Twas the night before Christmas

and all was still....until Father Christmas visited!!

Yes that's right...he's Beeeeeen!

Here is a sneak peak of the festive goods in store.

I cant wait to take a million snaps tomorrow and feast on all the festive food!

Finley has quiet frankly been spoilt rotten but anyone could have told you that.

See you all soon

Have a wonderful Christmas

Love Kayleigh x

Our Twinkley Christmas Bun

Wow...nobody ever told me that once you have kids Christmas engulfs your whole life for the entire month of December. Wrapping, cleaning, list making, card designing, present ordering, food shopping....I'm tired out all over again just reading that! 

Everyday for the past week I sat in my good old blog writing area (the couch) to write blog posts on all sorts of exciting things but could I finish one of them, nope! I have 3 draft posts crying out for photos but i just haven't had chance to take them, one reason being I have been THE most busy Christmas person ever and analysing the 'big' food shop over and over until I think we have everything but a box of cotton buds in the trolley. And the second reason is there is no natural light anywhere! I have a weird 'thing' that I have to take pictures only in the day when there is an abundance of sunshine....not something that the North West is known for in the Winter! I need to buy that lightbox I keep promising myself!

Anyway I thought I would make use of the dark, gloomy, drizzly weather and off I went to grab Finley, some fairy lights and my camera!

After I made Matthew risk life and limb climbing on chairs to disassemble our kitchen fairy light feature all for the love of photography we headed to the darkest spot in the house to take a few snaps.

As with the majority of my posts this may be a little picture heavy, but hey who doesn't love looking at the most adorable pictures ever?! 

I have had this idea pinned on my Pinterest board for ages and I finally managed to tick it off :) I just wish we had time to re-do our Christmas cards as I would use one of these pics to send out to family!

Ever since Finley started crawling it has been so difficult to get any pictures of him sat still, the majority I get now are of a blurry baby zooming passed the camera or of him trying to escape up his stairgate. He was so fascinated by the lights he sat there playing with them patiently whilst I managed to get a few decent snaps in.

I think he looks like an angel in this picture, you could just imagine if it panned out there would be his beautiful white angel wings....

Thank you so much for taking the time to read and please share your Christmas snaps with me either in the comments below of on my Facebook page here

Love Kayleigh x

Its Officialy Christmas

...well it has been officially Christmas since last Sunday but I have only just got around to writing the post, it seemed to take me forever to edit these pics, I was distracted by all the festive-ness and started browsing Christmas songs on Youtube. Concentrate Kayleigh, concentrate! Here is a pre-warning - this may become a rather picture heavy post!

Anyway, I wanted to show you all a few snaps I took of us putting up the Christmas decorations ready for Finley's FIRST EVER Christmas. *yay*

To be honest I had imagined a lovely Sunday of making paper chains together, watching Elf and Finley rolling around on a bed of tinsel but the reality was slightly different. Instead we missed Elf because Uncle Buck was on, Matthew distracted Finley with the tree star whilst I took almost half an hour de-tangling beads, which you cant even see on the tree *sheesh* and to top it off Finley decides he dislikes the tinsel very much and doesn't agree to wear it as a garland he so promised when I was 8 months pregnant last December!

Note the disapproval of a Tinsel necklace

Our Christmas Star in his Christmas PJs

t still turned out to be a lovely family festive afternoon and we enjoyed creating our own little Santa's grotto, if I had my way I would have 100% more decs up but Matthew said I was already verging on tacky...but isn't that the whole idea? I wont bore you all to tears with a picture of every single decoration we own but here are a few snaps of the tree :) 

Once we got on a roll hanging up stockings and pinning up the bunting it didn't take too long to complete the look we have now, 'a colour jumble' if you will, I haven't gone for the traditional matchy matchy look, I prefer the rustic mis-matched look. I cant wait for next year for Finley to add some homemade baubles and hanging pictures, possibly even Spiderman if he doesn't mind living in the tree for a month. 

I just had to add that this is one of our Christmassy candles we currently have burning, now I'm not one for spices especially cinnamon and this goes against all my dislikes for a candle scent, but, I love it. It is a spice-fruit combo and smells just like well...Christmas! My other fave is Cranberry which came in a set we bought here.

I shall leave you with this lovely pic of Finely and I celebrating our decorations success. Oh, it is the law to wear your hair in a bun and wrap tinsel around it from the 1st December onwards :) 

Quick read this *ssshhh* here is a secret mini quiz for you, I have secretly put little birdys in some of the photos above. Take a look and let me know in the comments how many you can spot!

Hope you all have your decorations up and counting down the days till Father Christmas comes!

Love Kayleigh x

Gearing up for a change

A while back I wrote a post about the pressures of losing weight after a baby, or losing weight in general in my case! I spoke about doing it for you and when you are ready, and not to feel rushed into anything, I certainly know the first year of Finley's life was special and as a first time mum I had enough daily worries like, 'why hasn't he pooed', 'what is that tiny red dot on his arm', 'oh no its injections day'. So for me adding calorie counting and snack worrying into the mix just seemed too much at the time...plus I just enjoyed eating and not worrying about it.

However I now feel like the time has come to shed a few pounds stone and feel a little more 'Kayleigh' again. I didn't gain too much weight when I was pregnant but I certainly have gained since my wedding in 2010....

