End Of

Hello, Everyone :)
It's another end of another week. I know it's really Tuesday, but when you are a stay at home mother you can set your own week endings and starts, or that is what I'd like to think. The week ending I'm really talking about is the Holiday Week...on blog it didn't really go that well. But I'm actually quite excited to end it so I can start another one, that will hopefully go a bit better.
But as a finishing treat, here are a little video and a few more pictures from our time in Cabo Verde :)

I love this little video of Oscar. He stops and poses for Dan to take a photo of him and then continues with his little walk :) So freakin sweeeeeeet :)

This is one of the pictures I actually absolutely hated, because I just felt I look so massive and it was just one of those why meeee? moments with this one. Then I realised that I am actually not massive, I'm just next to a 1 year old and a skinny guy :D SO I figured I'll just put this picture out in the world to remind me to be less critical about myself.

The amount of pain we went through to find these swimming outfits for Oscar. They are from Debenhams and cost a fare wack with about £20 for each (we got 2)but they were so worth it in the end. Oscar hated when we tried putting sun cream on him, so it was good that most of his body was already protected with this spf40 suit :)

YES I look like a twat, but I wanted a picture with the massive waves :D I mean they were huge. The red flag was up most days because these waves would take  a grown man down and under. And they were also very loud. The bikini is again Roxy :)

Anyway, I do hope you have enjoyed a few little snippets from our first long haul family holiday to the hot Cape Verde. And as always, Stay tuned :)

xoxo

Meril

White Blouse

Hello, Everyone :)
You know when you pack your bags for the holiday and plan your outfits and you think you're going to look amazing at all times? And then you realise that you really don't want to put make up on every day just in case there will be pictures taken because it's bloody hot outside. You don't really want to wear those high wedges that go nicely with that short skirt because you are running after a toddler all the time and bending down in places where people will have a full view of your private parts. So you end up wearing pretty much the same kind of outfit pretty much every day, because it looks nice AND it's practical for the holiday. For me the outfit was shorts and this £5 peasant blouse from Missguided that I ordered from their sale section only a few days before the trip. And this top has become my favourite since I wore it the first time.

I mostly wore it with my two pairs of jeans shorts I took with me and mixed up my shoes and accessories :) So if I was going for dinner I would wear sandals and some jewellery but if we were going to the playground with Oscar it would be paired with tennis shoes and my trusty backpack (I will talk about that some other time :D)

And now I have wore it so many times during my holiday I have kind of gotten obsessed with white blouson style gypsy/peasant tops. SO above are a few other ones from Missguided I love and the first one is the actual one I own. And I love that mixing it up with different items of clothing I can wear it all year around :)

What is your favourite holiday outfit? Let me know in the comments below :)

And as always, Stay tuned

xoxo

Meril

Holiday

Hello, Everyone :)
SO blogging on a holiday went great :D Let me just put it out there before anyone else does...I failed miserably. We just had way too much fun and we packed every day with lots of activities and naps :) Yes...naps...most days we all had 2 naps and it was wonderful :D I will also apologise to everyone who has emailed me, I have filed the emails and I WILL reply :) As like I already said the Internet and WiFi situation was poor in Cape Verde. But here are a few pictures I took of Oscar on the beach that I love so much. It was our last day (not travelling back day) so we decided to take a long stroll on along the soft sand and crashing waves while the Sun shun brigth and the wind blew stong.

And if you haven't already realised then we are back home now and apart from getting more activities and adventures for Oscar I will try to get back to the old routine we had, because even though holiday mode is great... in the real world it won't work for that long :D I will write a few posts about the lovely holiday we had and then continue with the interests, hobby and family posts with a few little foodie ones thrown into the mix as well.

So Stay tuned

xoxo

Meril

Travel Day

Hello, Eeveryone :)

You know that feeling you get when you step out of the plane and the heat hits you with all it's force :)? Being couped up inside due to bad weather and cold in England I am currently experiencing a feeling I can't really describe. It's a mixture of tiredness and happiness and buzz all at the same time. We have only been here for a day and a bit and as you might have noticed this post is late....due to no fault of mine really. Because apparently having wifi in rooms is such a tabu here in Cabo Verde I have been unable to write at the times I usually do. 

I am not saying there is no Internet what so ever, that would be just crazyness :D but it's only in the lobby/bar area and I didn't really want to leave D alone in the room with a sleeping Oscar on the first night :D

But let me tell you about the joy that was travelling with a 16 month old for about 8 hours (6 hours of that in a plane). And I'm not even joking about the ''joy'' part of this as it really couldn't have been better. Well it can always be better, but what we got was pretty damn good as well. 

