It's winter :)

Well its definitely winter here in Ireland now, there is frost on the grass and everywhere thats in the shade most mornings and there's a chill in the air. It was minus 2 degrees last night and I'm still sleeping with the window wide open, pregnancy heat's lovely :) Poor hubby has to sleep in Pj's and a dressing gown, with a hot water bottle! LOL

The down side to the frosty weather is undoubtably the cost in heating your home to a comfortable temperature, over here most people have oil fired central heating and the cost just keeps rising... We've opted for a wood burner since we have access to local, cheap wood and we love having a real fire in the house :) A friend of Al's dad is coming tomorrow to fit it into our chimney, I'm so excited...

The only thing is, do you think we have enough wood gathered up?? hehe

We borrowed Al's dads saw for the long chunky bits, it was brilliant,
about 1,000,000 times quicker than by hand!

There is something so lovely about opening your garage and smelling cut wood, sometimes I just stand for a few minutes and look at it smiling (like a crazy person!). It's just comforting to know that we will be warm and cosy this winter. Gathering up this wood has given me so much pleasure over the last few months, as I get older I seem to be more and more happy about the really simple things in life, does that happen to everyone?

Al's happy birthday :)

We had a lovely quiet birthday celebration this year for Al's 32nd, it was so special knowing next year he'd have a baby boy helping him to unwrap those presents! I bought him a few 'new daddy' things that were so cute I just have to show you.

These are from smiling tree toys, a small family business who hand make all their toys with love and you can really see it, I highly recommend them they are just stunning! Exactly the type of toys we'd imagined our baby playing with :)

One of my favourite places in England

When I was a child we lived in devon for a few years and we went to Clovelly lots, its a stunning little village with steep cobbled streets that only accommodate donkeys - no cars! On the walk back up from the sea we always had a clotted cream ice cream :) The simple pleasures are what you remember! So when we went back in September I had to take Al. It's great to be able to show him little glimpses of my childhood, since most of it is scattered round the world there's not much I can show him 1st hand so this was quite a special day :)

5 month bump!

mmmm Ice cream :) takes your mind off the walk back up tho!