The Best Things In Life Are Free..

For Easter this year Dom surprised Skye with her very own strawberry plant to take care of and watch grown!

She took great care with watering it and got excited when she started to see the small green strawberries starting to grow!

We noticed the other night that she finally had one big red strawberry ready to be picked and once we told her she couldn't wait to pick it off and try it!

I love watching her learn about things and seeing the excitement in her eyes over things we take for granted every day, it really is the best seeing life again through her eyes!

After picking her first strawberry she couldn't wait for more to grow, and was excited to be able to pick quite a few this morning before nursery!

I love summer mornings when the air is still crisp and the sun is shining, I can't wait to explore life more with this little one!

What are your favourite things about summer? Do you grow your own fruit/veg? :) 

Thanks for reading! x

Easter 2017!

I can't believe that Easter has been and gone already! This year is really flying by!

We had a great Easter and really enjoyed the Easter holidays!

Skye went to bed excited for the Easter bunny and was really pleased to wake up and see what he had left for her! :)

I love how excited she gets for all these things now that she is a little older!

We then went out for lunch with all the family and Skye got to run around and play with her older cousins.

Once lunch was done we headed back to mum's and the kids did a little Easter egg hunt! Though I'm not sure who got more excited about it...*ahem...Dom* ..!!

  

After a lovely day and too much chocolate, we were all ready for a good nights sleep! 

When Skye went back to nursery after the holidays, we found out they were doing an Easter bonnet parade on the Friday, so we bought supplies to make her a hat! She really enjoyed making her hat and sticking all the things we had got to go on it, Dom was even allowed to help her!

I'll definitely remember her first Easter bonnet parade forever, she did so great even though she was very nervous about it! I still remember doing my Easter bonnet parades when I went there all those years ago! ( I hated it!! )

Goodbye 2015....

I used to love doing these posts and I still now look back at the ones I did a few years ago!

I love to document things, and in a world where we are constantly taking photos I always worry that in years to come I'll forget when a certain picture was taken! So at least I can look back at these posts and remember the year haha!

These pictures aren't in any sort of order, because lets face it who has time for that anymore! lol

2015 was a year of many highs and lows. We had many tears and many laughs!

It's so strange when I look back especially at photos of Skye because it seems she started the year unable to do so many things, and now she has learnt so much, it doesn't seem possible that she's learnt so much in one short year!! I always feel that photos from the start of the year should have been so much longer ago than they were! 

We have definitely enjoyed our family days together! Evenings are the most fun, when daddy usually does the bath time and I enjoy hearing them giggling away together! 

At the start of the year Skye was just getting the hang of walking (1st pic) We went to Weston on a day out for my birthday and it was the first time we had let her walk around somewhere that wasn’t home! 

Another big change for Skye this year was that we decided to move her into her big girl bed - You can read more about this on a separate post I did earlier in the year! We are so proud of how well she adjusted! We just knew she wasn’t comfy in her cot anymore so the move was for sure needed!

This year also saw a very big challenge for our whole family, as my dad had made the difficult decision to have a major operation for his pulmonary embolism. This was a very scary time for us all and made worse by having to wait for over 6 months for him to be called in. We didn't really know a lot about the operation, and I especially didn't want to know. That was until we got the phone call one morning to say he was booked in for the operation at the end of May. It suddenly became real and I decided to read up about it. I'm not sure if I felt better for knowing what was going to happen or not! 

It was quite scary reading that it is one of the most difficult operations and where he went is the only hospital in the UK that does it! We even saw a youtube video with someone else who had had the op and the surgeon who performed it!

I don't think I'll ever forget the feeling of walking away from him in the hospital that night we left him there, not knowing if we would ever see him again. 

I also won't ever forget the moment I got to walk into the intensive care unit and see him afterwards. So relieved that he had made it through! I had gone up to the hospital in Cambridge with them as I didn't want mum to be alone when she couldn't be with him, so this obviously meant taking Skye as well. I honestly couldn’t be more proud of how well she handled all the waiting around, different places and being away from home for around a week! 

This year also saw a little sunshine! Which meant we got to play in the garden and Skye had her first proper paddling pool play! She really enjoyed this and loves playing with water! We also enjoyed a family day out to Durdle Door! 

