Our Day by Design

Its Grahams 31st Birthday today, on his first Father's Day; Happy Birthday G! This last year has gone so fast with all the preparations for the baby, Holden's arrival and the holidays we enjoyed. We have a busy summer ahead with my sister and her family visiting, two hen do's & the weddings, a week in Center Parcs then a trip to Australia in September which will be our first family holiday! Daddy with Holden when he was just 40 minutes old. This is also the first photo we have of Holden, unfortunately I missed it as I was still in recovery and hadn't met him yet. {His birth story is coming soon.} This is also our anniversary of 9 years together {and 2 years, 10 weeks & 5 days married!} Unlike last year when we celebrated in Marrakech and I was almost 8 weeks pregnant, this year Graham was at a stag do last night so once he got back we opened gifts with Grahams dad then headed out to lunch just the three of us before visiting my parents o...

My niece has now arrived over in Oz! My sister Ashleigh had their baby girl called Willow at 8.22pm yesterday, weighing 7lb 14oz & 51cm long. I'm so excited to hear about the new arrival and delighted for her and her husband Patrick, as well as new big brother Enzo. I'm just sorry we wont get to actually meet her and introduce her to her new cousin until next summer. Congratulations Mummy, Daddy & big brother Enzo! My parents are still over in Australia until next weekend so they will get to spend some time with the new baby before they come home. I'm looking forward to hopefully seeing them all on skype this weekend.

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...

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...

In what has become a bit of a tradition since my nephew was born, we are spending the October school break in the Peak District with my parents, aunt & uncle and my sister, brother-in-law and nephew. My cousin is also coming down to join us for the first weekend. This may be the last year we all get to holiday together for a while since my sister, brother-in-law and nephew are about to emigrate to Perth, Australia. Since we wont all be together for Christmas this year, we are having Christmas dinner tomorrow instead, including a tree, cake, chocolates and crackers! Even if they had been staying in London we still wouldn't have been together as my niece is due on boxing day and I will be too pregnant to travel by then. My parents are now going to Australia for Christmas and we will be with Grahams family so its lovely we can have an early celebration together. There may be internet access but since the house is on a farm in the middle of nowhere there probably wont be;...

Back in October last year we spent a week down in the Norfolk Broads with my parents, my sister, her fiance & my nephew and my aunt & uncle. Since we are about to head off for this October's trip, I thought it was time to get caught up with a quick recap! We drove down to Pontefract on the Friday night and met my parents and aunt & uncle at a Premier Inn, just in time for some food and a few glasses of wine. On Saturday morning we continued our journey as far as Norwich to pick up my sister & family at the train station before continuing to our house on The Broads for the week. We stayed at a lodge by the river in the village of Wroxham , which came with a motorised day boat for us to use. The living room / kitchen was upstairs with the four bedrooms on the ground floor.   We took the boat out for the first time on Sunday and made our way slowly towards Horning , mooring right in front of the Swan Inn for lunch, which was delicious!   My dad h...

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY ENZO (Image from here ) Its my nephew Enzo's 2nd Birthday today; I cant believe how quickly this last year has gone since he was one and now he has a little sister and a little cousin on the way! We are spending the day at Battersea Children's Zoo in London to celebrate. For his birthday we got him a trunkie for him to take on his travels, a number 2 t-shirt, a Thomas book and a very hungry caterpillar colouring book. He also got an extra present of Winnie the Pooh duplo. We are going to see them again in just 3 weeks when we all go to the Peak District for a week.

Its Grahams 30th Birthday today; Happy Birthday G! This last year has gone so fast with all the weddings, holidays and events we had planned so we are now looking forward to what this next year will bring! (Image by Craig & Eva Sanders ) This is also our anniversary of 8 years together {and I year, 10 weeks & 5 days married!} As you know we are celebrating in Marrakech and hopefully at this moment we are enjoying the sun and lazing by the pool! We are going to celebrate with his family when we get back by having lunch on Sunday at Grahams parents house.

A couple of Saturdays ago {12th March} we were able to use one of our Christmas presents by having lunch at La Potiniere in Gullane. We were given a voucher from my aunt & uncle and my parents received the same and bought one for my aunt & uncle too so we could all go for lunch together, masterminded by my aunt. Since my dad and aunt had been ill at New Year it was really our new year celebrations. I'm fairly sure we confused the other diners by our 'Happy New Year' toast in March! The restaurant is quite small and just has 20 seats, which allows one of the owners, Keith, to serve as well as be in the kitchen; this makes it a lot more like being in someones house, rather than in a restaurant which is lovely. They bake two different types of bread so I tried the sunflower kind while we looked at the menu, along with a glass of prosecco for our toast. With such a small restaurant, they choose to only offer two choices for each course on the menu, with one meat &...