Me and Mine: A Family Portrait, June

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The Me and Mine Project is something that I've wanted to join in with for ages - the idea is that you take a photo each month of your whole family, and then end up with a lovely set of photographs that capture your family as it grows. This month we finally got our act together and purchased a tripod, so it was family photo go-time! June was dominated by our holiday to Tuscany at the start of the month, and that's where we managed to take our family photos. We climbed to the top of a steep hill at Fiesole, a little hill town which overlooks Florence, so we had the most spectacular views over the Florence skyline.     As you can ...

Sharing the Blog Love #1

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A huge welcome to the very first #SharingtheBlogLove - a new linky from me and Laura at Dear Bear and Beany. Laura and I both love the sense of community that comes from the blogging world and we want to give a little something back. We are aiming to bring some love to your fabulous posts by each choosing our 4 favourites and showcasing them in our following week's post. If you’re chosen as one of our featured posts, we’ll include a link to your blog and blog post, as well as a summary of your post and why we loved it – so a total of 8 fabulous posts will be showcased each week! To give these great posts even more exposure, both ...

Sharing the Blog Love - Showcase 1

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Today marks the launch of #SharingtheBlogLove - a new linky which I am running with the lovely Laura at Dear Bear and Beany. The idea is that we each choose our favourite 4 posts every week to really give them some love. We will feature them in our weekly posts with a little write up on each and a link to your post and blog, we'll tweet them throughout the week, and we'll be sharing our showcase posts each week with #TheList, a linky run by the fabulous Aby (You Baby Me Mummy) and Amy (Mrs and Mrs T Plus 3). For this first week, obviously we don't have any posts to choose from yet, so we've gone rogue! I'm choosing ...

Restoring a Flooded Garden

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When our garden flooded last month I was devastated. Of course it's a small issue compared to experiencing flooding of your house, but I was very upset to envisage all of the hard work I'd put into the garden over the last year going literally down the drain. But I've been so surprised by how resilient a garden can be to flooding - if you're reading this after experiencing a flood and hoping to restore your flooded garden, I hope you'll be reassured by how quickly ours has bounced back. Stay off the soil and the lawn until the water has gone Be patient and allow the water to drain away. Walking on water-logged soil compacts it, making it more difficult for it ...

Living Arrows 26/52

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“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” by Kahlil Gibran On one of my days with Max this week, we visited Loseley Park Gardens, near Guildford. It was a beautiful garden to explore, and Max had a great time roaming around the different parts of the garden. The part I found most lovely was when we discovered the White Garden, with it's long pond, and this cute little frog statue next to it. Max loved this little guy. He insisted he squat down next to it, like a frog, and I take his photo. Let me tell you, taking a photo while your toddler is simultaneously trying to sit right on the edge of the ...

#SharingtheBlogLove - A new linky

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One of the aspects of blogging that I've most enjoyed since I started has been the amazing community that exists around it. I've always been an avid reader of blogs, but the sheer number that I read now has grown massively and I find there is always a new up and coming blog that I discover and love. #SharingtheBlogLove is a new linky venture which I've set up with the lovely Laura from Dear Bear and Beany. We both wanted to give something back to the blogging community, so the idea of this linky is that it will be a weekly showcase of our favourite posts, introducing you to new bloggers you might not know, and highlighting the talent that is ...

A visit to Bekonscot Model Village

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There's something about being a parent that inspires a nostalgic desire to revisit all those places that you remember from your childhood. Bekonscot Model Village is one of those places for me. I remember numerous trips there as a child and was really keen to take Max now he's old enough to enjoy it. Bekonscot is the oldest model village in the world and was opened in 1929. The village as a whole has a quaint 1930's vibe to it, with a zoo, circus, harbour, cable car, and numerous trains which weave their way through the village.     There is a winding path which leads you round the village. It's wide enough for a pushchair, although we left ours in the car and ...

Summer style in your 30’s

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Where does a mum in her 30's shop for clothes? I think like most mums I lost my interest in fashion and style in general after having Max. The completely all-encompassing aspect of having a newborn, combined with insecurity in my different body shape, and the limits that breastfeeding puts on the clothing you can wear, all added up to mean that it was a long time before my love of clothes returned. But I think once you emerge from the newborn fog (which can take longer for some people than others!), you start to crave things that make you feel good again, and clothes are one of those things for me. But all of those shops that I used to trawl ...

Living Arrows 25/52

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“You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth” by Kahlil Gibran I've loved seeing other people's contributions to the lovely Living Arrows series and so I wanted to start taking part too! Living Arrows is about celebrating childhood and each post I will be sharing a moment, or series of moments from our weekend. This weekend for father's day we made a visit to Hinton Amper National Trust - a house and gardens near Winchester in Hampshire. On arriving we were told that they had a haybale maze, perfect for toddlers so we headed straight there.     Max could not have been more excited by the maze! The bales were the perfect height to make it challenging for him, but ...

Floral styling for a summer bedroom

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When the summer comes round, there's nothing better than a bit of a bedroom spruce up - new bedding can really transform and brighten up the bedroom, and when you consider the number of hours you spend in your bed, it's well worth investing in making it a cool and comfortable place to be.   Embrace the florals Flowers are one of my favourite ways to track the seasons, and floral bedding is always a big hit with me. Anyone who knows my love of a bold patterned wallpaper will probably find it unsurprising that I also love a bold print when it comes to bedding. It adds a splash of pattern and colour and is a really easy way to add a ...