An evening stroll

 There's no lovelier way to wind down and relax after a day's work than taking a leisurely stroll past the seafront. This evening I had to pop down to the Doctors, so Eddy and Noah joined me for the walk and had a look around the beach whilst waiting for me. Even though it was a bit late for Noah to be out, you would hardly have noticed it from the warmth of the sun and the brightness of the evening. It was really nice to be all together, reminiscing about our weekend and the fun we've all had! When I rejoined my boys they had rehearsed a little song together and promptly began performing it to me...and all I could think to myself was this truly is the life!

Something Old, Something New...

Now that we have fully exhausted our birthday celebrations, we are coming down from the week long high that has involved Noah's birthday party weekend and everything that has gone into preparing for it. This morning I stored away his birthday cards to keep them safely preserved, but after doing so my sideboard looked rather bare to say the least!

As we are approaching our second wedding anniversary, I thought it might be nice to make reference to that in my next 'display'. We have a lovely flower heart that I have preserved since our wedding day. It hung on the top table at our wedding reception and has aged beautifully since! It is quite fragile sadly which means when it is handled now there is always some fallout of petals.

 Since our move, I have been too afraid to have it on permanent display incase it gets knocked or damaged, but I thought hanging it on our mirror would keep it nicely out of Noah's reach and therefore, fairly safe too!

I picked up some tablecloths from The White Company and this one is so fresh and pretty, perfect as a soft touch to the sideboard. In the centre I have popped a candle in a hurricane jar and have surrounded this with a few pretty tea light holders. I love candles very much and combined with the soft stripey blue of the tablecloth, (and the fact I haven't ironed it!) I think it looks quite nautical and fresh.

(Excuse moi in the shot!)

Love Bunty

xXx

Space saving storage!

When it comes to creating space and saving valuable space one of my preferred methods for soft items is to vacuum pack them. Recently, Noah's wardrobe has been getting rather full and there were two large moving boxes sitting at the bottom which had just been left untouched when we moved. I had already organised them to contain  all of his old clothes that he had outgrown, but since needing more space, I decided to delve into them and start vacuum packing them away!

Now, I am not an uncontrollable hoarder by any means, I do my bit to recycle old clothing etc and try to not let our 'stuff' take over the house too much! But there is a good amount of Noah's things that I don't have the heart to let go of yet and when it comes to clothing, I hope I will be able to pass on his old things to any future brothers he may have. 

Therefore, I decided to separate his clothing into three bags covering the main three age groups he has outgrown already: 0-3 months, 3-6 months and 6-9-12 months. This way it will be easy to reach for specific clothing in the future and I know I will save a tonne of space too!

Let the packing commence!

All vacuum packed and ready to be stored away! Although the bags look pretty large here, they really are nothing on the pile I began with!

Happy Monday everyone!

Love Bunty

xXx

Celebrations and family time

This weekend we had a little get together of our family to celebrate Noah's one year. The weather was perfect so we spent all of saturday outside, sunbathing with a picnic in the park and a stroll along the beach. It was lovely for Noah to spend some time with his aunties, uncles and cousins who he doesn't get to see very often. We all went paddling in the shallows of the sea and had a great time splashing about and watching the boats sail past. It was a perfect summer day in so many ways and having lots of us together at the beach made it feel as though we were on holiday!

 Noah has been spoilt rotten with some lovely gifts which I will be showing you all soon. The last of our family left today and now the house seems far too quiet! Noah is completely exhausted and so had an early dinner followed by a bath and has been put to bed...(we'll see if he lasts through the evening!) 

As well as complete exhaustion from such a busy weekend, I think both myself and Eddy have been left with a great sense of togetherness in our families. It's no small feat getting our big families together these days, but as parents, seeing how everyone will 'go the extra' mile to celebrate the new budding generation is really heartwarming and beyond anything, we feel blessed and grateful knowing how loved by everyone little Noah is.

I hope you've all had lovely weekends too?! 

