Lisa & Run had their baby this morning.

AT 9.30 this morning a baby boy was born to them.
He was due on the 3rd of Dec, so he arrived just a smidge early.
Baby boy joins their little girl Florence who is soon to be 3.

Tis the season to be merry and have runny noses.

Grandparents, you will be glad that you live miles away from us at the moment cos we all have colds and coughs.
French Granddad, you do realise you probably gave it to us don't you?
You are forgiven though.

I'm not that bad really, not that bad at all if i'm honest, but i'm bored of wiping noses and feeding cough medicine into Daisy.

Iris is also very keen in sitting on her potty, i am wondering if she has a tummy upset cos she just wants to sit on it all the time at the minute and she doesn't seem to do that much in it, but i guess we have to let her, you know encourage her as much as we can.
Blimey we will be out of nappies soon.

Here is a random pic of the girls.

The crappy Play-Doh penguin

Here is a photograph of my crappy Play-Doh penguin, and Daisy was right Uncle Paul's were much better.
However i don't think Uncle Paul made his penguin a dirty green toilet just in case the penguin needed to do it's business.

Harriet's baby

My friend Harriet had her baby.
The tiny baby is called Oriana, she weighed just under 6lb and here she is modelling her hat that i made for her.
She is so very very dinky.

Here is a photograph of Oriana with Giddy (her big brother) in the background.

Here is a photograph of Iris with Giddy, i think she is giving him words of encouragement in putting his sock back on.
Iris and Giddy are almost the same age, i think Iris is just a smidge older.

It is my birthday.

Yes it's the big one and it's ok so far.

I got a new sewing machine for my birthday and it's really rather fab, i've had a little go but i need about 3 weeks really to fully understand all the things it can do.

I also got
* some lovely fabric to make things with, cotton corduroy.
* some beautiful roses and chocolates and an unpicker (which i asked for)
* a photo album and some Devon Clotted Cream Fudge which Daisy says tastes like PlayDoh.
* a cheque
* an electronic whisk type of thing so i don't have to beat cream and the like by hand anymore.
* a camera, Marc tricked me by saying he needed one and getting me to help him choose and then he went and wrapped it up and gave it to me. Horay.
* a big tube of smarties

and i baked myself some fairy cakes, yum yum yum.

and i'm going out for dinner tonight, horay.

The Richards' for lunch *updated*

We visited the Richards' today out in Berkhamstead.
The Richards are made up of James & Sally and their two children Thomas and Rowan.
Iris took to Rowan instantly and thankfully Rowan quite liked Iris too. Rowan even picked Iris up with her broken arm, which she got falling out of her bunk bed! note to self - don't get a bunk bed for the girls yet.
The Richards' have a cat called Oscar, and Iris really liked Oscar too, so much so that she started to call Rowan, Oscar for some strange reason.

Twitter

I set up a twitter account. (it's there on the left)
I only did this because we (Marc and me) were talking about trying to keep up with the wonderful world of technology, specially seeing as 'fingers crossed' we're moving out of London into the country soon.
The internet is now a very different industry, from the industry i left about 6 years ago.

Anyway though, twitter is largely pointless, but fun.
I can text a message to my twitter account and it will show up on the blog instantly, isn't that smart.
So i can now annoy my family even more by sending useless pieces of information to my blog from anywhere.

I predict i'll get bored and remove it after a short while though.
Or maybe not.

Evercreech here we come.

Yes in this current climate of financial turmoil, credit crunch, recession and all the other terms which are being chucked about at the moment, we have finally after 12 months on the market, managed to secure a buyer for our house.
Ho-bloody-ray.
We have also managed to have our offer accepted on the house we want to buy.
So if all the solicitors involved can pull their finger out (i'm guessing they're not that busy at the moment), we could be out of London within three months.
Now that is exciting.
Bloody exciting.
Bloody bloody exciting.


Here is a photograph of the girls at the top of a slide in our local park, wearing their home made pixie hats, i think they might need more of these pixie hats for all the potential cold winters ahead in the country.
Maybe i'll knit them in very very very thick chunky wool to keep their little heads even warmer.
I might even knit myself one.

