Plates and such

I am English {as most of you know}, so I feel as if it was beyond my control when it came to starting a tea set. It was a need that was instinctive and necessary, I couldn't fight it!!! It also may have been SLIGHTLY influenced by the fact that my twin sister has one.....buy only slightly ;)

So this year for my birthday I was lucky enough to get the start of a set. Unlike most, I thought it would be cool to have a more eclectic set of different prints and was super happy when that's exactly what I got!

My friend Anna got me a tea cup and saucer from the Rose Confetti collection and Ryan got me a set of mugs {which are all different prints} from the 100 years of RA collection. With some birthday money, I also got a tea pot set from the Vintage Polka collection. I can already imagine all the different afternoon teas I will have with this set!

 Anyways, now you know the much needed history behind the origins of my set, I wanted to bring you to my next topic....how to display it. I know that it could have comfortably sat behind a cupboard door but where is the fun in that people?! So I set out on a quest to find a display case. I actually found a really nice one at Ikea but Ryan quickly decided to vito that choice when he found out it was $500 {an investment really!}.

So after much deliberation we settled on this thing......

Isn't it uggo?!?!?! I wanted something that was sort of an open display rack and this was the closest I could find. Of course I couldn't leave it like this! So Ryan eased the edges and reshaped them into a much prettier shape, then I painted it. Here is the end result......

Isn't is cute?! I LOVE it! It works quite well in the kitchen and cost us less then $100. OF COURSE I had to go and order some more Royal Albert with the extra savings, it only seemed logical! xxx

Blob Christmas!

Since we are now in December, I thought it would be nice to share the babies Christmas photo with Santa Claus! Plus I am desperately finding anything else to do other than the work that is piling up as we speak :)

Last year was sort of a dud but I LOVED the outcome. Brooke looked absolutely confused with life and Bennett thought Santa was terrifying. It made my day :)

This year I decided to continue the torture tradition and bring them back again to see the man in red. They still hate him but to my disappointment excitement managed to somewhat hold it together. I suppose it was a good thing as Santa was much less stressed holding them haha.

On a side note, where are all the nice mall Santa's you see in movies? This one was better than the rest but the one last year was awful. I still look at his happy face and know its a lie, he was pure evil! He told me off for showing his face to Bennett before I placed him on his lap. Santa is not supposed to tell off 28 year old's who gave birth to not one but TWO children in a year. He wasn't there again this year......maybe he fell off his sleigh or something :) 

Anyways, sorry to cut this short but I am off to do my ever mounting pile of paper work. WHY am I so unorganized? Wish me luck! xxx

One month!

Wow it's been almost one month since I last posted! Whoops :)

So, what's new?! We were supposed to go away this month but had to cancel our holiday due to Ryan's work. So we just stuck around the house and in turn have had some really nice weekends.

Here is what we have been up to lately :)

Professional pictures:

We did another session of pictures with Gingersnap photography for fall. It was around the same time last year that we had her come and do Brooke's newborns, so it's quite cute to see the changes. I hate pictures and didn't intend to be in them. I am glad I stepped in for a few though because there are some sweet ones with the babes. Take a peek! P.S. Those faces MELT my heart!

Halloween:

Halloween is always fun but this year it was extra special with Bennett and Brooke. They seemed to really enjoy themselves and even understood the concept of going to neighbors doors to get candy. My brother and sister came over to trick or treat with us, then we came home to eat a takeaway and watch a scary movie.  It's becoming quite the tradition actually! We have done that every year so far since Bennett has been born.