Another fun trip we took this year was to Longleat! I was given some vouchers for my birthday and couldn't wait to take Skye! Especially on the driving bit so she could see all the animals up close! She loved it! I would love to take her again now she is a bit older!! 

Obviously the best part of our year was this right here! I got to marry my best friend!! It's so funny to think that at the start of the year we had no idea we would get married this year! We decided to start planning the wedding as a way to distract me from thinking about my dad's operation. We picked out a few venues to go and look at and funnily enough the first one we went to I fell in love with! We spoke to them about dates and they told us they had one date available in August.. ! It was April at this point and we walked away feeling that we should have taken it! On the drive home we came to the conclusion.. why the hell not?! My dad was due to go for his op in May and  we thought this would be the perfect thing for him to look forward to afterwards! We took the date and began planning!! However as May came around and the hospital still hadn't phoned we began to panic that dad wouldn't be well enough to come and we had to consider cancelling. Luckily we held out and he had his op at the end of May which left almost 3 months for his recovery! 

We had so much fun planning our wedding and Dom did so much!! All the little details that I wanted he made possible. I will definitely share a whole post about our day. It was perfect and once it was over I just wanted to do it all again!!

So here we are at the end part of the year, Skye enjoyed her first carnival! She also enjoyed fireworks on bonfire night and her first sparklers! She still talks about fireworks now! lol She also enjoyed carving pumpkins with daddy! And of course she turned two at the end of November!! I don't know where the time has gone! I'm sure I was just bringing her home in that tiny car seat!! 

This year also saw us sign for our first proper home together!! It has been a long few weeks of decorating!! We now just need to do the big move! 

Dom also had a career change right before christmas! It is so strange to not have him here whenever we need him, but we will get used to it! Being self employed is hard hard work! 

And the best thing of all.. dad had his 6 month check from the hospital and we are over the moon to report that he is doing so well! 

I can't wait to see what 2016 brings for us all! 

p.s Yep one picture made it in here twice! Oops ... it is a cutie though.. can you spot it? :P lol

Project Life

Over a year ago I found out about Project Life and I was really interested in looking into it and starting one of my own. I found it on the hobby craft website and chose out the design I wanted. 

To begin with it does seem like a lot of money to spend out at once to get all the bits and pieces but it is so worth it in my opinion! I also got given my album, core kit and photo pockets for my birthday! 

I chose the midnight album and the blush core kit. You can get it so all of your kit matches, but I liked the different styles and didn't want mine to match too much!! I also chose the photo pocket pack with different styles of layouts. You can also get these in different options, you can get packs that have all the same layout. There are also a lot of other bits and pieces you can buy, but I didn't really feel all of it was necessary to begin with! However I did pop into hobby craft and they had a special offer on the Project Life section, so I picked up the baby girl mini pack! I decided to get this as most of my PL is going to be based on Skye and the designs were so cute!! You can also obviously get this in boy designs as well! I believe there is a mini kit for lots of different things... I may have to purchase the wedding one!

Photo Pocket Pack

  

Blush Core Kit

 Baby Girl Mini Kit

I've always loved the idea of a scrapbook but every time Ive started one I've always just gathered things and never used them! This idea is so simple as you get your cards to help fill and make the pages look pretty and you can just slot your photos in the layouts that you chose. Also some of the cards have sections for writing little things, so you can make notes about the photos or jot down little memories! It's such a cute idea! 

To begin with I was a little over whelmed with how to start it and what to put in it! But I have now (over a year later!) decided on how I want to start! I have got my photo's printed and I'm really looking forward to putting it all together! 

I have also collected a few other items to decorate my pages, things like washi tapes, some postcards and some sharpie pens!

The idea of scrap booking has always excited me, and I love photos so this is perfect!!

I will hopefully share some photos of some of my pages when they are complete!!

Say it now.

Why do we take simple things for granted?

I longed so much for this child, terrified I wouldn't be able to have children, and now I have this beautiful daughter and I wish sometimes I would stop and cherish how lucky I am to have her. Some are unable to have their dream of children. I try every day to be thankful for her and enjoy every moment that goes by so quickly but as weeks and months go by so quickly I always feel that it's never enough.

