Home & Homework

I have broken the habit of a lifetime by getting on with homework on a Friday evening rather than last thing on Sunday.  Daisy wasn't very impressed by my efforts but she got on with it anyway (the picture at the top of her work is of a black cinema screen, she wasn't feeling very artistic).

 Freddie's nursery is now finished and I just love it - his face lights up whenever we go in there.  He is still in our room at night but it's ready and waiting for him...

What I got

We had a great morning at the car boot sale - just wanted to share a few of my finds ...

a lovely old sewing box full of bits and bobs

fab Pyrex nesting bowls

a pretty vintage tea set

and a gorgeous old Doctors bag!

Tea and Cake

My friend Jennifer came round this afternoon for a cuddle with Freddie, her little boy Alex goes to school with Daisy (Daisy LOVES Alex, she has asked him to marry her but is still awaiting a reply).  This very lovely lady made this very lovely cake for us!  It is just so pretty that I cannot bear to cut, Daisy is so desperate to eat it that we have had tears.  But I simply can't.  It's just too special.

 

Sleeping Baby

Freddie has just slept through the night for the 3rd night running, I feel so much better for getting that extra bit of sleep.  It will be so amazing if this continues but I do remember being lulled into a false sense of security with Daisy who was a great sleeper until she was 3 months and then that was it, she didn't sleep properly through the night until she was 3 years old.  She used to wake up shouting that she wanted cake in the middle of the night and wake the whole house up ~ the boys were not amused.  She is better at night now but still enjoys a midnight feast, I get her up on the morning to find chocolate round her mouth and her teddies sat around a little picnic blanket.

Our room has blinds up at the windows and they don't keep the light out very well so I have been looking out for some curtains that would do a better job.  The car boot sale on Wednesday was awesome.  We went over to ask a guy how much he wanted for an old tea chest and noticed that he had heaps of vintage fabric, curtains, bed linen and tablecloths and I literally filled up two huge black bags with everything I could and I found a pair of curtains that fit the window perfectly so I think they are to thank for my baby sleeping so well.  And they look fab.  

Teeth.

Yesterday Daisy lost her first tooth.  This tooth has been wobbly since about March and was literally hanging on by a thread.  Every day we would have an update on how far she could push it forward with her tongue, on Tuesday, our last update, she was convinced it needed to click 2 more times before it would come out.  Then, while on her way to Rainbows it just fell out into her hand.  She was with my cousin Kate when it happened but when I picked her up the beam on her face was huge.  I actually don't think I have ever seen her smile quite so hard as she showed me the gap and unwrapped the little piece of tissue paper containing her tiny tooth

The Tooth Fairy visited and left £2.50 for a very looked after little toothy peg which she woke us up very early to show us.

Meanwhile, Freddie has been dribbling continuously for days, he has had blotchy cheeks, is biting down on anything he can and has been quite unsettled.  He is only 6 weeks old and I have never known a baby teething at this age, but what else could it be?  Can babies be getting their teeth through this early?  What can you do to sooth such tiny gums?  Poor little bubba x

Happy days...

This weekend was great fun.  Saturday was a ballet day, Daisy had her usual lesson in the morning then a rehersal for her modern dance exam in the afternoon.  I managed a quick scout around for some treasures while she was in there and found these lovelies.  I am a bit obsessed with typewriters at the moment.  Sunday morning it was actually not raining for once so we were all up early and off to the car boot sales, Freddie only slept for 2 hours Saturday night so keeping my eyes open was quite a task.  We came home and had a big Fathers Day brekkie, Nathan opened the many many cards that Daisy had made him and we headed into Winchester to the Vintage Market and a wander round the shops, Ben bought a hat he's never going to wear and an expensive pair of trousers and Daisy bought a rabbit on a spring that is now called Bounce (not to be confused with Bounce-Bounce, her trusty favourite rabbit).  And I found some lovely vintage Pyrex cups! Happy days!

Freddie.

It is SOOOO windy outside.  Freddie and I are having a cosy day indoors still in our jammies.  Plan for the day?  Look through photos and drink lots of tea.

Cake.

