Pregnancy - week 13: The one where I hate on maternity clothes!

Hiya! So I know I said I would blog more.....but I was just sooo tired last week  and I wasn't feeling great. I had a nice, relaxing time at my mum's house in north Wales - here are a few snapshots to show you what I got up to:

That should be Betws-y-Coed...ooops. A beautiful town on the mountains :)

Trout for lunch at the pub and a beautiful house and church.

I can just about still get into some of my clothes and I crocheted my first baby bootie!

My bump is starting to get a little bit bigger so I went to the hassle of looking for some maternity clothes. That proved to be a depressing experience! After trying some ill fitting jeans in New Look and several shapeless dresses, I decided to put the effort in to order some Topshop jeans to the local Topshop store.

Topshop doesn't seem to carry maternity clothing in any of its' regular stores but if you pay an extra £2, you can get your online order delivered to the nearest store (where you can return it too!)
I ordered the Leigh skinny maternity jeans and a blue t-shirt dress (which was hideous) and found the jeans to be super comfy and a good length (you can get a 30inch leg...)

They are expensive at £38 (plus the £2 to order) but I'm planning to wear them all the time. The New Look skinny jeans I tried were rough and baggy on the legs - and generally annoying.

The selection of maternity clothing in high street shops is truly awful and as I'm not a fan of online shopping, the situation is a little desperate!

Anyone got any tips??

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius...

Hi there! So there is a bit more of a reason as to why I've been so quiet recently.....

I've been busy growing a baby. I didn't want to say anything until I knew there was actually a baby in there this time around.

I've been feeling pretty tired so most evenings after work have been spent napping on the sofa, and this sudden heat wave has not helped at all! I'm out of the horrible nausea stage (felt like that would never end...) so now I'm just suffering with back ache and indigestion.

My clothes are getting quite tight so I've picked up a couple of cheap maxi dresses from Primark so far. In another couple of weeks I will have to invest in some maternity jeans etc but I'm putting it off until I'm a bit bigger. Maternity clothing is pretty horrible!!

I'll try and blog a bit more from now on as I've got plenty to talk about....although I will be heading to my mum's in north Wales on Monday for a much needed holiday!

Speak to you soon x

Instagram catch up

So, you haven't seen much of me recently......so here's a quick catch up via the wonderful world of Instagram. Lazy, I know. Deal with it.

I picked up my wedding ring the other day - only 68 days until I'm a married woman!

I had my first bbq of the year - and ate lots of perfectly toasted marshmallows.

We had to buy and make a bbq first though! This one is currently £20 from Sainsburys.

I fell in love with this display in John Lewis. Orla Kiely is my idol.

We reached the "free whole chicken" level on our Nandos loyalty card. Nom.

Summer means salads. I made this one all by myself.

Wedding supplies are starting to arrive. The stars are for favours version 4 and the bags are for our candy buffet.

What have you been up to? Enjoying the sun? Suuunnnn......

Snapshot Brighton

On Wednesday, we went to Brighton. We were blessed with some gorgeous weather (which makes a change) and had a particularly lovely day.

I put on my heart shaped sunnies:

And we jumped on the train! When we got to Brighton, we were slightly shocked by the overflowing dustbins along the streets - seems like the binmen (refuse collectors?) had gone on strike! Little bit off putting - especially on a hot day.....

But we didn't let that deter us. We made straight for Nando's and had an awesome lunch - and got our ninth stamp on our loyalty card! (That means next time we go we get a free whole chicken!)

Nando's corn is to die for....

Then we hit the shops (but didn't buy anything.) Well, actually I ended up buying my wedding ring as I found one I absolutely loved! We went for a walk along the pier, played the 10p machines and gawked at how expensive the fun fair rides are at the end of the pier!

You can see this ride in the first photo, at the end of the pier. How high?!!

After all the fun and games, we went to a cute looking café called Cream where I had a pretty good cream tea. The scone was a little bit dry and crumbly but the clotted cream and homemade jam made up for it :)

It took a bit longer to get home on the train - by then I was pretty exhausted. All in all, a great day by the seaside!

