovered that it had extra rooms which were ideal, and was a triple-glazed eco-house! Even more perfect. We liked it.

The garden blew us away. Really big, wraparound and a veg garden, fruit cage and greenhouse that weren't even pictured on the estate agent's photos.

We wavered a bit, because after we looked round the house shrunk by at least 30% in our imaginations and we were worried about bedroom 3 being downstairs. We ummed. We ahhed. We poured over the photos and the measurements. And then we went for another look round and fell totally in love.

Selling our house was about as fun as selling a house always is. It felt like it took FOREVER to sell, and meanwhile Bramleys was getting multiple viewings, so anxiety levels were quite high. But it all worked out in the end.

On the second to last day of school term, we did it. We enjoyed the crazy scramble to box up the final things and clean on our way out of the home we'd lived in for 10 years.

We took the children to school from Glenboig, then picked them up and walked them back to Bramleys, bubbling with excitement.

That moment is mad isn't it? The thrill of being IN the new house at last, but the fact that exhausted though you are from a week of packing and cleaning, you now have another week of cleaning and then weeks of unpacking ahead of you.

So then the unpacking and cleaning and sorting began, and it's still ongoing really. We are really enjoying how this space has improved our lives though. There are four ways to get from the ground floor to outside. FOUR! So whenever the mood strikes, you can pop open a door and you're straight out there.

The rabbits have their own zone, which is now professionally fenced off with a picket gate (Although our make-shift chicken wire fence worked pretty well for two months! Only two escapes!) We had to re-turf the area too, because although it looked ok in December (above), by February, after a very wet winter, constant foot-fall and rabbit munching and then two fellows digging around erecting a fence, it was bare mud with the occasional wisp of grass.

We used a mixture of low-growing clover-rich wildflower turf which I bought and grass lifted from the front garden (to create a wildflower meadow) to cover the abused soil. It looked like Frankenstein's lawn for a while, but it's knitting together nicely now. Leo and Rosie were really happy to have grass available again. Grazing time is back on!

Inside we haven't made many changes yet, to be honest. We have bought our first (probably of several) rugs. I'm super happy with this purchase. Not only has it transformed this floor from hard, slippery and constantly covered in fluff and dust...

...to cosy, textured, colourful and lush underfoot. It was also a really ethical purchase from House of Dhurries. Made in India, in the home of the weaver, rather than a factory, from waste fabrics, then transported to us, via Denmark. No new plastics, decent wages for all involved and it should last DECADES. Me likee. Me likee a lotee.

And it does a terrific job of anchoring down most of the dust so it doesn't constantly look filthy!! Obviously, we still need to make new curtains and put up a lick of paint, as well as remove some wallpaper not to our taste. But to be honest, the series of unfortunate events (mostly colours which did not do what they said on the tin) we experienced when we painted our bedroom, has put us off buying paint for a while. Plus, we can't find a fabric we love for the curtains that doesn't cost all our arms and legs.

The kitchen is in the centre of this home, which is really apt, because a kitchen IS the heart of the home, I think. Here we have endured many hours of lectures, home-learning and studying, as well as the usual baking adventures and meals together.

We invested in a new table with chairs and benches, so we can squeeze as many people as we can in the long sides, when we're able to have guests. And because our old kitchen table, which I love dearly, was really quite inconvenient as a kitchen table. Spills and crumbs always fell through the gaps and landed in the drawers and the chairs didn't fit properly underneath! It's been given a new job as my sewing table upstairs, and I think it'll be much better suited to that role.

It is rather a lovely space to hang out, because you can hear pretty much everything going on in the house, and holler to people upstairs. You can look out the huge doors and see what the rabbits are up to. Having them fenced in beside the kitchen and Rachel's office really is lovely, because we can always see them. We often couldn't at Glenboig, as they'd be tucked behind things, or hiding the the bushes where we couldn't spot them, but now, they feel like part of the family. There is also a huge silver birch just outside the kitchen doors, which is so relaxing to watch.

There are dozens of birds in the garden here. Blue tits, a family of robins, starlings nesting in the eaves next to our bed (so we can hear them rustling their wings at night when we're in bed too), pigeons (of course), blackbirds, dunnocks aplenty, the odd goldfinch, occasionally a magpie and a couple of times some lesser redpolls, visiting from up North to feast on silver birch seeds! They appeared in perfect time for the RSPB Garden Birdwatch, which was very considerate of them.

You can also see the hot tub from here, which the previous owners ended up leaving. We'd never particularly wanted a hot tub (expensive and not eco-friendly at ALL), but when gifted one, along with all the chemicals to keep it clean, it would be rude not to fire it up. We managed to get it running in time for Master R's 8th birthday in January, and had it on a few weeks. The kids LOVE it, and we enjoyed it a fair bit too. We do intend to get it serviced and have someone teach us how to use the settings and get the water levels correct. Hopefully by the summer, when we can have folks over.

