Pre-pregnancy - 7 months in

We're just entering our seventh month of TTC - or 'Trying To Conceive'. I've joined up to a couple of forums to chat with other women who are trying to get pregnant and that's about the only acronym I can remember... and I've still no idea what 'evap' is.

There seem to be babies everywhere - even on the Audi advert at the cinema. We turn on the TV and we have recordings of Jane the Virgin. Laura Diamond thinks she's pregnant. We decided to try to finish off the Friends DVDs and realised that we're watching the series where Emma's just been born and Monica and Chandler are trying for a baby. And if you've read the latest Harry Dresden? Well, you'll know.

I also seem to be at the age where all the women I went to school with are either pregnant or have just had babies.

Last year after my sister-in-law got pregnant she told us that they'd decided she'd come off the pill and they'd 'just see what happened' - you know, oh-so-casually. I usually have the Jeremy Kyle show on while I'm cooking and, as you'll know if you've ever watched it, it seems the contestants (yes, I call them 'contestants') just need to message someone on Facebook and they get pregnant. There was a girl on there the other day - she'd been with her boyfriend for nine weeks... and she was nine weeks pregnant.

It seems to be so easy for everyone else.

Realistically, I know that it takes time - about 6 -12 months for the average couple - and that in the grand scheme of things, compared to some couples that try for years, 7 months isn't a great amount of time. But the frustration is starting to set in.

Also, if you've ever read online articles on how to get pregnant, the information is confusing. I've read baby/pregnancy-related sites that say the only time to try is around the time of ovulation (and if you miss that 48 hour window, you're stuffed) and I've read the NHS website that said a woman could get pregnant at any time of the cycle - which is always what I was taught growing up. My mother used to tell me that my reproductive system was always trying to get pregnant, working against me at every turn, so I'd sort of assumed that when I came off the pill last year that getting pregnant would be pretty quick. If I'd have known then what I now know about the process I'd have come off the pill much earlier.

The other part of the frustration is not knowing what's going on. I've thought I might be pregnant a couple of times but the tests were always negative (obviously, otherwise this would a less frustrated post!). To SBB I've likened the process to being blindfolded and being asked to throw a dart. At a moving board. In the dark. Whilst you yourself are being spun in the opposite direction to the board.

Luckily, SBB is remaining quite positive and supportive but I know he's starting to feel left behind too. He's a great believer in things happening for a reason, and usually I am too, but I'm also impatient - I want to know what the reason is and what sort of timescale we're looking at!

Recipe: Fruity curry

My Mum makes an awesome fruity curry, but the rest of my family aren't curry lovers so her version is so mild you can barely taste the curry! I grew up eating it so it has a special place in my heart but since getting together with SBB he's introduced me to 'proper' curries so although it doesn't have quite enough of a kick for me anymore I still crave the combination of fruit and curry.

The list of ingredients is fairly small and it can be whipped up in a relatively short time.

The recipe serves two and is pretty customisable. You could throw in a diced stalk of celery, or a whole apple, dried cranberries instead of sultanas or even a few nuts. When I came to make this the other night I realised I didn't have any apricots (boo!) I did, however, have some cashew nuts so I threw those in instead and it was pretty awesome!

A tip for the apple is to choose the crunchiest one you can - I made the mistake of using a 'softer' one last time I made it and the apple was a little soggy, but then I always prefer my apples crunchy - if you don't, just add whichever apples you like as it won't really effect the recipe.

I usually make this recipe with cooked chicken - sometimes I can pick up a discounted fresh chicken from Co-Op for about £1.50 so I cook it as soon as I get home, strip off the meat and portion it into bags and freeze it to later use in pasta dishes, sandwich fillings and curries.

Ingredients:

• 20g of butter (or a couple of sprays of light oil if you're calorie counting)
• 2 fresh chicken breasts, diced (or 200g cooked chicken, shredded)
• 1 onion, sliced
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 3 tbsp curry powder
• 1/2 apple, diced
• Small handful of apricots, diced
• 70g sultanas
• 500ml chicken stock
• Salt to taste

 Melt the butter, or heat the oil, in a medium pan over a medium heat. If you're using fresh chicken, add this to the pan and cook until each side has a bit of colour - about 6 minutes.

