Birthday and Dedication weekend

Well it's been a really busy few weeks. My poor husband is working like mad preparing for his CFA exam. 

It's this financial exam which he spends 9 months preparing for. It's a truly evil exam which has 6 300-500 page textbooks in it's content and you have to memorise around 250 formular for it just to name a couple of the evil things about it! Unfortunately it means that around this time of year we don't see each other a lot as he works 2 hours before work and 3 hours afterwards. 

However the 2, 6 hour exams are on Saturday so for two months there is no CFA yay! 

Unfortunately I've also had viral gastroenteritis so it's been interesting to try and balance everything! 

Anyway last weekend it was exciting as it was my birthday and Nemo's dedication at church (a way of welcoming a child into the church). 

We went up to my parents for the Friday and Saturday as my sister and her husband from N.Ireland came over. On the Saturday I opened all my presents, I was a very spoilt. Here is a summary but by no means an exhaustive list of my presents:

 

My husband made good use of a sale in m&s (so proud of him!) 

And yes he did buy me stickers and a baby wooden toys because they are cute!

And a basket!!!! I love baskets, I'm a bit addicted to them :)

And finally my hubby went shopping at www.strayjewellery.com (amazing jewellery with free p+p) and got me loads of things but here's a couple of my favourites:

Little tea cup and tea pot :) 

A little owl pocket watch necklace- how sweet! 

 

My brother and law and his wife got me this beautiful locket.

My sister and her husband got me lots of clothes and two extra scarfs (because I always need more whatever my husband says!) 

This is one of the lovely tops they have me 

They gave me my presents in this bag though- I really am a big kid! 

My mum and dad got me a deckchair go the garden, I love the stripes and how old school it is. 

Here's a picture of it wrapped up!

They also gave me a new crochet book and a massive pack of soft dk crochet wool that will keep me going for ages!!!

I've started crocheting granny squares for a bath mat. 

So the weather having been gorgeous the weekend before was terrible on my birthday so we decided to go to Lincoln for the day. Unfortunately on the way we encountered what promised to be a huge traffic jam so we diverted to a place called Southwell. We had some tea and cake in a cafe and then went round he charity shops. We picked up some good bargains including these posh ties for my husband at £3 total:

We then went to the park with Nemo whilst he rest of the family was cultured and went to a World War exhibition at the local cathedral. 

Daddy and Nemo enjoying playing on the  swings. 

A really blurred picture of the local squirrel eating an acorn.

Then there was an massive outpouring! After the rain trailed off we continued in the park using a nappy to try and dry off the slide! My sister took photos so I will have to steal them from her. We then used the nearby assault course (for children) for our own competition. We must have looked a sight, 6 adults doing this childrens assault course, it was very serious with rules and time trails! 

We finished the evening with a Home made Thai curry and birthday cake!

So on the Sunday morning we traveled down to Briatol for Nemo's dedication. Of course 5 minutes before we were due to go up Nemo decided that he wanted a feed and having borrowed my sisters dress for the occasion which didn't allow for easy access I had to bribe Nemo with breadsticks and rusk. This did mean during the dedication he was dropping bits of rusks all over the platform in the front of church! Again my family have the photos. 

Afterwards we went to a local cavery with my parents, sister and brother in law, my husbands mum and my husbands god parents. I made a cake for Nemo (a blue iced square cake with his name as a wooden train on top). You can see that Nemo enjoyed it! 

It was a lovely but tiring weekend so we spent our evening just relaxing at home, such a lovely weekend :) 

Woman of many talents (maybe?)

So my quest for saving money has taken me to a new level. My husband has lovely thick red hair which grows super quickly, it needs cutting every 6 weeks which costs about £15. So I decided to try and do it myself. We brought hairdressing and thining scissors from boots for £8 and I attacked my brave husband's head last night. 

This is what his hair looked like on Sunday 

Starting to get a bit long and thick for work (he has a sensible grown up finance job!) 

