Six months later

It's been six months since I last got around to posting an update. Six months is soooooo long and as expected lots has happened and changed here in our world. 

Spring and summer flew by with lots of exciting trips and visitors and now autumn is busy turning the world golden. The clocks changed this weekend and I have started drinking pumpkin spiced lattes, so winter is surely on its way.

This summer was full of adventures. Nate turned 2 (gasp!), my sister and her boyfriend visited from New York, my mom visited from Florida, we attended a 60th birthday party, a dozen toddler parties, a sausage and beer festival, AND we went to Barcelona for a long weekend.  

And on top of everything else, I started a new job this month!

Hopefully I will get around to updating with some more details at a later date..until then I will let these photos tell the story...

At home

auntie Debbie!

Out and about

In Barcelona

Autumn in Joules wellies

I love everything about Autumn. I love the changing leaves, the smell of fires being lit, the stunning light through the clouds, and the warm food. 

I also love putting on wellies and going outside with my family to play in the leaves, walk through the mud and take in all the seasonal colours. It's even more enjoyable with Nate in tow. I love nothing better than rediscovering the world through the enthusiastic eyes of a one-year old. 

I was given the opportunity to choose a set of wellies for me and Nate for the Autumn from Joules. They have a HUGE range of cute Women's wellies and they even had a teeny tiny pair small enough for Nate who is a size 4. There is a boys wellies range from Joules too if you have an older son. It took me ages to finally decide on a pair for me. I went for dark green ones with little foxes on it because I wanted something more understated, but they have excellent patterns to suit all types of styles. 

When they arrived I took Nate straight into the back garden to try them on. Nate has a pair of cheaper wellies and he hates them because they are so stiff and he struggles to walk in them. I was worried how he would react. But these Wellies are seriously soft and squishy and he loved them straight away! He noticed the tractors on them and kept pointing to them, then looking back up at me and smiling. 

The only thing left for us to do was to get out and go exploring! My husband and I took Nate and the dogs to our local nature trail. It was Nate's first proper walk in the woods and he was in his element. 

I honestly love these Wellies.  They are reasonably priced and so comfortable and light. And because they are super soft, they slip on and off so so easy, which is of course essential for me so that I can get to my cup of tea as quickly as possible after walking in from the Autumn chill. 

You can have a look through all the Wellies on the Joules website here. 


We were sent these wellies free of charge from Joules for the purpose of the review, but all opinions are my own and are 100% honest. 

our easter weekend

I love Easter weekend in the UK because the Friday before and the Monday after Easter are always bank holidays and 4-day weekends are just the best!

In past years we used to take advantage of the long weekend by travelling. We went to Rome one year, Paris the next, and took day trips around the UK in other years. But ever since last year, Easter weekends have been decidedly more tranquil. Last year I was 27 weeks pregnant so we spent the time relaxing and getting stuff ready for the baby. 

This year, with Nathan in tow and new annual membership cards to the National Trust in our pockets, we went exploring around Suffolk. {Side note: We recently signed up for an annual family membership to the National Trust because they have so many gorgeous properties to explore and we can bring the dogs too. In the past we have wanted to visit some of their properties but the entrance fees are expensive so we always made excuses to not go. Now we can't make excuses anymore and, in fact, we will go out of our way to explore as many of the sites as possible in order to get good use out of our membership fee. I look forward to blogging about our trips to the different properties we discover.}

OK, back to our weekend...on Friday we thought we would visit Ickworth. Ickworth is a gorgeous National Trust estate near Bury St Edmunds with tons of land, a beautiful mansion and (this time of year) hundreds of little lambs wandering the grounds! It was a very cold day so we didn't spend as much time outside as we would have liked, but we managed a quick walk with the dogs to view the lambs before heading into the palatial house. 

The basement of the house has been restored back to its condition in the early 20th century and it was fun looking through the servants' quarters. It felt like we were meandering through the hallways of Downton Abbey. We were surprised to find that in the servants' kitchen there were women dressed in old costumes and baking old fashioned cakes in the original ovens. It smelled delightful and made it feel like we were stepping back in time. Nate loved looking around at all the new sights and sounds. 

After taking some funny self-portraits in the large mirrors upstairs, we stopped off at the cafe for coffee and cake before heading back home for fish and chips.

On Saturday we headed east and took the dogs for a walk at Blaxhall Common, a nature reserve with long sandy paths perfect for the dogs to run and run. We have taken the dogs here many times, but it was Nate's first visit. It was another cold day and the skies were threatening to snow so we only walked for about 30 minutes. Afterwards we went to nearby Snape Maltings and had a pub lunch at the Plough & Sail. We sat near an open fire and ate delicious comfort food. 

Sunday was Easter and we spent it visiting Nate's great-grandmother and watching the boat race on TV. We didn't do any Easter-themed activities because most of my husband's family were out of town and they don't really celebrate it anyway. I thought about getting Nate a basket with some goodies, but decided against it for this year. Next year I plan to put a basket together for him and also take him to an Easter egg hunt somewhere nearby.

Monday (today) was cold but sunny and after a lazy morning we went to lunch at the Maybush with some friends. We frequent this pub often and I have even blogged recently about a trip there. The food and company were amazing and Nate behaved himself wonderfully. In the afternoon we took a walk to the park and Mr M played with the dogs while I pushed Nate in the baby swing. 

I really enjoyed our Easter weekend this year. It was filled with outdoor activities, good company and tasty food. Now I'm on countdown until my return to work. I only have 2 more weeks of maternity leave, so am going to try and enjoy every last second. 


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day out ~ pub lunch

Last night, Mr M and I had our first date night since baby Nate was born. It was just what we needed. We had an amazing time stuffing ourselves with Italian food and wine! 

Today we didn't have anything in the house for lunch and even though we were still kinda full from date night we decided to go out for a pub lunch because...why not? So after Nate's swim lesson we headed out to one of our favourite pubs on the river Deben. 

It was a lovely afternoon so I thought I would share some of our photos.

It was freezing outside and the usually filled picnic tables were empty.

The fish and chips were fried in beer batter. Does it get any better than that?

Nate was very well behaved and tried fish, chips and peas for the first time. He liked it all.

He still hasn't perfect his wave yet but he is getting there.

I hope you are all having lovely weekends wherever you are. xo

the gallery: morning

Recently, when not raining, the mornings in Suffolk have been gorgeous!  The rapeseed fields are in blossom and the skies have been filled with beautiful clouds. Or at least that's what my husband has told me. I must confess I haven't been waking up early at all unless it is to go straight to work, and I didn't take this picture, Mr M did. He is very good at getting up and out, enjoying nature on his bike or with the dogs. I, on the other hand, have been very good at trying to enjoy as much sleep as possible when I can.

Everyone tells me I need to make the most of sleep before baby boy arrives...or maybe I'm just lazy, not sure yet. 

This post is linking up to The Gallery on the Sticky Fingers blog. 

the gallery: easter

In Easter's past, due to the generous 4 day weekends here, Mr M and I have gone on adventurous little trips. One year we went to Rome, another year it was Paris and then last year  it was the south coast of England. This year it has been much more low-key: we went on a quiet walk with the dogs through the woods in the rain.

To be honest, it was lovely! And I have been meaning to go on more walks to keep my ever-expanding body active, so I felt very accomplished after our stroll.

In future years, I'm sure Easter will be more about painted pastel eggs, chocolate and fun kiddy activities. But this year I was happy to keep it calm and relaxing ahead of baby's arrival. 

This post was written in response to a prompt from The Gallery on the Sticky Fingers blog. Why not check out The Gallery to see what other people have posted?