Our Day by Design

M E R R Y   C H R I S T M A S I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas or festive season with your loved ones!

With only 3 days until Christmas, I wanted to show you how we made our flat look festive! We put up our tree, got out all of our decorations and displayed all the new ones we bought in Cologne. Along with the tree we also have the ornament tree I added last year, which I use to display some of my favourites. As usual we totally underestimated the time it would take to put the tree up, string all the different lights around it along with all the garlands and that was before we even started on the decorations!   Again this year we had quite a few {I think there are 11} new additions to the trees, collected throughout the year on our travels. They include a gold metal star from Bratislava; a painted glass bauble from Vienna; a wooden ornament from Marrakech; a red metal star from Bakewell; a beaded ornament I made myself {the second pic below}; a glass tree which was a gift from a friend and quite a few we bought in Cologne in November. They were two red tin San...

We have finally made some progress on the nursery! As you may have seen from some of my nursery pins , we loved the idea of painting grey stripes on one wall. The room was still painted magnolia from when we moved in, as you can see below, so Graham started by painting the whole room white and glossing all the woodwork. I then forgot to take a photo of the room before we started the next stage! To find the perfect grey colour we had previously tried a few paint swatches from the Grey Steel & Night Jewels Dulux Tailor Made Colour ranges against the white in our living room. After looking at loads and loads of grey options these were really the only ones which didn't have any hints of blue or green. We then bought a tester of Grey Steel 2 , the 3rd one down in the photo, which we loved when we painted a bit on the white wall, behind our travel map so it wouldn't be seen! Having read a few tutorials online before we started, everyone recommended Frog Tape as t...

Reaching 32+5 weeks means we are down to single figures with less than 8 weeks to go. The baby is the size of a squash (or a jicama, whatever that is). As you can see my bump is still growing a lot! I can still get away with wearing a few normal tops or vests providing they are long enough, otherwise its all maternity clothes. Although I think my bump is quite big I've been told by more than one person this week that they don't think so at all, and since its all out the front it doesn't look too big; one was surprised that I only had 8 weeks to go! Unsurprisingly I haven't managed to take a photo every week since my last update although I did manage one in Cologne at 31 weeks and one on Sunday when I was exactly 32 weeks.   It was my 30th birthday on Saturday so after having a delicious afternoon tea at Mimi's in Edinburgh, my parents had some family and friends round to their house on Sunday for another homemade afternoon tea to cele...

Its my 30th Birthday today! Unlike the last couple of years when we have been in Florida for my birthday, this year we are at home, since we took our last baby free trip to the Christmas markets in Cologne last weekend. This morning we are going round to my parents so we can skype with my sister, brother-in-law and nephew in Oz then we are going to do some shopping before meeting my parents at Mimi's in Leith for afternoon tea. Tomorrow my parents are hosting some of my family and friends at their house for another afternoon tea to celebrate. At almost 32 weeks pregnant, its not exactly how I thought my 30th would be but I'm looking forward to a lovely weekend.

After celebrating an early Christmas in October with my family, the 19th of November brought Christmas in November with my fellow Blogging Six girls;  Conversation Pieces , My Spare Thoughts , Daydreams in Lace , This Girl Is... & A Dizzy Girl . I was bridesmaid dress shopping for my best friends wedding in the morning {being pregnant I just spectated while the other two bridesmaids tried the dresses on} then I met the girls at Coco's before we headed down to Mimi's in Leith for lunch, where we were going to swap our secret santa gifts. The rules for the secret santa were a small bought present and something homemade and I think its safe to say we were all quite nervous about handing over our gifts. However, everyone loved what they had been given and what had been made for them so there was no need for the nerves. You can read some of the other posts the girls have written about our secret santa here , here & here . I had Lisa-Marie  so I bought...

At the same time as we ordered the pram and car seat , Grahams parents very kindly bought us the cot we wanted. We chose the John Lewis Olivia Cot in white and grey.   (Images from John Lewis ) We looked at quite a few cots but saw this one quite early on and didn't see anything else we preferred or that felt as sturdy. I also liked the fact it has a drawer underneath. We chose to just get a cot, rather than a cot b ed, since they are smaller and it will be used for at least a couple of years then we will just buy a junior bed instead. The cot also has 3 base positions which can be adjusted as the baby gets bigger. To go with it we ordered the coir spring cot mattress. The cot is getting delivered along with the car seat in December when we can get it made up and then into the nursery. Hopefully all of the painting will be complete by then. Then we still need to get bedding, sheets and possibly a valance so that you cant see into the drawer when the mattress is ...

After choosing our pram , we knew we had to get a car seat that would fit onto the chassis with the additional adapters. We chose the Maxi-Cosi CabrioFix car seat in black along with the Maxi-Cosi EasyFix base. Grahams parents generously bought us the full system.   (Image from John Lewis )  (Images from John Lewis ) Since our car has Isofix points I wanted to make sure we got a base for the car seat which means it will be a lot easier to take the seat in and out of the car, especially if the baby is sleeping. The car seat simply clicks into the base, rather than having to mess around with the seat belt every time. The car seat and base are getting delivered to our flat in December so that we can install it into the car in plenty time for the baby arriving.

The last weekend in October we went to John Lewis with my parents to order the pram / buggy we wanted as they had generously offered to buy it for us. We chose the Bugaboo Cameleon with the dark grey base and dark blue canvas since we know its a boy. We had a bit of drama as Bugaboo have now discontinued the dark blue and John Lewis didn't have any left in stock; we ordered the main dark grey base along with the black canvas with the option to cancel that if we found the blue. After a search online, we found the dark blue canvas so we could get the combination we wanted. I had originally wanted the limited edition dark purple but felt it would be more suitable for a girl. Cameleon Carrycot (Image from Baby Concierge )  Cameleon Seat (Image from Bugaboo ) We didn't really look at many different prams as my sister has the Cameleon and loves it. We always thought that it looked the best option and everyone we know who has one loves it. We did look at a few others b...

Now that Ive reached 28+1 weeks, we are officially into the 3rd trimester, and the baby is the size of an eggplant (or a chinese cabbage). Only 12 weeks to go which I'm sure is going to go so fast with Christmas first.  We decided to go for a 3D/4D Mini Scan at Babes in the Womb at the weekend so that we could see the baby again and confirm it was definitely a boy before we buy anything else!     It was so lovely to see him again and despite the fact he kept hiding his face with his hands and feet, we managed to get a few good 3D pictures. The sonographer confirmed that it is a boy and that he is around 2lbs 6oz just now. He has also still got his head up at the top so hopefully he will start to turn around soon. He is facing my back and as my placenta is at the front, and therefore between us, that explains why I'm not seeing any kicks at the front and why Graham cant really feel any either. We were so glad we had gone to get the scan and felt it was definitely w...

In December last year we spent 8 nights in Orlando, Florida with Grahams family {his parents, his sister & her fiancé, his aunt & uncle and his cousin & his fiancée}, making 10 of us in total. The 8 of them had spent a week down the coast in Fort Myers first but due to our lack of holidays, we could only get 6 days off work. We met them all in Orlando on the Saturday. We set off on the Friday, my 29th birthday and as we landed in Orlando, we were just relieved that we had actually managed to get there, following a few issues to say the least. It started with the never ending snow which had closed Edinburgh airport and kept my sister & nephew up here since the weekend before. The week was full of helpful suggestions from everyone and there were even thoughts of driving down to Manchester for our Orlando flight; thankfully the airport reopened on the Friday morning! However there were still a few issues at check in {how an airline system can’t cope with people who ha...