My 29th birthday:

Actually I should say OUR birthday, as I share it with my twinster. Carly took the day off work {ummmm who actually works on their birthday?} and we went shopping of course!! The babies were both unwell so we didn't do too many shops but just enough to feel satisfied with our trip. Then we went our for dinner and home for dessert and presents. We were actually SPOILED ROTTEN this year {not that I am complaining}. Here is a picture of everything we got....is that rude? I don't want to be braggy but it's just so nice to open presents that someone has bought specifically for you. I will never be that adult that says "dont worry about getting presents for me" because let's admit it peeps....who doesn't love a good gift once in a while?! :) I also got a bonus birthday dinner a few days later from my in-laws which involved pizza and a new coat. Like I said, I was spoiled :)

Sickness:

Both my babies have been a little under the weather lately. Brooke picked up MRSA and developed a very painful boil on her bottom {good thing it wasn't me as my bottom is not something that I wan't to have on show!!!}. It got so bad that she had to have a procedure to have it lanced. It was HORRIBLE to watch them put her "under". It's not the typical put you to sleep kind of thing anymore. Instead they feed a solution of some sort through an IV that essentially makes them unaware of what is happening. First of all the IV was torture to get in. They had to have me, a male nurse and a female nurse hold Brooke down because she was so upset. Her veins kept blowing so it took about 45 minutes to finally get one in. Then when they fed the solution through, it was so sad to see her float off to space. Her eyes went all weird {similar to Ryan's when he is drunk!! haha} and she just wasn't there any more. Either way we got through it and her boil healed ok. Bennett picked up MRSA off Brook but didn't have the procedure. He just had a course of antibiotics and it seems to be gone now. Phew, this parenting thing is stressful!

Dates and DIY:

We have managed to go on a few date nights to the movie theater thanks to my sissy and Ryan's parents! I just realized it was 11 years recently since our first date. Isn't that CRAZY?! We also have continued doing a few things to the house. The next project is our basement reno, so this weekend we organized and cleaned out alot of stuff down there {pure torture}.

2004-2006 {The first couple years we spent together!}

Christmas:

Lastly, I have started to get ready for the most wonderful time of the year! I LOVE LOVE LOVE Christmas! My parent's also surprised us too and have managed to book tickets to spend yet another year with us! I cannot wait! This is what our street looked like on Saturday, every year the community puts up lights on the arches. It's starting to feel festive.

Also, Ryan's 30th birthday is on December 16th so I am working with a friend to do a joint surprise party. He has no idea....its adorable!

Anyways, this is getting a little longer than I originally intended and Brooke is pawing at my feet, so I had better go! Have a nice evening!! xxx

Bennett is two!!!

Am I actually writing a post about Bennett being two? I suppose I am. sigh. Yes my baby is two and these last two years have been nothing short of amazing!

So two. I am actually looking forward to this year! There is nothing to be sad about when it comes to a healthy, happy boy growing up. Although I am slightly freaking out about the fact that I am 29 and am a mother of two. Ummmm when did I grow up?! haha.

Bennett had two special days this year, his party the week before and then his actual birthday, which fell on a weekday. Obsessed is an understatement to how he feels towards Toy Story right now, so of course we had to do a Toy Story party!

 For the actual day we just had a relaxed, low key sort of day. We started by having breakfast and face-timing with England. They watched him open their pressies which were all super cute! After that my sis gave the babes a bath and then I took Bennett out for some time alone with him. I decided to take him to McDonald's for lunch because I love big macs  he loves nuggets and it has a huge play place. Nuggets were a hit, play place not so much. I sent him up the structure thinking he would have so much fun. Well I started hearing little voices within the tunnels saying "move baby" and quickly realized that there had been no kids coming down the slide in a while. So I tried to call Bennett down but heard nothing but more complaining from the other kids. Much to my dismay I had to ascend the play structure and make my way through a traffic jam of tiny people until I reached the source of the clog. Little Bennett had gotten to the top and was physically shaking/refusing to go any further. Kids were actually pushing at him and he had secured himself like a little starfish with his feet and hands. I managed to coax him towards the only exit which was a slide. I slid down with him and instead of gliding down, I ungracefully stuck the entire way!! I had to sort of half push myself down/half hold Bennett. Oh and if you are wondering, yes I was 100% regretting my Big Mac decision. Pity looks were all over the other parents faces when I emerged red faced and disheveled from the stupid tunnel slide but I had rescued the birthday boy and that's all that mattered. I ended up just taking him back to our local park and letting him play there until it was time to pick up Brookey.

