Our Day by Design

As you may have seen, I have added a new page;   Holden's Monthly Photo Project . Now that his monthly photo project is complete, I wanted to put all of the images and monthly blog posts in one place.  I've put each monthly photo with a link to the post for the full two years of the project. I have also added the completed images of each full year seen below. I took the same photo of Holden every month, on the same chair beside his bunny. I put him in just a white vest with stickers showing the month. For the first year I also took photos of him on his lambskin rug and for the second year I took photos of him standing beside his penguin. By the end Holden was completely losing patience with the photos but I'm so glad I stuck with it and completed the two years as we now have a wonderful set of images showing his growth from a baby to a little boy. I took the photos on the 1st of every month, maybe a few days late some months, wherever we were. I'm so glad I ...

Holden's 24th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 24 months old on the 2nd of February. I can't believe that my little boy is now 2 years old. The first part of January was fairly quiet but included a trip to zoo, a couple of visits to soft play and the leisure pool with friends and one of Holden's friends birthdays. Holden also got to spend a day with nana & grandpa since my parents were still away and also got a haircut and new shoes. My parents arrived back from Australia on the 11th then my sister, nephew and niece came a week later on the 18th. It was wonderful to see them all as it had been over a year since we last saw them, when we were in Australia in Oct 2012. The rest of the month was busy as we spent lots of time with my niece and nephew while my sister was away. We went swimming, to the soft play, lots of lunches, dinners and sleepovers at granny's too. There was also lots of planning for Holden's birthday party as ...

Holden's 23rd monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 23 months old on the 1st of January, New Year's Day. The first two weeks of December we were still on holiday in Florida with Graham's parents, sister and brother-in-law. I celebrated my 32nd birthday on the 3rd with a day in the sun by the pool then a lovely meal at night while we were staying down in Rotonda West. We moved up to Orlando on the 7th and spent the week enjoying the theme parks, the pool and fitting in some shopping. We went on the hot air balloon at Downtown Disney, had a day at Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Studios & Epcot, then went to Mickey's Very Merry Christmas Party at Magic Kingdom, all of which Holden loved. We also saw the 'snow' in Celebration, visited some of the resorts, and took Holden to see the Disney Santa. On our second last evening we had a gorgeous dinner at the Contemporary's California Grill to celebrate Graham's parents 60th birthdays...

I'm over on Life Love Laura today talking about Holden's nursery as part of her " Share your nursery " feature. I hope you enjoy reading and would love to hear your thoughts.

Holden's 22nd monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 22 months old on the 1st of December while we were on holiday in Florida. In November we continued with things in the house, getting prepared for our holiday and also organising Christmas. My dad very kindly wallpapered out living room wall for us, we put some things up in the loft while Holden tried out climbing the ladder  and we finally got our Internet access. We had to do quite a lot of shopping this month to get organised for birthdays, Christmas and our holiday before we went. The start of the month was busy with two fireworks displays, one in the town Graham's parents live in and the other in our town, both of which Holden loved.  We spent a day up at the Highland Wildlife Park near Aviemore to see the polar bears which was great, although it was freezing! We went to a fam ily birthday party for Holden's second cousin Amy, visited Holden's great granddad and met our NCT group at ...

Holden's 21st monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 21 months old on the 1st of November. We finally got proper Internet access at home at the end of November but after a busy month getting ready to go on holiday, going on holiday, Christmas and Holden's 2nd birthday, its been a busy few months, which is why I am so late with this monthly post, and the ones to follow. In October we made more progress in the house getting the loft prepared with some flooring and buying wallpaper and lots of other things, then the builders came to do their 28 day visit. We also continued to explore our new town with walks and a visit to the soft play centre. We've had lots of lunches and dinners with family and friends including a family meal for my cousin's birthday. Holden enjoyed visiting Almond Valley, a heritage park, again with Graham's family and we've also been to Dynamic Earth and had a visit to Holden's great nana. I've started going ...

Holden's 20th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 20 months old on the 1st of October. Most of September was spent unpacking the rest of the boxes in our house. As progress was slow while Holden was around, Graham's parents looked after him for the day which we unpacked some more of the boxes from the spare room and our room before the removal company came to pick all of the empty boxes up. Holden started his new nursery at the beginning of the month. We've spent some time exploring our new town with visits to the high street shops, the park with the aviary which Holden loves, bookbugs, the swimming pool and both soft play centre's with friends. We've also had lots of lunches with friends and family and had visitors to our new house, including My Spare Thoughts . Like last month there have been many shopping trips to buy things we needed for the house and new shoes for Holden but we also managed another day at the zoo. We've also ...

