Autumn leaf tea light holders

I've had the materials ready to make these for a while but I just haven't got round to making them until now. These tea light holders are really simple and easy to make. You only need a few materials, they take a matter of minutes to create and they look really stunning on a dark autumn/winter's night.

To make them you need: several mason jars (I used two empty Dolmio jars and an old candle jar), some autumn leaves (either artificial or real), raffia and some PVA glue. Now just a word of warning about the leaves. I read somewhere that it is possible to use real leaves for this. The instructions stated to collect the leaves then leave them for at least two weeks to dry out by placing them on kitchen roll underneath a heavy book. I tried this but it just didn't work for me. I could not get the leaves to stick at all and they wouldn't mould around the sides of the glass jars. I'm not sure if it was the consistency of the glue or the leaves themselves. By all means, try it - you might have more luck! I decided to attempt this project again, this time with artificial leaves I bought for a few pounds from Amazon.

To start with, you will need to thoroughly clean your glass jars and remove any labels. It helps to leave them to soak in warm water and the labels will come clean off. Then mix PVA glue with a little water and apply it liberally to the jars.

Stick the leaves to the jars, overlapping them but leaving some gaps to allow more light from a candle to show through. Finally, coat the leaves in a further layer of the glue mix to give them a shine. Once the jars are dry (I left them to dry overnight), tie raffia around the tops, place a tea light inside and light it. I've placed mine on the kitchen windowsill and they've made the room look really cosy.

A Trip to the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve

November sees the return of our annual day trip to the Donna Nook National Nature Reserve in Lincolnshire, not far from where we live. The reserve is home to one of only four large colonies of grey seals in the British Isles and because of this it attracts tourists from all over the UK. Usually these animals spend most of the year out at sea but during the months of November and December, they come up onto the sandbanks at Donna Nook to breed and to give birth to their pups. They are only around for a short while and they are a must see if you live in Lincolnshire. The viewing area is open from late October to December but the best time to see the most pups seems to be towards the end of November/beginning of December. It allows you to get close enough to the seals to be able to touch them (although you shouldn't and wouldn't want to!)

We take Tommy every Winter to see the seals at Donna Nook and this year we had our newborn in tow too. The walkways at the reserve are relatively flat, so suitable for buggies but there is quite a climb up over the sandbanks before you get there and it can get extremely busy so do bear this in mind. We opted to use a baby carrier instead and Isla was more than happy to watch the seals from there.

The reserve itself is very low key, as it should be. It consists of two little huts, one at each end, that gives visitors information about the seal colony and allows visitors to make donations or buy a small selection of gifts. Information plaques along the way are fun, children-friendly and encourage you to find out more about grey seals and the work that the nature reserve conducts. It has two car parks at either end of the walkway and is £2 to park for however long you want to be there.

We visited the reserve on a rather mild day and we spent quite a while there. It does get very cold and windy on this part of the coast, as it's very exposed to the elements and there is little shelter so if you do go, be sure to wrap up warm! If you do need warming up, there is a handy hot food and drinks van where you can get a Lincolnshire sausage in a bap or a hot chocolate. This we found to be very welcome indeed!

I would really recommend a trip to the Donna Nook Nature Reserve if you haven't been already. There aren't many places in the UK where you can observe wild animals as closely as you can do here, and rare ones at that. It's a super place to visit if you are interested in these animals or you enjoy wildlife photography. It really is a spectacle that both of my children enjoyed. It's cheap, educational and a great place to visit if you don't mind getting a little chilly in the process!

Autumn Leaves

Since having Isla, I've been really conscious of not spending as much quality time with Tommy. I knew this would be inevitable, particularly as I'm breastfeeding and no one else can do that bit for me. A newborn takes a heck of a lot of feeding and changing and these two activities seem to take up the majority of the day, leaving me little time to spend doing the things I love most with Tommy. I've lost count of the number of times I've told him to wait a minute and those minutes have often turned into an hour! Because of this, I've really tried to set aside time to spend with Tommy on his own, whether it be to go out to the park for an hour or doing a craft activity indoors.

Tommy is really observant and he's constantly taking in everything around him. He has been telling me all about how the leaves on the trees have changed colour and I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to do lots of activities to do with Autumn (I know we're nearly into Winter but hey ho). I've been meaning to work on somewhere to display artwork he produces, a washing line or some such device in his bedroom but I just haven't got round to it yet. Most of the time, drawings and paintings from nursery get stashed in the nearest cupboard/drawer or get put on the fridge only to get splattered by a muddy dog and ruined. This being the case, I decided on a temporary measure - to make something to display on his bedroom window.