I want to always remember the way she smiles when she wakes, the way she smells when she's just been bathed. I want to always remember the feeling of bringing her home for the first time, the look of love in Dom's eyes as he laid them on her the moment she was born. 

I hope I always remember these things. 

It's so easy as days, weeks, months and years go by so quickly to forget sometimes not to take things for granted, one day in the blink of an eye things can change and then all we'll have left is regret. Regret of things we wished we'd done or said, moments we wished we'd taken just a little longer to savour. I know we can love until our hearts are full and we'll always long for something that once was, that's just human emotion, I just want to try and do things that can be done now, because as I once heard, "you can't make time later"

If someone is important to you, tell them, because if you never had the chance to, again, you'd wish you'd told them. 

Having a daughter..

I didn't plan on writing this post, but the last few days i've been so grateful for my little girl... well i say the last couple of days, i'm always grateful for her lol
But Dom has been away since Friday, so it's been just the two of us, and I've loved having her to keep me company! The last time Dom went away i was pregnant with her, and it feels like so long ago!
I look at her every morning and wonder how on earth i was so blessed to have such a beautiful little girl.
She's almost 5 months old now, and i seriously do not know where the time has gone, it feels like only yesterday they were placing this tiny human in my arms! She's grown so much and has got her own little personality already!

Words cannot even begin to describe how much i love her. She is my absolute world.
I just cuddled her and nursed her to sleep and as i looked down at her sleeping i caught a glimpse of her newborn self. I remembered sitting in the hospital bed on her first night out of the belly, looking down at her, and although she's grown so much, i can still see her little newborn self in there!

I'm terrible at letting go, and sometimes i just want to cry at how big she's getting, and i feel my eyes well up every time i have to put yet another piece of her clothing into the "too small" pile! I know she must grown ... that's life, but oh how i wish i could slow it down just a little. I knew time would go so quick, so iv made sure to savour every moment.. but it still doesn't feel enough. I never want to forget a single thing, and although i'm sad at how quick she's growing up, i also look forward to seeing her grown and change. I look forward to a million more firsts that we have yet to come. She's brought so much joy already, its hard to believe how much more there is still to come!

She's deffinately the best decision i ever made in life.

i look forward to the rest of our lives baby girl, and I'm so happy that i get to be your mama. x

2012 what a year!!

I love looking back over the year once it's done and seeing all the pictures, and remembering all the good and fun times i've had!
2012 was deffinately a good year!!
From camping trips, to walks, to bike rides, from greece to italy... cuddles and kisses, all wrapped up with the best christmas ever!

Here's my year in pictures <3

Here's to 2013! :)

Trumpet man on the street..

I went home for lunch on friday last week, and mumma dropped me back to work so she could borrow my car, as she stopped outside work, i noticed a man playing the trumpet on the street. It was super loud, and i said to mum that would be my entertainment for the afternoon...

As i was working i began to recognise the tune being played. It was infact Danny Boy. My nanny B's favourite song. We had this played at her funeral and anytime i hear it, i think of her. It was so nice to hear, and i smiled to myself, and at the same time felt a little sad inside to think of her gone. 

It's so lovely how a song can remind you in a instant of an event, time, place, memory. It reminds you how you felt, what you were doing, every little detail of the moment, and i totally love the way music has the power to do that.

Nanny B we all love and miss you still. Rest in peace sweet nanny. xxx

a year in the life of us...

I've been meaning to do a post about this for a while, especially since the 27th of August!

Dom and I celebrated a whole year together!! 

When i think back to how we met, and when we met it all seems so surreal! 

I love that we've made it though and despite all the ups and downs of a LDR we're still together.

I feel we're so strong because of what we have to go through to be together, and when we finally move in together it will be like a whole new chapter for us to explore! I can't wait!!

Day we met :)

What an amazing year!! 

When i look back at all the photos i can't believe how much stuff we've done, from tor climbing, go-karting, camping, leopups walking, holidays to greece and italy, camping in a petrol station (lol) silly photo booth mornings, bus rides to bristol, bike rides, gigs, shopping trips, strawberries in bed, hot chocolate in bed, cake pops, cinema trips, food trips... when i think of all this i wonder how can life get any better?!

Can't wait to have him by my side always <3