Potty training: day 1

I have a feeling this may be a long day. I'm fully prepared though. I have 2 potties strategically placed, reward chart on the wall, chocolates and stickers on standby and a spare pair of pants and trousers downstairs just in case. And if all else fails, I have floor cleaner and the washing machine ready to go!

So, be prepared for a lot of 'poopy' posts for a little while...

The story so far:
No. of attempts on potty: Lost count
No. of wees on potty: 1.5 (the other half landed on the floor)
No. of poos on potty: 0
No. of times I've had the floor cleaner out: Lost count

Onwards and upwards huh?

Sarahs cards Blog challenge LO

I'm having a lovely crafty month and am getting loads of projects finished as well as ideas for some new projects-I can feel a stash order coming on! lol. The highlight of the month so far is being voted as my teams LO of the month on UKS and making it to the final. :)

Sometimes you can't just help being pleased with the way a LO turns out and for me, this was one of those times. Normally my LO's have to be quick affairs as I can't always guarantee I'll get time later and so they don't always have the finishing touches I'd like. However, this LO for the Sarahs Cards blog challenge was completed over several days and I'm really pleased with the finished piece. The challenge was to use some old stash so I used up my Nov kit (November is a long time ago, right?) which I loved as I love Crate Paper. I wanted to work on layering and texture and generally doing something different to my normal style so I also used up some really old (like bought when I first started scrapping 5 years ago cos I thought they'd be really useful but they're still in my stash pile!) fibres which I wrapped around the chipboard flowers. I also used some old sentiment rubons leftover from my wedding album and some old ribbon along the bottom.

I've also created this LO recently using the idea of the bird from Ellepiggos design on the Feb DT booklet at Sarahs cards:

Finally, I made this Easter wreath after seeing Joys idea from IACW on the UKS blogbits part of the homepage.

I had to add some blue ribbons inbetween the yellow and green ones as H is an Ipswich Town fan and there's no way he'd allow Norwich colours to be displayed in our house! Men, huh?

Just your usual Saturday then?

So calm and peaceful is so not how I'd describe my day so far. We've (me, a toddler and a baby)had a harrowing trip to the hell that is Tescos on a Saturday morning so that I could stock up on the fresh stuff for the week and purchase a few potty training essentials. We now have a reward chart and stickers, some extra pairs of easy pull down trousers (I'm being prepared!) plus even more pants that Jack choose for himself. I'm working on the assumption that a potty training toddler can never have too many pairs of pants, right? He also chose some Postman Pat vests which for £4 were worth the peace and quiet that they bought. The boychild is just a bit PP mad.
We also stopped off to get him some passport photos done which just goes to prove I'm crazy as anyone who has had passport photos done in the past will know. It's hard enough doing them as adults but with a 2 year old is near on impossible. So anyway, there I am, on my own, baby in trolley, toddler in booth, balancing him on my arm/shoulder whilst trying to keep myself out of shot and trying to convince him that if he kept looking ahead at the machine, Postman Pat would appear (did I already mention that he's Postman Pat mad?). After 3 attempts we finally got one that I hope is acceptable. We did try at home before we left but these were the best we got:

Now I know you're supposed to look miserable in passport pics but these are just classics. I feel some scrapping coming on!! lol.

After all that, I definitely needed a caramel latte to cheer me up (plus the babe was crying) so
to Costa we headed (Have I also mentioned I have a thing for skinny caramel lattes?)

When I got home, peace was firmly restored with the arrival of my Sarahs Cards £75 for £25 box which was full of yummy stash. There were loads of lovely papers and CS as well as American Crafts embellishments, pens, ribbons, journalling boxes, thickers, bling and brads! Even though I wouldn't have neccesarily chosen some of that stash myself on closer inspection I can definitely see loads of possibilities for it so I shall enjoy playing with that. :)

Anyway, boy child is demanding food so I must dash. Laters.

What's rocking my world today?

In no apparent order:

1. I'm feeling pretty pleased that I'm now on week 16 of breastfeeding my daughter. She's so easy to feed and when she smiles at me halfway through a feed it's all worthwhile. I know that my son was on formula by now so this feels like a particularly momentous milestone to reach.

2. I've been out running twice this week so I have 8 miles under my belt. I'm hoping to get another 4 in tonight and perhaps twice over the weekend.

3. I've picked up an entry form for this:

Mind you I still have to fill it in, don't I?

4. I've been lusting over this new Crate paper collection over at Sarahs cards too. Just perfect for all my girly pages.

5. Whilst talking about scrapbooking and the fabby Sarahs cards, I'm also looking forward to my £75 for £25 grab box of goodies to arrive. :) Plus my kit arrived this week too so loads of yummy stash to use. :)

6. I'm also loving my new papers and chipboard from 3Jolly Scrappers. I'm a bit of a Cosmo Cricket nut anyway so their girly line is right down my street:

7. On a random note, Costa Skinny caramel lattes are high on my faves list too. And the pashmina scarves that I bought in town for a £1 each. Bargain and such a fab accessory.

What's not rockin my world?

1. My 'i' key on my laptop. Stop sticking please.

2.Growth spurts. Fussy feeding babies are no fun.

3.The fact that I'm 5 days and counting till potty training starts. Eek. Pass the red wine please.

Have a great weekend all! :)

Sarahs cards LO (plus a few extras!)

