Week in the life: Monday

Morning!

Our day usually starts slowly with some cartoons for little man whilst I catch up with world news on my phone. (Ahem - social media!) Since the Belgian and I both teach during the holidays we take it in turns to have a lie in and today was his turn.

Made Jamie Oliver's easy pancakes for breakfast. Mine were served with banana, cinnamon and syrup and the toddler had two plain - he's a man of simple tastes.

Had decided last night to try some more structured play and so scoured some of my pinterest boards for some ideas. We made a car park with paper and washi tape and a tunnel with the same materials.

We went to a new-to-us park and the toddler enjoyed the swing again - after a long spell of disliking it. I am glad daddy was there with us as the toddler is like a whirlwind at the park!

Exploring through play...

As usual the toddler wanted to bypass the kiddy stuff and go straight to the assault course where he has to be helped on most of the obsticles - but his balance is really impressive.

Case in point...the zipwire!

We stopped for lunch in a cute gastro pub called The Potting Shed. The boys were impressed they could watch football whilst waiting for the food.

After such a busy morning the toddler and pregnant mummy needed a nap. I love naps at the moment.

When we woke up we did some crafting. He used to be opposed to arts and crafts, but we got him a stamp set at Hema in Belgium with cars, trains and all his fav things and now he loves it.

He got hold of a pen and decorated his face. 

Daddy is trying to do a job a day on the house, in the holidays, and so I had to entertain the toddler in the garden with the slide and hide and seek. He thinks though that when he goes in his car he's invisible - very cute!

When all else failed we pulled out the emergency...ice-cream!

And the finished result (after a skype session with his grandad in Belgium for some advice!) we finally have handles!

And the compulsory bath shot. He's been less keen for bath time lately and we've had to be creative with ways to lure him into the bath. I think he's clocked onto the fact that bedtime comes after bathtime and so he wants to prolong it as much as possible.

So thanks to Ali Edwards for her great week in the life project and for forcing me to get the big camera out and to blog. 

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Compare it to my Monday in September 2013 when the Baby was only a few months old. How times change and another reason why I love this project!

Exciting news!

So this is the reason (amongst many) I have been absent from my blog for so long. (Click on video.)

Hoping normal service can resume soon...

Project Life 2015: Week 1

Okay so in my previous post I promised I would share my Project Life pages for 2015.
I am glad to here I am not the only one sticking with 12 by 12 - clearly some of you take as many pictures a week as me. 
So here is week 1 and I am pleased to report that it features mostly big camera photos and you can really tell the difference. 
I also resolved to take better photos of New Years as we always spend it in Belgium and the in-laws are not as into taking pictures as my family are (in fact dad claims that it 'ruins his rep' when we document our whole stay in pics and get sneaky ones of him tucking into fish and chips or asleep on the sofa at 7pm!), but I resolved that this year I would not let it stop me and I would get the big camera out and get some group shots.
Bit of a fail that I didn't get a group shot of us and even forgot to get one of me all dressed up for our posh meal on New Year's Day. So I used the self timer when we got in and got this really goofy shot - but since its the only one I used it.
Perhaps I should have asked Santa for a selfie stick in my stocking...

The second part of the week focus' on some Belgian classics like waffles and go karts on the coast. These are things we do every visit and have photos capturing it every time - so they will form a cute little record of how he grows and perhaps next photo op the waffle won't look as big as his head! 
Don't you love the shot of the go kart about to go down the steps to the beach?
I've always been a fan of extreme photography - haha!

Supplies:
Heidi Swapp Dreamy edition Project Life kit
Studio Calico wood veneers
Heidi Swapp interchangeable stamp
Twenty fifteen free printable here

Me on a Monday

It's been a yay it's half term and its daddy's turn to get up with The Baby and so I will have a lie in, family trip to the media museum, The Baby sending morse code messages and checking out his reflection in several crazy mirrors, boys bonding over games consoles, cheeky lunch at Subways, clear out and clean the fridge, big food shop, meet daddy during his run for a walk around the yarn and lots of chilly fun at the park and running down muddy hills kind of a Monday!

