Back again (baby on board) 🎈

Belated Happy New Year! 🎉 

I don't know where to start...here I am back after an unplanned but necessary 2 month blogging break! I was going to say that this is my first post whilst pregnant but actually when I last wrote we had just found out 4 days before so this is actually my second post, but at that stage it was too early to really have any symptoms. Soon I pretty much became a bed-bound, sickly mess for weeks on end so needless to say I didn't really have much to blog about, especially if I was going to keep the pregnancy secret for a while lol.  While we're on the topic, whoever invented the term "morning sickness" was playing a cruel joke and that name needs to be banned permanently 😅

So, here we are at the end of that nasty first trimester, still feeling sick but hopeful that the end is in sight (please Lord 😭). I thought I'd do a bit of a catch-up from recent times, the highlights anyway...

Our vibrant pineapple sage plant which sprung up in the summer and then bloomed like mad in the winter, beside the pair of socks I knitted for my grandma for Christmas (pair number 10!):

Pair number 11 which were a Christmas present for Ed's mum, although I didn't finish the second sock until New Year's Day 😆

I don't think I'll ever get bored of magical self-striping sock wool!

Throwback to our lovely Christmas tree, it certainly jollied up my sick days on the sofa (as did Juniper):

This is what my days looked like for about a month, sweet Juni was my little guardian angel who could be found sleeping on me about 90% of the time. Either she knew there was something going on in my tummy or she just really likes my snuggly dressing gown, who knows...

There were so many rainbows during that time as well! Some days going up to the window to take a photo was one of the only things that motivated me to get out of bed 🌈

Mid-December was Ed's birthday and the day before it I suddenly remembered that birthday cakes are a thing that people generally do. I wasn't up to making (or eating) cake so I decided that a jelly cake would make a fun change! 🎈

Juniper with crazy eyes whilst we watched Matilda:

Blurry siblings on swings during the traditional Christmas Eve walk to the park:

A snapshot of Christmas dinner table chaos ❤️ (spot the bubbles from the bubble blowers we got in our crackers!):

I'll remember this festive season as the one where I couldn't eat much Christmas dinner (and I definitely didn't stay up until midnight on New Year's Eve 😴)

Glitterberry J2O (another tradition)

On Boxing Day evening we had to pack our suitcases, getting ready to travel to Ed's family the next morning. As you can see, Juniper was trying her best to blend in so that we wouldn't take her to the cattery:

Deal high street 

We had a relaxing time over New Year's, walking, puzzling, and sharing the baby news with different members of the family 💛

Canterbury Cathedral

Looking for badgers in the woods...

...finding interesting fungi!

A lovely walk to Broadstairs beach...the white cliffs are still a novelty to me, also the parakeets flying around! I know they are pests to some people but I like them 😊

Back home again with Juniper, she was very happy to be here in her kingdom after a week in the cattery! No harm was done of course but the way she hissed at the kind lady who looked after her might have made you believe otherwise, we felt a bit embarrassed by her antisocial behaviour 😂 not that you'd believe it of her with all my cute photos.

Here she is helping us to complete a second *extremely difficult* puzzle (which is still unfinished a week later oops), and also playing with her current favourite toy which is a green ribbon from around a Christmas present:

Assisting me with my journalling:

And sleeping in her one of her current favourite nap spots, up on the cat tree that we recently moved to a perfect spot into the living room:

Her other favourite spot is on top of my big crochet blanket which is currently sitting in a pile on the floor (waiting for me to finally get around to finishing it!)

Whilst I'm just indulging in Juniper pics I couldn't not share this adorable ✨ glow up ✨ 

December 2020 vs January 2022 😭 

That's all for now! See you again soon xoxoxo

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