Add onion and garlic to the pan and saute until translucent - about 6 minutes. If you're using pre-cooked chicken, add it to the pan now and stir in the curry powder. You may need to add a little water to stop the powder sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Add apple, apricots, sultanas (or whatever fruit/nuts you've chosen) and stock. Season with salt if you wish. Simmer for 10 minutes of until the sauce thickens.

I usually serve with 70g (dried weight) of brown rice or over a baked potato.

Do you have a fruity curry recipe? What fruit do you use?

An overdue introduction

It's past time that I introduced two very special little ones!

 These are some early pictures of my fur babies - they're only about 10 weeks old in these two photos.

 So let me introduce you. First we have Cillian, our beautiful little boy. He's a little camera shy but when we do get photos of him they're so worth the effort:

And then we have Pancho, our little princess. She's stubborn and spoilt and utterly gorgeous! She, unlike Cillian, loves the camera. I just have to say 'Pancho, pose!' and she will:

They're both mini lops and they've just turned three years old. They're not from the same litter and we bought them from a breeder in Shoreham-by-Sea - I'd love to give you a link to her website but she seems to have taken down it down.
Look for more cute pictures and antics in the future!

Birthdays and gardening

Yesterday was my 28th birthday - I kept expecting to feel different or that sense of being special that I used to get when I was younger but it just felt like a normal day.
We went food shopping in the morning and then headed out for lunch at The Wight Mouse Inn - we went with my parents, my mum-in-law and my nan on my dad's side. It was a lovely meal and the place had some great quirky touches to it.

Really want one of these!

Chocolate cake! Yum!

The view from the carpark

We missed our turning on the way home so ended up going through Kingston and and Chillerton - there's some lovely countryside. It was a shame that SBB had to nip off to pick up some keys because it would have been a great afternoon to go out for a walk.

New books

Happy Monday!

I had a little delivery at the weekend. Amazon was running a three books for £10 offer. Three books for a tenner? Yes please!

These are the ones I chose:

I'm so excited to get stuck in!

How about you guys? What are you reading/ which new books have you bought?

Starting to tile

Saturday was a good day and I don't mean in a Klingon way! (waves to fellow Trekkies) We headed into Newport to run a couple of errands and I popped into my favourite charity shop to pick up some more photo frames for the photo wall I'm planning for our living room. I don't know what it is about the charity shops in Newport but only one ever seems to sell a good range of frames.

It also stocks concrete lions - I was so tempted!

Our haul

 The only thing I tend to buy from charity shops is photo frames that I can strip down and redecorate (which reminds me, I need to upload the ones I've already done!) but this time even SBB picked up a couple of things - the copy of Les Miserables and the classical CDs.
I also picked up this:

I actually can't stand Stilton but something about the pot just called to me and I could see it sat on my kitchen window sill.

I also clocked this little baby in the window of Mia in St Thomas' Square. One size £10. Bargain.

I know it's nearing spring and orange is more of an autumn colour but I'm still looking forward to wearing it.
After our little shopping trip we headed over to B&Q to pick out some trim for the tiles in the kitchen. We dabbled for a while with the idea about having a brushed metal edge to match the sockets but in the end decided that it would make the edges too obvious and might make the tiled area look small. The fact that they were also about three times the price swayed us a bit too!

Up at the flat SBB got to work on the tiles while I finished off the painting in the bathroom and worked on the windows in the living room. While I was painting the frames I noticed some of the trim had come loose so I squirted some sealant in that I had to hand and smoothed it down.

Work at the flat will be more of the same for the next few days I think!

All women need two hairdryers and other rules for life

1. All women need two hairdryers - because your hairdryer will ALWAYS break when you have sopping wet hair and are running late. This means that you will have no time to fully dry your hair under the bathroom heater and then can't straighten it so will have to go to work where your colleagues don't want to mention your hair 'just in case you meant it to look like that'.

2. Typically you will always forget your phone and mp3 player on the day that the internet at work is broken meaning that you will have no music to listen to and won't be able to search for a back-up hairdryer.

3. After a long day when you have no enthusiasm for cooking the Chinese will be closed - despite the fact that you know they were open on the same day the week before.

4. You will have dressed in sweats and a slobby hoodie in the anticipation of running into the takeaway and not taking off your coat. When the takeaway is closed you will then have to sit in another eatery and take off the coat thereby exposing said sloppy outfit.