Project Life Title Page 2015

So like a lot of Project Lifers I faced the great debate at the end of last year - should I switch up the size of my Project Life?

I only started a pocket scrapbooking approach to memory keeping last January, after really enjoying my first experience of putting together a December Daily album. I also realised I take sooo many pictures that I would never find enough time to scrap them all in 12 by 12 layouts.

So in my decision making process I was inspired by Allison Waken's 9 by 12 approach and that gorgeous coin protector front page, also Stephanie Makes' innovative and ambitious idea of a mini book a month and I love, love, love Tracy's 9 by 12 layouts this year too. 

However, in the end I concluded that I take far too many photos to fit into a smaller format and so I would stick with 12 by 12 - in fact my reasoning was very similar to Big City Quiet's here. 

Some changes that I have made to my process this year:

• I am going for the weekly approach. I took a monthly approach last year and would often mix weeks up and ended up including most of my pictures and my months would sprawl on for ages! So I am taking a more organised and concise approach and so far am finding this is really helping me to stay focused. 
• As a result of the weekly approach I am being more selective with photos and trying to use my big camera for at least a few of them - mainly at home shots as I am too lazy to lug it around with me. 
• I am planning my layouts out in a little book and keeping notes on the week as last year I often scrapped in retrospect and think I lost some of the little stories and details.
• Try to document all of our lives instead of just The Baby. I am trying to take more selfies and couple shots so our story it told too. For January I have taken some classroom shots and am trying to include the every day stuff that never makes it into my albums. (Look out for lots of arty laundry shots!)

So this is my title page for 2015. I wanted to document my layouts every week, but realistically that will never happen. I am using a mixture of Costco printing and online like Snapfish and freeprints and so I am not able to complete the layouts every week - although I am planning and note taking and post-it note sticking every week.

I have been mainly using my Heidi Swapp Dreamy edition Project Life cards and some free printables from pinterest. 

The bottom two photos were taken on New Year's Eve and the top one is from our day out in Whitby in October. I love the contrast of the pastel colours with the black and white photo and want to use more black and white in my album this year. 

What are your plans for 2015? 

I will be back soon to share some of the rest of January.

Here's to being a yes mum...

Do you find that when you are the mum of a lively and adventurous toddler you end up saying 'no' far too often?

Well today I decided to be a yes mum.

I let him drive the car.

Then we went to the park, even though it was freezing, and I let him go on all the dangerous, big kid climbing frames and slides (even though it involved me having to chase him, hoist him, have a panic attack every five minutes!) that I normally drag him away from. 

He loved it. I was exhausted.

I let him push his pram all the way back to town and linger for ages over the swans.

I let him walk through the muddy puddles and then splash in them and get his trainers and jeans covered in mud.

I took him to our old favourite cafe (where the waitress is his girlfriend - it was a happy reunion) and he got a fruit shoot (daddy bans them shhh) and a chocolate rolo brownie. 

And wear it all over! 

Ad snuggle on the sofa with mummy and watch Gilmour Girls on Netflix (he's a big fan!)

Okay so perhaps the last one was more for me. It's tiring work being a yes mummy!

Do you ever have days like these?

Me on a Monday

It's been a road tripping to Wales, first birthday celebrating, cake rejecting (from the birthday girl!), Hello Kitty photoboothing, dessert bar admiring, ice skating on frozen lakes, laughing nervously when the ice cracked, marveling at the scenery, photo overload, family gathering, feast partaking, Adam Sandler entertaining, sisters reunited, general tomfoolery, Sunday night soaking kind of a weekend.

And you?

Baby does Bruges...

The gorgeous and jet setting crafty blogger, Kelly Purkey, shared this link to a toddler's view of New York City and it reminded me of some photos we took in Bruges at New Years. I started putting the camera on the floor to get the toddlers perspective of Bruges.  
And the result? I kinda love it. They may be blurry, imperfect and unedited but I love them. 
We plan to get the top one made into a canvas for our wall - I just love his cheeky little grin as he balanced over one of Bruges many famous canals. 

He was particularly impressed to find a burger restaurant named after him too!