This was our first extended rear facing car seat, and is permanently in one of our cars until R outgrows it. It is a gorgeous seat, very plush and has tons of fancy features that really make this a luxury car seat – and as such comes with an accordingly high price tag. I think you can get this for around £260 if you shop around.

The main plus points for this seat are:
It is one of the highest scoring ERF out there. With excellent side impact protection as well.
I think the softest, comfiest, most solid rear facing seat money can buy.

Other great points
Has an amazing magnetic belt system, which keeps the straps out of the way so you don’t have to fish them out from under your baby when buckling him in.
Wonderful shoulder/headrest adjustment system. You just grip a bit on the back and pull up, which at the same time moves the shoulder strap height. Really easy.
Multiple reclining positions. This would be a huge plus in most other cars than ours. Our rear seats (7 series BMW) have a very steep angle on them which means that the most reclined position is barely reclined at all, and the most upright position is too upright. But a huge plus in other cars. You just lift a lever under the seat and adjust with your hand.

Negatives
It is huge and weighs a ton.
The first time we installed it was rather fiddly. I have since removed and installed it and it was much easier, although I’d be lying to say it is a piece of cake.
And yeah… once again it is pretty huge. I’m going to see if it fits in the middle soon but I think it probably wont due to how wide it is and how far back my husband needs his seat to drive.
It only rear faces to 18kgs. This is probably ample for some kids but my son is pretty huge and I can imagine we will have to retire this seat at some point unless we have another baby!

So I’m getting quite addicted to this knitting buisness and picked up some patterns in France. Bad idea, they are so gorgeous and now I want to knit them all!! Small problem, I don’t remotely speak french and the patterns are… intense.

This is how they write increases etc

depuis le debut de l’ouvrage, augmenter de chaque cote au debut de chaque rg:
1 fois 3m.,
11 fois 2m. = 68m.

As far as I can tell, this translates in English to something like..

since the beginning of the work, increase each side at the beginning of each row:
3m 1 times.,
2m 11 times. = 68m.

Oh my god i totally worked it out.

[FRENCH]en coloure blue marine monter 18m
tricot 4 rgs au pt jersey end prendre le coloure  vert et continuer en tricotant au pt jersey end

en meme temps depuis le debut de l’ouvrage, augmenter de chaque cote au debut de chaque rg:1 fois 3m., 11 fois 2m. = 68m.

[ENGLISH]

Cast on 18 stitches in navy blue.
Knit 4 rows in stocking stitch then take the green color and continue knitting in  stocking stitch

then increase each side at the beginning of each row: first row has 3 stitches either side increase, then increase every row by 2 stitches either side (knit 11 rows).

Good times!

pretty much in love with these liberty / nike collaboration premium high dunks… not sure if I would buy them myself though considering I’m against paying RRP fr anything and they will sell out… that and I don’t really need another pair of high tops

Loving lazy Tuesdays… relaxing on the couch with some tea (herbal) and some new cookbooks (Nigella of course).. listening to the sounds of the dishwasher doing dishes for me. Dreaming of hooking up some cushions with  my new found crochet skills.. maybe later.

Interlude to check facebook, watch some videos of the grammys and realise that little man will still  be sleeping for another hour… bliss. If I could block out the noise of the rubbish truck outside I could almost pretend that I am on the couch in New Zealand..

Look at how big munch man is getting… Looking so grown up in his jammies from Aunty Julian too…yes that is the lens cap from my camera :/

I’m back in London after 2 amazing months in New Zealand… what a contrast…
dull and gray from bright and sunny
cold and wet from warm and humid
just us from family and friends.. I guess it’s this last one that makes the most difference. It has been such a fun time having all our family and friends around for the past few months, I miss you guys so much already.

It’s really weird coming home to our flat here, to be honest I had kind of forgotten what it was like after 2 months. It is nice though, Reuben’s room is so bright and cheerful – I just stuck up the R E U B E N letters from Erica too which are super cute.