I found this activity somewhere on the Internet or Pinterest (I can't remember where now). It's both very easy to prepare and easy for a child to produce on their own. I'm all for children being able to complete a task/activity with very little guidance from an adult. It makes them both independent and confident.

You need some sticky-backed plastic (old School Blue Peter I know!), black card or paper, scissors, a pencil (a bright colour that's show up on black and square pieces of yellow, red and orange tissue paper).

The first step is to draw several leaf outlines on the black piece of card. It is quite nice to use different-shaped leaves. We went on an autumnal walk and collected a variety to draw inspiration from.

 

 

Draw a separate outline around the outside (about 1-2cm) of the leaf shape and then cut out the inside and around the outside.

 

 

Stick the templates onto the sticky side of the sticky-backed plastic.

 

 

 

Then stick the tissue paper pieces to the sticky-backed plastic, overlapping them a little to ensure no gaps are left (it doesn't matter too much if they do). The final step is to stick more sticky-backed plastic to the top and cut around the black outline one final time. Here are our finished leaves. They'll brighten up even the darkest of autumn days don't you think?

 



 



Playdough Funny Faces

My little boy Tommy (3) seems to be really into playdough at the moment. He seems to want to do something with it every day and I'm in no way adverse to this. However, I do find he just seems to aimlessly cut and shape it and not make anything but a huge mess. This is fine with me most of the time but I thought it would be nice to make some more focussed activities for him to do using playdough. The material is so versatile and the possibilities of it are just endless. I love the way it can be shaped time and time again into almost anything you can imagine and that it can be reused.

I always make my own playdough using a no-cook recipe found here. I've tried and tested the recipe a number of times myself. It's soooo easy, takes a matter of minutes, uses very few ingredients and works perfectly every time. Homemade playdough is much better than the stuff you can buy - I find it's much more malleable for young children to work with. The shop-bought stuff can be tricky to work with and needs a lot of kneading before it can be easily shaped. Homemade playdough can also be coloured, scented or glitter can be added Again, the possibilities are endless! As the above recipe suggests, I would recommend using Wilton Gel colours to colour your playdough. They are really vibrant and a little goes a long way. Once you've made your playdough, seal it in an airtight container or bag and it will last for up to six months.

I will be including lots of activities for using playdough on my blog over the next few weeks, including some Christmassy ones in the run up to Christmas. This one I came up with was the idea of making playdough funny faces. You can use materials like the ones in the picture below. Alternatively, you could use straws or pasta pieces, sequins or whatever you have to hand. It really helps if you use materials that are easily pushed into the playdough. For us, the pipe cleaners didn't work particularly well, as Tommy struggled to push them into the playdough unless he used the wire ends. We used a range of buttons, googly eyes, coloured matchsticks, pom pom balls, pipe cleaners, a rolling pin and cutting tool.

 

Tommy was able to complete this activity independently and he needed very little help from me. He was engaged in the activity for well over an hour and was delighted with the funny faces he created. The possibilities are endless with this activity. You could even make animal faces or stretch to making moustaches/beards. The great thing about this activity is that everything can be reused again.

 

 

My Birth Story!

OK, so a bit of a long one. Sorry!

Reflecting on my first experience of labour, I feel very lucky. I don't remember a lot of it, largely due to the pethadine I'd been given and the fact that labour occurred in the early hours of the morning and I just wanted to sleep through most of it. Was I in pain? Absolutely! It was the most horrendous pain I had ever experienced in my life. It seemed never-ending. It seemed like I'd never get my little boy out. You seem to have these feelings regardless of how long your labour is. You don't trust your body to know what to do. And yet it nearly always does. My labour with Tommy lasted 3hrs 50 mins - a relatively short labour for a first baby. My pregnancy was "text-book" I guess. I felt more healthy during the months of my pregnancy than I'd done in any point of my life and my labour followed suit. Tommy was in a perfect position for an "easy" birth, he turned beautifully when it came to the pushing stage and it was a good job because he weighed in at a pretty impressive 8lb 6oz! This came as a shock to everybody, being as I am just over 5ft!

It's a weird thing contemplating giving birth for a second time. All the questions you had before you gave birth the first time are still floating around your head: Will my baby arrive safely? Will the birth be ok? Will I need medical intervention? Will my birth go according to my birth plan? How long will it be? Will I be able to cope with the pain? I imagine that, no matter how many children you give birth to, those same questions are always going to be there. I'm not sure whether experiencing labour before offers much help when you're thinking about going through it again, particularly if, like me, you pretty much erased most of it from your memory. The second time, for me anyway, there seemed to be more things to worry about. How would I "know" if I was in labour again? Would it start the same way? Be as painful? Last as long? Go as well as the first? Would I be as lucky?