Still inside, this is one of my favourite rooms. The Utility. Oh, how I've dreamt of having a little utility for laundry, for allotment-veg-washing and for hiding clutter I don't want in the kitchen. As it happens, this utility is HUGE, and there is plenty of space for all of those things. Those paint things had been in the sink waiting for me to have time to rinse them for THREE DAYS. It's not that I'm proud of my laziness, but it was brilliant to be able to leave it until a time I could do it, which I could never have done before, because the sink in the kitchen is in constant use. It's a lovely space to iron uniforms, fold laundry and gaze out the window at the fruit trees in the back garden.

We've been gradually adding our own flavour to this new home of ours. Mostly in the form of wall decorations. The stairway photo collage has become the kitchen cosy corner photo collage, minus a dozen which didn't fit.

The children's room is chaotic, colour wise, because their bedroom and playrooms were amalgamated into one, so there is red, pink and orange, plus the pale grey walls (and two teal). It also feels cluttered, despite being ENORMOUS, but once they've outgrown the toy kitchen, that will improve I think. What did help was erecting two massive shelves above the bunk beds, and helping Master R to complete most of his Lego sets so they can live IN ONE PIECE on the shelves, rather than in millions of pieces in boxes all over the place. The one room which is pretty much FINISHED is Rachel's office. It is a small room, which helped! Dark grey on two walls, which luckily goes with the pale grey blind which was left. We got her the cement/metallic pots with succulents for Christmas (and successfully moved house without killing them, while keeping them secret!) and she's got a desk which she can raise to work standing when she wants.

I created a mini-collage of photos and artwork on the wall, in keeping with the monochrome kind of scheme. I do like it.

The other big change that this home has enabled us to make, is to rescue the family piano from Norfolk and re-home it with us, where we can enjoy playing it. Having been raised in a home with a piano (and other instruments knocking about) I always felt a bit sad that Master R and Miss O didn't have that opportunity, but they are loving life with a piano now. Auntie K got Master R a piano book for his birthday and he's already onto the second book, while Miss O is working her way through. We get lots more practice down on weeks when I'm on annual leave, but the occasional tinkle still happens at the end of university days, or days when I'm not working on placement.

And the garden. Really I could do a blog post a day about this garden of ours. Not only is is spacious, but it's been well created. There are trees and hedges all the way around so you can barely see the fences. There are glorious fruit trees planted on the grassy area, so there are always branches, or blossom, or leaves to look at. And there are many things to play with. So much good wild fun is had in this garden of ours.

Tree decorating with a snowy cloud looming. I love that they do this kind of things just naturally, with no prompting.

We've been able to enjoy winter in this garden, as we got good snowfall again this year. So much snow, in fact, that the roads around here were perilous, so we spent a day sledging and studying inside, rather than me trying to travel to my placement community some distance off.

We've done more work in the garden, to be honest, than in the house. Doing the garden is so much more FUN. And quick. A shed, for example, can be popped up in one morning, even if nailing the roof down in a confined space causes much hilarity!

It is now mostly painted, although we ran out of this lovely green colour, so the back and one side are random mixtures of purple and green! We've bought more paint, but we haven't quite got round to finishing the painting, or putting on the eaves. It's a low-priority job. The key thing is, we have somewhere to store all our gardening bits and pieces. I've never had a shed of my own before, and I do love it.

I also love having a greenhouse! SOOOOOO much! Yes it's metal and plastic fabric so it's not the most beautiful, but it is FULL of life. This photo was taken just a couple of weeks into using it. I have rather cunningly slotted a piece of spare wood on top of the horizontal metal ridge and then hung my equipment on that. Currently, every shelf space and the entire side on the left are covered in plants. Courgettes, leeks, herbs, cosmos, sunflowers, sweet peas, sweetcorn... we've got it all going on in there.

Now some of the veg that started in the greenhouse are out in the raised beds. I can't tell you the thrill it gives me to pop out the utility door to water my veg of an evening, or to slip out in PJs on a Sunday morning to put the flowers out to harden off. SO much easier than trips to the allotment (which I'm still trying to keep up with, along with my buddy).

We're starting to get a taste of what it will be like in this space in warmer weather, and it's going to be GOOOOOD. No more sighing at the bleak, dead plants that the rabbits have destroyed. The children have enough space too, that they can entertain themselves for HOURS rather than minutes. They have trees to climb, and so many spaces to hide that hide-and-seek has become a regular occurance here. I mean, it always was, but they were always either behind the hutch or behind the hobbit hole before. Now they could be any one of a dozen or so hidden spaces!

We even bagged ourselves a hammock, once we knew we'd likely be moving here. Someone else in the village was selling it second hand so we snapped it up. I recently managed to find two trees I could attach it to, with some bailer twine, an old carrier chest strap and a buckle and strap from Master R's old bike helmet. Unsurpringly, the bike helmet buckle snapped, so I need to get myself another carrier strap to use next time. It was lovely and relaxing while it lasted.

