Look What Came Through The Letterbox

I love the new format!

Gorgeous new china

My bargain radio

There are also a few tutorials

I did notice that on the front cover there a price of £1.50, i suppose people who sign up for one will get it free and they will be for sale in the shops!

Lots of gorgeous new goodies, I love the new messenger bags and the cagoules in a bag too!!

I suppose your wondering who our potential new family member could be, you might of remembered me mentioning about getting a dog but we decided against it for the moment and chose to go for a cat instead, Mason our youngest is a very timid little boy and we hope that by having a cat it would help him, so we contacted our local RSPCA as we had seen some of their cats on the web. On tuesday a gorgeous cat was brought to see us, she was beautiful to look at but much bigger than we thought she would be, she seemed very relaxed around us and the older two loved her even though she scrammed both of them, Mason was very scared and we couldnt even get him into the room. So we have decided to wait until Spring when the kittens will appear (is it just me but I just presumed that female cats were like us ladies and got pregnant all year round, apparantly not!!!) as we think a smaller cat would suit him!! Steve came up with idea of preparing him for one, so last night Steve put two toy cats by the side of Masons bed with a saucer and some small lego bits which are food and he has to feed them every night and morning bless him!!

I have Louie at home poorly today, so not really getting much done.

Have you visited Lulu Carter blog, she has fab taste, she recommended a website http://www.redcover.com/ , you have to register but you can then drool over the most gorgeous houses!!! My faves are Natalie Robinson's beautiful home, Amanda Knox who owns Decorative Country Living and Amanda Meade who owns English Country living!

Warning - it means you will have to spend even longer on the internet now!

Claire xxx

Awards, thankyou's and bargains!!!

Good evening ladies, I should say men as well but I dont think that there are many of you out there reading my blog.....lol! As you can see I have been awarded the 'Real Persons Award', funny name but I think it means that you are as real as your blog.....which we all seem to be on here! It was given to me by the gorgeous Mel Mel, thankyou hun, I love your 'real blog too'.
I have to award it to 7 lovely bloggers so I award it too,
Lesely - Notes From My Days
Mary - Mary Poppins
Natalie - Summer By The Sea
Alison - Vintage Amethyst
Clairey - Blogging For Brenda ( I need to change this to Nothing Will Go Wrong)
Kathy - My Life and Other Beads, who's been an extremly busy lady at CL fair
Lea - All Things Shabby Chic, although I dont know where she has dissapeared too...lol!

Now this is a very belated thankyou to the lovely Natalie at Summer By The Sea, she very kindly made me this along with a gorgeous yellow heart (which I forgot to take a pic of but it is hanging in my kitchen) and I love it, it goes perfectly in my kitchen, thankyou again, you are so kind, I promise that you do have something on its way, that goes for you to Catherine aka Molly Cupcakes, I honestly have the worst memory ever and I do owe you a huge apology!!


Now onto my bargain, a Greengate king size throw for £40, I purchased mine from Homescence which is the same company as TK Maxx, I had seen the navy blue throw which Mel Mel has got in TK Maxx a week ago, I picked it up and put it back for ages but decided not to get it as I was supposed to be getting christmas pressies ( I ended up purchasing a gorgeous bookcase from Rossiters in Cardiff, its the same store as the one in Bath, and had it for a real bargain, I'll post about it in my next post), of course when I got back home I wished I had purchased it especially after seeing it looking gorgeous in Mels house. A few days later I popped into Homescence and they had the above throw and two smaller navy blue ones, I took hubby back later in the evening and he very kindly bought it for me even though he hates it and was convinced the boys would hate it to, much to his surprise they dived straight under it and have done ever since!!

Finally a piccie of my three taken on Children In Need Friday, it was wacky clothes day in school and they could go as mad as they wanted but this was the closest I could get them to going wacky, they also had odd socks on which isnt hard to do in my house....lol!!

Have a good evening.........Claire xx

New house to be... pics...before

We took the boys to see the house for the first time yesterday, so i quickly took a few shots around it.....I love this front door, its going to be painted green, haven't decided which shade yet!!The youngest one taking a pic with his pretend phone......note the fab carpet!!!

