Baby month is here! 🐣

Spot Juniper 👀

 

I've been a bit obsessed with documenting all the caterpillars in the nasturtium patch...they have seriously taken over which is slightly sad because it doesn't look pretty anymore but at the same time it's quite fun to watch and I guess we are being good and eco-friendly letting them stay 😆

My grandma kindly gave us some homegrown blackcurrants which I decided to make into jam. It was very simple but as you can see I still managed to make a mess haha.

It's soo yummy and we may have demolished the first jar in about a week 😋

On the subject of edibles, we have also been using our own garlic and onions from the garden:

This beautiful rose has a funny story attached 🌹 A few months ago I rescued it from a bin where it was thought to be dead. I potted it up and it sprang into life, producing its first flower! It's a floribunda rose called 'Hot Chocolate':

The strawberries are doing well, and the bindweed is building up along the garden fence to the point of producing flowers 😅 I've seen bees flying in and out so I don't have the heart to get rid of it, it looks quite pretty too:

We've got our first little tomatoes growing and the courgettes are producing their big yellow flowers:

One of my favourites, the bright pink rose campion is growing like mad again, and the hypericum berries are forming:

My sister finished her A Level exams recently and we had a celebratory trip to the Jane Austen centre in Bath...

😍

Juniper asserting herself as centre of the world:

Maternity fashion at its peak (I'll miss this big round bump!):

This moth appeared on my hand whilst I was serving a customer at work so I carried on the rest of the transaction with it attached to me before releasing it outside 😆 Moths freak me out a bit when they're fluttering around but this one was sleepy I think and just look at it's fluffy little body:

Passion flowers in my dad's garden:

We had a fire so that we could test out the new extendable marshmallow toasting fork 😂 It was a great success but the weather was so sunny that at times we ended up hiding in the shade as far from the fire as possible! 

Long time no Tom on the blog! 

A few days later (when Ed and I were doing some much needed tidying) I found some old photos including this one of Tom and I almost 15 years ago ❤️

Back to another hoya bloom update! Just look!!! Don't they look good enough to eat?! 😍 They also smell like cocoa which is a bonus. 

It's as though Juniper knows that the bump won't be around for much longer and is making the most of being able to lie on it:

This week I had my last day at work before maternity leave! Definitely bittersweet but feeling good and excited overall. Also just very ready to slow down and rest 😄 Don't worry, the prosecco was non-alcoholic haha 🍾

Hydrangea season is upon us, along with my 38 week baby bump:

I'm currently snailsitting so have 3 mouths to feed instead of the usual 2 🐌🐌🐌 My friend's snail is actually one of the babies that mine had last year so I need to get a family photo of them together 😆 stay tuned for that next time! 

My 25ish year old Teletubbies had a bath today in preparation for the newcomer. I hope you enjoy this image as much as I do lol 🌈 (and YES after 6 weeks the scaffolding is still up!)

Good bye for now! 💛🌸🐈🐛🍰☕🎁🌀🌞🌱

Sourdough resurgence 🍞💪

 Hello!!! Look at our sweet cat!!!!

Recently she has been enjoying sleeping on my lap, especially when I'm wearing my fluffy dressing gown (who could blame her?) but she has a habit of doing it when I really ought to be getting up and doing something else. Sometimes I wonder if "my cat was asleep on me and I didn't want to wake her" is an acceptable excuse for being late for work?

I love this photo, 3 pairs of my homemade socks hanging up to dry in the soft, sunrise light 😌 plus this amazing pink heather which Ed and I bought at the garden centre:

I have been living in this green jumper which I found on a charity shop trip with my granny:

Ed made a banoffee pie last week which we enjoyed over a few days 🍌 and a toad which I fell in love with at work:

This roast was possibly the best meal I've ever made, it was elevated by the inclusion of a turk's turban squash (google it), also the last few tomatoes from our garden just to use them up! And then we have some amusing photographic documentation of Ed trying to paint whilst Juniper drinks his paintbrush water, sometimes we have to shut her out when we want some focused studio time now 😆

🌿 Home sweet home 🌿

She likes my dressing gown when I'm not wearing it too.

Fun fact: my current favourite nickname for Juniper is June Spoon.

Some excellent autumn colour from a chilly but sunny run last week:

My latest charity shop find! I couldn't not buy it after our recent mushroom obsession, plus it was such a bargain and is soo soft 🍄 Followed by our sweet neighbour Pebbles, since she hangs out on our bin a lot  now it means we get to stroke her as we leave the house or come home which is nice:

Three November skies with intriguing clouds:

Guess what! I'm back to sourdough making, hooray! 🍞

Plus a few of the clementines I bought last week had babies inside them! It was a very fun discovery 🍊

No photos of my current knitting so have this instead!

A corner of our house, and some funny packaging at work:

On Bonfire Night we decided to drive up to Dartmoor and see the fireworks in the distance, complete with homemade toffee apples which were a very sticky affair! In the car we listened to the new ABBA album so now whenever we hear it it reminds us of fireworks 🎆

Some weird mushrooms I spotted on the weekend:

I went to Stitch Fest with my mum and came home with this adorable pin badge which is perfect for me (except that I knit my socks from the top down and on a circular needle, but that's just being picky 😆):

A bible verse I have been musing on recently:

A comically narrow aisle in our new favourite shop to get snacks before the cinema:

We went to see Dune this week and we were the only two people in the whole room 😆 it was fun, like our own private cinema! We still felt like we had to whisper though haha. P.S. the film is great and if you're going to see it then you should definitely see it on the big screen 💥

I had to make this, I just did:

Another Tuesday another run:

Followed by this beast of a pizza! The dough rose much more than we expected so it was very filling, but delicious 😋🍳🍕✨

And that brings us up to the present day...me eating lunch with Mike Winger on the tv and Juni sleeping beside me looking like a chicken wing:

Before I go, here are my recent exciting houseplant acquisitions 🌿 a calathea triostar, a peace lily which I think is variegated (we'll see!), and a pink princess philodendron 😍

Facebook reminded me that four years ago Ed and I went and visited our friends in Venice, I couldn't resist sharing a couple of my favourite photos from that trip:

Thanks for being here! Love Bethany x