Eventually, we'll probably re-configure the garden a bit. But for this year, we're going to live in it and see what works. Find out where fewer leaves are shed, so we can work out where to put our pond (which is currently still in existence, in a trug on the patio). Work out where the sun falls on summer evenings, so we can decide where our seating should be. For this year, we're letting it go a bit more wild. No mowing here, except for a couple of spirals, a picnic spot and the area around the washing line. Already some forget-me-nots have appeared in the lawn. I'm eager to see daisies and dandelions joining them.

The front garden has already had a makeover. There's a big expanse of lawn, with a beautiful old bramley apple tree and a tall ornamental pear. Too much plain grass in between though, so I've lifted the turf in two kidney bean shapes to create some wildflower meadows. My plan is, once they wildflowers spread a little, it can turn into a meadow throughout, with a few mown paths so we can get hither and thither without crushing flowers underfoot.

Meanwhile in the back garden we have FLOWER BEDS with FLOWERS IN!! The kiddos have enjoyed choosing flowers to plant and it feels a genuine privilege to not have to build elaborate chicken wire cages to protect them from nibbling teeth!
Yes, life here at Bramleys is GOOD. We are so lucky. So very, very lucky. I was saying the other day, how we can see trees from every single window, and that makes such a difference. I'm a window gazer. I'm forever gazing out of windows, and being able to see so much greenery and life just beyond brings me peace and joy and hope for the future.

End of this Era

Today marks the end of an era. Quite a big era, actually. The era of me being a stay-at-home Mummy. 

From January 2013, when my maternity leave began (actually, it began on the very day Master R was born, since I didn't start it until term started back. Good timing young man!) until today, I've been an almost completely home-based Mummy. 

Yes, I went back to work one day a week between Master R's  first birthday and Miss O's arrival. And I kept myself busy, helping to run the Baby and Toddler Group, starting up Suffolk Mobile Sling Library, volunteering at the University of Suffolk now and then, as a service user, working on the ElmsWild Flowers project and getting involved with Extinction Rebellion. But mostly, I've been reliably about. Present physically for my two small people, if not always in spirit. 

It's been a hard era, I'm not going to lie. Harder than I imagined it could be. The emotional fatigue I experienced, caring for two smaller humans, day in, day out, what staggering. I hadn't realised how important alone time was to me, until I didn't have any. I didn't know it was possible to love your child so much it hurt, but simulataneously long to do something other than play dinosaurs or make believe. This era has been marked by sleep deprivation, childhood illnesses leading to quarantine (ugh, who likes quarantine?!), debilitating insomnia and tantrums. So many tears and tantrums. Many of them mine. 

But it's also been undoubtedly the best era of my life. I became Mummy. Twice. That is quite simply, still magical to me. I longed to be Mummy for so long. I felt like it would never really happen to me. Yet it did. I grew two humans inside me, birthed them, nourished them, slept beside them, doted on them, cared for them, taught them to speak, sign, sing. Watched them grow and learn and struggle and succeed. I now know what it means to love unconditionally. What it means to hold a sleeping child and weep as you beg them not to grow a centimetre taller or a minute older. And what it means to celebrate their milestone moments, even as you grieve for the younger them they're leaving behind. 

All eras have to end eventually. And this one has come to a slow, natural close. From Monday, I'll be a studying Mummy. A working Mummy. A Mummy AND a student midwife. 

It's been really nice to have 4 months to sort my life out. On that first day, having dropped Master R and Miss O BOTH at school for the first time ever, I drank a cup of tea and made a big list. A list of all the BIG JOBS that I wanted to get done, so I could start University with all my ducks lined up. With the house, allotment and sling library all ship-shape and ready to survive three years of me being much busier. (Or at least, differently busy. You can dust or wash up while supervising children, but not while you're on placement at a doctors surgery.)

In the last four months, I've worked hard pretty much every day and I have:

• Sanded down and re-painted the five upstairs doorframe.

• Re-painted all eight internal doors. 
• Created 23 compilation videos, from April 2018-December 2019.
• Sorted out all the photos on my laptop, tidied up our photo collection on Dropbox and deleted unnecessary files and programmes from my laptop, so it's ready for a new lease of life as a student laptop. It now works slightly faster than the previous snail pace it had ground down to. 

• Re-decorated our bedroom. This was a long, long-awaited task and it took us until January to finally decide how we even wanted to decorate it. And it looks so brilliant now, I'm thrilled. It took many hours, but it's the relaxing haven we wanted to create.

• Made a blind for the bathroom, only 9.5 years after we moved in! 

• Finished the pond construction and planted an apple tree in the garden.

• Prepared for and taken part in the October Rebellion. Yes, I played samba in Trafalgar Square with about a hundred other rebels, slept on Horse Guard's Parade with a clear view of Number 11 Downing Street and sang musical numbers while on night watch on the road block. Magical. 

• I also took Master R on the School Strike March in September, and joined a Re-Think HS2 march in December. Plus I've done some sitting in the road in Cambridge. And several samba sessions various places.

• Created four photos albums; Master R's first five years of craft and drawings, our Netherlands holiday album and Miss O's much delayed first and second year albums. 