Dining room.....again check out the carpet, even though it's all 70's carpet throught the house, the condition of it is amazing, luckily all the downstairs has woodblock flooring underneath the carpets. Fireplace will be going, its identical to the one in living room,

Very child friendly doors....not

View down kitchen to back door...

view up kitchen to hall, it's a very long kitchen so we can fit table in space as seen above, all the units will be ripped out and replaced.

hall, stairs and landing carpet.....need i say anymore

I really like this landing window, although its not original it matches the one in the hall

even more amazing carpet, in my oldest boys room to be

fab tiles in bathroom, think they are known as chick tiles as you can make one out on each tile.

Are you jealous??

So yes we have our work cut out, luckily we are staying put here until the main things have been done.

Having a great weekend so far, Wales won the triple crown in rugby and fingers crossed they will win the 6 nations ( not sure they will beat France but are way ahead with points diffrence ) and Cardiff have just got through to semi finals of FA cup for the first time in about 90 years!!! Can you tell I like sport?

Didn't I Do Well

These are the gorgeous things I recieved from my boys for Mothers Day, I would like to point out, that they are layed out on the bed and not a table cloth if your wondering how creased the table cloth is..lol

I had a lovely day, was spoiled wrotten, woken up with pressies and a cup of tea and croissant in bed, mum in law popped over in the morning. Visited a place called the Pump House which is full of antiques from furniture, toys and fireplaces to lovely nick nacks, the only thing I bought was a enamel popcorn bowl which is currently holding bananas. Hubby took boys to park in the afternoon so had a extremly relaxing day. The only sad thing was not having my mum around, I took some Freesias to her grave on the Saturday as they were her favourite flower.

Hope you all had a good weekend xx

Piccies

I've finally managed to put some pics on, this top one was taken in Bourton-On-The-Water last year, my little one had just got over a nasty tummy bug that really wiped him out..bless him

These are the latest pics of the boys, I don't take as many as I used to. xx

My First Tag

Yeah, I've been tagged for the first time by Vintage to Victorian, thankyou...I've seen these tag and swaps that go on and hoped to be invited so I'm very pleased. The tag is about your own 5 favourite archive blogs, well mine won't be hard as I don't have many so I might have to change it a little bit.
You have 5 links which are.
1 : must be about family
2 : must be about friends
3 : must be about yourself-who your are, what your all about
4 : must be about something you love
5 : can be anything you choose.
You then have to write about the links then tag 5 other bloggers with at least 2 being new acquaintances, which won't be hard because your nearly all new!! So here goes
1 FAMILY
I have the most wonderful husband, I split from my ex husband vowing to never marry again when a year (didn't take me long to change my mind..lol.. )later my husband came in to my life, I know this will sound nuts but I belive my mum sent him to me just at the right momement in my life...in my eyes he is so handsome, he is everything to me and I hope he realises it, he's kind, funny but also brings me down to earth when I get carried away with things...straight away he wanted to be a part of my oldest two's lives who were one and three, he has a son from his previous marriage and we have a gorgeous little one between us. We are very lucky because as a step family we get on amazing, my boys adore him and my stepson who is a loving and caring boy. I'm proud of the fact that my older two have never seen any trouble between myself and ex, they see us as friends which I think has benefitted them.
All our boys are gorgeous (biased of course ) my stepson is 12 this year and has just started high school, popular with the girls, he loves football, rugby and heavy metal like his dad and has just started his own band, he plays drums and guitar and is growing up to be a wonderful young man.
Then there is my eldest who will be nine this year, he is my mature, sensitive and inquisitive, gorgeous looking first born, obssesed with football and football magazines (where does he get it from)he plays for a local team and takes it very seriously. Then comes to my middle one who will be 7 this year, he is the comedian of the family, he's cute with gorgeous green eyes and a cheeky grin, he's always smiling and very accident prone as he is a right daredevil who I'm convinced when he is an adult will be a adreniline junkie climbing mountains and doing other very dangerous trick to scare me. Finally we come to the baby, I say baby but he will be 5 this year, he has the longest eyelashes ever, when he was a baby people would stop me in the street even men to comment on them, people say he looks just like me which is the biggest compliment as he is gorgeous, bless him he does look a bit like a girl as he has long hair ( short hair just doesn't suit him ), he is also the naughtiest but tend to get away with it because of his looks. He will do anything to be involved with his brothers and is a real homebody and a proper daddies boy.
Gosh I've gone on a bit and it's only the first post.

