Thursday 3 September 2015

A Photo Every Hour - Saturday 29th August

And so another photo an hour day rolls round - doing this challenge each month seems to be about one of the only things I'm keeping up with! Everything else - blogging, reading, baking, cleaning the house - fallen by the wayside over the last few months.

Anyway, onto last Saturday, a bit of a mixture of a day - some of it boring and some of it a bit more interesting.


9am - A glass of orange juice to start the day (the fancy 'not from concentrate' stuff as well) :-)
9am - orange juice


10am - A bit of a rest before starting some cleaning. I've realised over the last few months I need to do a bit of work and then sit down for a bit otherwise I just knacker myself out.
10am - tea and a knitting magazine


11am - Lots of laundry which needed to be put away.
11am - putting laundry away


12pm - More cleaning, although the dishwasher means I don't have to do the leg (arm?) work.
12pm - crockery in the dishwasher


1pm - Another pitstop. A cup of tea and one of these chocolate scones picked up from Tesco the previous night.
1pm - chocolate scones


2pm - Andrew's turn to do some housework now and all I have to do is lift up my legs!
2pm - Andrew hoovering


3pm - Time to get ready to go out and this was the print I'd chosen for the evening (from the New Look maternity range although I acquired it from a charity shop, obvs) ;-)
3pm - patterns on the dress I was going to wear


4pm - On the road, heading off to Sturminster Newton in Dorset (the place for the first illuminated carnival of the season here in the South West)
4pm - on our way to Sturminster Newton


5pm - Not too much further to go now...
5pm - still travelling to Sturminster Newton


6pm - Luckily my parents had already arrived and done the chip shop run for us. Me and Andrew surfed and turfed it that evening.
6pm - fishcake, sausage and chips


7pm - Waiting in the rain for the procession to reach us.
7pm - Sturminster Newton carnival procession


8pm - It was only a small parade but still fairly exciting; being the first one brings out all the carnival friends you haven't seen since last year.
8pm - Sturminster Newton carnival procession


9pm - Back to the car after the carnival and my dad had come prepared with flasks and chocolate.
9pm - tea and a Turkish Delight


10pm - Almost back home, just a few miles to go.
10pm - almost home


11pm - And the usual 'book and hot drink' pic before heading to sleep.
11pm - book and tea before bedtime



This month we had 23 lovely bloggers joining in (including some new faces - hello!)...

Jane from Is That Your Darling joined in on Instagram and Twitter
Jennifer from Adventures in Pop Culture joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Rachael from Dear Ms Leigh joined in on InstagramTwitter and on her blog
Rachel from The Inelegant Wench joined in on Instagram
Laura joined in on Instagram
Rebecca from Just Me joined in on Instagram
Kitty from The Eagle and Other Bikes joined in on Instagram
Chelsea from Love in Modern Life joined in on Instagram
Janet from Words That Can Only Be Your Own joined in on InstagramTwitter and on her blog
Kerri from Crumbs in the Bed joined in on InstagramTwitter and on her blog
Emma from Oh Gosh joined in on Instagram
Shazza from Sunshine and Celandines joined in on InstagramTwitter and on her blog
Penny from A Penny for Them joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Sarah from Sarah Rooftops joined in on InstagramTwitter and on her blog
Liz from Distract Me Now Please joined in on Instagram
Amy from Fluffy Owl's Adventures joined in on Instagram and on Twitter
Sarah from The V Nice Life joined in on her blog
Elise from Elise and Life joined in on her blog
Hazel from World of Joy joined in on her blog (and it was a special birthday - happy birthday lady!)
Susie from Second Hand Susie joined in on her blog
Eileen from In My Playroom joined in on her blog
Shaheen from Allotment2Kitchn joined in on her blog
And of course, myself here on this post, plus on Instagram and on Twitter :-)

For September's date I'm going to go with Saturday 26th - purely for selfish reasons as I'm supposed to be off on a coach trip to the Big Pit National Coal Museum that day!
 
 
Also, check out what I was up to in...

Wednesday 2 September 2015

This Summer at the Duckpond


Questions, questions...

How have I managed to do no blogging whatsoever over the summer?
How am I already over halfway through this (still fairly unbelievable) pregnancy?
And the eternal blogger cliché - how is it already September?

Answers on a postcard please.



So that was summer 2015. I honestly had no idea back in May at the start of the summer that by the autumn I'd be well into the second trimester and expecting a Findus in January. I mean, we'd started the treatment for our frozen embryo transfer at the end of March but it didn't even cross our minds that it might actually work.

We still managed to get up to a lot of stuff though, even if at times I had to take things a bit more slowly.



Findus went to his/her first Glastonbury festival (I was 10 weeks and 5 days); I did two shifts working down there and then went in on the Sunday evening to see Paul Weller and The Who. I did feel a bit tired during Paul Weller's set so I had a doze while he was playing - I'm sure it looked perfectly fine down there at Pilton!

Glastonbury Festival

Lionel Richie walking back to the helipad at Glastonbury Festival

Oh yeah, and did I mention we met Lionel Richie? (rather than being chauffeured back to the helipad (which is along the lane we work on) he decided he wanted to walk and "enjoy the English countryside")


Me, Andrew, my parents and brother spent a lot of the summer Shaun-hunting in Bristol. Following on from the 'Gromit Unleashed' trail back in 2013, this year it was our woolly friend who descended on the place for the 'Shaun in the City' trail. There were 70 Shauns in total and we managed to spot 59 of them - a fairly respectable number methinks considering my condition! (oh yeah, that's being wheeled out as an excuse from now til January...)

The brother with a Shaun the Sheep in Bristol


Me and Andrew had our usual trip to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival at the beginning of August. Back at the start of 2015 we decided to go for the whole week which in the end, proved to be a very good decision indeed as we could spread out the number of shows and I wouldn't get so tired. We still (somehow) managed to pack in 28 of them though, including a live recording of Radio 4's 'Just a Minute' at the BBC Potterrow tent and a blogger meet up with some truly lovely ladies - Denise, Gwen, Alex and Elise (who is an absolute darling and had knitted Findus some gorgeous little booties!). We did well for celebrity spotting in the street too - not including the ones we saw in shows, we also walked past Nina Conti; Rory McGrath; Josh Widdicombe, James Acaster, Mickey Flanagan and Ivo Graham (who were all going to see Jon Ronson at the Assembly Rooms - who was fab); Rob Beckett; Matthew Crosby; Janey Godley; and spot of the week - Richard Osman.

Edinburgh



And a Findus update...
Well, he/she is still alive. Despite being a fairly positive person for the rest of my life, I can't help but worry about this little one. I clearly have no trust in my own body. We had our 20 week scan last week (at 19 weeks and 1 day) - it was 8am in the morning and this baby is obviously not a morning person as it spent most of the scan curled up in a cosy little ball asleep. The sonographer was lovely and got me to do some kind of belly dancing move to try and wake the baby up - all you got then was it shuffling round for about 10 seconds and then going back to sleep. It did a perfect impression of someone who really didn't want to be woken up that early! Long story short, we have to go back on 18th September for another scan so they can complete all the necessary checks (and hopefully find out whether it's a boy or a girl!).



Hope you've all had good summers!

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