Show and Tell Friday!

It seems like such a long time since I did Show-and-Tell Friday - a really wonderful feature that Kelli presents each week. So I decided that I would use our little shopping trip today to join in.


My show and tell are this little pair of beautiful pink shoes that I bought today for my darling Baby Kay - her very first pair of shoes. She has some wee soft slippers that she tootles about the house in, and a gorgeous little pair of soft leather slip-on ones for keeping her warm when we are out and about, but now that she is whizzing about in her walker, and start to tentatively wobble up and down a few steps along the edge of the sofa, it was time to get her the real deal.

The girl in the shop was very helpful, and even though Baby Kay was far more excited about the tissue paper coming out of the box she was very patient about being measured and having several different ones tried and tested. The shop even take a commemorative Polaroid picture for you and put it in a little card as a keepsake of getting your first shoes!! I have no idea how long Baby Kay will wear these - all my friends tell me that shoes are the most expensive things they seem to have to get for little ones, and to expect to have to replace them with alarming regularity - but these special ones will be going in her keepsake box for her once she outgrows them!

Who knows, I might have started a life-long love of shoe-shopping in my little girl already!

Happy Friday to everyone!!

Show & Tell Friday

This week for Show and Tell Friday I am posting something that actually belongs to Baby Kay again! It is her wall planner - that hangs over her changing mat in her nursery. It is a lovely quilted, embroidered chart, which is very colourful and bright as you can see - and which can keep a very wriggling 10 month old captivated for the 90 seconds it takes to change her nappy - unless she has decided to pull it off the wall now that she can reach the bottom of it to grab!!
It has little felt boxes that are attached with velcro at the back so that you can change the day and date every morning for her. There is a little pointer to turn to the right season, one for the weather and a little table to show whether it is hot, warm, mild or cold outside! Baby Kay loves hearing what the position is every morning, and watches intently while we explain what day it is and what the weather is doing! Little wonder she is a weather forecast addict!!

It is just a very sweet way of starting her daily routine - and we look forward to the day when she is a little bigger that she will be able to tell us what the day is, or decide what she wants the weather pointer to point at!

The planner is also special for another reason - we had this planner a long time before we had our darling daughter, or were finally decorating a nursery for her. My husband took me to Stratford-upon-Avon a few years ago, and we saw it in a shop. He had taken me over for the weekend to see the RSC production of Coriolanus, and before we flew back to Belfast we had been browsing in the gift shops. When I saw this I loved it, but I felt that it wasn't right to buy it when our baby plans hadn't materialised as we had hoped. My darling husband didn't agree. He bought it for me and said at the time that we would put it away, and when the time was right we would have our baby, and then we wouldn't regret not having got the little planner we liked. His faith that it would happen, and his love for me and his baby - who we didn't have yet, and wouldn't have for some time to come - has been something that has sustained our family through many tough times.

One of the happiest days of my life was getting it out of it's packing this time last year and pressing it to hang - with my big pregnant bump getting in the way of the ironing board, and not quite believing it had really happened! Just exactly the same way I feel when I look at our daughter asleep each night before I go to bed and can't quite believe she's ours.

Hope everyone has a great Friday and a lovely weekend!

Show and Tell Friday!

Today for Show and Tell I am showing a vase that I got about 7 years ago. It is a Poole pottery purse vase - the design is called Odyssey, and stands about 12 inches tall. It really is quite a big heavy piece of pottery. I adore it because of the very vibrant colours and lovely sheen off the the surface. I am not really an ornamants or vases person, but this one had caught my eye many times in a John Lewis department store when I lived in St Albans - a whole lifetime ago!!! :)


It would never have occurred to me to buy it - I had no need for it, and anyway, had I had the money I would have probably been spending it in the book department instead! But having seen it so many times it really stuck in my head. Then, unexpectedly, the company I worked for at the time gave everyone some John Lewis gift vouchers as a Christmas present following a good financial year. I felt as if this was serendipity and just blew the whole lot on the vase!

Immediately afterwards I panicked at having spent so much on something that was going to be no use to me at all, but I have always loved it, and grow to love it more as time passes, so I don't believe it was a waste. Some day Baby Kay will have it I hope and enjoy her Mother's outrageous splurge in the China department!

Thanks for looking!

Show and Tell!

For my Show-and-Tell this Friday I am going to show this gorgeous Noah's Ark that Baby Kay was given by her God-parents before she was born. They knew I was working through a Noah's Ark cross-stitch for her nursery (which finally got finished just before Christmas, when she was 8 months old, instead of before she arrived!) You can see the cross-stitch here.

This Noah's Ark advent calendar was being sold in a gorgeous (and very expensive) gift shop in our town. I had seen it in there in their Christmas display a few times, but it never entered my head to even ask about it (I am conscious of the adage 'if you have to ask the price then you can't afford it!) nor had I mentioned it to anyone. Baby Kay's Godparents had gone out to do some shopping of their own while they were staying with us last year, and when they arrived back they told me that they had bought their God-daughter her first Christmas present. I was so stunned by their thoughtfulness and generosity - and their kindness for this little girl who wasn't even born yet. It has pride of place in Baby Kay's nursery, on a shelf by her cot at the moment.

