I spy with my little eye....a tiny bit of a tooth!

It's been a while so here's a bit of an update (and a recipe to make amends!).

Last weekend was my grandad's 90th birthday and my great aunts 60th jubilee of nunhood (is that a word??) so we made our way to Upminster for the celebration.
29 members of the family pitched up, along with a few friends which was great, although Natalie was a bit overstimulated by all the attention. Grandad's house used to feel huge when I was little, but now that the family has grown so big it's struggling to contain us all!

Natalie can now add butternut squash to her list of favourite foods! She's also tried courgette and green beans, and is loving all the new experiences. Next week we'll move onto 3 meals a day (at the moment she's just having breakfast and dinner) which will be fun, it wont be long before she's eating the same meals as we are.

We managed to get a great charity shop purchase the other day - this lovely pumpkin patch vest was only 99p!

We harvested our carrots the other day. They're a special variety - they're spherical! They taste yummy - very sweet!

I finished (well, almost) the student welcome packs for church. Here's what they look like:

You're probably wondering when I'm going to tell you about the tooth I mentioned in the title of this blog. The wait is over! Yesterday Natalie did 5 poos - literally every nappy bar one was a pooey one. I now realise why, as she was smiling up at me this morning and I spotted a tiny (and I mean really tiny) bit of tooth poking up from her bottom gum! What a big girl - she's growing so fast!

(ok, you can't really see it in the pic but it is there!)

We also had some really good tummy time yesterday, mucho progress!

I almost forgot to mention that our dishwasher miraculously came back to life! After handing in his case study, Pete decided to have another look at the dishwasher to see if he could fix it. He switched it on for a rinse to see what it would do, and it seemed to work fine! Not sure how long it'd been working for, hopefully not long so that the weeks of washing up haven't been in vain!

I've been thinking about the blog, and have decided I'd like to make it a bit more tailored as I currently cover lots of different subjects in each post. I'm coming up with a list of topics so watch out for the slightly more focussed Purple Toucan, coming very soon!

Now, here's the recipe.

Bacon & Pea Risotto

We eat this meal quite a lot because its really tasty but very easy to make and doesn't require many ingredients at all. You may think that the words 'easy' and 'risotto' are oxymorons, but this is a bit of a cheats risotto that doesn't require constant stirring. Enjoy...

Serves 2
1 onion, finely chopped
2 rashers of bacon, chopped
150g risotto rice
500ml hot vegetable stock
50g frozen peas

1. Fry the onion until lightly browned in 1tbsp olive oil and a knob of butter in a saucepan (about 7 minutes).
2. Add the bacon and fry for 5 minutes until it starts to crisp.
3. Add the rice and stock and bring to the boil. Stir well, then turn down the heat and cook, covered, for 15-20 minutes.
4. Stir in the peas, add a little pepper, and cook for 3 more minutes.
5. Dish up and serve with some grated parmesan.

foot in mouth....

Natalie's doing really well at eating, she loves carrot, swede, and baby cereal!

Potato she's not so keen on, and she makes a face as if I'm feeding her a lemon when I give her potato to eat (it makes me so sad, I love potatoes!!).

We gave her some diluted fruit juice too which she didn't like at first she eventually got the hang of drinking it.

However, Natalie's got a new favourite thing to eat, even more than carrot....her right foot!

At every opportunity she grabs it and shoves it in her mouth. Yesterday she managed to get her big toe in her mouth and her second toe up her nostril - what a talented daughter I have!

Here are some pictures of a present I made for my friend's birthday last week - I really enjoyed making it, I may have to make one for myself too!

Pete's been working really hard over the last month on a case study he has to submit to university in order to graduate as an architect (along with taking some written and oral exams). He decided not to work on it on Sunday but to spend some time with me and Natalie so we went for a walk in the woods near home. It turned out to be a really nice walk, we're thinking of doing it again on Christmas Day after dinner (yes, I know - I'm already thinking about Christmas!).

I cant wait until November when all of Pete's uni work is finished and I get my husband back! It's been pretty tough having him at work during the day and then working in the evenings and at weekends too - I know he's looking forward to getting his home life back too!

I've noticed recently that Natalie's become very interested in the labels on her toys, so I decided to use some of the many ribbons I have collected over the years and make her a tag blanket:

It's not quite finished yet - I need to sew up the corner that I left unstitched so that I could turn the whole thing inside out again (I never know how to do this neatly - I think I'll have to do some research to find a tidy way of doing it), and I'm going to quilt the square to hold it together better, but I think she's going to like it!

Creative in pyjamas

I spent most of yesterday in pyjamas because I was feeling exhausted from the few nights of disturbed sleep we've had courtesy of Natalie. The plan was to try and nap when Natalie did, but I couldn't quite manage that, so instead I browsed the internet for creative ideas and spotted these lovely quilts:

from oliverands

from jcasa

from onegirl

I want to make something similar that we can use as a play mat/ picnic blanket in the garden, but I think that project will have to wait until we've sold our car and we have a bit more of a disposable income again.

Anyway, whilst browsing the internet I felt inspired to create, so I got out my boxes of paper and fabric scraps and got crafting! I made some bookmarks inspired by ones I found on an italian blog:

and I started making some fruity pictures inspired by some I found on notonthehighstreet.com:

I also got a lovely belated wedding gift through the post from my kiwi friend Anita - it was a cute tile with a fern on it - Thanks Anita!!

This morning I decided to give tummy time another go - normally Natalie hates it but as the health visitor told me she should spend at least 20 minutes a day on her tummy I've been persevering and today I added a cushion into the mix, which actually made it more bearable for her - for 30 seconds at least!