This is how much hair I took off (2 separate piles!)  I have to say my husband was super chilled about me doing it- I'm not sure I would have been so trusting!

Luckily we have a Dyson animal vacuum made for picking up dog  (/husband!) hair. 

And this is the end result 

Not perfect but I was pretty pleased with the result. 

I mainly just used the thinning scissors to reduce the volume in the hair. And then tidied up the ends. 

The weathers here has been fantastic recently and we got a swing for the garden for Nemo. He's been really enjoying it and has kept him happy when I hang out the washing!

Nemo is now moving around so quickly it's mad. He climbed up a step yesterday and he can stand on his own for a couple of seconds.

He and Poppy are making quite the team, no drink is safe! 

Here's one last photo of Nemo in his hat- he looks so cute :) 

Stocking up

Ever since I got pregnant I am always trying to spread any impending cost in regards to Nemo so that I never had to spend lots of money at once. 

A few weekends ago realising that Nemo was now definitely in the 9-12 month clothes we went to another second hand baby fair for his 12-18 month clothes. We were really successful and got approximately:

4 jumpers,

6 long sleeved tops, 

5 t-shirts,

3 dungarees,

2 shorts,

4 trousers, 

8 long sleeved vests,

2 sleep suits,

1 wet suit type swim suit,

1 romper and

1 body warmer.

This came to a grand total of around £25.

Together with a few other bits I'd already gathered and I'm pretty much sorted.

Nemo's rapid change into an all moving baby has made us realise that he's growing out of his baby baby toys and perhaps needs to start to move onto older toys. We already have a few bits I've found including an ikea train set my brother and sister in law got Nemo, some mega blocks I brought cheaply from my local charity shop,

So far me and my husband have probably enjoyed these more then Nemo! 

We also have this fisher price play thing (?) that I brought second hand several months ago. It was such a good buy, I was a bit hesitant because I think it was about £10 but of all Nemo's toys it keeps it entertained for the longest. It has balls that you drop around the track, lights and music, Nemo's latest favourite thing to do it drop food into the tunnel. I discovered this after I found Poppy sniffing around it!

Wanting some more older toys for Nemo for a few months time we went to a new childrens fair in Ubley. I heard it was good by a friend because it's such a posh area. It was a 50 minutes drive but the drive was really beautiful. 

Ubley is this quiet beautiful posh village in lovely countryside so I didn't quiet expect what happened when we got in. We were accidentally very early and ended up in the front of a massive que (about 30 minutes before there were at least 30 people there). When we went in there are all these woman pushing past me grabbing things, one woman knocked me into the table. I was in disbelief. A lot of the woman seemed to be grandmothers and surprisingly there weren't many prams around, I never believed Grandmas would be so determined to get the best things for their Grandchildren! 

Never the less the items at this sale were good and I was happy with our purchases. 

These lovely wooden puzzles were £1 each.

 This was the most expensive buy at £3 it plays songs, has drum noises a microphone and keyboard. This is probably one of the most annoying toys made so I'm sure Nemo will love it!

At 50p this phone can record voices and play back which I thought was sweet!

£2 this pull along telephone has got more advanced then the one I had as a child is has a moving mouth and talks to you in again quite an irritating voice so again Nemo loves it! 

A 50p classic! 

A final bargain at 50p. 

I was pretty pleased with our selection for just over £10 we have some things for Nemo to grow into playing with. 

I cannot believe how fast he has grown, I did some salt dough hand and foot prints with him this week and was amazed at how big his prints were.

 After the fair we popped into the park with some friends and Nemo enjoyed playing on the swings

Nemo's not been very well, you can tell he's not great because apart from just having a cough and cold Nemo is off his food which is almost unheard of (as my mum will tell you she was amazed that he loved eating her Thai red curry last weekend!)

I made him some noodles but he wouldn't have any and just played with them instead- I don't think Poppy minded though!