And one of the best bits about coming home – My wonderful hubby bought me the best birthday/wedding anniversary/valentines day presents ever… I feel so spoilt. I got  a kitchenaid stand mixer and this amazing kenwood food processor. No excuses now to get out of baking

Of course Reuben is now over 9 months.. I feel like this year is flying by and soon he will be one year old! Can’t believe it. Sometimes I still can’t believe that I have a baby of my own, let alone a crawling handsome little charmer haha. His crawling is still on his belly, and he has just started pulling himself up on stuff. We gave him his first haircut 2 days ago, and he jammed his fingers in a drawer this morning

xx

My baby turned 8 months a few days ago and wow how time has flown. I keep meaning to update my blog but basically I’m too lazy. Anyway… Reuben is now “crawling” (body still on the floor but getting where he wants to go pretty quickly!) which is so exciting, I love seeing how determined he is to get places.

He still is such a good natured baby, always happy and relaxed and just goes with whatever is happening. He still is a great sleeper – although we have had many disruptions recently (to be expected – we are in New Zealand with my parents) – but on the whole fantastic he still sleeps 11 or 12 hours solidly at night and has 2 naps of 2-2.5hours each. I am in the process of weaning him from his third nap although I’m not too sure how ready he is for this yet.

His eating is going well – he has a very large appetite and I nurse him 4 x a day with 3 solid meals. I have struggled while on holiday to prepare homemade baby food like I normally do and we have resorted to using too many jars of organic babyfood. Oh well there is time to fix that.. A sample meal routine/menu for him is something like this:

Breakfast: Breastfeed & Oats/Fruit/Water blended/mashed. Sippy of water
Lunch: Breastfeed & Vegetable/Rice, sometimes fruit/oats
Dinner: same as lunch
Bed: Breastfeed

I pump almost every night before bed too which has been great as his grandparents (my parents) have enjoyed being able to feed him and I have enjoyed having such wonderful babysitters!! I want to write a review on my pump soon because it is AMAZING. But for now it is called Avent Isis iQ duo – Double electric pump – learns your rythm.

Rueben is a very curious and easily distractible baby so our nursing sessions are about 5-10 minutes long now. I haven’t had him weighed properley since we arrived in NZ but I took him on my parents scales and he is over 10kgs now (over 22lb).

All in all I love him an unspeakable amount times a million plus four and I hope he reads this one day and knows how much I love him

One of the major downsides of moving countries is the whole temporary redecoration thing. When we arrived we needed bed linen etc.. and I find it really hard to spend money on things that I know we will not be able to take home with us. Bedding is one of those things that I think you should spend as much money as you can on because you spend so much time in bed and good cotton sheets just improve with age, they get softer and more comfortable the more you wash them. However the good ones are obviously going to be expensive. So we have ended up with some really dodgey sheets because I couldn’t get my head around spending the money. And a horrible polyester filled duvet which is really really not cutting it… sigh.

I love nice modern/contemporary soft styled bedrooms. Our furniture at the moment is a lot lighter than what I would ideally choose if I had disposable income – I picked up this bed off eBay for some ridiculously cheap amount- but its really a light pine not dark like in the picture and plus I don’t have the bed curtains.

We had a beautiful real possum throw that decorated our last bed – and now it’s approaching winter I am looking to get a throw or bedspread on the cheap – time to hunt down IKEA and eBay I think.

I love neutrals for bedrooms – so relaxing and romantic and I need to get some cushions that set the bed off. Watch this space – before and after photos to come eventually (I hope).

Its been a long long time since I have updated. I’m so slack. I don’t even have a good excuse.

I’m still a long way from the lovely country I call home, New Zealand. While everyone there enjoys stunning summer days and long evenings, we have rain, sleet, snow, and darkness at 4pm.  The last 6 months have brought an entirely new way of life for me, and one major unexpected change.