It has 24 little doors for treats, or to hide all the little pairs of animals in for a child to bring out during Advent, and rotates on a central pivot so you can turn it around to reach the doors on the back. It is just beautiful to look at, sadly my photographic skills don't stretch to doing the lovely colours any credit. The details on it are just perfect - it is handpainted, and all the animals come in pairs (naturally!) The Noah even looks a little bit like the Noah in Baby Kay's cross-stitch!

And I love the rainbow with it's little doves. It is so bright and pretty and looks so sweet in her nursery.

At the moment Baby Kay is too small to play with it (and probably for a few Advents to come!) but she points at it when you are lifting her from her cot, and then has to be held up to look at it while she makes 'Hmmm... Hmmmm' noises at it! I tell myself that's her recognising Noah and saying 'That's him again!' I look forward to telling her all about the story when she is older, and filling her little Ark with surprises when she is old enough to understand the significance!

Thanks for looking!

Lizard for Lisa!

Little picture of the lizard from Friday's show and tell - but in his pride of place on the top of our wedding cake. Lisa from AKAWest was curious, so it gave me an opportunity (not that I needed much pushing!!) to have a look through my wedding photos to see if I could find a good one of him!

Didn't occur to me that it would be sensible to add one when I did my show and tell - am still a newbie when it comes to these things!

Show & Tell Friday

I always really love reading other people's show & tells, and marvel at the amazing china, crockery, ornaments, decorations and dainty things people have in their homes. When I was growing up dusting was one of my weekly chores, and I loathed it. My mother has to this day a house full of beautiful (and dustable...) things which I love to look at, but am so glad I don't have to look after any more! I was determined that I would admire these things in other people's homes too, but avoid as much dusting in my own house as I possibly could. It also makes it much easier now that I have a little one - hopefully fewer things to baby-proof against. The downside is that I have a lack of pretty things to show & tell, so once again my choice is a bit odd. I trust you will bear with me - Baby Kay will thank me when she's older and dusting is something she is helping me with; a much quicker job than it was for me!!

My show and tell is this little lizard - bought in Barcelona by my husband and I, and used to top our wedding cake instead of the more traditional bride & groom when we got married in 2006. It is a replica of the lizard/dragon which welcomes you at the gates of Park Guell in Barcelona, inspired and created by Antonio Gaudi. He is also the man behind La Sagrada Familia - the magnificent unfinished cathedral, also in Barcelona - an awe-inspiring testimony to one man's faith, and to this day a controversial and breathtaking place to visit. It is also the place my husband told me he loved me for the first time.

We hope to take Baby Kay there in March for her 1st birthday to square the circle as it were. The stationery and the colour scheme of our wedding was all tied in with this little guy - to echo Gaudi's love of mosiac and colour. My husband spends a lot of time in Barcelona with work, and before we two were three I would regularly join him there for weekends. It is a city we both love and if we came into an unexpected fortune we would buy an apartment there and split our time between her and this amazing heart of Catalonia. The little lizard sits in the kitchen of our home, so we see him every day; a perpetual reminder of our wedding, and the city we both love so much.

I so love this this idea - it gives me a great chance to tell my little girl things about me and ours lives that I might not otherwise think of putting down for her. And I love reading everyone elses Show & Tells - they are inspirational, funny, interesting and a great thing to read with a cup of tea!

My Show & Tell is a perhaps a strange one - it is my collection of blank, unused notebooks. I have to hold my hands up and say, 'I confess, I have a problem.' That problem is I cannot stop myself buying lovely notebooks, journals and jotters, and being determined to use them for something great when I get them home. And then I decide they are too good to spoil with random jottings - and I'll keep them safe for something special when the inspiration takes me. And then I don't use them for anything for fear of spoiling them, since they look so pretty and pristine. My husband thinks it is slightly insane (and also very funny, and much less expensive than shoes and handbags, so he doesn't interfere with my addiction!) The photo I am showing is only a small selection of the total - the collection is actually much more out of control than the picture suggests!!



It all sounds rather sad in a way, but strangely I have always loved my collection of unused notepads because they hold so much potential. They almost speak to me of what could be in them in the future - they are just waiting to be filled with ideas and recipes and quotes and poems and verses and all sorts of wonderful things. This year however I am determined to realise some of that potential - whatever that happens to be. I am going to start using one of them for things as they strike me - my darling husband for one will be glad to see them starting to be used; a real sign that I am starting to embrace life, enjoy the amazing things around me, and take a chance on the fact that while I might not produce anything as beautiful or inspirational as the covers of my notebooks, what ends up being inside will say more about me than leaving them empty!

Show & tell Friday!

Darling Baby Kay - this little post is inspired by something I found on another blog - it is Show and Tell, where you pick something that is important to you and tell other people why. When you are bigger this is something you will get to do at school, but for now it is my turn to pick something to tell other people - and you - about.

I have picked this little decoration, which has pride of place on our tree this year. I had to take it off the tree to take the photo because the flash is doing all sorts of crazy things to the picture because of the tree lights and shiny decorations!

Why this is important to me is probably obvious - but I will explain anyway. Daddy and I waited so long for you, my darling, and finally we were blessed with you in March of this year. This is our first Christmas as a wee family with a baby to share our day. Daddy bought this decoration when he was in Canada with work in November, so like you it has come a long way to be part of our lives here in County Armagh. We are looking forward to this Christmas more than ever before and it is all thanks to the new joy you have brought to our lives.