• Dismantled, emptied, then re-filled the compost heaps at the allotment. Then I spread all the soil over the entire back bed, which I'd previously cleared of weeds, plants and rotivated. Also tidied the back area, created a shelf and sorted all the chicken wire.

Before

During

After

And then after a bit more re-enforcing later

Lovely today shelf. 

• Re-built two wobbly allotment raised beds. 

• Re-enforced an entire fence at the allotment. 
• Built a cold-frame at the allotment, which just needs some gaps filled before we start using it in the spring.

• Collected a load of horse muck, then had another delivered at the allotment. Between us, we've spread it across three raised beds. There's more still to spread, but that can be done at weekends in the future.

• Gone round the house with various tins of paint, painting over all the chips, doodles and sticky finger marks, so it's all the right colour and a lot less tatty looking. 
• Rubbed down and re-waxed the kitchen table.

• Fixed various bits of coving that were falling down, and re-painted them. 
• Taken down, then more firmly affixed two curtain rails which had been damaged by children pulling on the curtains!
• Attended about 15 sling library sessions, and a meeting, to make sure all the paperwork was sorted out ready for me to hand it over to by good friends and colleagues. 

• Fixed the wall in the kitchen where the sling library used to be stored and re-painted all visible skirting boards in the kitchen.

This was just after I'd scratched off the flaky paint! It was quite a state!

• Sorted out the boxes under the bed, got rid of a bunch of stuff and cleared some to the loft so I have somewhere to store textbooks, folders and other Uni kit.

I've also continued with some midwifery related reading, and sourced some kit I'll need. Second hand folders are awaiting filling, books are ready to be read or used as reference material. Oh, and I've also had to dedicate many hours to getting Leo to bond with our new rabbit, Rosie. Just signed her adoption paperwork today, since they're now getting on wonderfully and enjoying life together in the garden. 

I'm feeling quite pleased. Yes, there are a couple of things that didn't get done. I've not extended the accidentally-shrunk hall curtain, but that's only a 30 minute job one day when I finally find some suitable fabric. Then I'll be sure not to wash it again. Lesson learnt! And I didn't do a deep clean and re-organise of each room, but we're essentially quite tidy people anyway. And I do need to try to get my laptop to communicate with my phone and camera, because at the moment transferring photos and videos from either is a ghastly task. I might play with that this afternoon. Actually, I shan't have time. There's the Valentine's Cake Sale at school to help with. 

So that's it. The end of this era. I'll still always be Mummy, of course. And I'll still always have a list of bits and pieces that need to be done about the house or allotment. I'm still going to keep my toe in the Rebellion, because we REALLY need to the Rebellion to work. And soon. And I'll keep in touch with my sling library buddies, and maybe even drop in on them when there's a weekend Baby Fair or something I can visit. 

As of next week, it'll be the start of a new era and I'm excited to get started. Apprehensive too, because I am fairly aware of many of the challenges maternity services are facing and creating for birthing families. But I'm keen to learn lots and start supporting women and their families through the biggest and what should be greatest transformation of their lives. 

Mummy to children

This year has started with transition. The transition of our family, or the transition of me, at least. From Mummy-to-Babies to Mummy-to-Children. The past four years, well, five years really, have changed me. I transitioned from teacher and wife to pregnant woman and then mother. I have changed and learnt more than I imagined I would. I'm a different person than I was before. Better, I think. It's been the most intense, exhilerating, exhausting and joyful journey I've been on. 

And now my children are baby and toddler no longer. They're children. And I am transitioning again, from Baby-Mummy to Child-Mummy. And I'm enjoying it. 

Our activities, conversations and relationships are different. Lots of creative play. Master R still adores imaginary play, and now Miss O joins in, taking her role as puppy (Roly, in 101 Dalmations) or snowman (Olaf, if we're playing Anna and Elsa) or Dory, if, like this morning, we're enacting Finding Nemo.

On this evening, Miss O having gone to bed first, Master R and I filled the tuff tray with toy stuffing and started out playing with snowmen and penguins. We came up the idea of making snowmen, and I fetched some pins, ribbons and socks. 

Before we knew it, we had a whole family of snowmen, each with individual faces, scarves and some even with hairstyles! It was such fun, playing and talking with my boy. He's so articulate and thoughtful. His mind is always creating characters and stories. 

After that, we played some new board games, Master R, Rachel and I. Master R found this one hilarious. I was relieved he wasn't upset when he tipped the Ark. Instead he giggled each time. It was a magical evening. So simple, but so precious.

We went on an adventure on the second day of this year. Off and out with a packet of biscuits, welly boots and some warm coats. We explored a bit of wild space next to the A14. Ran up this slope and admired the view from the other side. Explored through the woodland, chanting "we're going on a bear hunt, we're going to catch a big one..." Miss O kept crying "Aden! Aden!" and "Splash splosh splash splosh!" 

We found this fantastic climbing tree and everyone had a go at climbing the ladder-like branches.

These little explorers balanced on tree trunks which lined a path, stomped on molehills and ran themselves silly. They arrived back at the car wind-blown, rosy cheeked and ready for another biscuit.