Holden's 19th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 19 months old on the 1st of September, which was over a month ago! As I mentioned in the last post, we finally moved in to our brand new house in the middle of August, so we have been quite busy getting organised the last few weeks and we still have no internet access! At the start of August we spent time with family and friends including lots of lunches, visited a new play cafe and a local farm, Holden had a birthday party and I even had a night out at a festival show with my friends. We enjoyed more of the summer with another family birthday BBQ and spending time in the garden. Once we had the keys to our new house we took a week off work and got everything delivered from the storage company and moved from my parents' house. We managed to unpack some of it while Holden was with my aunt and at nursery, before we officially moved in on the 21st of August. Since then there were a lot of shopping tr...

Holden's 18th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month.   Holden turned 18 months old on the 1st of August, which was almost six weeks ago. I was so late with his 17 month post and then we got the keys to our new house, with no internet access, which is why I'm also very late with this post. We had quite a busy July with lots of lunch meetings with friends and family, getting personalised coke zero bottles, some new house shopping at Ikea and enjoying all the lovely weather with a trip to a country park, a couple of BBQ's, time in the garden with the water feature, a trip to Portobello beach, a botanics walk, trips on his trike and a few park visits. We also spent another day at the zoo, visited Auntie's new house again, did some holiday shopping for Holden and visited another coun try park with My Spare Thoughts . I also managed to meet My Spare Thoughts & Daydreams in Lace for a lunch trip to the museum. Holden got himself a great new chair from my a...

Holden's 17th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 17 months old on the 1st of July, which was over a month ago. I'm trying to catch up with my monthly posts as like last month I'm very behind with this one, considering he was 18 months a week and a half ago! June started off well with a trip to the local festival in Haddington, a community lunch with all the neighbours at my parents shared green area then coffee with my friends. However, I then got ill with a stomach bug which lasted ages and after a week with no change, I had to visit the doctor then the hospital. I ended up being off work for over a week which wasn't great either. I'm the midst of it, when I thought I was improving, we met up with our NCT group but I didn't get to stay for long. Finally when I improved we had a trip to the zoo with Holden's nursery, we celebrated fathers day with Graham's family then lunch just the three of us before Grahams birthday, wh...

Holden's 16th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month.   Holden turned 16 months old on the 1st of June, which was over a month ago. I spent the first couple of weeks of June ill from a stomach bug, which is my excuse for this post being so late, although I have no excuse for after that, especially since he turned 17 months three weeks ago! May seemed to be quite busy. We were at toddler group, visited friends, went swimming, had a day at the botanic gardens and another at the butterfly farm, dinner out with my parents and a visit to a soft play centre with friends, as well as enjoying time in the garden. We had lunch with auntie Hazel, then met up with  adizzygirl and her husband for coffee. W e spent the first May bank holiday at Almond Valley heritage park with my parents, aunt and uncle, seeing lots of animals which Holden loved and playing on the trampoline and in the large sand pit. The second bank holiday was spent visiting my aunt and uncle who ...

Rather than doing separate birth announcements when Holden was born, I decided to add his birth information and a photo to the thank you cards we sent for all of the lovely baby gifts we received. Knowing that I wouldn't have any time to actually make the cards myself, I decided to order photo cards from foto.com . I chose two different photos of Holden; one wearing his 'been inside for 9 months' suit and the other when I caught him smiling. Using photoshop, I edited and cropped the photos before adding a grey banner beneath each. I used the grey banner to add his birth information including his full name and the date & time of his birth and his weight. I ordered 60 cards, 30 of each, thinking that would be plenty but we only ended up with two left, which I've kept for his baby book. All of our family and friends were incredibly generous and gave us so many gifts when Holden arrived, some of which we still haven't used as some had thought ahead and bo...

Holden's 15th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 15 months old two weeks ago. We celebrated our 3rd Wedding anniversary on the 3rd of April with a quiet night in with a takeaway then the rest of April was quite busy. We went swimming, to toddler group, bookbugs and met friends at the park, enjoyed a lunch with my aunt then a dinner with Grahams family. Once my parents returned from their trip to Australia, we enjoyed lunch with Grandad one day then dinner with Granny too after taking them to visit the show homes at our new house development. Holden went to a superhero themed birthday party wearing a batman t-shirt as we couldn't find a costume small enough. I got to have a night in with my friends where we enjoyed a few cocktails and also enjoyed a coffee after work with friends one night, which I hadn't done for a long time. We spent the day at a farm with My Spare Thoughts and her daughter, then met them again the week after in Glasgow fo...

Holden's 14th monthly photo, taken on the 1st of every month. Holden turned 14 months old on the 1st of April. As usual I'm behind in posting but especially with this one as that was a whole month ago and he turned 15 months today! As I mentioned last month we moved out of our flat at the beginning of March and in to my parents house where we will stay until our new house is ready. We had a couple of busy weeks sorting everything in the flat and getting the rest of our belongings and furniture moved in to storage before it officially sold on the 20th. We are getting used to our new routine of me being back at work three days a week; Holden attends nursery for two of the days and then my Dad looks after him every Monday. We've been to toddler group and bookbugs a couple of times this month and also spent time with friends. We also got to have a night out at the Chinese then pub with our friends, while my parents babysat. My parents then went to Australia to v...