Treats!

Wow we're flying towards the end of the month alarmingly fast!

It's been a busy month so far, this is our birthday month - me & Pedro - so there's been a little bit of celebrating and spoiling going on.  I was definitely spoiled.  My lovely husband replaced my missplaced/stolen Kindle with the new version. Loving the ability to read in bed again without having to put on a light!  He also got me a lovely necklace from the children which is also a baby teether, it is fantastic and saves me from being garoted by my normal everyday necklace (a Hot Diamond star) as it is yanked by Little Miss.  Only I've just realised I haven't taken a photo of it, but this it the link.  It's absolutely fantastic, pretty enough to be worn with any outfit, to work, etc without looking like a novelty but also really practical that it can be chewed as much as my baby sees fit and it still looks great.

I bought myself a little birthday present too, I need to get my scrappy trip quilt top finished and I decided it needed a border as it's very, very scrappy to a did a little online shopping at Backstitch and bought some lovely solids.  I'm really impressed with the excellent service from Backstitch, ordered fabric on the Sunday night and I had it by the Tuesday lunchtime.  Can't ask for better service than that can you!

Now I just need to decide which colour is the inside border and which is the outside - I was thinking slim green border then wider blue border but looking at that photo I'm leaning more to a slim blue border and wider green.  Still debating!

I also got a fantastic gift from the lovely Lynz, a book all about Zentangle, a little notebook, the best Sharpie pen I've ever seen and a gorgeous handmade pouch to keep it all in.

Basically Zentangle is just fancy doodling, you are supposed to go into a 'Zen' like level of concentration when creating your 'tangle' - yeah, yeah, yeah.  I just wanted to find out how to do cool wee doodles.  The book shows you 2-3 different techniques every day, with the idea of building your skills over a period of 6 weeks.  I've never really been one for following things exactly to the letter, so I've dipped into to techniques from the start, middle and end of the book.

I've had a couple of wee shots and I'm pretty impressed with how well they have turned out.  Just after an hour or so of playing about. 

I also got some money which I used to go clothes shopping for the first time in ages.  I'm not very good at shopping, even less so having lost weight.  Yes it was a great feeling trying on sizes which I haven't worn for quite a few years but I have no idea what suits me.  So with the forthcoming festivities I'm utterly clueless about what I should get to wear to a couple of parties I am going to, or what will even look remotely decent.  It's not a big dilemma to have, but it is confusing me!!

Productive

I've been busy in the last week.  Really busy.  I had a couple of days off which I'd planned shortly after returning to work from mat leave (I was being super organised and putting in for my Christmas holidays what with being part-time and all I need use annual leave for public holidays and stuff and just decided to book the rest of my holidays til end of March!).

Anyway I had time off arranged for last week and decided at the last minute that I was going to decorate our bedroom.  We've talked about it for AGES, but like most things with us, we talk about it but never really get round to doing anything.  So I decided to just buy paper and do it when I had the time off booked.

But I forgot to account for the many other things going on last week (and for the time taken up actually looking after children!).  So my great plan was to start painting the bedroom ceiling maybe Tuesday night or Wednesday morning then the walls on Wednesday night and get the papering done on Thursday when No1 child was at nursery ........ well that didn't really happen!

By the time I got myself and kiddiewinks home on Tuesday and did bedtimes I was exhausted so all that was achieved was emptying the room of unnecessary 'stuff'.  Wednesday morning I was helping out at Nursery to make 70(!) cupcakes for the Halloween party.  I eventually started to paint at 9pm on Wednesday.  This resulted in us having to camp out in the livingroom

 

(we were joined by a small person and lots of toys just as we were waking up!)

Then Thursday morning we had nursery halloween party so rushing about making sure that we had all of the Dude's Spiderman costume  - superheros can't leave their masks behind! 

Cue 3 walls very hurriedly painted while he was at nurser.  What was intended to be a quick trip to the Baby Clinic early Thursday afternoon ended up taking most of the afternoon and us leaving without being seen so we returned home one grumpy, tired, hungry baby and one highly unimpressed mummy.  Painting resumed after kiddiewinks bedtimes!

Wallpapering finally happened Friday morning - we went from this

 to this in just over 2 hours (all done just by me - I'm really chuffed with myself!)

The room is nearly finished, I've put up the new curtains and shelves are back up.  I need something for the wall facing the bed but not sure what yet - picture, mirror, shelving?  Can't decide what I want yet but I'm not in a rush so I can look about till I find something which is just right.

Over the weekend the Dude also got his first swimming certificate (a Duckling award!), we feed squirrels in the park on Sunday, I got a lovely delivery from Backstitch of goodies to finish my scrappy round the world trip quilt top and I paid a visit to Tesco at 2.30am (yes am!) on Sunday morning to buy essential teething granules for Little Miss who decided her top teeth needed to come through and we were reminded just how useless teething gel actually is.  Tonight the Dude and Daddy went to the local firework display while I stayed home with Little Miss - 8 months is just a tad too young for her first firework/bonfire event.