After that both the blobs napped and then we had my sister and brother over for pizza and presents. It was a cute day for a cute boy.


    

Here are his stats!

WEIGHT: 27.6 lbs

ROUTINE: We have had lots of visits this year which always puts off the routine slightly {who wants to go to bed at 9pm when you have visitors in your house?!} but he is now back to going to bed around 9-9:30 after bath time. He also takes a nap every afternoon for 2-3 hours {while Brooke does too!}.

MILESTONES: Bennett has grown alot since my last post on him! He is really strong and loves be be outside running around. He also plays alot with Brooke and enjoys the park. His favourite show is still Peppa pig and he is OBSESSED with the movies "Wreck it Ralph", "Toy Story" and is starting to appreciate "Frozen". Brooke and him are always together and they get along so well. He sometimes tries to ride her like a horse but otherwise they are usually playing with his train table or chasing each other around. He shows compassion towards animals {specifically cats....he is SO my child!} and loves riding the skateboard with Daddy. He still doesn't talk much and had to go see a speech therapist recently. He does communicate with us, its just mainly the words "dada", "wow" and "ow" when he hurts himself. Then sometimes he surprises us and says a word perfectly and appropriately. On his birthday he said "Woody" when he opened his toy Woody doll from my Mum. Plus the other day he said he wanted to "go outside" to my sis. I am not taking him back to speech therapy for a while until I really have concern for his speech. All children learn at different paces so I am just going to focus on encouraging him and giving him a loving environment.

Happy birthday little man, we love you so much!!!!!!!!

My toe

I know no one wants to be reading about my toe but this blog is about my life and right now my life consists of trying to fix my toe. Ryan thinks it may fall off tonight, it looks that bad! I am off to the doctors tomorrow but in the meantime....soaking, soaking, soaking. That is all :)

Bennett's nursery

Hi peeps!

I thought I would do a quick post on Bennett's nursery today seeing as it is going to become Bennett's AND Brooke's nursery in the next couple of weeks.

Our sleeping arrangements lately are all over the map. It's abit complicated but let me explain. Ryan broke our bed in our master bedroom a few weeks ago. He blames it on the fact it was from Ikea but in an attempt to entertain Brooke, he decided to throw himself onto the bed. Of course the second he landed on the bed, the entire thing fell through and hit the ground below {don't worry Ikea, I know it was Ryan's fault}. No injury's were reported but our poor bed is beyond repair. Since one side is still holding up the mattress, we decided to try and sleep on it the first night by both really quickly getting into bed at the same time. Ryan {as he is heavier} slept on the side that was ok to balance us out. It was horrible.

So the next night we moved into the spare bedroom but I HAAATE the mattress in there. So the following night, we moved the spare mattress into the upstairs hallway and moved our mattress in the spare bedroom. Anyways, long story short, Brooke has been sleeping all by herself in the master bedroom and we are in the spare. There is also the extra mattress blocking half the hallway that the cats have decided to use as a bed.

To add to the chaos, I have decided to take the time to redecorate our bedroom before we move back into it. Plus, Brooke now has proved that she can sleep in her own room so I thought it was a good idea to move her crib into the nursery.

So here are some pictures of Bennett's nursery currently {OK ok, well not at this very second but the last time it was tidy haha}. Looking forward to showing you the new arrangement when Brooke moves in! It will be blob party every night! xxx

The bow collection is Brooke`s, in case you were wondering :)

Late night post...

Hi peeps! I am laying here waiting for my babe to stop crying. Oh god, it's so sad but I have seriously tried everything, she is just over tired. It's so funny because she keeps saying "shit" in her unhappy rambling. I know she doesn't know what it means and before anyone thinks it, I promise I didn't teach her! It's just a sound she has been making lately and I honestly laugh every time it comes out of that sweet mouth.

So here I am, I can't fall asleep with an unhappy baby so I thought I would do a quick bloggy post while I wait for her to dose off. I found Brooke and Bennett playing with my old coffee earlier. There wasn't much left but they had defo taken a sip each, which may be why we are struggling to stay asleep tonight. Actually Bennett loves coffee...and alcohol....we start them young in this house ;) 

Sorry all these jokes are probably going to encourage someone to call parent line on me. I really am a good Mum, I promise!!