Lazy days, lazy blogger

Hiya. I've been a bit M.I.A recently.....I just haven't felt the need to blog and I won't apologise. I've also been enjoying the rare rare sunshine. Who could ask for more?

A few days have been spent walking around the local country park. Eating ice cream, drinking tea and generally enjoying being outdoors for a change. It's been heaven for me.

I'll be marrying this dude in 106 days...

None of my clothes are current but they're not quite vintage yet either!

I've also been making myself a new blanket (for the colder days!) out of some super soft snowflake wool.

It's about 3 times this size already.....

And finally, I managed to get some of Ben and Jerry's Peanut Butter Me Up ice cream on half price (Sainsburys.) I can confirm that it is divine.

I may be back in a few days....I may not! I'll only be back if I'm feeling inspired. Love you!

Make your own typography quote wall art

It's no secret that I'm on a tight budget these days - weddings don't come cheap you know!
I've been wanting to do this tutorial for a little while now but I couldn't justify the new photo frames needed. Luckily though, I found some old frames that I hadn't put up yet so I set to work making myself some new art!

I would say this was moderately easy to do.....I made it all in Microsoft Word.

Firstly, I downloaded a whole load of different fonts from a free, online website. Just google "free fonts" to find some and then you just download them, save them to a folder, open the folder and click the save font box. Easy!  (If that doesn't make sense, the websites usually tell you how to do it....)

I then went on Pinterest for some quote inspiration. When I was feeling suitably inspired, I opened up Word and inserted a text box (insert tab at the top, choose a simple text box and drag it to the shape you require.)
I found this to be the easiest way to write each word and adjust the size. This way, you can place words at different heights and angles.

When you are happy with the design, print it out! Mine are A4.

DIY quote art for simpletons.

I like the first one better than the second one, but by then my fiancé was rushing me about making the dinner (I offered) so I didn't get the proportions quite right!

I'm planning to make a load more, of different sizes and then I'll create a little feature wall of them in my hallway.

What do you think?!

Craft fail: Bicarbonate of soda and cornflour dough ornaments

Bicarbonate of soda and cornflour dough ornaments:

You can blame Pinterest for this one again! I was going to make salt dough ornaments as my wedding favours but then I read a few blogs which lead me to trying this purer, whiter dough instead. Big mistake.

You can find recipes for bicarbonate of soda dough all over the internet. Here are the dry ingredients:

It took me 3 tubs of the bicarbonate to make up 2 cups (it's all in American measurements!) and about half a pack of the cornflour.

Measure out the dry ingredients and bung them in a saucepan.

Add the water and stir it all up. There are little, black bits in my mixture which are the coating of my "non-stick" saucepan. Luckily, they didn't really show in the final dough but I should probably have taken this as a warning to give up!

Heat it on a medium heat until it starts to thicken. Keep heating until it starts to come together as a dough.



Leave it cool (takes quite a while) before tipping it out and making a ball. Knead it until it's smooth.

At this stage, it looks gorgeous! This might work! It could be fantastic! No. It's all lies.

I rolled it out and cut out some shapes.....it was too soft to hold a shape. So I threw a strop and put the ball of dough in the fridge for a couple of hours.

This helped a bit and I re-rolled the dough and re-cut out the shapes and laid them out on a baking tray to dry.

A few days later, they started to crack. You can dry them out in the oven on a low heat but I would think this would make the cracking even worse!

Ok, so they are lovely and white in colour, but the texture is crap. Cracked and quite brittle.
Most of these went in the bin and I still have a large ball of dough in the fridge. What a waste of five quid and my time!

I then went back to the shops and spent more money on some Das air dry clay, which I know works because I used it to make my Xmas ornaments.

Don't even bother trying this craft as it is a waste of money!!!

Unless..... you can send me some pictures of how it's worked for you....and tell me where I went wrong!