Run's Christmas Cards

Our good friend Run Wrake (out of Run and Lisa and Floss) has for sale in his shop some rather lovely hand printed Christmas Cards.
http://www.runwrake.com/shop/xmascards/



Run's main website

Rachel and Josh have a baby boy!

Yes a baby boy was born to them this morning at about 6am.
He joins Freya (4) and Pippa (2)

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE HAMILTONS.

x

Tiger children

Both girls had their faces painted at Daisy's nursery fund raising day on Sat.
Here they are looking like cute little pussy cats.

Our Landline is working again.

Horay, thanks to BT, yes BT, not Talk Talk, we now have a landline that rings more than once.
Talk Talk apparently did some investigations but actually deemed the problem fixed via a text message on my mobile, about a month ago. If they had bothered to actually call the landline they would have realised the problem wasn't fixed.

Anyway though eventually i built up the courage to go through the long system of phoning them up again, and after waiting on the line for about 30 mins i was eventually put through to a very nice helpful person called Gabriel who actually did something about our problem.

He took my mobile number and then told me to hang up and not anwer the landline so he could test it (have you ever tried to not answer the phone when your sitting right next to it? I can tell you it's tricky) so he called me back, and i didn't answer and he realised that the phone only rang once and then went to white noise, and then he called back on my mobile.

This particular problem was called a 'Ring Trip' which was caused by faulty wiring somewhere along the thousands of wires it takes to bring a phone line to our house.

Then this morning i got a call from a BT guy called Garfield who said he was five minutes away could he come round, so we had to say yes, and he fixed it.

The problem was kind of to do with additional non BT phone plugs that somebody (pre-us) fitted, i think it was to do with running an old security system that was still plugged in when we got here.
Anyway though he fixed it and it didn't cost anything.

So feel free to call us on the landline or even leave a message.

Auntie Polly's hat

This is a truly awful photograph of me wearing Auntie Polly's birthday hat and scarf.
I knitted it and posted it to her and i can confirm she officially likes it.

Sister Polly please send me a photograph of you wearing your hat and scarf, i'm sure it will be much better than this god awful one.

Christmas Ideas for the girls 2008

Oh my it's that time of year again, so i thought i'd just jot down a few suggestions for those family members who need a little help buying a little something for the girls.

What the girls really want for Christmas is:
That fantastic house we've been drooling over in Evercreech.


But seriously...

Both girls are quite into Playmobil so if you fancy buying any of that then go ahead.
Playmobil official website.
If you click into products on the left hand side, then there is every type of playmobil there you could possibly think of, it is lots of fun to look at.
You can buy direct from this website, and also from these websites http://www.amazon.co.uk or http://www.toysrus.co.uk
As a general guide within Playmobil, both girls like mummies and babies, Iris especially likes little tiny pushchairs and prams to put the babies in.
They also love animals / zoos.
There is a lovely playground set with swings and a roundabout and i think mummies and babies and buggies come with this set, but it's probably a bit expensive.
Feel free to join forces and buy something together.


If that doesn't take your fancy...

How about DVD's
They still really like Charlie & Lola, we currently have 1, 2 & 5
You can buy these all over, in shops like Woolworths, WHSmith etc... but if like my family, they've shut your local Woolworths down to build yet another supermarket then you can also buy them online at the BBC Online Shop.
This link might take you straight to Charlie & Lola DVD's or it might not.

or
* Charlie and the chocolate factory (the original with Gene Wilder in it)
* Mary Poppins
* Sleeping Beauty
* Chitty chitty bang bang

Feel free to suggest one, if it's going cheap in your local supermarket, we might have it but then again, we might not.


You can of course buy (or even make) something entirely different, but i would ask that you keep it small until somebody buys that house in Evercreech for us, where we would have all the room in the world.



For anyone out there looking for inspiration for christmas presents for their children, here are some websites with nice toys.
Great Little Trading
Letterbox
Early Learning Centre



For your reference here is a link to 2007's christmas list

Stuff you find on Hackney Streets - a toy car

This looked like it had probably been quite a nice little toy car at some point, and probably wouldn't really take that much fixing, but we don't have the space for it yet.
Not yet anyway.
So it can stay on that pavement until the council come and tow it away.




Other "Stuff you find on Hackney streets" photographs.