Wardrobe clear out

Since having my son I have done a lot of coming to terms with things that have changed.  The main thing being my body.  Everyone says pregnancy will change your body and that has never been so clear as it is now.  Don't get me wrong, I loved my body when I was pregnant and I was hardly a beanpole before my son but I am definitely nowhere near where I thought I would be 18 months on.  

I know I have lost a lot of weight and although there is still a fair amount to lose I have had to be realistic with myself.  I gained a lot more weight pregnant than I probably should have but unfortunately I have noone to blame but pizza and my willpower.  In the process of gaining all of this weight, my body obviously got wider.  I am now even more hourglass than before except I still have my mummy pouch.  We have a wedding coming up at the end of the month and whilst I feel like I have been waiting my whole life for my friend to get married, I'm dreading it a little as I won't look the best that I was hoping for.  I bought a dress in December thinking I would lose tons of weight and it would drape off of me.  How wrong I was.  I will now have to beg to see if I can at the very least exchange the dress despite it being months old but never worn. 

I will be honest, I don't particularly hate the way I look now, just that I cannot get rid of this pouch that's left over.   However, I tried on the dress and the fact it would zip up but with a massive struggle made me upset and disappointed that my top half was now so wide, I would have to be in the next size up in clothes than what I used to be - forever.  I tried on back up dresses I had worn to other weddings and found the same problem, the waist was tight - nothing that my special knickers couldn't fix though but the top would barely close, if at all.  This afternoon, I pretty much culled many of my dresses in a bid to start afresh.  I will be selling a couple of the dresses on ebay as they still look pristine but the majority of them will find a new home through a charity shop.   My new outfit for the wedding will be this: 

And I can't wait to wear it and hopefully rock it! I so want to be proud of my mumbod and this should do it some justice.  

Building up my wardrobe again will be time consuming and costly but a necessary evil.  I'm glad I can tell myself straight and not have a wardrobe full of delusion.  I have never been one to hoard clothes on the off-chance I might wear them/lose weight to fit into them and I have no intention of starting now. 

~AB~

Days out with baby

The weekends of the last month or so have been jam packed with visitors and days out, which I'm not at all unhappy about but it has required a lot of planning, something of which a year ago I'm sure I wouldn't know where to start.  Thankfully, all of that has changed and hopping from class to class (on Wednesdays) has been a breeze although I'm sure at the Toddler Playgroup they do wonder why I'm turning up in my work out gear! 

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I felt the pressure as mum and that maybe my cleaning obsession wasn't making me fun enough for my son.  Having spoken to another mum since then, she too has refused to do messy play with her son for the same reasons, I'm not crazy.  I read this amazing article which was shared in LinkedIn one afternoon and I felt like a lightbulb had gone off in my head: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bunmi-laditan/im-done-making-my-kids-childhood-magical_b_5062838.html. I have just seen that this was written a couple of years ago now but recently updated and I can't believe I have only just seen this after torturing myself for months.  If you feel as I do as a parent and think it's all your fault, I would definitely tell you to read this article.  I thought about it and my mum didn't do messy play with us.  It would have been torture.  Sure much like me, she read stories to us and created forts and let us have imaginative play with real saucepans rather than the plastic ones but I don't remember a single moment, nor has she ever mentioned to me that we did any form of messy play.  She wouldn't have had the time to clean up after us.  So I'm done with the whole messy play business for now, my son can do it at nursery and in messy play classes if he so wishes but certainly not in our house.  Not at least until he is more controlled.  

Anyway now that I've cleared that up, the one thing I have been doing that the article also mentions is taking my son out on special family days.   I'm very keen to do this as I want the three of us to bond as a family, I don't just want it to be me and my son as he doesn't get much time with my husband as it is.  So here are some of the things we have done so far (I know I have shared one of these links before but I'm sure you don't mind them again!): 

• Discover Centre, Stratford - http://www.discover.org.uk/
• Natural History Museum - http://www.nhm.ac.uk/ 
• Lambourne End Farm - http://www.lambourne-end.org.uk/html/open.htm
• various soft plays in the area 
• various fun days at parks in the area 

Now that my son has also now discovered Thomas the Tank Engine, I have registered to receive the newsletter of this place: http://eorailway.co.uk.  I'm mega excited about it and can't wait to have our first trip there.  There are always special events on and my son will be able to see a real live steam train.  Maybe I'm carrying enough excitement for the both of us.

This weekend coming will be a picnic with friends who have just had their second child.  I know all eyes will be on me and how broody my husband or I will get but I think, let's just focus on the here and now.  I've only just decided not to put so much pressure on myself, why add in another baby to the mix? 

~AB~

Internet Issues

Last week our internet went down.  My son was unwell and asleep and nothing else in the house works without the internet.  We watch tv through the xbox, all of our tablet gaming apps require a connection and my phone is the only device that has any other kind of access to the worldwideweb.  