Miss O is becoming increasingly ingenious. Or perhaps she's just getting old enough to demonstrate her ingenuity. Couldn't reach as high as Master R, to roll cars down the roof, but no matter. There is always another way!

On this day, she decided that this sticker was the perfect accompaniment to her outfit! Hilarious girl. She loves using this doorstop tortoise as her "baby".

And one week into this 2017, our boy turned four. He was so excited. He really gets Christmas and birthdays now. The anticipation was great and he was so happy on his party days. He surprised us by asking for a Bob the Builder cake. I thought he'd go for Paw Patrol or Thomas the Tank Engine or something. He doesn't even watch Bob the Builder very often. He's got four books about it. Well, it's clearly made an impression, and luckily Auntie Becka volunteered to make the cake and some Mum friends kindly lent me some toys to decorate the top. I helped... I smashed up the bourbon biscuits to make the "mud". About a whole packet, when it turned out we only needed a couple of biscuits worth!

And this was very exciting! Now it's time for him to transition from his beautiful wooden balance bike to a pedal bike of orange metal. It's going to take some work to master the skill, and he's rather unsure at the moment. It seems like a lot of hard work to him and he says "Don't ever let go, Mummy". When the days are warmer we'll spend time at the park, where there's plenty of soft grass to practice on. 

Lazy lunchtimes. I cherish them on a Saturday morning. Before swimming we pootle about together. 

Cosy afternoons in the lounge. The sun is going down a little later each day, which I'm relishing. Bring back the sunshine, I say. We made a "Pingu" (Miss O's favourite cartoon - the episode with bowling makes her giggle aloud). Master R was in charge of the feet.

Some out-of-season trees. 

My little chefs, hard at work making some banana loaf. Which, disappointingly, we put too much baking powder in, so it leaves a bitter aftertaste. It's ok with custard though, or dunked in tea. We'll use self-raising flour it the future.

This weekend we were very productive. We erected an extra wardrobe in Master R's larger room, which is being gradually transformed to a sleeping-and-dressing-and-reading room for both of them. Having moved all their clothes into one location, we then dismantled the chest of drawers and wardrobe in Miss O's nursery, and the cot, which neither of our children have used very much, and certainly not at night-time! We talked about the weekend, while I was pregnant, that we put together that furniture. But I didn't feel sad. Life is moving on and I'm excited for our next adventures. 

Then, in the space of about 40 minutes, we put together three Kallax shelving units and transformed the nursery into a playroom, for all their toys. 

It isn't finished. There's pollyfilla on the wall to be sanding and painted over, and new curtains and blinds are needed (I'm thinking actually, of moving those from Master R's room over, once we've redecorated the bedroom in soothing natural colours). But already we all love this space. 

It makes such SENSE to have all the toys together in one place, and all the clothes and books in another space. Our small people have been enjoying playing together in their playroom, rediscovering toys which have been re-organised and relocated. 

Our ultimate aim for the bedroom is to create an unusual sleeping space with bunks beds, but asymmetric, so that we create a little reading snug under the higher bunk. That's my dream, anyway. That, and a swinging chair hanging from the ceiling in the corner by the window! But that can wait for a while. Miss O still happily sleeps in our bed each night and for her naps, when she consents to nap. Already she's in the awkward phase in between needing a nap and not. The last two days her sleep has been utterly buggered, which resulted in her having Ready Brek for dinner at 4pm and going to bed at 5:30 today! 

So here we are, in 2017, being Mummies to children. Two wonderful, charismatic, determined, entertaining small people. What an adventure!

Dear Baby O

Dear Baby O,

You're having a tough time at the moment. Being seven and a bit weeks old is hard. This Wonder Week is really bothering you. You are finding it unusually hard to fall asleep. Once you're asleep, any little thing can wake you. You want to feed all day, mostly for comfort, but that makes you sick quite a lot. It is Difficult with a capital D. 

Despite this, we've had a lovely family day. A successful shopping trip this morning saw us coming home with our very own BBQ. The warm weather and the fact that we finally have some patio furniture (an early birthday present for Rachel, who will be 30 later this month), inspired us to take part in some outside cooking.

Your big brother was VERY interested in the BBQ. As Rachel was constructing it, we were explaining (as you do, very carefully, to a two-and-a-half-year-old) that it would have fire in it, which is hot and dangerous, so he'd have to be careful. He wondered how we might put it out and suggested we might use a bucket of water. So, when Rachel moved the constructed BBQ outside, he dragged a stool over and stood on it, with a bucket of water (filled from his own water tray), ready. Totally ready to put out the fire ... that we weren't going to light for another two or three hours. It took a lot of persuading to convince him to stand down!

Today we had aimed to get lots of tidying and sorting done in the garage and garden, but you were needing almost constant contact, little one, which made that tricky. I confess I was frustrated that we were constantly being interrupted because you were squawking for cuddles, or milk, or just so you could vomit all over both of us. But I can't stay grumpy when you smile at me. I just can't. You're too, too gorgeous. And it's not your fault you're especially needy this week. Your brain is undergoing HUGE changes and I can't imagine how bewildering that must be. 