Bunty

xXx

Stationary tidy

I have had this stationary tidy lying around for a couple of years not really doing anything and certainly not tidying my stationary! I dug it out yesterday and wondered exactly why I bothered to bring it with us when we moved. But since it's here, I figured I might as well find some use for it. I decided it could be useful to hold some of Noah's bits and bobs but I wanted to freshen it up a bit first. I thought it would be fun to make a mini blackboard out of the front panel and so I painted it with my blackboard paint and then, after some deliberation, I thought it would be funny to use a piece of chalk and draw a moustache on it. The other day at my parents house, we found some fake moustaches that my brother got for Christmas. Noah had a lot of fun trying them on and we were in hysterics watching our baby fiddling with a grown up moustache under his nose! Hence my inspiration for a moustache blackboard! haha!

Love Bunty

xXx

All quiet on the Morton front

While Noah is down for his nap this morning I have been running round like a headless chicken trying to straighten the house, clean the bathrooms, hoover the floors etc because we have family coming again this weekend. Thankfully, Noah is a great little napper and I can usually guarantee at least one to two hours of stillness in the house to get on with the domestic side of things. This morning was a bit of a toughie as I woke up feeling rotten though! It was SO hard to drag myself out of bed and get breakfast for my boys, but thankfully the morning has picked up for me now and I have a few minutes to myself to just take five.

I hope you all have a lovely friday! Happy Weekend!

Love Bunty

xXx

Quick and simple meal for baby

As I hadn't been very well this evening and Eddy was working quite late, I wanted to make Noah a simple evening meal that wouldn't be too arduous to prepare or take too long to cook either. I settled on pasta, which happens to be a current favourite of his. After cooking the pasta I added a dollop of Philadelphia cream cheese and some chopped tomatoes and mixed these together until it formed a thicker sauce. Noah enjoyed munching this down and it only took me about 10 minutes to make! Pasta is a brilliant staple and it is so easy to make lots of different varieties of flavours and sauces to go with. Tonight's recipe was so basic but was evidently very enjoyable for Noah. It's definitely handy to have a couple of quick recipes you can rely on for those evenings when you just can't face spending too long in the kitchen!

Love Bunty

xXx

Summer lips

I haven't done a lippie post in a little while but I found this gorgeous Revlon colour last month and I have pretty much worn it every day! Surely that deserves recognition?! 

I wanted a peachy/orange shade as I was getting a bit bored of mundane reds, but I still wanted to maintain a pop of colour to feel summery. So as always, I had a little look at the Revlon counter and came across their Smoked Peach, 013 from the matte collection. Now this is seriously nice! I like the matte collection and have repurchased their 'pink pout' dozens of times, so in terms of consistency and feel, I knew I would like this. Revlon lipsticks do, on the whole, last well and I don't find them drying which is a big bonus, especially for a matte shade. 

I would say Smoked peach is a perfect, almost burnt orange colour which is very easy to wear with a variety of looks. It works well with my pale skin, but I am sure it would look lovely on a variety of skin colours and tones, in fact I would love to see it! 

Have a lovely day  everyone!

Love Bunty

xXx

Coffee Table in situ

We finally made it home late last night after a great few days at my parents. Remember in my post about the coffee table that I made a shabby chic project out of? I said the hardest part of the project would be convincing my husband that we could indeed fit it into our car...well, we did it! With much 'jiggling' around of bags, clothes and not to mention our travel cot too, we managed to get everything in! Thankfully our new table made it home safely with us and I wanted to show you how it looks set up in our living area. Once inside, you can really see the colour of the paint, (which I am totally loving by the way!) Whilst painting it outside, it really did appear much lighter and so it was a lovely surprise to view it inside where the rich mushroom colour really came out.

What do you all think?!

Love Bunty

xXx

The 'Bunty' magazine

Does anyone else remember reading these?! While I've been at home I have been enjoying going through some of my old books and I came across these Bunty magazines which have quite a story behind them! In my mid-late teen years, my older siblings and I had a dear friend, James, who sadly passed away a few years ago. But he was so full of energy and joyfulness during our time as friends and I always remember one time he came to visit us and brought me some vintage copies of the Bunty magazine. One is from 1970 and the other, 1991 and he cleverly edited the front copies to put my own face into the illustrations! As you all know by now, my nickname is Bunty and has been for all my life, it was just such a shame that they ceased printing copies in 2001 when I would have been at just the right age to thoroughly enjoy reading them! 

Did anyone else enjoy these? 

