A pink pony came to live with us...

Friends that we didn't get to see over Christmas because of various illnesses met us in Banbury last week. We had lunch and a catch-up and they gave Martha this very pink rocking pony!!! It's just fab! I would never contemplate buying her something like this (boring mummy!) but she just loves it. When Mike was assembling it Martha was there with the screwdriver trying to help!

You squeeze the ears and it clip-clops and neighs and a red heart flashes on it and the mouth opens - Martha is just enchanted with it all. She rides on it and sings "Seesaw Margery Daw" which comes out as "maddery daw" and all the dollies and the monkey get a ride on it too.

Dinner with Friends

Went out to dinner locally with Lynn and Julie and had a lovely evening - the food was cooked to perfection and the tiramisu was divine! We also sneaked in a couple of starters to share and a bottle of way-too-nice wine! Lovely times.

Birthday loveliness

Birthday dinner in Leamington Spa

Cupcakes at the Yew Tree Cafe

Canal boats by the aquaduct

Vietnamese sushi

Birthday teapot


I celebrated my birthday at the beginning of the month and I really enjoyed it! Lots of lovely presents arrived mostly in the mail - a new lovely fuschia-coloured handbag, Benefit make-up, shoes from Next, a Gino cookbook, a case of bath goodies, Amazon vouchers - I was thoroughly spoilt.
On the day we went to music class, had sushi for lunch, chatted on the phone to several people then Martha and I met a friend with her little boy and we walked by the canal and went to a cafe at a craft centre at Wootton Wawen. The next day I had lunch out at our local Christian cafe with my parents (lovely there and very child-friendly) and that night Mike and I finally made it to see the King's Speech with dinner at Pizza Express beforehand (I love that place :))- it really was a fun couple of days.

A round up of February

February has been a nice month for us, lots of business success for me and hard work. I was very structured and disciplined and it really paid off. I worked pretty much every Saturday morning doing stalls which was good and Martha got to spend time with Dad. Martha and I also went to lots of weekday kiddie groups and had a lovely time with everyone.
We celebrated Valentine's which was really nice and quite fun. Martha made her first craft item at playgroup - a hanging card heart but she wasn't too keen to hand it over to Daddy so we hung it in her room!
This month we had a few friends for dinner - Uncle B & Auntie F and Hazel who came to Sunday lunch (and brought amazing jam and hyacinths and wine - lovely treats), friends Sue and Daz came for curry & a catch up just this weekend and a couple (Lou and Dave) came with their boys too for us to get to know them a little better. Also old friends Andy and Caroline came - we hadn't seen them for years so that was a big catch up time...definitely need to do that again soon.
I caught up with some scrapbooking and Mike got some log chopping done and we sorted out a few things in the house. The month has flown by and now it's March 1st already.


A nice time at soft play with friends. Martha was only keen to dress up when she saw the Thomas outfit.

Still loving a hat - Martha steals her Dad's hat as soon as he is home from work.

We nipped into the Monday coffee morning at church to sample a pink cake - yum!

I can reach the veg basket!

Mike and I had dinner together on Valentine's night - steak and mash and minted veg followed by melt in the middle chocolate puds (all courtesy of Waitrose!) It was lovely not to cook - just fling it all in the oven. And a bottle of prosecco ensured I was asleep by 9pm, how romantic!!

My first attempt at Red Velvet cupcakes for Valentine's Day - red sponge and cream cheese frosting, pretty good!

We loved The Blue Train music at our Musical ABC class. It is all played by recorders. On the last day of term every child joined in with the music while bubbles were blown all around to imitate the steam from the train - pretty special for little ones!

A new find - Martha loves her sticker books and they keep her amused for ages. It's good when I am doing a few work things at the dining table. Having a business that allows me to be home for Martha is great but it does mean that I do need to do some daytime stuff from time to time. I do feel really fortunate that I can be flexible though - REALLY fortunate!

A choo choo train in the park and the doggy hat that Martha loves with long black ears! We met some new friends and talked to lots of dogs out for walks. Fun times!