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Sunday Mini Styles #30

Wow. Sunday Mini Styles is 30! I remember the evening when I just randomly started this blog nearly 9 months ago. I'm so proud of how far it's come and it has really helped with my sanity as a first time mum. Sunday Mini Styles has been something I've done consistently pretty much from the beginning and I still love writing up this post every week. Most importantly I have connected with so many cool mummies by writing these posts. Hello to all of you, I appreciate you :) x

Let me get straight into this weeks outfit.

River Island  denim shirt  |  H&M stripped vest  |  Gap jeans  |  Zara scarf & shoes 

I can only apologise for the quality of this flat lay. The sun hid at 12.30pm (how rude!) and there was no natural light. No matter what I did to try and edit this photo it still didn't look great.


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A Day With: Happy Mama = Happy Baby

A Day With: Is a fun series I am running on the blog. I love 'day in the life' style mummy posts. They are fun to read and interesting to see the way different mums manage their days. I think all mummies are superheroes  We all have our own challenges with managing our lives and running our households, but we get through it and that should be celebrated.

If you want to have a nosey at the first posts of this series, here they are:

A Day With: Eat.Love.Live
A Day With: The Moderate Mum
A Day With: Motherhood: The Real Deal

Todays guest is Julie from Happy Mama = Happy Baby. Julie, her husband and her 16 month old baby boy live in Portugal (are you jealous yet?), having recently moved back there after a 5 year stint in Brazil (you must definitely be jealous by now!).

I love Julie's gentle parenting approaches. She shares them on her blog and it's lovely to see them in her day to day. I also love the idea of baby yoga. I'm totally going to look it up and see if they do it in my neighbourhood.


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Losing Baby Weight Challenge Update: Nov 25th 2015


My weight loss challenge has been coming along nicely this week. My determination and will power is very much sticking around thankfully. I did have an overindulgent cheat day on the weekend. I felt like I needed it at the time but now I am kicking myself because our holiday is creeping up and every little effort is going to help shift those pounds.

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To My 15 Month Old Baby Girl

I always say that one of the greatest things about writing this blog is that you will be able to look back at this for many years to come and read all about how much fun we had, what real life looked like for us and understand just how loved you are.

You are now 15 months and you are becoming such a little character. You are the funniest, craziest and most endearing person that I know and I am so totally blessed to spend every day with you and watch you grow.


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Losing Baby Weight Challenge Update: Nov 16th 2015

OK so I promised I would weigh in every week before I go away so today is the day!


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I'm Sad. I'm Heartbroken.

I'm feeling a bit lost this week.

Let me rephrase that. I'm feeling very lost. On Friday, after getting home late from being out visiting family, I was settling Baby Girl in her cot. She was pretty much asleep. I was lying next to her and singing to her, waiting for her to go into a deep sleep before I could creep out of her room. It was about 10pm. Something told me to check my phone and have a look at the news. I must have read one of the first news reports about what was happening in Paris. As I read, I knew this was bad. Very bad. When I left her room I went straight down to the living room and told my husband J what I had read. We put the news on and watched the live reports. He ended up falling asleep on the couch, as he often does.

I was in a weird place where I couldn't stop watching, but I just didn't want to know. I wanted to hide away and be oblivious, but it was too late. I watched the whole thing unfold and finally forced myself to bed at around 2am. I went to bed that night with a broken heart. My heart was broken for the victims of this senseless crime. My heart was broken for their families. My heart was broken for the people of Paris and one of my favourite cities. The very city where my fairytale began and J proposed. My heart was broken at how many people this would affect. My heart was broken because this was one of those things that reminded me that the world isn't always a good place.

What will come of this? Is this just a horrible isolated instance, or could this really be some kind of new normalcy? My heart was broken for my innocent baby girl, sleeping soundly in her cot. What world have I brought her into and what will her future be like?

Taken today by my kitchen window

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Sunday Mini Styles #29

There is so much 'diva-ness' in today's outfit, I just can't take it!

A diva - Baby Girl is certainly becoming. I'm sure it's got a lot to do with a stage she is going through to but I have no doubt that part of it is just her developing personality. She knows what she wants and she knows how to get it, whether it be fake crying, trying to be cute, or busting out words we haven't heard her say before. At nearly 15 months I'm finding her so much fun and she is hilarious. She is hands down the person who can make me laugh most in the world.



