Looking at the fridge display of artwork today and I can’t believe it’s almost been a whole year since Joss created her first piece of artwork! She was just 5 months old when we did this at baby group together. At the time, the words ‘soon they will wear two little shoes’ seemed far far away in the distant future, but how time has flown since then!
I love where we live, lots of greenery and the nicest walk, a 25 minute round trip at its shortest, part of a coast to coast route at its longest,taking in a pretty little marina with small boats and lots and lots of wildflowers.
I always like to stop and look at the big colourful cable wheels, and recently we picked over 1kg of blackberries, now frozen, over a week of evening walks.
We try to do this every night, and twice a day at weekends, this walk is where Alex proposed, where we’ve planned, sometimes rowed and dreamed.
It’s at the top of our street, we live in a small flat – but look at our garden!
I honestly wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world!
It’s really taken a turn into Autumn this week don’t you think?! We’ve been digging out some of the warmer clothing and winter woolens and I have started to pick up Joss’ crochet scarf again in the hope I’ll have it ready for her to wear when it gets really cold! Legwarmers are a must under trousers on the colder darker nights too, especially as we’re still doing our early evening walk and noticing the leaves are starting to turn.
Following my post earlier this week reviewing Nappykind Boutique’s baby legwarmers they have kindly offered three lucky blog readers a pair of babylegs each. You can see more of the funky designs on offer at Nappykind Boutique on their website at http://www.nappykindboutique.co.uk/
To enter the giveaway do the following to obtain entries:
1.Follow Nappykind Boutique on twitter for one entry
2. For a second entry like their Facebook page
3. For a third entry leave a comment below to tell me what you would use the leg warmers for (eg to wear in a sling, protecting knees when crawling, arm warmers etc) and say whether you’d like leg warmers for a girl/boy/or unisex (leave your FB and Twitter name so I can check if you want extra entries too)
Entries close at Midnight on 30th September and winners will be informed via the blog on 1st October (and by email)
Open to UK only
Winners will be selected via Random.org and Nappykind Boutique are responsible for delivering the prize
Paris 2011, on honeymoon, I have long been a lover of French Macarons and we set out to find one of the many Laduree shops in Paris. We actually saw four in our time there, each one more luxurious than the last, all pastel colours, rose fragrances and pretty boutiques, it was pure Paris to me! I was restrained and bought just a small box, my favourite is the salt caramel, mouthwatering, I thoroughly recommend the Earl Grey too though, and the strawberry, and the coffee, the pistachio and the…
Ok, ok, I want ALL the sweets!
I received a 20% discount from Nappykind http://www.nappykindboutique.co.uk towards Joss’ new babylegs, all views and creative direction of this post are my own.
Joss and I have been using cloth nappies since she was old enough to fit the birth to potty styles, so since she was ten weeks. We often get a lot of interest when out and about, we also do a lot of mythbusting, so thought we’d share our top tips for cloth bum babies and mums. This is the first post in a series on cloth bum babies.
1) Seems like a minefield of brands and styles? There are people out there who can help you!
You could find out about your local nappy library (I know, like for borrowing books, but fluffy, how good is that?!) here http://nappynetwork.net/nappy-library-map/ . I like coffee, and Joss likes cake, so we like to go to our local Nappuccino, Cappuccino, Nappucino, see what they did there?! Many libraries or Real Nappy Advisors run them on a monthly basis, so you can get advice, chat to other cloth bum mums and as I did recently, get support when your little one has a teething rash and you have had offers of hundreds of different creams to use! When I’m not working we go to a local one.
2) Save yourself some pennies and do some of the legwork yourself
We had a lot of poly-fleecy baby blankets that Joss had outgrown. Fleece makes a great nappy liner, it wicks the moisture away from baby’s skin and is really absorbent, if you’ll excuse the TMI but I call a spade a spade, the poo just flicks off down the toilet and it’s a lot less wasteful than paper liners. We try not to use disposable liners unless childcare necessitates, instead we make our own fleece liners cutting a template to the size of your nappy brand you can get lots of funky coloured liners for free in our case, or the £2 cost of a cheapo blanket. Do tell the grandparents if you’ve just popped a virulent red in as this caused a bit of alarm until closer inspection revealed a cheeky monkey! If you use disposable liners and you need to put a lot of nappy cream on as we have of late a fleece liner gives your nappies better protection too!