2 FRIENDS
I know a lot of people, my husband hates the fact that we can go anywhere in the UK and I will see someone I recognise (even happened in New York ) but I don't have a lot of real friends, I'm sure that goes for a lot of you to....my closest friends don't really know each other either...my bestest friend is my hubbie.....then follows my bestest girlie friend who I have known for around ten years, she is the one I tell everything to and we meet up every week, go on shopping trips together, cinema to see really girly films our husbands don't want to see and is there whenever I need her plus when I move will be just around the corner...I have another very good friend who I used to work with who I see regular and speak all the time to and then I have a couple of school friends that I meet up with every couple of months to catch up....As all my boys are now in school I've made lots of new acqaintances with their friends mums and we go out around once a month.

3 ME
As you can tell I like to talk, if you met me in person withing 5 mins I've given you my life story, I don't mean to it just comes out and I'm a very open book but there are things that I can keep secret....I'm very honest, people see me has a happy person so if I'm not smiling or am quiet you know there is something wrong. I never judge people on what they do or how they live their lives. I used to be very laid back but since becoming a mum have turned neurotic and will cry over the slightest thing which really annoys me!! I have lots of dreams that I would like to happen but am learning to live with what I've got..

4 SOMETHING I LOVE
New York..don't know how to link my previous blog on New York to this. I can't explain what it is about the place that I love, I'm sure that there are equally many wonderful places in America and I've been to a couple of places but my heart really does belong there, I used to work as a beauty consultant for Clinique, not sure if a lot of you know that they are part of the same company as Estee Lauder and each year they choose a team from each part of UK, Europe, Japan etc as team of the year and my store won it, the prize was all inclusive trip to New York, this was the first time i had been and knew I was going to love it before I had got there. We were treated like celebs ,it was the real deal, fab 5 star hotel overlooking central park, escorted everywhere, dinner every night all paid for, river cruise (where I spent most of it in the loo being very sick as really bad traveller ) visiting the offices on 5th ave, meeting everyone who make up Clinique and Lauder. Our last night was a gala dinner at the River Cafe, this is situated in Brookyln just under Brooklyn bridge and has the most beautiful views over Manhatten especially at night, one of the highlights for me was having a glass of red wine spilt over my lap by my friend who immediatly threw a glass of white on top as she had heard thats what your supposed to do and having the vice president and creative director rush over and try clean me up, i have a great photo of them both with serviettes cleaning me up...I've since been back to New York and I'm sure will go many more in my lifetime.

5 ANYTHING
This is a hard one, there are so many thing I love , I suppose finding out about this blogging lark is one of them, my family and friends don't understand my passion for homes, interiors and lifestyle so it fantastic that I've met so many of you on line that feel the same the same way, I love everyday checking my favourite blogs to see what your all getting up to in your everday life and finding that we have the same interests and can relate to you all in so many ways....thankyou xx

Hope I have't bored you all do death, there are so many other things i've got to share!!!
I'm tagging the following
Buttercup and Roses
Molly Cupcakes
My Life and Other Beads
Vintage Heaven
Just Original
Have a good day xx

Sun is Shining

Doesn't it make such a difference when the sun is shining, apart from me noticing a million little finger marks on my windows...lol...it puts everybody in such a good mood and makes it so much easier to get out of bed.
So far today it has been a lovely day, it started with the arrival of some cute dotty cup and saucers plus a sweet gingham heart (pics to follow) from the lovely Jenny at Buttercup and Roses, then my friend phoned to say she is expecting twins, I'm so happy for her and her husband and little boy plus it will contain my own broodiness for a while!!
My eldest boy who is 8 and 3/4 (very important when you are desperate to be 9 ) has just come back from Football, his team drew the first match, won the second 7-1 ( he scored the 7th ) and lost the last, he's now in the bath as he was covered in mud. My youngest two boys ( 4 and 6 ) decided to bring every duvet and blanket we have in the house and just dump them in the living room, the plan was to make a headquarters for their army camp ( all of them love pretending to be in the army ) but have now abandoned the idea and of course mum is expected to take them all back upstairs while they play Mario Galaxy on the Wii with dad!
Monday we are going to view a house, I'm really excited as I have already seen it but hubbie hasn't apart from the details, it needs updating which is something I love doing so fingers crossed he loves it to!
It's half term this coming week so there will be no rushing around for us, just taking it easy which us howI like it.
In just under 2 hours we will be settling down to watch Wales against Scotland in the rugby, after last weeks 'Suprise' victory over England ( sorry English ladies, hubby English too, he wan't impressed) theres great excitement here in Wales, every one really takes it really personal if we lose..lol....mainly the men but I'm sure it will be a great game.
Have a good weekend everyone.xxxx