Poppet In the Park

Today started off in a bit of a frazzle.  I was rushing around trying to get ready to head to my midwifes appointment only to get there early and be seen about an hour late. With Miss little wearing her cranky pants since she refused her morning nap.
When I finally got in I didn't have the most pleasant midwife. The student one was awesome but when the actual midwife came in to "finish off" my appointment things went a little down hill. Apparently she was not on board with the birth plan my obstetrician and I had made after very careful consideration and spent a substantial amount of time lecturing me on what she thinks I should do. Whilst I do believe everyone is entitled to have their own opinions and further more that we can learn valuable things by discussing differences of opinions, this was not one of those times and I just wanted to tell her to shut up!
When I left I really felt like I needed to do something to calm myself and lift and my spirits. So when miss little feel asleep the moment I pulled out of the carpark I decided to take a little drive.

We went to Werribee Park and had some lunch in the beautiful rose garden. With the exception of Mamma trying to make her wear a hat Poppy had a wonderful time, most of which was spent pointing at roses and plants saying "pretty"

I have to say strolling around the gardens lifted my mood tremendously. We practically had the place to ourselves and had such fun exploring the grounds, I felt like I was wandering through a Jane Austin novel (even though I am more of an Emily Bronte kinda girl).

Beautiful Werribee Mansion

Inside on of the greenhouses

I love the tiles in this beautiful old green house

I tried ever so hard to get a nice picture of The Poppet amongst the roses but in every picture she was pointing and cooing at all the wonderful things she could see.

I believe I may have found a new favourite place to hang out in the Western suburbs and I know a few little girls who agree with me. Hopefully Poppy and I can go back soon with the Gorgeous La la Rose and her wonderful Mamma as I know they love it in the gardens too.

*What a Week*****

What A WEEK indeed...
Normally I see this, hear this and think oh oh something bad happened. But this is quite the opposite.
What an exciting and eventful and happy week this is, was and will be.

There are birthdays, big moves, babies due and hopefully some very exciting news coming.
I am loving this week but I am also hanging out for friday with as much enthusiasm as I used to yearn for the weekend when I was working full-time, but more on that in a second.

This week both of my sisters have a birthday. Happy Happy Birthday to Bek and Ali.

My bestest bud is moving house, which is super exciting. No I am not crazy I know that moving is a enormous pain in the butt, but starting a fresh in a new place making new memories is also pretty exciting too.
We also made the BIG decision to not move right now, which is also pretty exciting. I am looking forward to not having open inspections and making our house feel like home again.
I wasn't sure initially that I was in love with our little pocket on melbourne, but there are some very positive points to being here one of which is that I am secretly addicted to being so close my best friend.

My brother in-law and his beautiful partner are expecting their second child who could arrive at any minute. They are the best sort of people and I am sending them all the love in the world.

AND... the reason I can not wait for friday...

I have my first proper ultrasound (the 20 week one).. We forwent the 12 week ultrasound since with Poppy the results scared the bejesus out of me and I was mildly panicked for the rest of the pregnancy.
So not only do I get to see bubba properly and hopefully looking healthy and chubby just like their sister did at 20 weeks, but if we are lucky we will get to find out if Poppy is getting a brother or a sister.
I didn't think I would want to know, I thought it would be nice to get a surprise but now I am super excited to find out, hopefully the tiniest Meager obliges us.

I can honestly say I have not felt as good as I do right now in quite a long time. Everything seems to be falling into place, not so much how I expected it would but in an even better way.

I hope you are having a brilliant week and that tiny and big amazing things are happening in your world.

Not enough hours in the day

Have you been wondering where I have been lately??
Somedays even I wonder where I have been lately and what exactly I have been doing.
The very short answer to this is, I have been at home!
Getting your house all spick and span so you can sell is a mammoth of a task (especially when all up its almost 40 squares). So I get the terrible guilts if I forgo my domestic duties and duck out for some time in the real world with the little miss.
Speaking of my little Poppet, man is she getting big. She is now 8 months old, where did that time go? She prattles on all day long and now and can very clearly say mama, dada, nana, hello and a few less clear words. She has discovered that next to her dad our dog Frankie is the coolest thing in the world. When I am watching her play on her mat she looks dangerously close to crawling, part of me thinks this is super cool and the other part thinks oh oo she's going to be mobile very very soon.
I haven't done anything crafty in such a long time I forget what my workroom looks like (well a mess but you get my meaning). I was so pleased when I finally got the time to set up my sewing machine and sew a few christmassy things at the end of last year, I was all set to get sewing in January, but it just didn't happen. I had forgotten how great it is to see a project come together so quickly. When you mostly knit it takes forever to see how your project is going to look.
I have been missing my computer and for once have felt very greatful for my iphone (without it I would have had no internet for the past month). That being said they are also massive time wasters,, I mean really how many times do you need to check facebook a day??? (in my case many many times too many).
I don't want to get ahead of myself but I am really looking forward to this house selling, moving somewhere smaller with way way less housework and hopefully having time every now and then to read a book a in the bath.
Until then I plan to clean and tidy as much as I can and cherish whatever sleep I can get.

I hope your all having a lovely day.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you had a blast.

