Our new arrival has finally arrived

So Christmas day came and there were still no real signs of the baby arriving any time soon but things moved along pretty quickly during Christmas Day night.  And over a week late we finally welcomed our new baby on boxing day morning.  A beautiful baby girl safe, perfect and tiny.  We are all delighted and Little L is loving being a big sister.  

The best Christmas present in the world has been the safe arrival of our new daughter and the happy reaction of her big sister.

Happy 2013!

Christmas Day

After a very hard slog of working almost solidly through December my other half managed to get home on Christmas Eve in time to help Little L prep for the big visit.  We had to put mince pies and milk out for Father Christmas and a carrot and some water for the reindeer.  We put the socks out on the landing ready to be filled (fingers crossed) and watched the snowman and snow dog (well heavily pregnant mummy watched it) Little L just wanted to play with Daddy.

Christmas Day was very relaxed no travelling or visiting for us this year.  So we opened presents, well Little L opened her presents and any others for Mummy and Daddy.  These are some of my favourites!

 I cooked a lovely lunch that everyone enjoyed and ate.  Followed by a little sleep for Little L and some visitors.  A very relaxed Christmas, no visiting or rushing about and yes we spent christmas day still waiting!

Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. 

Waiting ..............

So this week me and Little L have nearly managed to get rid of our colds.

We have made a Christmas wreath, made and frozen mince pies, finished last minute gift buying,

wrapped all the presents, caught up with friends, written and posted cards, the cupboards, fridge and freezer are full of food, the house is reasonably clean, Christmas party attended, Christmas decorations up ......... and we now just need baby to make an appearance.
I'm not very good at waiting

Making the most of the heat you have

I bought curtains for our front door in the summer.  Yes I was going to make them myself but I found end of line lined curtains at Argos for £15 so there was no point.  Plus I bought the curtain rail but alas they sat untouched for months.  Once I had finished making the blinds for the kitchen my momentum just carried on and I set to attaching the track to the wall.  I had to attach a wooden batten first otherwise the track would have been really difficult to put up plus the curtains would have been too close to the wall.  That done and appeared to be straight onto the curtains.   Had to take a couple of inches off the length and then hand stitch.  With the leftover fabric I made a tie back which was really easy.  I just traced around another tie back to get the shape and used some D rings from old tie backs.

The curtains do clash with the green walls in the hallway but that was the choice of the old owners.  I did think about decorating the hallway before baby arrives but was told "No Way" by the other half spoilsport!  Hopefully next year some time I will paint the hallway beige/cream and the curtains will then match.

Not sure whether they make much difference heat wise as it's not been that cold yet.  But it does get very cold in the hallway so hopefully they will help a bit.

Another thing off the "To do" list and in a quest to spread the heat was drilling a 2 inch holes between the chimney recess above the fire into the kitchen which my dad kindly did for us.  The idea is that some of the heat that rises above the stove now goes into the kitchen.  It does work but hasn't made a vast difference.

And finally we bought ourselves a stove top fan,  we didn't get the original "Ecofan" as these were upwards of £100 but we got one from Ebay which works exactly the same way and was half the price.  This definitely works, it spreads the heat around the room and helps the washing dry quicker.  I would certainly recommend.

Been another busy week with groups and Little L's nativity play (that girl is a star and sooo cute in her costume). Plus I got the lurgy so we have both been ill all week. It's sad but at the moment my post birth craving/want is a lemsip.

Getting things done - Roman blinds

These last few weeks have been very productive if not a bit exhausting.  The mammoth "Things To do before baby arrives" list has been slowly shrinking and I have done some of the jobs on there that I had been putting off.

Top of the most put off was new blinds for the kitchen.  Now I did make new blinds back in March when I redecorated the kitchen but due to the bulk of the material and the rubbishness of the fittings they would never shut which isn't a problem in the summer but as we have one window that looks out at the front of the house I wanted that one at least to be able to shut during the winter when people walking past can spy into the kitchen.  So over the summer I had been collecting together the bits needed to make the roman blinds mainly from wilkinsons, diy shops and abakhan.  But still I couldn't faced doing them until about six weeks ago when the clocks changed.

Firstly I had to take down and carefully unpick the blinds as I wanted/had to re-use the fabric.

Then I had to make the linings, sew channels in them, sew them to the outer fabric.  Making sure that everything was straight and central.  Hand stitched the side seams.  Attached velcro and hemmed the top.  And hemmed the bottom by hand.  Then all the little rings had to be stitched in place.

Then onto the window fittings, using L shaped brackets I attached the wooden batten to the window.  Put velcro on it and screwed in the eyelets that would guide the cord.  

Then lots of ironing and trying to get them to hang straight followed.  And that was one blind made!  the day after I made the bigger blind, same idea but more difficult and I had to be even more careful to keep checking it would hang straight.  I am pleased with the result.  The small one is shut every night and is standing up fine.  The big one never gets shut really as we aren't overlooked.  Glad I made them myself, much cheaper and I got to have the fabric that I liked.  Then I moved on to hanging curtains but that post will have to wait.  

Do excuse the lack of blogging at the moment but I am counting down the days till baby is due and trying to get things ready for Christmas.  Plus attending all the usual playgroups, swimming lessons and appointments plus Little L has come down with a stinker of a cold hhhmmm great timing. 

Bye for now.