I love cakes.  Just love them.  I love how they look, I love eating them of course and the urge to make a big gooey cake is always there.  If I see a recipe for a pretty cake I write down all the ingredients needed and if I actually get round to buying them the next stage of making the cake rarely happens.  So I have a cupboard jam packed with cake decorations, icing (in various forms, a few boxes of icing sugar, a pack of royal icing, several tubes of writing icing - some gone hard and some just about usable), every shade of food colour, large quantities of flour... you get the picture.  I recently found THE most amazing blog whilst pinning pictures of baked goodies on Pinterest and if you love cakes you need to have a look at Sweetapolita 

 I decided to create this delight for my mums birthday last week...

 I am aware that I was clearly over estimating my cake making skills which usually consist of buying a box of ready made cake mix but the pictures were just so pretty and when I showed Daisy she convinced me that we could definitely do this.  I made my list.  I sent my man off to purchase everything needed (I didn't realise that ingredients from an American website would have a completely different name here), but with a bit of help from a couple of old ladies he discovered that vegetable shortening is margarine, confectioners sugar is icing sugar and pink gel is a bit like food colouring.  
I am not one for properly reading therefore not properly understanding instructions, I improvise a lot.  I don't have a Kitchenaid - I have a small Magimix food processor given to me by my gran when she bought herself a better one and I don't think it has a 'paddle' attachment which is what the instructions said I needed here.  Please note : this amount of ingredients will not fit into a Magimix.  I discovered this after trying to sieve in vast amounts of flour twice.  I abandoned this idea, transferred it into a big bowl and used an electric hand whisk, circa 1970, also from my gran.  It worked out OK, the whisk did sound like it was going to pass out from the strain of the sheer volume of cake batter but it got there in the end.  So the batter was done and tasting good, the next step was to put this into two cake tins, bake, then repeat as it is a four layered cake.  I weighed out the exact amount of batter, feeling very professional, into my lined, greased tins.  Alas, my tins were smaller than required which resulted in the this...

After cleaning up this mess, feeding the baby, bathing Daisy, doing some GCSE maths with Jacob and chatting to Ben about his new cool hairstyle, I baked the remainder of the batter and it did turn out well in the end.  In fact it was the yummiest cake I have ever eaten.  We covered it in pink ice cream flavour frosting and edible glitter and.... ta da....

Vintage Snapshots

One of our latest auction finds was a huge box of vintage cameras, we had great fun going through them and figuring out how each one worked.  So many fab designs, they just look great on display.  This is exactly why I love what we do ~ my living room floor is covered in cameras ~ never a dull moment...

A Little Shower...

I thought I would brighten up this dark, gloomy, wet June day with some pictures from my baby shower that we had 2 weeks before Freddie arrived (as you can see I was fit to burst - walking, standing, I was finding it all a bit of a challenge).  It has to be my favourite party ever with all of my favourite people.  And lots of yummy food.  We played games and had the most amazing magician ~ I am convinced he was truly magic.  Everyone gave a gift of a book that was their favourite story from childhood ~ a wonderful collection for a very lucky Freddie.

Beautiful pictures by beautiful Emma Case...

Baby Blue

So much time has passed since I last posted on our little blog and so much has happened... Our little boy Freddie was born on his due date, May 7th weighing a very good size at 10 lb 7oz.  It wasn't the easiest labour by any means, due mainly to the fact that I am a just a mere human being of average proportions and surely not designed to produce offspring of that size (the day after Freddie was born we were watching Earth Watch and there was a bear cub, an American grizzly bear cub, a few days old that actually weighed less than Freddie).  It all looked set to be a text book perfect labour, on the morning of the 7th my waters broke at 4am, contractions followed quickly after and by 10am I was in established labour. From there on it quickly changed as he was facing the wrong way and was in distress but cutting out all the gory details he was born with a forceps delivery at 3.24pm and my beautiful bundle was in my arms and I was head over heels in love with my new little man.

We were in hospital for a week while his brothers and sister were at home with my mum patiently waiting for their baby brother to come home.  They just adore him.  Daisy would be full time carer if I let her, she places herself right next to him at all times just in case she's needed.   He is starting to look at her with fascinated eyes and I can see a deep friendship ahead for these two little people. 

~ There is so much that has happened on the run up to little Freddies arrival that I want to share so I am going to go back in time over the next week or so and fill in the gaps of my long absence xx