Eventually, the garage was fairly tidy, although I only managed to sweep one corner before you needed me again. So I sat on our new chairs and sang to you whilst you fidgeted and fed. I enjoyed the sunshine as Rachel and Little R watched over the cooking burgers, pork belly and sweetcorn. All around the garden, toys and garden equipment were scattered chaotically, where Little R and I had flung them in our tidying and playing.

We did enjoy our first family BBQ. Little R, whose lack of nap was catching up with him, nibbled some salad, but refused to sample the meat. When he declared himself full, we sent him inside to carry on listening to his music CD. Within minutes, he'd conked out sitting up on the sofa, so Mummy Rachel lay him down among the cushions. He's currently asleep, still fully dressed on top of his bed. He's still not quite ready to cope without that midday nap!

I fed you, Baby O, while eating salad and pork belly one-handed. Then I passed you over to Mummy Rachel so I could eat my burger at long last. You projectile vomited all over yourself, Mummy, the new chair and the cushions. Oh dear. 

While she took you upstairs to commence the clear-up operation, I put my feet up and enjoyed the last of my burger. 

I could hear you and Mummy Rachel chatting through your open window. 

So even though we didn't really all eat at the same time and you and your big brother definitely need to work on your socialising skills, I enjoyed our first family BBQ. It was uniquely ours.

On a side note, your big brother did some photography today. He puts the camera strap around his shoulders and asks for help to find the on button. Then he chooses carefully what to photograph. He took several photos today, but my favourites are these two. 

"Mummy's frink."

"Now from der top."

He's so definitely the son of a blogger - he sees me taking bird's eye shots all the time! It's a great image, too! Very artsy!

I hope you start to feel more settled soon, Baby O. Right now I've passed you from my lap, where you've been feeding and fidgeting for several hours, to Mummy Rachel's. You're not comfortable or settled. We'll help you as much as we can with lots of cuddles and comforting. It is tough being a baby. 

Love from Mummy

A Dab of Glue

The last time I reported on the progress of our chest of drawers in the "cloakroom", it was looking like this. Neatly painted, but not as vibrant as it could be. 

It's taken me a fair while to get around to ordering décopatch paper of appropriate colours and a little longer to make a start on the décopatching. 

But last night I needed a distraction from my painfully spasmy ribcage (thanks to advanced pregnancy and a nasty cough), so I settled down to some therapeutic gluing and sticking.

I'd expected only to get half done, but it was actually a speedy job, while we watched Britain's Got Talent. 

I've had to paint a couple more of the knobs and switch them round, because the blue knobs were getting lost on the décopatched drawer. 

NOW it looks properly funky!

I'm tempted to décopatch the top of it too - what do you think? Too much?

Patchwork Chair Cover #3

 Another project has finally been crossed off my to-do list! Little R moved from his high chair to a booster seat on a kitchen chair several months ago. Since we only upcycled one... two kitchen chairs for ourselves three years ago, this required us to sweet-talk Grandpa into sanding another down and varnishing it for us. Rachel didn't have the time and I can't go attacking a chair in the garage with a sander and varnish while pregnant. That'd be a tad irresponsible! 

Happily, Grandpa was kind enough to oblige and the only step that I needed to do was to create a patchwork cover for the seat. This I managed to do over the Easter weekend at Mum's, while I was on my big finish-my-WIPs-mission (I nearly finished his Roman blind, made a start on his curtain tie backs and DID finish his monster bottomed trousers and some knitted cotton dishcloths, so I did quite well!). 

Step one was the hardest of all; drawing a diagram to decide how to lay out the patches. I found this not unduly taxing when I made the first two covers. But back then, I wasn't pregnant. I'm really finding the left side of my brain has genuinely packed up and gone on holiday this pregnancy. I'm much more intellectually hampered than I was when I was pregnant with Little R. My vocabulary is limited - I often pause partway through a sentence trying to recall a really quite basic word. Often I have to abandon the search for that word and explain myself a different way. Or kind people rescue me by suggesting what I might mean! I can barely remember any of my pin codes, which has caused some heart-stopping moments in shop queues. And I'm clumsy as heck. I literally cannot carry an object from A to B without launching it into the air or dropping it onto the floor. I'm just generally feeling pretty stupid. So this nearly reduced me to tears. I eventually managed to plan out the seat cover, but while cutting and stitching the fabrics found a glaring error whereby several centimetres had gone missing. Luckily my blagging skills are still in tact!

As I carefully measured and cut the pieces of fabric, I laid out the fabric on top of the seat (which I'd cleverly taken to Essex with me). 

 It looked fairly complicated. And rumpled. 

 So I gave all the fabric a wee press. Much better. 

 Mum walked in, raised her eyebrows and asked how on earth I was going to join those parts together. But that's actually the easy part. You just look for two pieces that join together and sew those together. Then another pair. Or a three. Each time I'd sewed a seam, I nipped over to the ironing board to press it flat.  

Gradually, you join together the twos and threes until you have an entire section.