Love Bunty

xXx

Teenage fashion

My little sister Rosie is one of those teenagers that always has an effortless sense of style. She always gets it right somehow and looks fresh, feminine and lovely in everything she wears! I remember some serious 'fashion' fails in my teens and I laugh about them now, but it's funny to consider that I actually take a lot of inspiration from my little sister in terms of what might be fun to wear.

Although there are six years between us, we are very similar in height, looks and we have the same size feet! Borrowing shoes from her is something that has become slightly second nature to me! Cheeky as it is, she always has some lovely new pieces of clothing and shoes to show me whenever I visit home and so we always make a point of spending some time trying on each others clothes and swapping items with each other.

It's a fun way to spend time with her and catch up on what is happening in each of our lives. She is just finishing her lower sixth year at college, a time i'll never forget! It's a lovely part of life where the world is at your fingertips: learning to drive, trying to answer the big 'what's next?' question...Where she is at now really reminds me of some happy moments in my own late teenaged years!

Bunty

xXx

A few days retreat

I love our visits home and always feel so refreshed afterwards. My family all grew up in the heart of the Devonshire country and our family home has been the same home we all grew up in. We never moved house and so the physical building of our home is invested with so many precious memories and exciting moments that have happened in our lives. It is the hub of our family in so many ways, even though us older ones have 'flown the nest' so to speak. We all gather back every so often and are reminded once more of what really matters in life.

I sometimes find life itself can get overwhelming, especially with all the new ways of communicating and creating content with new media. The internet itself is an incredible resource, I would not contest that for a moment, but after a while I do find myself longing for a bit of peace- a bit of a retreat and a simpler life.

I think that is partly why I love coming home so much, because I can literally retreat into a hidden spot in the countryside and disappear from the world for a moment. 

I make a point of not being 'online' as much when I am home so that I can savour every moment with my loved ones and I definitely recognise the benefits (even just mentally) of switching off from the internet for a while. 

The last couple of days have been pure bliss and I have really felt myself relax and let go of the normal pressures I feel when I am at home running my own house. I thought it would be nice to share a couple of photos that I feel summarise the last few days for me...

Noah hanging out with uncle Eddy (who was extremely busy working on his summer tan!)

Beautiful kitchen view

Peeping into my favourite garden spot!

Painted toes and sandals screams that holiday feeling to me!

Meet Toby, our mischief maker dog who has gained quite a reputation as a troublemaker in our village! (Think Marley and me!) He is a big old softie really...promise!

Annie Sloan Coffee Table

It's been a quiet weekend on the blogger front from me, I've been enjoying a few much needed catch up days at my parents home. We haven't seen them for a couple of months so it has been really nice to take some time to be with the rest of my family. Nevertheless, it didn't take long for my hand to find a paintbrush and some wood to freshen up.

I've wanted a nice wooden coffee table for a really long time and have been looking for a bargain for ages. It wasn't until this morning that whilst looking in my parents garage (which houses all sorts of history in there) that I came across their old pine coffee table that has been sitting in there for several years now.

It was hidden under a pile of boxes and other pieces of furniture and once I got my brother to dig it out for me, it triggered many happy memories of sitting in our lounge as a young family, sipping on tea or playing board games. It was in need of some serious TLC as it was covered in dust and dirt and was full of dents from years of use in our family home.

Mum kindly offered it to me to make a shabby chic project out of it and so I took myself off to Source for the Goose where I picked out a beautiful Annie Sloan paint to finish the legs and lower table with. 

I love Annie Sloan paints, they are wonderful to work with and always have a lovely matt finish which fades beautifully over time. I opted for 'Paloma' which is a mushroom colour with a hint of pinky undertone. It's warm and fresh and should (I hope) tie in nicely with the general colour scheme in our lounge.

First, I decided to sand down the top of the table. I'm a sucker for natural wood and I really enjoyed doing this to my kitchen table last year, so I was all too ready to have another go. After sanding down the top, I got painting the legs and shelf underneath. The paint is very thick and really only needed one coat to cover the wood. I'm really pleased with the outcome and very thankful to have such generous parents!  

As I was telling mum earlier, the only difficult part of this renovation will be convincing Eddy that we CAN fit it in the car to take home tomorrow night! Haha!

Love Bunty

xXx