Friday Five - Things I've been doing instead of blogging

Well its been two weeks now since I last blogged, I just seem to be so busy lately, the older she gets (seven months now) the busier I get!  So I've decided to share some of the more exciting things I've been doing.




1.  Pick your own.  We've been to our local Pick Your Own farm twice to pick raspberries.  Raspberries are my favourite berry and these ones were huge!  Its so much more rewarding (and so much cheaper) to pick them yourself too.  Two good things about picking raspberries are that the canes are mostly at standing height and therefore the berries are easy to pick.  The other thing is that they don't (well these ones anyway) have thorns so no scratches or pricks!

2.  Scrapbooking.  I'm going to try and get my A into G (as my dad would say) and post some of my latest layouts because I'm quite proud of them.  I've scrapped my baby shower, Eilidh's birth story, a picture of our god-daughter Emma at our wedding, us at Andrew's work Christmas party two years ago, and us at the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  At the end of each year I go through all our photos and make a list of the layouts I want to do and then cross them off when done.  I try and make sure I scrap older photos and newer ones, otherwise I'll get behind on the old ones.

3.  Cooking.  I've been cooking meals for Chicken.  I've got a post coming tomorrow or Sunday about her food so I won't go into too much detail, but let it be said, that girl likes to eat!!  This weekend I'm going to make spaghetti bolognese, some sort of chicken dish, more rice pudding and a custard for her.

4.  Hanging out with my baby friends.  Usually the girls from my ante-natal group and I meet every Tuesday, but this week we went back to our tutors house for a pool party (the babies paddled and we held them)  and today we tried to go swimming.  I say tried because we got to the pool and it was shut so we went to an overcrowded playground and sat at an overpriced cafe (and didn't buy anything) and fed the kiddies.  My lovely friend Jo and her adorable son George have been driving us around.  Indecently George is Eilidh's boyfriend, she likes her younger men you see (G is three weeks younger than her).

5.  Saying goodbye to a good friend.  My lovely friend Michelle has left London after living her for nine years.  Michelle and I met at high school 15 years ago when we went on a school trip to Barcelona Spain.  We hung out there and then when we got home to NZ.  Michelle and our other friend Jonelle are some of my oldest friends, and I'm really going to miss her.  Eilidh and I went to Heathrow to wave goodbye as she left to start her new adventure in Hong Kong where she is going to teach in an international school.

So there you go, that's been my last couple of weeks, Eilidh is now in a more reliable sleep pattern in the day so I'm going to try and blog then, fingers crossed it works!

Friday Five - Random photos from 'my pictures'

I've been having trouble thinking of a category for this weeks Friday Five, and I was browsing through the random photos in the 'my pictures' folder on my laptop.  All our photos are stored on an external hard drive so these photos are a real mix, here are my five favourites:
1.  Our gorgeous God-Daughter Emma.

This photo was taken at our first engagement party.  We spent a glorious day in the garden of our favourite pub.  Emma was fifteen months old at the time and was so well behaved the whole day.  I remember she was quite taken with both of those wooden spoons.

2.  Our Engagement party invite.

I (with the help of two very good friends, and Andrew's cousin Fi) made these invites, about one hundred in total.  I love all those photos because they show us having a really good time.

3.  Us on holiday in Spain.

In May 2008 eleven of us rented a villa in Spain for weeks holiday.  The house was amazing and we had such a good time.

4.  My cousins and I circa 1985.

This photo was taken at my grandparents fortieth wedding anniversary party (I think).  We had a 'Miss Universe' competition, and I won!  I guess that was one of the perks of being the youngest there.  Can you guess which one is me?  And, can you guess which one of the 'girls' is actually a boy?

5.  Andrew's work Christmas party 2009.

Andrew's work throw really fancy Christmas parties, they are always black tie and held some where fabulous.  This one was at Madam Tussauds, it was really cool because they had all the 'celebrities' out on show.  My friend Leilia did my make-up which I really love, she is sooo good at it, love those fake lashes!

Spring holidays - the highlights reel NZ version

Hi everybody, (yes thats you Mum)
Sorry I've been away for so long, as I explained I went home to NZ for three weeks and then we went to Italy for a ten day holiday in Tuscany with the inlaws.  I've had a great time and over the next week or so I'll post in more detail about what we did, but for now, here are the highlights from NZ.

Spending time with Nana and Pops.  It was so great to introduce Chicken to her Pops, and for her to catch up with her Nana, and she totally remembered her too!

Catching up with old friends.  Jonelle and I have been friends for fifteen years now and she had her second baby a week after Chicken (they were due on the same day incidentally)  Good times.

Catching up with family.  Nic is my cousin who lives in my hometown with her husband and two boys.  I spent a few afternoons introducing Chicken to her cuzzies and catching up on family gossip.  We also had a birthday party for Leo where the whole family (and some very welcome extras) came to our house for lunch.  So good to see everyone again!

Catching up with my god-daughter and our BFF's.  Emma totally loves Chicken and it was really nice introducing her to our BFF's (and Emma's parents) Neil and Ange, and their boy Tyler.

Catching up with our Ldn friends.  Everyone came to Ange and Neil's for a pot-luck lunch and we had so much fun catching up.  I got to hear everyone's news, (how was that keg party Vicky?) and we got to meet Naomi, Rose and Jono's beautiful little girl.

Introducing Chicken to her Dad's family.  We spent 24 hours visiting Andrew's family and introducing Eilidh to her two great-grandmothers.  We also got to see my Aunty Barb and Uncle Murray - hey guys!

So that's it, a three week whistle-stop tour to catchup up with old friends and family, I had so much fun (count how many times I've used the word so, far too many!) It was really sad leaving because I really miss these guys, when I'm here in the UK there are lots of cool people to distract me, but as they say, there's no place like home.