And before too long, I had the entire cover in one piece. That was when we discovered that due to my calculation boob, it was a bit too small to attach, so Mum had the clever idea of sewing some bias binding all the way around the outside. Genius.

I said the planning was the hardest part. But the most infuriating, rage-inducing part was, as usual, attaching the cover to the chair. For some reason, whoever produced these simple kitchen chairs decided to make the seats from mahogany, or possibly diamond. It is an absolute %$*&^@# to try to get a staple into. Mum's stapler wasn't up to the task. We tried tacks, but they were huge, and were in danger of ripping the fabric, causing fraying So we use some upholstery tacks that Mum usefully happened to have. 

Even those kept bending over sideways. It was a nightmare. I was trying to hold the tacks in place with some pliers, Rachel was trying to hammer them in straight and without bending them, and we were both striving not to swear in front of our toddler. It was a CHALLENGE. 

We eventually got it attached by hook and crook. Looks bloomin' smashing underneath, doesn't it!?!

We could only get three of the four screws back into place to reattach the seat to the chair base, because one of the screw holes had been covered by multiple layers of fabric. Ah well, three will have to be enough!

Little R is happy with it, and it looks very cute, so I'm very pleased we persevered through the difficulties. 

I'm happy with the fabric choices too. I didn't have enough of the fabrics I'd used on our chairs to do a chair which completely matched, but I got some lovely foxy themed fat quarters from my good friend Mandy for my birthday. They go really well with the shades of green and brown I've used on our adult chairs, and bring in some orange, which features in our kitchen too. 

See? Little R's is more childish and colourful than ours, but they clearly belong together. 

Three beautiful kitchen chairs. Aah. Job well blagged. 

(But already, I'm dreading trying to fit the fourth cover on the next chair, when this Little Baby is big enough to require his or her own chair! I must invest in an uber-powerful stapler by then. Or a nail gun.)

A splash of paint

We've had rather a blissful weekend here. Yesterday was a busy day of productivity - shopping shopped for, wardrobe in Little R's soon-to-be-big-boy-bedroom filled with shelves and all my sewing stuff moved in (there's a LITTLE space for his clothes to move in later), garden hoed and tidied, rabbit hutch cleaned, DVD's parcelled up to be sold and various other jobs ticked off very satisfyingly. I LOVE days like that. It was also a momentous day, as Little R had NO NAP. This was a conscience effort on our part, because for the last week he's been falling asleep too late on in the afternoon and then being impossible to rouse, so bedtime has ended up getting far too late. He coped admirably yesterday, and was ready for bed by 6:30, which left us with the whole evening to relax... and get a few more jobs done. He's coped today without one also!

After the business of Saturday, Sunday was a day of leisure. We went to Baylham House Rare Breeds Farm, which Little R simply ADORED. He's been going on about cuddling a lamb for two weeks and today he FINALLY got to fulfill his wish - he was delighted. And he fed goats, pigs, cows and sheep. He was in his element, splashing in muddy puddles, chasing chickens and leading us hither and thither to see all the things that interested him. 

Among all this fun, I still found time to tick another job off my list that I've been longing to do for months. In August, we replaced the tatty wicker chest of drawers in the downstairs facilities with this simple but tidy wooden one. I had plans to decorate it, but what with morning sickness and work I hadn't managed to get round to it. Until today! 

I tipped everything out of the top and bottom drawers, ready to add a splash of colour.

Did you spot these, perched on top of the chest? We picked them up on Saturday during a particularly productive trip to Homebase. 

Little R was my little helper. It was his first experience of furniture painting, and he did an excellent job. He understood that he needed to fill all the spaces with paint and I left him to fill the middle while I did the tricky edges. I do so love it when there's a job he can help with. 

Soon we had one "ight bue" and one "gark bue" drawer drying up on the table. Next to my beautiful amaryllis, which is now flowering. Rather irritatingly, it's grown so tall that I have to stand on a chair to really enjoy the full effect!

Admittedly, Little R's efforts did lead to this being a slightly sloppier job than I'd usually manage, but it was worth it to see the pride on his face. 

Rachel, meanwhile, had become inspired, and painted these two knobs. She had a plan. Oh yes, just wait and see. (You've guessed already, haven't you? It's not the most mysterious DIY project in the world, I must admit!)

 Ready for the ta-da?

Here it is:

Ooooh, it is cute. Rach pointed out it'd be perhaps more suitable in Little R's bedroom than the downstairs toilet, but I LIKE cute things, so there!

The blues were chosen to tone in with our duck pictures, which decorate the intense yellow walls of our smallest room. 

It's certainly cheered that dull pine up and makes the chest match the rest of the room. Now, my original plan was to décopatch the middle drawer with patterened paper of yellow and blue (I do have rather a habit of décopatching random items of furniture - see here, here and here). But I'm wondering now if that'd be a step too far.

 What do you think? Yay or nay?

Edit: I DID eventually décopatch the middle drawer - see here.