Women always impart their wisdom when it comes to talking about giving birth. They will usually do one of two things: either scare you senseless with their account of their week-long labour that needed every possible medical intervention, leaving you to worry that the same will inevitably happen to you. Or they will proudly announce that their labour was the shortest in history and wasn't actually that painful, leaving you to naively assume it's going to be a walk in the park. The only thing I actually listened to is someone from work that told me: however long, painful or difficult your labour is, just remember that every pain, every push, every hour that passes by is one closer to meeting your baby. When you think about labour like that, you can deal with anything it decides to throw at you. The longer both my pregnancies progressed, the less I cared about what happened to me during my labour. As long as a baby was the result of it, it didn't matter. 

So much so that I didn't even write a birth plan. My "plan" literally read "If I need it, I'll have it." I am all for women having really specific ideas about how they want their birth to go, but it's just not realistic to expect that birth will go exactly as you want it to. Labour is extremely unpredictable. There's no telling how difficult or how long it will be. There's no telling how you will cope with the pain. I didn't want to set myself up for failure, as it were - have really specific plans that all have to go out of the window, leaving me disappointed, let down or like I had "failed." I hoped I wouldn't need any pain relief the second time round in truth. Not because I wanted a pat on the back for being brave. Merely because I feel guilty for not being able to remember everything about my son's birth, largely because I was out of it on pethadine and drifting in and out of sleep. It was all a bit of a blur. If I had a choice, I'd like to remember every little detail the second time round.

I thought having gone through labour once before, nobody would have anything they could add to the conversation about giving birth, no advice to impart, no "tips." It turns out I was wrong. Your second birth'll be loads easier, loads quicker, less painful they said. This was great news to hear. How wrong they turned out to be however!

Labour (or what I thought was labour) started on Tuesday night at about 8 o clock. I'd asked people whether I'd know if I was in labour or not the second time around. The pains of labour are erased from your memory straight after you give birth and you struggle to remember what they felt like. Well, when it happens for the second time, it all comes flooding back and trust me, YOU KNOW! My husband asked the same questions as he did the first time round: Are you sure this is it? Have your waters definitely broken? It's a long way to the hospital if you're not in labour and we have to come back blah blah blah. I was panicking because my labour had been quite short last time, it was a 45 minute-drive to the hospital and I didn't want to be giving birth at home. Little did I know, there was absolutely no chance of the baby coming anytime soon!

I was convinced my waters had broken and I was having regular contractions so, after a phone call, we made our way to the hospital. We didn't have to sort anything out with regards to Tommy, as luck would have it, he was staying for a sleepover at Nanny and Grandad's caravan.

Sat in the car, I felt both excited and nervous. I was getting regular contractions and I felt sure our baby would arrive that evening. That was, until we got within 5 minutes of the hospital, and all of a sudden, everything just stopped. We arrived at the maternity ward and waited to be examined. Something just didn't seem right. How can everything stop all of a sudden? Why weren't my waters leaking when I was sure they had been earlier? I had the usual checks, which were all fine and was told to wait around to see if I would have any further contractions. If not, I was to go home. My waters had in fact not broken but I had some sort of yeast infection instead which I had mistaken for my waters breaking.

No contractions came, so I was told I wasn't in labour and that I was to return home and call if I had any concerns. To top it off, they told me my baby was back to back so I should try getting it to turn when I got home. This sent me into a bit of a panic if I'm honest. I knew my baby had been right-occupit anterior through the last half of my pregnancy and I knew it wasn't the 'ideal' position for birth. I knew that babies in this position were likely to go back-to-back because they usually turn in a clockwise direction on their way out. Back-to-back babies tend, although not always, to make labour more difficult, longer and increase the likelihood that intervention will be needed. I'd tried everything I could to try and turn baby, using all the techniques suggested by Spinning Babies, but it hadn't worked. Baby just liked being in that position and there was little I could do in the end to change that.

I found this all so frustrating. The pains I'd been having were not Braxton hicks, but very much real labour pains. When I got home, I couldn't go to bed; I was still having regular, painful contractions. While my husband got some sleep (well he was going to need it after all wasn't he?), I watched a bit of TV downstairs. I opted for some of my favourite comedy programmes but they didn't make me feel like laughing. After further calls to the maternity ward, I had a bath and then tried to sleep, which as anybody who's ever experienced labour before knows, is pretty much impossible. I managed to get a few minutes but I was either in too much pain or too excited to sleep.

At this point, I was beginning to need something to take the edge off the pain. The pain had been very bearable so far and intermittent. There'd be an hour of "contractions" and then nothing for the next. I was just breathing and getting through it. I emptied my kitchen cupboards in the search of paracetamol but we didn't have a single one in the house. At 6am, hubby went out to get some and they helped me get through the next hour or so.