This would be hell for some people, in fact I actually sat there wondering what I would do with myself (other than cleaning etc because we all need some down time), then I realised there was stuff the internet had been distracting me from in the first place, like reading a book! Before I had my son, I would plough through books like there was no tomorrow.  I love history and in particular anything related to the Tudors, Victorian Crime in the East End or Napoleon.  Quite specific I know but I find them all fascinating.  I especially love historical fiction and obviously have read almost everything Hilary Mantel has published.  

A few months after my son was born I bought a book for myself thinking it would be a nice way to unwind at the end of the day.  It was recommended by Amazon as I had read another book by the same author, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher.  It sounded interesting and a nice little escape from reality.  This book is, Mrs Robinson's Disgrace - The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady by Kate Summerscale.  My son is now almost a year and a half and I'm not even halfway through the book and this saddens me for two reasons, I don't have enough hours in the day and I'm no longer doing things I used to enjoy. 

I did find a little bit of joy cross-stitching the superhero alphabet for my son and I have found another two I would like to do before he grows out of his room, I'm just waiting for the aida to turn up for the second one so I can get started.  Getting lost in historical fiction and crime however, is so much more appealing. Here are some of the books I have absolutely enjoyed so far: 

• Bring up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel
• Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
• The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox - Maggie O'Farrell 
• Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
• The Invention of Murder - Judith Flanders 
• The Maul and the Pear Tree: The Ratcliffe Highway Murders 1811 - PD James
• The Magnificent Spilsbury and the Case of the Brides in the Bath - Jane Robins
• Mr Briggs' Hat: A Sensational Account of Britain's First Railway Murder - Kate Colquhoun  
• The Blue Flower - Penelope Fitzgerald
• Pure - Andrew Miller 
• The Confessions of Catherine De Medici - CW Gortner
• Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
• The Report - Jessica Francis Kane
• Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood 
• The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood 

Obviously I have read other books and can thoroughly recommend Tina Fey's Bossypants - it is hilarious but these ones really took it to another dimension for me.  These are definitely an acquired taste but just for a little escape, if you're into any of the stuff I have mentioned above, and haven't had a look at these, I would recommend them. 

~AB~

Nursery ideas

I'm not going to lie, I loved writing the last post about interiors.  I love new home design trends and I love getting newsletters with new trends and upcycling ideas in them.  There are so many different things you can do in the home and there is never any rule against combining two or more styles.

I loved looking at nursery ideas when we were in the process of buying our house.  Sure, I wasn't pregnant yet but the house was a means to an end.  We would have a family in that house one day and optimistically the nursery was the second room to be finished.  I knew that I wanted a "grown up" nursery, I have never been a fan of teddy bears etc all over the walls also, I figured it would be easier to decorate once my son was older if the colours were a little more mature as it would give us a nice blank canvas to work with.  My husband didn't know we were having a boy and I don't like the idea of blue for boys and pink for girls so the ideas had to be neutral.  Some of the ideas I looked at were as follows:

Housetohome & indulgy.com

mrsandthemisc.com

www.freshdesignpedia.com

www.chiccheapnursery.com

As you can see there is a lot of two things, stripes and orange.  I knew pretty early on that orange would be the accent colour but the stripes were just an added bonus to the design.  As you will have seen from earlier posts, the ceiling is striped and our changing mat, mobile and the bed linen are both orange.  The rest of the room is beige and the furniture is white with orange handles.

Last week I had a discussion about a room for my half-brother.  He is 6 and has a pirate ship bed and the intention is to have a mural on the wall in front of the bed.  The rest of the walls are to be painted.  The room used to be Manchester United themed (don't ask) so was red and white with a Man U border.  When my husband and I had to move in with my dad between houses, I bought a self-adhesive border to cover up the hideous football logo and thicker curtains to make it a little bit more homely.  Now my half-brother is older, he has inherited the room and it's in the process of being redone.  Covering up red coving will not be an easy task and also the room has been redone/covered up so many times it will take a lot of effort and time to convert it again. 

I had suggested that possibly the walls should be painted in a pale blue to represent the vast sea and sky and that the ceiling should be painted navy with glow in the dark white dots to represent the night sky.  My dad had decided on painting the ceiling a pale blue but was unsure about the walls.  The room is massive.  My half-brother is scared of the dark and also not very big so the navy would make the room feel smaller in a good way.  Also he loves space and science so would love a night sky and maybe a planet mobile in a dedicated space corner so he can study the planets in more detail.  This took a lot of convincing my dad that navy was a colour worth considering on a ceiling.  

Needless to say I manage to find this image on Google and my dad promptly went out to get paint colour cards.  I love the idea that you can influence a child's imagination purely by the colours you use in their room.  I hope that the orange will inspire my son, I know he already loves bright flowers and cars and I can't wait to see what he will be like when he's a little older and we have to repaint his room.  

Where do you get your inspiration from when decorating your own house? I would love to hear your favourite decor styles. 

~AB~