You know that saying about plans going astray, well, yeah, I can verify that is true Still, my life is very nice right now, just a bit different from our plans of just a few months ago. We always had planned on coming to London for a few years to work. We planned on having a baby at some stage and coming back to NZ to settle. Little did we know that I was already pregnant when we left glorious New Zealand! So that was one small spanner in the works. I looked for work solidly for a few months once we arrived, but there was just no software development jobs going. In hindsight I should have given up looking a lot earlier and worked in a cafe, but I didn’t, and well, then it became too late because I sprouted a somewhat huge baby bump. Thankfully my husband landed a sweet job very soon after we arrived (and they love him, he has just had a promotion!), otherwise we would have been on the next plane home.

on the tube, blissfully unaware of the baby growing in there

So, here I am, jobless, and growing a baby in my belly. People ask me what I do and I have a hard time answering – what on earth do I do? Well, I spend a lot of time on eBay, that’s for sure. Having a baby has increased my addiction even further and opened my eyes to the designer baby second hand clothing market. Thankfully we also bought a car that turned out to be a piece of crap, because I spend lots of time fixing it or visiting our mechanic, who I am getting to be quite good friends with haha. I go for walks, I go shopping and have hot chocolates, I cook and sometimes I even clean.

Yeah. My life is pretty sweet. And on top of this I seem to have been blessed with the worlds easiest pregnancy. I haven’t had any morning sickness, or anything weird like that, and I’m only just getting to the uncomfortable stage where I walk the poor baby into door frames and stuff.

31 weeks pregnant!

What else is going on….

I’m so itchy. I don’t know what causes it, although I do have a general idea of what trigers it – water, or more specifically taking a shower. Generally I can minimize the itching if I just jump in and out very quickly and then slather some moisturizer on my legs. But – sometimes a quick shower just doesn’t cut it. Like right now. I really needed to wash my hair, and as you probably know, my hair is really, really long. This means it takes me a few minutes to shampoo and condition it, plus shave or whatever else I gotta do, and by the time I get out my skin is crawling.

I literally scratch to the point where I am covered in red marks and lines. It usually takes about half an hour for the urge to scratch to disappear and then about half an hour after that I feel like I can function normally. This has been going on for years and years, and I go through periods of months when I am fine and some where I am not.

I think maybe I have some kind of liver problem, or food allergy. Its getting to the point where I really need to do something about it, because its getting damn hard to scratch certain bits now I’m pregnant! Plus the thought of having a little baby and one hour of itchies freaks me out.

Yeah apart from that not much else. I feel my next few posts will be baby stuff related.. so please forgive me xx

This was a cake for my friend Melissa who turned 12 years old last week.

Inside the cake was what I normally bake when I am not sure of someone’s preference, layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with a chocolate buttercream.

I have only been in London a few weeks and already I have hunted down two French patisseries for the sole purpose of buying macarons. Last week when we were in Canary Wharf for interviews I stumbled upon Paul and bought a giant macaron. Unfortunately no one was sure what flavour it was, and even after sharing it and eating it neither of us had figured it out. The texture however was devine and it was far richer than the Ladurée ones, but obviously very bland. I think the huge one from Paul was 2 pounds something, and roughly equates to 3 or so of the little Ladurée ones which were 9 pounds 80p for 6 + a pretty box. Ouchie.

After discovering last night that there are two Ladurée shops in London – First stop today was Harrods. Which of course is packed full, mainly with tourists, and looks to have quite a cool food court with people chowing into these amazing looking gelati/sundaes.  But I wasn’t there for any of that and in fact we made it through the ground floor in possibly record time to end up in Ladurée.

Hubby helped me pick out 6 little macarons – here is my verdict. (L-R in pic above)

Orange Blossom – hubby chose this flavour and although I wouldn’t have done so myself I quite like it. The green ganache slightly put me off but it does taste very floral.

Salted butter caramel – Third place? Almost sticky ganache, with a scorched caramel flavour.

Vanilla – rich with vanilla seeds, although tastes slightly pasty almost. On second thoughts the aftertaste is of an amazingly rich vanilla icecream.

Chocolate -Thick and rich with a nice deep ganache. I give second place to this guy. I think this may actually have been bitter chocolate, they didn’t have both available and this is light and not so sweet.. I wonder.

Rose – amazing rose flavour, super fluffy ganache almost like whipped cream, consistency too thin for my liking but still devine, strongly rose scented and tasting like turkish delight.

Pistachio – My favourite, densest and delicious, with a nice texture. Mmmm.

All in all amazing! If you want to make me happy – buy me macarons. Pistachio ones if you are too scared to choose

Is it sad that my goal is to try all the flavours? Haha. The berry ones, and of course lots more pistachio ones And to be fair, I must of course compare with all the ones from Paul and then Pierre Herme when in Paris!!