Homecrafted Christmas

 Christmas... I do love it. I love the anticipation of waiting for it to be time to get down the decorations from the loft, turn on the Classic Christmas CD that we always listen to and put up the decorations. 

This year we had my homemade Christmas bunting to hang for the first time - I'd bought the fabric last year and even cut it into triangles, but I didn't find the time to sew it together until the New Year. It looks cosy and colourful, swagged (is that a verb?) around the lounge. 

But for me, the Christmas tree is the highlight. This year we didn't need to dig into our collection of gold and red baubels, which I bought cheap as a University student to fill my humble shared tree. We finally have enough unique Christmas tree decorations to fill the branches easily. 

What I love most, is that each decoration has a story. Some have been bought at various places, and we can remember the tale of where and when. There are the two we bought in the closing down sale of The Pier, a shop we used to love to visit in Norwich. There is the fluffy Father Christmas we acquired on our disastrous trip to Reykjavik. There is the little mouse in dungarees and robin we got this year at Blackthorpe Barns. 

The best ones, however, are the ones we have made ourselves. Starting with the very oldest, a hideous specimen that I made when I was 10 at Brownies. I remember making him. I was really pleased with how my skiing pinecone (where DID they get that idea?!) looked... until I drew on the face. I had not got the hang of drawing faces yet. Oh dear. How odd he suddenly looked. 

Disappointed with his strange look (and, to be honest, the fact that he is a skiing pinecone, and therefore not inherently Christmassy!), I've always hidden him deep in the branches of the Christmas tree so he's practically invisible. But he has to be there. It's tradition. I had to take him with me when I left home and I still nestle him deep in the tree, mostly out of sight. Although this year, an intrigued Little R keeps pulling him out to chat to him.

I like to look at my childish handwriting on the bottom. I was in Year 6, and my teacher at the time was very keen that we all join our letters with viciously spiky joins. I didn't like it at all - I prefer to write with smooth, curved joins. I used to rebelliously do my entire page of handwriting that way, knowing I'd be sent back to my desk to repeat the entire exercise again, this time spikier. It was a battle of wills between my teacher and I.  I always wonder whether I wrote the neat, joined named first and then got bored labelling the second one, or whether it was the other way round. 

Anyway, moving on. There are also a whole range of knitted creatures who peep out from our tree branches. The fairy, clown, Christmas tree and elf were all knitted when I was a teenager. I've made the little snowman and mouse in the last couple of years. 

There is also a reindeer (I also made one for my Grandma a couple of years ago) and a couple of knitted miniature mittens that Rachel's made.

Next, chronologically, are the ceramic decorations that Rachel and I painted during our little Christmas break at Center Parks many years ago. 2010, I think it was. We both got the flu. Swine flu, we think. I've never felt so ill in all my life. We spent the whole trip dosed up on Day Nurse, struggling through all the active, outdoorsy activities we'd booked. I remember I kept having to put down my paintbrush to blow my sore nose, again and again. But they turned out well! I painted the gingerbread man and stocking, and Rachel did the snowman and reindeer.

There are three crocheted star/baubel decorations a la Lucy of Attic24, which I love. I later adapted that design to make my dresser knob covers. 

And last year, I made LOADS of felted decorations, for Little R's friends.

I was so proud of how they all looked, but I only had the time to make ONE for our own tree. I planned to make more this year, but morning sickness and time got the better of me. I haven't even got around to adding a ribbon to this one. Epic fail.

Inspired by my selection of felted creations, my Mum make this gorgeous little house that year too, during my FIRST day back at work. It was the first day I'd left Little R, to go into school to plan for my return to work. 

I love them all. I love how our collection is slowly growing. It's a tree full of memories, as well as festive cheer. Would you like to see the whole thing in its glory? I'll have to see if I can find a photo of the whole tree, actually... hang on...

Bad luck! I haven't taken one! I've only got photos of Little R adding decorations in his pants. No good. I'll have to take an atmospheric photo on Christmas Eve, twinkling in the darkness and add it. 

Christmas begins...

312/365

Little R, 

Last year, being nearly one, you were big enough to try to put the decorations on the tree. You earnestly pushed them in and were delighted if they happened to balance on a branch. This year though, being nearly two, you had the necessary skills to hang the decorations on properly, and you loved it. "More one! More one!" you kept demanding, until they were all on. You even took direction and listened when we suggested you not put two ornaments on the same branch. The tree looks marvellous.

Well done, our boy. 

Little R's Little Cushion

 

Another day, another crafting ta-da! This was the simple little project I was working on while I dillied and dallied about making the flowers for my wreath. 

Little R's little chair, which he loves so much, needed a little cushion all of its own.

So I chose some colours from my selection of "lounge" colours, and made a very little ripple. A very subtle ripple too, as it turned out, since I forgot to do two increases and two decreases for each hill and valley. It worked just find with only one though. 

 

Long enough to slightly overlap and button up at the back, and simply double crocheted together at the edges.

 

Simple-pimple, and it fits just perfectly on his chair. 

 

He was quite interested to see that his previously white cushion had turned all woolly and colourful.

P.S. And how cute are those bear slippers?!