I have been so out of body lately! Do you ever feel that way? I do the actions but I am sort of doing them without thinking. It's weird but what evs! I thought meditating might help and I downloaded this app called head space. I made Ryan mediate with me the other day and it was hilarious. He just fell asleep and I ended up starting at my toes and thinking about my poor pedicure job.

Speaking of which, I MUST tell you about my disastrous pedicure. I went out on a "date night" {god I sound so lame} the other day with the husbie. It occurred to me that my feet felt like sand paper so I thought I would splurge {which is SO hard for me to do :) } and get a pedi. It was actually horribly unrelaxing and hurt alot as she cut my nails. I was seriously stifling cries of help...while sucking on their free sweeties they give out. How can I resist?

Anyways, I got through it and went out later that night. My toes looked like perfect red jewels....until the next day. My big toe started to swell up and puss {is that how you spell puss? I don't think I have ever had to type that!}. My sister was the lucky recipient of picture updates as the toe got progressively worse and worse. It was purple, swollen and bleeding. Yuck. So after 2 weeks of this I went to the docs and it's 100% infected. Ryan want's me to go back and tell the salon but I am not into confronting them and having them look at my toe. I just like showing it to my siblings to gross them out :)

So there you have it. I clearly like to ramble on and over share at this wee hour. Brooke is still awake by the way. Ryan got up and brought her into our bedroom which hasn't helped at all. Please remind me never to feed my infant coffee again! Wish me luck! xxx

Blobina is ONE!

September 13th arrived this weekend and my little Blobina officially turned ONE . Now I have two one year olds running around the house until the end of October. And yes, I have been waiting all year to say that :)

Brooke is currently chopped FULL of personality. She is a little fire ball when she is mad {and wow she can get mad} but easily recovers and is the sweetest little monkey! She LOVES to dance, any type of music can come on and she is over in the corner swaying or raising the roof. The other night, Ryan and I were watching a drama where one of the main characters was getting fired. This dramatic {and depressing} music came on the show and Brooke stops what she's doing and starts pumping her hands in the air. It was so funny!

She isn't walking yet but has started to stand by herself for a few seconds! Her crawling is at lightning speed when she is chasing Bennett around, so walking isn't that necessary at the moment.

We had a fun day with her on her birthday. I set up her little pile of pressies for her to wake up to in the morning with a few balloons. I thought she would be so excited to see them but I forgot she hasn't really encountered a balloon before. She was a little apprehensive to say the least.....

  

After getting over the balloons, we brought her new chair and presents over to my sisters and skyped my family in England. They watched her open her presents and got to sing to her for her birthday.

         

 

We had a quiet afternoon while the babies napped. Bennett got a Buzz Lightyear for Brooke's birthday and Brooke got a Jesse doll, so when they got up we put on Toy Story for them.

At dinner, a few friends and family gathered at our house for a little celebration. Brooke seriously LOVED the attention from everyone. I decorated the kitchen with hearts's and flowers. I also was going to get her a pink flower cake but decided she would enjoy a monster cake so much better. So I had the same cake made that Bennett had for his first birthday called "Harry the Monster". Of course Brooke needed a girl version, so we changed it to pink and aqua and called her "Harriet the Monster". I think she liked it ;)

After dinner she opened all her lovely presents from everyone. I was actually pretty impressed at her opening skills, she did do some of the ripping herself. It was really cute! P.S. I loved how the chair we got her was the perfect present opening chair. I am getting Bennett one for his second birthday and am excited to put all their presents on their chairs every year for their birthday mornings.

Full of sugar and totally exhausted, we gave both babes a bath after everyone left and put them to bed. I couldn't help peeking in on my newest little one year old and found her fast asleep. She is perfection.

Now I still have to do her final stats for this year!