Right now I'm not too sure which road to go down to loose the weight but I can guarantee one thing once I am given the challenge of weight shredding I go full force, for someone that is rather podgey I have THE best willpower. Back in 2009 I lost over 3 stone and when I look back at pictures I am happy with the overall look I achieved, I don't want to be too thin because I still like the idea of a more curvy figure, but I definitely need to be more healthy.

In the past I have considered surgery to help me get rid of the extra weight for good, and very nearly went through with it but looking back I am so glad I didn't. 2 family members did go through with it and the new 'them' they so yearned for turned out to be a very unlikeable version of themselves. That being said it is my own experiences that have led me to think this way and I'm sure not all people have experienced this. For me it really isn't worth all the sacrifices that come along with bariatirc surgery, I love food far too much to sacrifice it for life so there is no wonder they highly advise counselling afterwards! Being chunky is part of me and my personality and I know that without my belly and chubby cheeks I would be very different. So with that all said what I am trying to get at is I still want to be me, I'm happy with my personality, I'm happy to occasionally eat a twix and actually enjoy it or treat me and Matthew to a dominos on a Friday night! I'm happy with my quirky personality and my sarcastic sense of humour...the only thing I want to change is my size slightly, all I want to do is fit in a pair of Topshop jeans...comfortably! 

Courtesy of Pinterest

I may seem to contradict myself on weight loss now and again as sometimes I am very contented in my skin and it doesn't bother me in the slightest, yet other times like today I would love to be a lot thinner and think back to the years I was so much thinner *sigh*

For now I shall have a look around to see what new weight loss plan/methods would suit me best, I have tried many many ways to loose weight in the past and I may possibly re-visit some old 'friends' in the new year, but I will be sure to keep you all updated. 

Do you have any new years resolutions you plan on sticking too for 2013? Good Luck! 

Love Kayleigh x 

A cheeky morning with Finey

This post is a little bit of an accident really, I was just snapping away on the camera trying to get some shots of Finley sporting his festive jammies when I realised he was just being plain cheeky! At the moment it is almost impossible to get a picture of him sat still...instead he is always doing the 'I promise I'm being good Mummy/Daddy' face, whilst climbing up any furniture he can find!

To be honest I'm not surprised, I think he is getting me back for disappearing a few times this week. On Wednesday I had to leave him for the longest time ever...13 hours 40 minuets to be exact!!! *Sigh* and to add to my already mummy anxiety I was over an hour away in Manchester! For all those people who may be interested I was at the Employment Tribunal courts observing, so concentrating on cross examinations took the edge off wanting to constantly sob and call home. 

Then the next day I was out with all my bestest work chums for the works Christmas Tea, it was a quick Chinese before we got drenched running to the car to get home to Finners.

Anyway, I wanted to share a few of the lovely snaps I captured of Fin being a good old cheeky chap! I wouldn't expect anything less of an 11th month old baby boy....and I have a sneaky suspicion he isn't growing out of it any time soon! That is fine by us, we just love our spirited bun full of giggles and mischievous glances. 

Theres the 'look' I was talking about!

As I chased him back into the front room out of the Kitchen he headed straight to the DVDs, this baby just doesn't want to take it easy.

Let me know if your little ones are keeping you on your toes? Oh oh oh guess what.....the Christmas tree is going up tomorrow! YAYAYAYAY 
'I love you, I lovvveee You, I LOVE YOU' -can you guess my most fave Christmas film from that quote??

Love Kayleigh x

Daddy Loves Finley this much

A slightly different post for you all tonight but I thought you might be interested in Matt's most recent addition :) Here's little background for you all first.

When Finley was teeny tiny I already knew he wouldn't be a cuddly type that snuggled with a Teddy or curled up with a glow worm in his cot. So after a little searching I opted to buy him a few Lamaze items, fun, educational but still have a hint of 'teddy' I so want him to love. One turned out to be his most cherished toy of all time...the one the only Mr Robot. 

He pops up everywhere!

Now...to all you Lamaze enthusiasts out there you will probably know that his real name is 'Rusty Robot' but my husband being the creative genius he is came up with Mr Robot and it has stuck, thinking about it there is a theme running will all his toys....Mr Robot, Mr Giraffe, Mr Peter Rabbit...hmmmm! 

Anyway I wanted to show you all the Tattoo Matthew had in honour of our Fin Sausage. In total I think he has around 23ish tattoos to rival my zero haha! This was his latest and of course our most favourite one. 

It isn't your ordinary tattoo but hey, we're not the kind of family that does ordinary and when Finley gets a little older it will be great to tell him the adventures of Mr Bun and Mr Robot.

You may also be wondering who Mr Bun is....

When I was pregnant we always referred to our baby as the 'Bun' and as soon as we found out it was a boy it was Mr Bun from then on. We had three names for Finley before he arrived but we never called him his name till he was born, so it was always 'this would be lovely for Mr Bun' or 'its in Mr Bun's room'. To this day he is still our Mr Bun and he probably gets called that more than his name!!

Matt has said that he would like to get another tattoo with Finley's proper name, probably when he is a little older so Finley can write his own name and it will be an exact copy of his handwriting. I on the other hand shall be a big girls blouse and admire Matthew's tattoos from afar.

A bit of a random post for you all but I would love to see if you have any little tributes to your babies :) 

Love Kayleigh x