A First Christmas cuddly toy

It was my niece's first Christmas this year and I wanted to give her something that would last and that she would hopefully keep forever. From my own experience the soft toys that I've kept from childhood were the ones that were personalised in some way. I was very lucky and my parents had a very creative neighbour who knitted me a rabbit with a yellow dress and white ballerina shoes - I called her Buttercup. Now, I can't knit, so that wasn't an option but a few of the others I still have are ones with added ribbons or clothes made especially for them and that I could do! (Or so I thought)

I started out by buying a cute soft toy on sale from Mothercare and I was lucky that the one I had my eye on went into their (additional) 20% off toys sale so I ended up with a bargain at about £3.99!
I then bought an offcut of material and some ribbon from Hellerslea in Newport. The ribbon bundles were about 60p each and the material - which I think was a sample size - was about £2.

I browsed the web for ideas of designs and decided to try and keep it as simple as possible. I had a rough idea of what I wanted it to look like so I mocked up a paper version and then cut out the pattern from a scrap piece of material.

...There was just one problem. I forgot that the tension from the bobbin is too tight in my sewing machine so it ended up looking like this:

Hmm. Maybe I wouldn't be sewing a dress afterall...
This discovery was only made after about four hours of measuring and mucking up various different paper versions. I'll admit, finally defeated, I shed a few tears. My intended present was ruined. To my mind at least.

I gave up and settled on handsewing the bow and stitching her name onto the foot.

So, not entirely the Christmas gift I'd had planned but it's still a pretty cute present.

Happy New Year

Now that 2014 is coming to an end... What? I'm lagging behind in the post-Christmas-and-New-Year posts? Oh well. Here's a few snaps from over the festive period;

Christmas nails

Christmas Day breakfast - chocolate spread on crumpets. Yum!

Boxing Day dinner

Boxing Day dinner for the bunnies. I resisted the urge to arrange it differently ;)

Leftovers i.e. lunches for the rest of the week!

Somebody got peckish in Sainsburys (Not me!!)

Dinner with the girls

Week 1 - Christmas Countdown and the last few days

A second post from me today as I wanted to finish the countdown before Christmas (and I've only got hours left!).
Spoiler: we didn't get it all finished but here's an update of where we've got to. We only managed to get Dad over one night during the week as he was pulling some serious overtime.

While he and SBB were working in the kitchen I started the gloss work in the bathroom. Remember how it last looked all the way back in week seven?

Painted on the left, unpainted on the right

It's getting there

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, SBB and Dad tackled the hole for the hob. This had to be done carefully - particularly when moving it after it had been cut as it could snap. They reinforced the thinner cut edge with another strip of wood and a couple of clamps.

However, when we slotted the hob into place there was a problem. We discovered that the support struts didn't allow the hob to sit neatly in the hole.

Area to be cut marked out

So we chopped out a segment and replaced the hob only to find that there was now a section on the left that was also in the way.

This was annoying to say the least and I wonder if everyone has this problem with B&Q kitchens and hob tops.

Once we got that sorted we moved on to the sink. There was a gap between the cabinet and the rim of the sink that, while not visible from standing, would be glaringly obvious when getting things out of the cupboard. Why, oh why, did B&Q design it this way? Anyway, our solution was to use an offcut of the leftover plinth and screw it onto the top of the cabinet.

There was one problem. The screws securing the center column sat proud of the wood so Dad used a little drillbit called a countersink to skim a little out of the top of the screw hole so that the screws sat flush to the wood. I was pretty impressed - I had no idea what that drillbit did!

We then screwed everything back together and I am so impressed with how it looks. It's really coming along don't you think?

For the rest of the week and the last few days I'm afraid life has gotten in the way of DIY.

Christmas buffet spread at work

Keeping warm at work - Sweet popcorn Options hot chocolate (couldn't really taste any popcorn)

Favourite steak meal at The Lifeboat - yum!

 All of which finally leads us up to tonight. Christmas Eve. All the presents are wrapped, I don't have to do any cooking until Boxing Day (when SBB and I have our own belated Christmas Day) and Midnight Mass is hours away unless I fall asleep first... :)

Hope you all have a lovely Christmas. x