I know no one really wants to hear a happy story, but I thin I still learnt a few tricks along the way that I can share with all the mama's going to travel in the near future :)

We only had about 45 minutes of this blissfull sleep until the silly lady started talking too loundly, but it was nice none the less and gave us a well needed break of entertaining the little one to keep him happy.

So here are my 5 tips to last a ''semi'' long flight with a toddler

1. Get new toys - I give all the credit to Dan for this one, because he was the one researching the good toys to get and actually got them in time and then managed to not give them to Oscar ahead of time. 

The 2 things I thought were pretty awesome were the buckle pillow, that you can see on the picture and sticker books.

The buckle pillow kept him entertained for a good half an hour initally and then he kept going back to it. So it was definitely a WIN. And the sticker book (stickers you can re-attach) is another one of those things he had so much fun with. To be honest he has been loving sticking little stickers everywhere lately, which is why D got it in the first place, but the fact that you can stick them on the pages and stick them again and again, is what made a huge difference. 

2. Bring snacks - the unheathy kind you know he will love

3. Be calm - you are locked in an airplane for the duration of the flight, so no matter how angry you will get, you will not be getting off early :D SO why bother stressing yourself and everyone around you out by being a stresshead.

4. pack all the baby stuff is one bag in separate zip lock bags, so everything will be easy to find when you need it. Snacks and drinks in one bag, diapers and wipes in another, toys and books in the third....you get the idea. Also pack a set of spare clothes...there might be explosions of all kind

5. If strangers wants to help you out.... let them :D you are in a contained space so no one can steal your child, so if he is willing to go for a little walk down the isle with a complete stranger, then let him :D you will get a little breather and your child will have a little change of scenery so to say.

But all in all we were so lucky with Oscar behaving so well on the flight and even during lift off and landing. And now it's our second night here and we are all enjoying it so much. More to come ...

So...As Always

Stay Tuned

xoxo

Meril

Holiday Week

Hello, Everyone :)

Let me start by saying how sorry I am for being late with this post. The plan was to still upload a post every morning at 9am like during Beauty Week, but life got in the way yesterday so I had no time to write or prepare anything. Tomorrows post will also be a late one, because we are travelling quite early and obviously I won't be able to do any work on the plane as there will be a little toddler needing all my attention at all times :D But that means I will be able to do an update of our travel day and tell you all about how it went :) And during Holiday Week I will be updating you all about how and what we are doing on (I can now reveal it)Sal Island in Cape Verde. 

Totally stole this picture from the Internet and I have really no idea if it's in Sal or another Cape Verde Island :D But hey I wanted a nice picture rather than a pile of suitcases that is sat in D's office waiting to be taken to the car tomorrow morning at 7am :( :D

So what have I been doing today? It feels like everything. I have been trying to get the whole family ready to go, packed my things and Oscars thing. I cleaned the house :D (Is it just me or coming home from a holiday is less painful when you know you are coming back to a clean home and clean bedsheets?)Prepped everything for the plane trip...so everything that is not going in the checked in luggage. I also went and got a few last minute things and collected the things we ordered .... All in a day :D And the day is not even over. Once I finish this post, because I told Dan I needed to do this, I have to go and help him clear our living room and cover our furniture, because while we are gone some work will be carried out....some wall plastering and stuff I'm quite happy about not having to witness :D OH, and I also did a food order for when we are back. We are getting back quite late on Tuesday and we will be arriving to a pretty much empty fridge, so I did our usual weekly food order for Wednesday morning. So I have been very busy here, but I'm glad I've made the time to write this post and let everyone know I haven't given up on the blog already :D 

But for now I hope to see you all back here every day for a week for Holiday realated posts filled with Sun, Sea and Burnt Shins (or hopefully just some tanned skin :D rather than burnt :)

And As always 

Stay tuned, everyone :)

xoxo

Meril

Weekend Away

Hello, Everyone :)

If you follow me on INSTAGRAM then you might have noticed that we had a little weekend away trip. We had a chance to go to the newest Centreparcs in Woburn for 4 days and spend a lovely weekend there. It was a nice break and it just hit every mark as to what we were looking for and expected. As D said, you think of something you would like and soon you will find out they have it :D (that's not a quote by the way, but it was something along those lines :D) What I'm trying to say that for a family who has a child under one it was the perfect place to go to. 

