July 2012 zoomed past

Sunny smiles and stripes!

The coconut shy at our church outing

Severn Valley Railway for Mike's birthday weekend away 

Babyccino at Pizza Express

My friend gave me this fabulous framed photo of Venice !!

Cake and singing for Daddy :)

What happened to May?!

We had a busy month :: Martha was making sure she made the most of the last month of being 2!!

We delivered invitations to Martha's 3rd birthday party - an invite, a personalised ribbon and a sugar mouse!

We celebrated my brother-in-law's 40th birthday with all the family going out for a meal and then having Sunday dinner together along with plenty of cake & bubbly :)

I made a Gruffalo cake for Martha's actual birthday

We used a birthday ring for the first time

Martha had a playhouse for her present

We went to a farm day with a homeschool group - utter bliss, what a lovely day.

We played in the garden lots and hot-tubbed too.

Opening parcels

The essentials of a good birthday - balloons and cake

Martha had "pulled elbow" but still managed to help one-armed with gardening

Preparing the party bags

Lunch for little ones and lunch for mummies

More cake...

Toadstool cake - fun to make (Annie Rigg recipe)

More toadstools...

Hilarious pass-the-parcel

We made birthday crowns

We have had a lovely time celebrating - the weather was lovely & we did lots of great fun things and saw friends and family. 

Fun times

This month there has been lots of playing with friends.

...lots of painting and drawing and learning letters

...lots of blowing bubbles and gardening - we have planted beans and flowers and kept the potatoes watered.

Back to work

We totally loved our Easter break and all the bits & pieces that we crammed into it. Now we are back to work and I have to say I was ready for it today. I really enjoyed getting back into sending emails and booking events and contacting people. 

Until the end of May we have a great charity incentive for people who want to join the business and start Phoenixxing for themselves. 

Have a look at http://www.phoenix-trading.co.uk/web/annewilson 

There has never been a better time!

Lynmouth

Lynmouth was a good place to stay for 2 days. We found a hilltop apartment (Glen Lyn Gorge) with a four poster bed and a woodburner stove. It was basic but lovely and reminded me a lot of Italy with hairpin bends to walk up to reach it, sea views and high ceilings. Made me want to read Marlena Di Blasi's books about Italy again (I used to read these regularly but since Martha came along, not so much!) 
In the morning before the tourists arrived we walked along the stony beach and visited the swing park - lovely times :)

Wild Beautiful Exmoor

  The Exmoor ponies

    New hat!

I hadn't been to Exmoor before and loved it...wild undulating hills, gorse, fabulous coastline, sheep, ponies. pheasants, villages, Devon teas.

I am sure we will be back here again to explore further as this was just a fleeting visit. 

Happy (Mad) Campers :)

After Spring Harvest we moved a few miles west and ended up at Cloud Farm which I had read about for quite some time. It was a fab site, real campfires, a cafe with delicious cream teas on offer (it would be rude not to try one) and also a takeaway or eat-in service in the evening which we made use of and decided not to cook as it was a bit cold, damp and windy. 


The new bell tent was great, we loved it. The surroundings were very beautiful but...we didn't have a thick enough/big enough mattress so we were achy and uncomfortable. I bought the Bill Brown stripey double mattress from Bell Tents UK but really you need more, especially if a small girl won't stay in her bed and ends up in the middle sprawled out. It was a good try out though. Next time we will take a trailer and put the wide mattress in which will be perfect...we can't do with creaky joints and back ache at our age!