A mixed bag

This week has been an interesting one with some mixed emotions.

On Sunday night we kept the kids up waaaaay past their bedtime by taking them down the pier again. This time we saw seals as inland as the Bridge as well as the pier. 

Me and husband are thrilled to live in such a beautiful part of the world. 

Monday saw the new health visitor come around. 

My first visit from a health visitor when Nemo was first born was a disaster. She walked in half was through a nappy change. Nemo screamed for the entire visit, probably because in part I was too embarrassed to attempt to breast feed Nemo in front of her (it was still pretty tricky at that stage!) 

I was desperately trying and failing to settle Nemo whilst keeping up a conversation and it was just a nightmare.

This visit was completely the opposite. Nemo and Pebble were simply angelic, they cuddled me nicely, Nemo was chatty, they both played peacefully and by the end the health visitor had a police hat, sword and flower necklace on! Thank you children! 

Me and hubby had decided to draw the line at Nemo's third birthday and take a more persuasive tack to get him potty training (as we suspect may be avoiding it out of laziness rather then lack of ability...) But on Monday afternoon Nemo decided he wanted onto wear pants on (something he has wanted to do on occasion) so I decided just to start potty training in the hope that by his birthday next week he may be mostly dry. 

Well Tuesday and Wednesday's saw many many wet pants but nothing in the potty. Today has gone better with two successes (albeit one of them was a bit flukey as I had stuck him on the potty 10 minutes having thought he may need one soon). 

Yesterday Pebble and Nemo had their first play date. Nemo was unindated with 3 extra girls of top of Pebble to share his toys with! I was a little distracted as Poppy dog managed to escape....again! (From the garden I thought was dog proof when we moved in!) she ended up embarrassingly as the same vets as last time having followed a lady round who was walking her two dogs. 

She unfortunately is on season so the timing is slightly disasterous, let's just hope here are no puppies in a few months......  :s 

Losing Poppy is just sickening as my head fills with images of her being run over by a car. 

To add to the stress I also got a text from my landlord mentioning the need to keep on top of the garden lawns. Thinking this was odd my husband called the landlord who said that a neighbour had complained about the length of our grass. 

Just to get this in perspective here is a picture from yesterday morning of said long grass 

Now admittedly having been exactly 7 days since we last mowed it the grass was starting to need another trim but is it not a bit excessive to complain to our landlord?

I know this is emotional of me but it really burst my bubble. Whoever complained has never spoken to us and we have only lived here 5 weeks (in which time we have mowed 3 times). It made me feel unwelcome for the first time since moving. I also got a lovely message from a friend in Bristol last night and it just made me so homesick for all the familiar things in Bristol.

Silly how a little thing can derail you (well me anyway!) 

Anyway poor hubby was sent out last night to mow again (he was going to do it at the weekend)! Whilst he was out mowing the front lawn the retired man opposite us (with an immaculate garden) came out and appeared to examine the length of our lawn so I wonder who may have made the compliant...

Of course I know there will always be things like busybody neighbours where ever you live and I was always going to miss my friends in Bristol. To cheer myself up I decided to get on with making Pebble her dress. I had for the first time actually bought a pattern.

http://veryshannon.com/patterns/sallydress

So here it is finished 

 

It has these lovely big pockets (so posh is the pattern they are even lined!!!) 

I think Pebble looks adorable in it. It is very satisfying to see someone wear something you have made.

I will leave you to go and stick Nemo on the potty again! I will let you know how it goes next time! 

A tale of two quilts

I have managed to finish two projects in the last two days which has filled me with a great sense of satisfaction. 

Firstly I have finished my attic 24 ripple blanket http://attic24.typepad.com/weblog/ripple-blanket-know-how.html I used the cupcake bundle of wool. 

So here it is 

I've decided it's going to live on the spare bed so here it is. 

One of the first things I did in the house was getting the spare room ready. I have the travel cot even set out in the room as it makes it feel a bit easier when I'm missing friends and family to know that I have somewhere that's ready for them to stay in! 

So here is our guest room. I love that it looks out onto the garden too

So I also finished Nemo's pirate quilt for his birthday. Now I've been debating making a quilt for years (before I had Nemo days!) I eventually with a little advice from my amazing mum decided to take the plunge! So here it is 

Now again from advice from my Mum I need to go back and 'stitch in the ditch' (as diagonal lines would go through the faces!) to finish the quilting experience fully! 

Now it's onto my next projects..... :) 

Settling in

Today marks the end of our first 4 weeks in Berwick. It's amazing how quickly being somewhere totally different feels normal. I think Nemo still occasionally gets confused about whether we are going back to our new or old house.

We've tried out a few of the local toddler groups however they are all winding down at the moment for summer holidays. This has scuppered the make friends quick campaign a little. I am definately missing my friends in Bristol but spending time with the children in such an amazing area is definately helping.

We have found ourselves at the beach quite a lot over the last few weeks. Nemo is definately his Dad's son and just loves building sand castles. Pebble absolutely adores paddling in the sea. She can't seem to get enough and just wades straight about seemingly oblivious to the coldness of the sea! 

This is my husband before he hurt his back which has seen him surrender to the sofa a lot over the last week! 

Nemo and Pebble are enjoying dressing up at the moment.

Pebble was enjoying wearing her fairy skirt so much that we took her out in it. Added with her fairy winged rucksack she got many smiles around the streets of seahouses.

Nemo wanted to take Pebble for the walk!

Nemo managed to see sharks and pirates in the sea from here!!

We celebrated my husband's birthday by heading to Alnwick gardens and castle. Of course I have mentioned on many occasions that we had our wedding reception at the treehouse and gardens so it's a pretty special place for us. They had a fairy tale trail on during our visit and had dress up for the children which was so sweet! 

Of course all the flowers were beautiful. We got Nemo so smell them but he decided that he didn't like the smell of flowers- what a boy!

Just love this gate!

We also went to the castle which we have been talking about visiting since before we were married. It has definately used the popularity of the Harry Potter films (which parts of were filmed at the castle) to its advantage. There were Harry Potter characters, wand making stations and even broom riding lessons. We watched a lesson which was filled entirely with adults and pretty hilarious! 

Nemo and his home made wand

Me and Nemo made good rulers I think.

Nemo got upset leaving saying he wanted to see the dragon again! 

We live in such a pretty town. This afternoon a bit before 4pm we decided to have a little walk around a our neighbourhood to find a park we heard was nearby. We found it and decided to have a little walk to Berwick and back just so we could take the children over the bridge. On our way back though we decided to try and find a beach that my Mum told me about. Well we found the beach then decided to try and find a lighthouse on a pier in the town. Anyway when we got back we'd walked miles and miles and it was 8pm! 

Such a good time talking and spending some quality time together. We even saw a seal in the sea which was amazing!! 

Nemo bought his baby along for the walk :) so cute 

I love when flowers grow out of walls, It's so pretty!

Seal!!!!

So far our experience of Berwick people is really positive. I find that most people say hello to you when your passing them and I have got into countless conversations with random people walking around. Today we were talking to a couple of the pier who told us that you very commonly see seals on the pier and even sometimes see Dolphins! 

So anyway that's a little sample of what we've been up to. See you next time when I will have hopefully finished Nemo's birthday present to show you!