Mum phoned and I told her I thought I was in labour. I'd not phoned her the night before as I didn't want her to worry, or to get excited if it was a false alarm and it was probably a good job, seeing as I hadn't given birth  over 10hrs later! I was coping well up to this point. I was calm and happy to be at home because as far as I could see, the end of labour was not nigh. Mum suggested she brought Tommy over to see me and this was such a good idea. I loved having him around; it was such a help in getting through the few hours that followed.

By 10am, my contractions were getting very close together and more painful than I could cope with. I rang the hospital once again and this time they suggested I should go in. When I arrived at hospital (11am), I was told I was a good 4-5cm dilated. I was told I wasn't going anywhere and they hoped I would have my baby that day. I flipping hoped so! I had a bath and a couple of paracetamol and then got bouncing on a gym ball.

The next few hours that passed by were lovely. No honestly! Yes, I was in pain but it was perfectly manageable without any kind of pain relief. We chatted, laughed, joked. We discussed whether we thought it would be a boy or girl, what names we liked, we talked about Tommy and what he might be up to. I really really was enjoying myself in a way. The midwife spent most of the time sat in our room and told us about her family and her birth stories. She told us our baby's birth would be her hundredth delivery, so she wanted to be the person to deliver it. She also told us she thought we were having a girl - she didn't normally predict babies were girls but when she did, her prediction was always accurate.

At 3.30pm, I was examined again to be told I was 7cm dilated. I was getting a bit fed up this point, not because I wasn't coping but just because everything was taking so long and I had begun to think I'd never get to hold my baby. I was getting so impatient and just wanted to meet him/her now.

The midwife decided to break my waters, as that would help speed things along a little and it definitely worked! By 4.30, I was 10cm dilated and pushing. I had a bit of gas and air at this point, as the pain was getting very strong. To be honest though, while it definitely numbed the pain, I didn't like the drunk, sicky feeling it gave me so I just tossed the mouthpiece aside, knowing it would all soon be over.

At 4.58pm, our little girl, Isla Grace Collingwood entered the world with a deafening cry. She weighed 7lb 3oz, and was a dainty little thing with long fingers and toes. I couldn't believe I'd given birth again. I couldn't believe that beautiful baby I was holding belonged to us. Right there, in that moment and indeed all the moments that have since followed, we felt like the luckiest two people alive. When you give birth the first time, you don't have any idea as to what a baby will bring to your life. When you give birth for the second time, you know just exactly what it means. You know all the joys and experiences that are to come and it makes you anticipate labour and birth all the more.

If doesn't matter how many babies you have, labour is ALWAYS painful, ALWAYS hard but ultimately ALWAYS the most incredible, amazing, beautiful and rewarding experience a woman (and her partner!) can go through. It says it all when, still in hospital holding her one-day-old child, a woman turns to her husband and says "Please don't let that be our last one" and follows it with "I want to do that again." No matter how hard, long, traumatic or difficult a labour is, there's not a single woman on the planet who can turn around and say it wasn't worth it.

Well, here goes...

Ok, so here is my first 'test' post. Please bear with me - I've never done this before and I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing! Anyway, I've decided to start a blog. I've no idea who or how many people will bother to actually read it but the number of views it gets isn't what drives me. A variety of other things do.

I've just recently given birth (well, 10 weeks ago actually) to my second baby - a beautiful girl we called Isla Grace. I also have a three-year-old little boy called Tommy. One of the main reasons I have decided to try blogging is that since having my children I find myself wondering how time passes so quickly. Anyone that knows me knows that being organised is not one of my strongest points. I take hundreds of photographs of my children but it never occurs to me at the time to print them off, organise them or make a note of the date things occurred. Starting a blog might be a good way of documenting and remembering everything we do together as a family. In addition to this, most of my extended family don't live close by and it would be a nice way of them seeing what we are up to on a daily basis.

Another reason for writing a blog is my childhood dream of becoming an author. Ok, so it's not an incredible fictional story like I imagined but a blog gives me an outlet in which to write SOMETHING at least!

As a part-time teacher (although I'm currently on maternity leave), I spend lots of time at home with my two children. Tommy is due to be going to school next September (eek!) and so I'm doing all sorts with him, in order to prepare him for that. I'm sure I drive him mad sometimes with my constant desire to "teach" him things but I just can't help it. That's what any good parent should do. I intend to fill my blog with activities I do with both my children and this might prove helpful to others that have children the same age.

Other posts you might expect to see here include my baking exploits, projects I undertake around my house, baby and beauty products I've bought and the occasional shopping haul. I'll also be detailing my birth story too, so look out for that!