My New Years was very quiet Digger, The Poppet, Frankie and all went to stay at my parents for the first time all together since Miss Poppy was born. I fell asleep early and was woken by the fireworks at midnight.

New Years kind of made me a little sad though. I saw soo many facebook updates from people that really didn't seem to  have the best time in 2011. It made me feel bad for them, especially since my year was one of the best I have had to date. Sure I may have been waste deep in dirty nappies and I have not slept through the night for more months than I dare count. And sure some not so great stuff has happened to us this year (even around christmas) but I just can't help but feel incredibly blessed. I wanted to be a Mamma more than anything else in the world, it might not have been a BIG dream compared to what some people wish for but it was my ultimate dream and realising it... well I will never, ever be articulate enough to convey just how wonderful that was for me.

I really do hope you all had an amazing new years and are enjoying 2012. I have so much planned for this year, but that's for another day and another post.

Instead I thought I might share some of my favourite moments of 2011 with you all in no order other than that which they pop into my head ...

* The arrival of Mr Archie Michael Rose an awesome little addition to an already awesome family
* Watching my brother marry to lady of his dreams (heavily pregnant and fighting back tears the whole    
   time)
* The arrival of Miss Poppy Nell Meager.. light of my life love of my heart
* Actually theres a tonne of Poppy related ones, her first smile, her first word (mum), her first dance.
* Finally starting this blog
* Spending time with family and friends
* Falling in love with caffeine all over again

There's a heap more good stuff from 2011 and I am certain that 2012 will be full of plenty of happy surprises too.

2011 you made me understand and appreciate the concept of family more deeply than I could have comprehended before and I am so full of love and hope as we dive into a new year...

I hope you all are too.

All quiet on the blog front

It's been a while between posts. It's been a while since I turned my computer on. I have a hundred and one posts in my head that I would like to write, I wonder if I will ever get to them.

Things have been pretty busy at my place. I would like to say that I have been so quiet because I have been busy with christmas crafting, decorating and baking. But the truth is I have been utilising every spare moment to clean, tidy, de-clutter and organise.
We are preparing to put our house on the market and man is that a lot of work.

I have decided to  give myself a few days off leading up to christmas though. Whilst I know that Poppy wont remember this one, I know we will always remember our very first family christmas. So I am going to try and get some crafting, decorating and baking done over the next few days (even if it is last minute)..

Hopefully I will have some last minute christmas handmade goodness to share with you all soon

xxx

*Little Review* Handmade Living -A Fresh take on scandinavian style

This past weekend my husband and I had a treat. The grandparents came up to hang out with the Poppet (by which I mean fawn over the poppet) and we went for a late breakfast and movie in Yarraville.
I decided to be a nice wife and let Digger chose the movie (opps), naturally he chose a baseball movie. But I got a great payoff, while we were browsing in The Sun Bookstore before the movie I spotted Lotta Jansdotter's book "Handmade Living" and since Ryan got to choose the movie I got to choose a book to come home with me...Hoorah!!!!

So not only did I get to eat a real breakfast with coffee whilst it was still hot and yummy, I also got to look at Brad Pitt for a few hours and take a pretty new book home.
And the day got even better. By the time we got home Poppy was soo tired from all the adoration and playing that she had a really really big nap. So I got to sit down with a big cup of tea and read my new book cover to cover... and what a book I loved it!!!

This book has everything I adore. Wonderfully creative handmade pieces, practical and pretty storage solutions, lots of textiles, an adorable child, and recipe cards. But what I thought was most awesome about this book is that it's not written by someone with a gargantuan disposable income who has furnished their home with items I could only ever dream of one day putting on my wishlist. This book is full of practical accessible and beautiful items, some from flea markets and garage sales, some hand crafted by the author or her local designer friends and amongst all of this, items from Ikea.
It's a wonderful book and I could say soo many nice things about it but I think I have covered the main points and I don't want to spoil it for you if you decide to have a look yourself, which I thoroughly recommend you do.

I cant wait to break out some of the recipes to make myself, the apple jam one sounds especially tasty.

Happy Weekend everyone

xxx

The Poppet Update

Here's a little update on our little one.

Well The Poppet is getting big.. At just 6 months (depending on whether you count by weeks or calendar months) she is already wearing mostly 0 and size 1, yes you read that right size 1.

She is busily prattling along all day long, occasionally stringing correct syllables together like ma ma or da da or hu looo but I assume these are all random happy accidents. But oh so fun to hear. She does this in her sleep also which is funny but strange at the same time. It keeps me on my toes.

We have also started solids and this little girl loves her veggies and rice cereal.. fruit not soo much.

I can no longer pop the little miss down on the matt and come back to find her in the same place as she rolls rolls rolls (but never for her dad) and has started to kind of commando crawl face down across the ground.

Poppy has discovered how to walk in the walker.. Previously we just used it as she wants to stand up all the time but now she can go backwards very fast and forwards slowly.

It is soo much fun to watch The Poppet learn and discover new things, like where the water comes from in the shower and what it tastes like. I am having a blast at home with her and don't want to think about having to go back to work ever (or at least right now)..

Oh and the cutest thing ever... Poppy has decided her mum is hilarious and literally laughs at me all day long... You would be hard pressed not to be laughing and smiling along with her.

I will add some new photos soon of our happy little lady.

Hope your day was sunny

xxx