We arrived late Friday afternoon around 5pm. Check in starts at 3pm, but we had to go with O's schedule rather than anything else. It was actually a rather fast journey. train for 50 minutes and another 20 in a taxi and we were there. Most people drive there but obviously we don't drive. The thing is that if you drive you can drive up to your cabin and drop off your things and then go and park, but since we arrived in the taxi, the people in the reception were nice enough to get one of the security cars to drop us off to ours instead of us having to walk for 15 minutes with all our luggage and a baby. We stayed in a 3 bedroom/3 bathroom lodge with a sauna. 3 bedroom one, because it was kind of a last minute thing and that was all they had left. As in there was no need for all 3 bedrooms, we would've been fine with just 1 :D (I don't think they have 1 bedroom ones) We would've been fine with just a 2 bedroom one. The good thing about the big house was that it did have a sauna at the back :) SO guess it was worth it really.

The whole place was in a really nice setting. They had 4 different areas with houses/lodges/bungolows ?  I don't know what to call them :D and then in the middle they had a lake and a plaza with a sports centre and spa and then another centre with a subtropical swimming park and lots of restaurants. And it was all surrounded by a nice pine forest :D We loved the water park the most obviously because O is obsessed with water :D But enough chit chat. Here are some pictures we took. If you have any other questions about the place or the trip, leave a comment and I'll be sure to answer :)

Hope you enjoyed the picture overload :D

Stay tuned

xoxo

Meril

Easter Weekend Recap

Hello, Everyone :)
So I wasn't good enough to do a post before this one, but everything was quite hectic and I don't actually remember pausing just to sit down for a little chill until now :/ I mean I didn't even have time for breakfast and lunch 2 days in a row, which is really bad. Not healthy, so today I have actually given myself time and had a nice lunch and coffee and ok I didn't really take it easy, as I was cleaning and hoovering the whole house :D But still I feel like it's actually been an all right day in a sense of craziness :D But lets get to the point. It was a long bank holiday weekend which means you working people might have had a long weekend off from work or those of you who work in restaurants and bars...I feel sorry for you :D I've been there and done the whole bank holiday weekend shit :) And I'm so glad I haven't had to do it this weekend and I actually got to go out with some of the best of the best girls in the whole wide world :D

So Friday I don't even know what happened  but the day just disappeared :D To be honest that's what most days seem to do lately, there just don't seem to be enough hours in a day for me to do everything I would like to do. I feel like I'm being pulled from every direction and feel at my last stretch. Even though now that it is actually lighter outside for longer I do feel less tired once I've put Oscar to bed as it just...I don't know...I feel less tired. Or maybe it's because I've been having my morning naps again :D Oscar is now sleeping in his own room and for the first few nights it was quite straining to get actually out of bed and feed him during the night, but D took him for the first 2 mornings, so just the knowing that I get the few hours in the morning made me get through it. Another thing that is actually a bit annoying that after we moved him to his room, he went back to having two feeds a night :( Hopefully the second feed will drop out soon enough again though because it's just so close to his waking time anyway...fingers crossed :)
I'm rambling again :D I'm sooo sowwweeeey :D

Saturday just kind of happened. I had to do a food shop for Sunday which took me 2-3 hours. And when I got back I was hoping I can start getting something done or clean something or clean myself up a bit. But no. D told me he is going to town the second I got back and two minutes later he was gone. So everything I had planned to do had to be done while taking care of a very active baby who now is discovering the whole house as he can crawl forward. By the time D got home around 6pm I had actually done pretty much nothing. I hadn't fed O or gotten him down for his nap, so I was just in a little mood, because I don't go out often. It would've been nice to get ready and look all nice. Which is why there will be no outfit post from that night out. I ended up wearing a short dress some sheer black tights, a black sweater and gold accessories, but I just felt frumpy and not up to scratch for a Saturday night out :D

On Sunday I don't even know how I got everything done :D D's family was meant to arrive around 1pm and when I woke up at 10 AM I had so much to do and cook. But at the end I did manage to put out quite a nice spread for the guests and had a nice day :)

So here are a few pictures from my weekend :)

Happy Easter from the strawberry face. He tried it for the first time this weekend and loved it. Didn't really like the watermelon for eating more like squeezing the juice out of it and making a mess :D

Hope you enjoyed the post :)

Stay tuned for a casual sweater dress Wednesday look post :)

xoxo

Meril