I'm quite pleased with some of these LO's although it's taken me a while to get some of them finished and uploaded. The first four are my Document 2010 pages for February. I also created the first page with the March week 2 challenge in mind as they wanted you to make your own embellishment and use some old stash. I didn't have any fabric so couldn't claim points for that part.

I like the fact that I have a LO without photos which is a change for me. I've also documented the photos we used on Emmas dedication invites and the fact that I raised £40 for the premature baby charity, Bliss, at our Church coffee morning. The remaining two pages are dedicated to my nephew, Joshua, who had his second birthday this month.

I've been meaning to scrap these photos for a while now (since the Oct kit in fact!) but they worked well with the Feb kit instead. I'm always amazed by how much Jack looks like Kev and wanted to document it in this page. It also meets the criteria for the March week 3 challenge which was to scrap about the men in your life; use green; use a bird embellishment and to scrap from a sketch.

This last LO is one I did at a local crop recently as part of a class. It 'should' have had 3 photos but I only had one suitable pic so I adapted it to suit. I'm loving all the stitching on the page and think I might have to invest in some stitching templates. The photo is my son last Easter dressed as a bunny in his nursery photo. Too cute for words, huh?

Thanks for looking. I love your comments so please feel free to leave me some if you like my pages! :)

Emma's dedication and a new milestone

Yesterday was Emma's dedication service and we had an absolutely lovely day. The weather was fab; the food was good (I was nervous that we hadn't done enough but it turned out to be just right although I'm going to ignore the two boxes of Jacket potatoes on our doorway!); it was great to see all our friends and family and generally, everything went extremely well. My brother even dressed up for a change! (When he was Jack's godfather he dressed in jeans and a hoodie!) lol.

It was the ministers first time of doing a Dedication and I thought he did really well. :) In our Baptist Church we believe that faith is a personal journey and decision therefore rather than Christening the children, we do a service of Thanksgiving for them, promise to raise them in a Christian family but ultimately the decision of whether they become a Christian or not will be down to them. If when they're older they decide they want to, then they can be baptised.

This was Ray, the Pastor, doing the service with Emma's godparents looking on:
The 'official' cake:

My attempt at a cake using an adapted Nigella recipe (there's a domestic Goddess inside me desperate to get out! I actually think mine is tastier too if I'm honest. lol. ):

Kev, Emma and I with the Godparents (and week old Robin!)

My beautiful girl:

Us:

Emma in the christening gown and shawl that both myself and my brother were Christened in:

All smiles:

I love those last 2 shots as I have identical photos of myself at the same age in the same dress and pose so I can't wait to scrap the comparison.

As an extra bonus this weekend, Emma learnt to roll (15 weeks exactly) so my life is going to get my interestng from now on. I'd left her on the playmat and Kev went into her as she was crying. 'Did you leave her on her front?' he asked. 'Er? No,' I replied. My little girl is growing up. :)

Redecorating

Well, it's been a while since i've updated my blog mainly cos as a SAHM I rarely get two mins to myself to do bits and pieces like this (as a perfect example, I've sat down to write this part at least 6 times now and always get called away for juice, biscuits, Postman Pat DVDs etc etc-sigh!). ETA this entrire post has taken over 2 hours to do and I wonder why I don't post more often. lol.

So what have I been upto? Well, we've also been busy decorating our reception rooms which Kev was hoping to do in a week (insert manic laughter!) We're 3 weeks in now and still it's not complete. Admittedly, it's not all his fault. The carpet in the playroom needed fitting over 2 days. we had problems getting the wall paper man in on a good day and things generally took longer than expected. Not to also add that Kev decided that changing the bathroom floor and our dodgy bathroom toilet was a good idea at the same time so at one point we had workmen all over the house. Anyway, it was worth it and it's slowly coming together although it's far from finished. I should add here that before we decorated the room had cream matt paint walls with cushions and prints etc that were in a burnt orange.

This is where we're upto at the moment:
The lounge room with my gorgeous Laura Ashley wallpaper in a duckegg blue and white. It's got a shimmer to the blue flowers too which looks lovely when it catches the light. The cushions and throw were bargains from Sainsburys. Kev chose the lamps in the sale at B and Q after seeing them at his brothers. The curtains were a nightmare to source as they were in the Dunelm sale. We'd bought a matching pair initially for the hallway and then I decided they'd look great in the playroom and as we wanted a matching pair in the lounge we had a manic day of phonecalls to all our local Dunelms to try and find another pair. My brother in law got these for us from Colchester in the end. I still have the window seat cushion to finish (mum's helping me with that) and there are photos/prints etc to go up on the wall.


From the opposite direction, you can see that the dining room is far from finished. We sold our big dresser and bought a new sideboard from Next which arrived yesterday. Even though the top is damaged, we've been advised by them to use it for the time being as the wait for a new dispatch is 12 weeks. Sob. :( Tonights job will be to put that together. It's a good job I'm a flat pack queen! I'm just looking forward to emptying the boxes in our kitchen with all our accessories and photos.
This is the playroom which is, naturally, a bit of a mess, courtesy of a certain 2 year old. Originally, the old external doors were in the gap between the dining room and playroom but our carpenter took them out for us and plastered the gap so now the rooms are more 'seamless'.





Latstly, these are the coasters that I made for the rooms. They were photo coasters that I bought in The Works for £3.99 a pack. I then cut some wallpaper to size so that they match the room. They look pretty fab and so, so simple to do.
I'll do an update post once the finsihing touches are in (and the rooms are tidier) so you can see it at it's best.