Next gillet  |  H&M vest  |  Primark leggings  |  Choice boots
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A Peek Into My Home: Bathroom Tour

My blog is like my little online diary. The things that I hold close to my heart feature heavily - family, food, and fashion (mainly of the baby variety).

One really important thing that I don't blog about is my home. I really am a homebody. There's nothing more I love than being curled up in my humble abode with my family, spending hours in my kitchen making wonderful creations, soaking in my tub, hanging in my living room and in front of a roaring fire when winter kicks in, and lazing in my bed in my ultimate haven - my bedroom. My home is where many of our family memories are made. This is where J lived when I first met him. Together we tranformed his bachelor pad into a family home - in more ways than just the renovations. This is the home where we planned our wedding together This home is where we brought baby girl after she was born.

When I was 7 months pregnant we did a full house renovation that included an extension, walls being knocked down, new flooring throughout and a brand new kitchen. No room in the house was left untouched. It was stressful doing it so close to giving birth but it was totally worth it. The end result has been a house that we  love and we have chosen every little detail down to the kitchen cupboard handles. I have been thinking about it for awhile, but I'm finally going to do it. I am going to share these rooms with you in a very special blog series - A peek into my home!


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Losing Baby Weight Challenge Update & Weigh In

On Monday I realised that there are only 4 weeks until we go on our holiday. If you've read my previous weight loss posts you will know that we are going to Australia for a Christmas holiday and I want to be as beach body confident as I can. So I got on the scales and this is what I was faced with:


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Our Sleep Diary - How We Got Baby To Settle In Her Cot Without Using Controlled Crying

I'll hold my hands up. We've neglected our night time routine for far too long. It's not that we haven't been sleep deprived. Believe me, we have. We've not really be confident with how to tackle night times. We've been really unsure about trying controlled crying. Rocking Baby Girl to sleep when she was a newborn used to work a treat. Put some music on, rock for a few minutes and put her in her cot asleep. Then it started to take longer for her to fall asleep. Then some nights she didn't want to be rocked but she didn't know how to fall asleep any other way. Then it was too late to easily put her down in her cot sleepy. And the putting to sleep process got longer and longer. The night wakings got worse and worse. We could never put her down in her cot without her already being asleep.

Things started to improve a bit but then as soon as Baby Girl turned one it went downhill rapidly. We had regular refusals to sleep until midnight, waking every hour, refusing to go into her bed, waking and then wanting to play, refusing to sleep anywhere but our chest. We were parenting 24/7 without time to reset ourselves. There was no time to wind down at the end of the day or even for a stretch of sleep for longer than 3 hours most nights.

J and I decided that for our sanity, we had to make some changes by doing things differently at night. We had to teach our girl that her bed is her bed. That is where she goes at night and that is where she stays. Most importantly we had to teach her how to fall asleep in her bed and settle herself when she woke.

I'm really quite proud of how far we've come in 2 short weeks. I kept a sleep diary to track our progress and I thought I would share it.

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Sunday Mini Styles #28

The only thing this weekend has been good for has been to snuggle up indoors and bond with the family. I don't mind the weather getting colder but constant rain just makes me want to hibernate and never leave the house. *Dreaming of an Australian summer in a months time - bring on our holiday!*

This week's main feature is from one of our trusty high street favourites H&M. I love that H&M are both affordable and stock the latest trends. Grid patterned dungarees, who would have thought you could pick some up from H&M? From memory, I think they were £14.99 and I found them last week.

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Self Saucing Chocolate Pudding Recipe

I have so many early family memories based around food. My mum is the world's best cook and even though as we were growing up she was studying full time, working full time and being a full time mum and wife she always made sure we had wholesome home cooked meals. She is definitely my inspiration for providing the same for Baby Girl. She is also the reason behind both my love of food and sharing that with people.


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Sunday Mini Styles #27

Oh dear! I have been Instashopping again. I just can't help myself. Recently I discovered Sofia Rose Boutique who source some gorgeous pieces to sell on their fab Instagram page. I've already purchased a few bits from there and today I am featuring this gorgeous shirt.



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