3) Think about clothing for a big cloth bum
Many brands offer ‘a cut for cloth’ range for a big cloth bum. We’ve found two some simple things invaluable, vest extenders and babylegs. Vest extenders help accommodate a cloth nappy at night, meaning we save more as we don’t need to move up into the next size vests so often, most baby stores and nappy advisors sell them. Babylegs are something that we really like. They are so simple but effective. Babylegs are baby leg warmers, they keep babies legs warm in a sling, unlike tights which can cause pressure wicking around nappy legs they are cut to the top of the leg, and when potty training (which is looking likely as Joss keeps loudly announcing ‘poo’ and ‘weeweewee’ in cafes) they are easier than rushing to pull tights and trousers down!
We recently took up Nappykind Boutique’s kind offer of a 20% blogger discount on babylegs, great as we were about to look for more to see us through the winter! These funky mustard yellow ones are super soft and super warm.
To add to my list of benefits above here are some more from the packaging:
An added bonus for you thrifty mamas? Not just for babies they can be used for older children and once outgrown they can use them as arm warmers too!
We’re really pleased with the quality of the babylegs stocked by Nappykind, they’re really stretchy, a good fit for my tall girl and come in a wide range of styles and colours.
The postage offered by Nappykind is really reasonable and the leg warmers arrived quickly! The only problem we had was that the washing/care directions on the packaging were in Japanese which I thought was rather fun, I did a bit of googling and we gathered they could be washed up to 40 degrees and tumbled too!
4) Sunlight is your friend
People always ask about whether poo goes in the machine and how I feel about that! Until weaned a baby’s poo is really water soluble, once weaned the poo flicks off the liner and the nappy gets washed as normal. Sometimes you do get a bit of staining, especially if you have a big stash of nappies and you want to wait a day or two between washes. This is where the magic of sunlight comes in, rain or shine get the nappies on the line and the sun will help to gently bleach them out! Follow the washing directions on your own nappies, they vary across brands and materials, i.e. microfibre, bamboo etc and be conservative about detergent usage, a little goes a long way and you want to avoid detergent building up. We use Totsbots Potion, there are others on the market and many Mams use an ordinary detergent. You will develop your own wash rinse routines as we have over the past year. Oh and if you find a small plump raisin in the rim of your washing machine door, do not be alarmed, we sometimes have escapees too!
5) Want to save more money and the planet? Wash your wipes
Opt for washable wipes, you’re washing the nappies anyway, this is a big saver and great for a sensitive bum. I use just plain water and wet them as we go, others soak a stash for the day with a few drops of essential oils. You could buy a washable wipes kit, you could also just use flannels as a friend of mine who got 5 towel bales as wedding gifts does!
This one is not so much of an achievement! Joss really knows her own mind and has started to use the word ‘no’ quite a lot, I like it as it shows she can communicate better what she does and does not like, but as you can see she’s also started exploring the world and does not always explore where we want her to. As Mr B took this photo I was engaged in a discussion with Joss about whether this was a good idea, she said ‘no’ but what she meant was definitely ‘yes!’
Who can resist this cheeky face though?! Three teeth now and loving life!
A bit different this week, I’ve decided to tell the story behind yesterday’s Silent Sunday with a few more photos. We have a lovely family home that we’ve lovingly put together over the past six years, some old, some new, some gifted and some handmade. Our favourite thing seems to be lighting, and I love the light that our Moroccan candle lamp gives off. It was a joint first wedding anniversary gift to each other and we carry it from room to room when relaxing.
We have a few other nice pieces that we’ve gathered over the years, I thought I’d do some home ware blog features so here’s a run down of our lighting first:
Joss’ simple IKEA shade with felt mobile I made when she was a tiny baby
Her bunny lamp…hop hop
My bargain lighthouse
Another IKEA find
And an oldie but goodie from now closed down The Pier, we loved that shop!
Saw this on Action for Happiness’ FB page this morning, it just made sense to me, juggling toddler, house, work and study has been a challenge this week! If you’re interested to read about their ten steps to happiness and support their campaign visit http://www.actionforhappiness.org
)
)
)
)
)
