studies, sniffles and superheroes...

I started writing this post on Friday afternoon, but then got interrupted by dropping Pete off for his exam and visiting my parents for the weekend. However, the thought of starting all over again was not very appealing to me, so please travel back in time with me to 2pm Friday 18th November.....

So, this afternoon Pete has his final oral exam to complete his 9 years of architecture studies! Phew, we'll be so relieved once it's finished and we can enjoy our evenings and weekends without them being overshadowed by revision.

Natalie's been much better at sleeping at night again, she seems to have gotten over the blip we had whilst on holiday (where she started waking up twice each night! She obviously didn't get the memo explaining that holidays are a time to sleep more than you do normally!!). However, last night she woke up at 12.30 and didn't want to go back to sleep! I wonder if she could sense the air of nervousness from Pete's impending exam and it stressed her out a bit. Thankfully the exam isn't until 3.30pm so there has been plenty of recovery time this morning!

Natalie's been sitting up very well recently - a month ago she could manage about 30 seconds before she'd fall over, but recently she's been able to sit up unaided for around 20 minutes! I can never go very far away as she WILL fall down at some point - I have to be on catching alert at all times.

My poorly little girl!

Both myself and Natalie have had a cold this week - I've got a horrible chesty cough (I've actually had it for about a month now - I should probably go to the doctors!) and she's had a really blocked nose, a temperature and a cough. We bought a saline nasal spray to help clear her nose - she's not a huge fan! She puts up a big struggle, thrashing her head from side to side to prevent me sticking the nozzle up her nostril, and making a right racket as if I'm trying to hurt her. But then once I've squirted it up her nose the crying suddenly stops as she realises that she can breathe through her nose and is able to suck a dummy or her fingers again! We've administered lots of cuddles and some snuggles with a blanket in front of cbeebies, as well as the occasional dose of calpol, so hopefully she'll be better soon.

Pete and I have started making more of an effort for our date nights recently - we've always designated one night a week to be 'date night' to make sure that we spent time investing in our relationship, but lately we've ended up just sitting in front of the TV wasting the evening away watching rubbish. Since we've been married money's always been a bit tight, so we've had to be fairly creative with our dates. Here are a few ideas for dates on a budget:

1. Go for a walk - this one's only really do-able in the summer (unless you like to walk in the dark!), and we often go for a walk along the river or into the woods.

2. Orange Wednesday's 2 for 1 cinema tickets - great considering a cinema ticket costs nearly £10 now (I remember when it cost "2.50 at the ABC cinema - does that make me old??). It may be worth going early to get the ticket as they usually get pretty busy on a Wednesday night.

3. Trade in your Tesco Clubcard points for Blockbuster rental vouchers - we've never paid for a DVD rental the whole time we've been married! You can get 12 rentals for £12 worth of Clubcard points.

4. Trade in your Tesco Clubcard points for restaurant vouchers - £2.50 worth of points becomes £10 of restaurant vouchers!

5. Take a pack of cards to a pub or coffee shop (in Oxford we have a chain of ice cream cafe's called G&D's that are open till midnight! There are loads of nice pubs around here too, like The Isis along Iffley towpath, The Victoria Arms in Old Marston, The Angel & Greyhound in St Clements, The Perch near Port Meadow not to mention all the bars down Cowley Road!

By making the most of the things listed above we manage to accrue a bit of money in our 'date' budget so every now and then we get to treat ourselves to a more expensive date!

The other day we went to Atomic Pizza for dinner as a bit of a treat! When I booked the table the woman on the phone couldn't hear my name - I had to repeat it 3 times and on the third time her response was "ooo, that's an interesting name!". I figured that she cant have heard me properly, because 'Eve' isn't really that interesting a name. When we got to the restaurant and I said to the waiter "I've got a table for 2 reserved for Eve", he smiled and said "Eeeve, we've got your name written down as 'Freeze'!" - obviously my superhero alter ego name!

Right, lets bring you back to Monday afternoon....

Pete's final exam went really well on Friday, and he should get the results this week. We're all very relieved it's over and we can enjoy time together properly again without lots of studying getting in the way! Natalie's particularly happy...

A month in pictures

So its been a whole month since my last post, life as a mummy has recently become a lot more time consuming. I used to think I must be super efficient to be able to juggle looking after Natalie with blogging, gardening, housework, crafting and sewing. Now I realise that I was just really really lucky having a baby that was quite happy playing without much input and who napped at regular times of the day. Now that Natalie's a bit older she's demanding a lot more of my attention, so the blogging (and most of the other things I used to do) has fallen by the wayside a bit.

However, I do want to continue, so here's the last month in pictures (and a few words!)

We went to the Lake District on our first holiday with Natalie...

We dedicated Natalie

Mum and Dad got me a new coat for my birthday (which hasn't actually happened yet, but I saw the coat while we were on holiday! I have actually worn it too - well, there's no point getting soaked in the rain while you've got a perfectly good coat sitting at home! You'll be happy to know that it worked very well!)

I hosted my first craft evening - I'm hoping to do it once a month. I completely forgot to take any photos while people were here (shows how much of a good time I was having!), so here are some shots from the end of the evening.

I almost finished my first quilt and have started my second one - the christmas table runner quilt!

Natalie's enjoyed lots of new foods. She's now eating pretty much what we have for dinner (we've swapped our normal stock cubes for baby stock). She's had jelly, beetroot (purple nappies!!), her first curry, and a naughty bit of ice cream from daddy's cone!

Natalie's now got 6 (well 5 and a tiny bit) teeth! We cant believe how quickly her mouth's filling up! She's discovered that she can grind them too which is GREAT (I'm being sarcastic - it's one of the most horrible sounds I've ever heard!)

I bought a nice biscuit - now used as a 'cake'- tin from the spangly new Sainsbury's store near us!

That's mostly it I think! Here are a couple more cute ones before I leave (hopefully not for a whole month this time!).

I've made my first quilt (almost)

A while ago I was given some old fabrics (curtains, bedsheets and a dress!) from my mother-in-law, so I started making a quilt! As I began, I thought "this is easier than I thought it would be", but then I got to the actual quilting bit and the unpicking began! I've had to simplify my design to match my skills, but as a first attempt I'm pretty happy with it. Here's the process in pictures:

The benefit of using second hand fabric is that I didn't need to wash it to pre-shrink it (yes, I just hung it on the washing line to get a nice photo!).

First I had to decide on a pattern for the quilt, so I drew up some options but here's the one I settled on.

I then drew a square template to cut my pieces from...

...and cut out all my squares.

I then had to sew them all together - at this point I was getting a bit full of myself as I managed to do it fairly quickly.

Next I decided to sew a border on:

...and then it got tricky. I decided to go for a fairly complicated free hand quilt pattern, but quickly realised I'd been way too ambitious as the quilt started to pucker and the bulk of it got wedged in the sewing machine! So I spent a few days unpicking the bits I'd done and then I just quilted along the lines between the squares instead.

So it's almost done - I just need to sew the bias binding round the edge of the whole thing! The back is a bit of a mess, but I've learnt from my mistakes and will do things slightly differently next time. I've already bought the fabric for my next project - a Christmas table runner:

And now for something a little different - we bought Natalie a nice wooly hat because we're going to the Lake District next week, it looks very cute! She's been wearing it on our bedtime walks (which normally end with her falling asleep!)