WEIGHT: 23.8 {a little lower than last month but she is moving so much more now}
ROUTINE: She is getting back into a little bit of a routine and going down between 9 or 10 after a bath. She was sick the last week but {knock on wood} slept in her crib the last few nights right through until the morning. I think it might be time to move Brooke into Bennett's room so they can share the nursery!
MILESTONES: She is standing up now for about 10 seconds. Brooke is also engaging Bennett more now like getting his attention and then getting him to chase her. Lastly, her hair is starting to fill in! Let's see if it will be a curly mop like her brothers.

Happy one year my sweet darling, we love you!

and to finish off this mammoth post....the comparison shot!

Bath time

I feel like I need to change this blogs name to "Confessions of a Mediocre Mother". Don't panic peeps, I am not admitting to being a horrible Mother but I am admitting to not being perfect. No one is, so i'm not concerned. No matter how organized I am or how much sleep I have gotten the night before...things are bound to happen.

Last night was one of those nights that I can't get my mind off. As per the routine, we finished dinner and headed upstairs for bath time. The babes LOVE bath time. It's sweet to see their chubby little leg rolls but they are also hyperactive and soak the bathroom in the process. C'est la vie.  They are big enough now for me to pop out of the bathroom to get their pyjamas together so I did exactly that last night. Before I knew it I started to hear instant struggling coming from the tub. Yeah that's always fun. So I ran the five feet back into the bathroom and saw Brooke FULLY SUBMERGED into the water BY HER BROTHER. The funny thing was that he had a big smile on his face and I realized that he was HUGGING her and thought it was the nicest thing ever. I often say that babies have no regard for their bodies, which is true...they fear nothing. Having two babies so close also means that they don't have any regards for the other ones welfare either. Bennett was hugging Brooke, which is so cute right? She just happened to be a slippery seal and slipped under the water while he was hugging her. Anyways, I saved her, performed a little upside down back thumping and got soaked. So when I think back to it now, it was a pretty standard night really :) xxx

Brooke is 11 months old!

NOTE: Sorry for being so behind on this blog. It's be a fun and crazy summer! I am posting this now but I actually wrote it 2 weeks ago haha. So in an attempt to catch up...here is Brooke's 11 month blog!

Brookey is officially 11 months old! My sweet baby is nearly a year...how did that happen?!?! She is currently sleeping in, so I thought I would quickly jot down her 11 month post.

This last month was good, both my sisters are still here from England and she LOVES having her Aunty's around. She has gone back to kissing people and will plant an aggressive kiss on them when they are holding her. Now she has teeth, sometimes she will even include a little love bite! I'm sure they will miss it when they go back to school in England in 10 days ;)

She is still crawling around everywhere. She started out by doing this weird scoot crawl but now only reserves that for catching up with Bennett {as it is surprisingly speedy}. Otherwise, she has started crawling normally.

She has SIX teeth coming through! Four at the top and two at the bottom. Her top two are quite far apart just like Bennett's were....it's SO CUTE! Her pain tolerance seems to be much better than Bennett's ever was. We knew every bit of discomfort with Bennett and he had some hard nights. With Brooke, you would hardly even know that she was teething at all!

Bennett is still her favourite, she is always trying to get his attention. They are such a cute pair, always together and now playing more and more. They are so similar, it's scary to even think about introducing another baby in the future because I feel it would be left out. That's me overthinking of course....as per usual.

          
Bottom Left: She did that to try and get Bennett's attention away from Peppa, it didn't work :)

Anyways, here are her stat's:

WEIGHT: 24 lbs {just over 1 lb bigger than Bennett was!}

ROUTINE: All over the map. It's summer so I don't mind but we will for sure be getting back into one come September.

EATING: Literally anything, she is actually alot better than Bennett. He isn't picky but still has thing's he doesn't like. Brooke, on the other hand, will eat whatever is in front of her {including dirt in the garden}.I hope that it stay's this way!

MILESTONES: Six teeth! She also climbs the stairs everyday now {with supervision} and will go all the way to the top without hesitation. Saying "Hi" and waving!

Here is my little Blobina at 11 months old :)

              

and for the comparison shot!