Crafts on Sea

Parenting

Oh I do like to be (heavily pregnant) by the seaside!

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Do you remember a little while ago I wrote a post about how to take to take your own photographs during pregnancy? Well, as fate would have it, while I was writing that post I was contacted by Marie Donn to see if I fancied doing some maternity photos with her.

marie donn photography

Marie is a proper photographer and does gorgeous lifestyle shoots so of course I said yes. And then the panic set in. I am not a supermodel. I am a normal woman, in my early thirties, living in Essex. Generally, I am quite happy with the above facts, but when you realise that someone is going to take pictures of you, being as normal a woman as you can be while heavily pregnant…. well, I was a little bit worried. …

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Messy play to beat the hot weather

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Messy play in the garden: keeps kids cool too!In the old days I used to love the hot weather. I have Raynaurd’s Disease too which means the times when I feel anything other than freezing can basically be counted on one hand. But six months pregnant? With a toddler? Hmm.

This great idea was something the Pre-school I visited yesterday were doing and when I recreated it at home today my friend told me to take pictures and blog it as it’s such a fab idea. I know that she reads this so I thought I better comply!

I filled the washing up bowl with cold water and a squirt of washing up liquid and chucked in a load of The Toddlers toys. Obviously not anything containing batteries! Toddler and his friend then spent ages looking for toys, taking them out, playing with them, putting them back in the water and, bonus, getting the toys clean at the same time. (I umm..don’t clean toys that often…)

Another added and brill bonus is that the BBC reported this week that one of their tips for cooling down in hot weather is to stick your hands in cold water. Much easier to get a child to do if there’s toys involved! They also encouraged wearing a damp tshirt which I can also report back certainly happened!

How are you keeping you and your kids cool in the hot weather? Any suggestions gratefully received!

How to take your own pregnancy photos

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how to take your own pregnancy photosTaking pictures of my (ever expanding) bump wasn’t something I really planned on doing until recently. There are no pictures of me pregnant with The Toddler. Well, ok, I’ve found one, but it’s at about 14 weeks and I just look a bit like I’ve had dinner. I’m not super self conscious about my body, but I think that, like a lot of people, the idea of a lens concentrating on my stomach makes me feel like perhaps I shouldn’t have eaten that third penguin before lunch today.

Then the other day I was reading the ‘wish I took pictures like that’ blog Capture by Lucy and I noticed that she had a section on pregnancy photography and I thought, well, why not? I’m not overly planning on doing this again so it might be nice to have something to look back on. It’s not like I have to put them up in my front room. Although I umm… appear to be publishing them on my blog so strangers can look at my belly. Once again I fail to have thought this through properly, eh?! …

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Diamonds, good. Fast cars, good. Polonium teapots…not so good.

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So, a couple of weeks ago a man contacted me and asked if I would like to do a product review on some clothes and I thought….hmm…. because the day he happened to contact me was super-dooper-spam-on-twitter day and anyone who contacted me that I hadn’t known since birth was treated with the level of suspicion that I normally reserve for Russian ex-military types with a teapot full of Polonium.
Which is strange, because in ye olden days I used to write a fanzine (yes, really that long ago, it was on ceefax and everything) and I used to get stuff to review all the time and never thought twice about it. Funny how one gets more suspicious in old age.
Anyway. Having worried for at least 15 minutes that this was a state sponsored attempt by The Man to Shut Me Down I then realised that a) this was unlikely and I should stop drinking so much caffeine and b) I could actually do with some new clothes for Jacob so I said yes and lo and behold a week later some goodies from Vertbaudet arrived in the post.
I did think that as a ‘proper’ product tester I should just let him wear their gear. However the Husband reliably informed me that if I dressed him all in pale colours he would look like Martin Bell.
Nice trousers!
Oh! And a nice top too! Apologies for the baby reins here, which rather spoil my modelling on the beach session, but he’d just walked down the steps onto the beach from the main road behind where, like a proper Essex Boy, he’d been trying to chase after 4×4’s and sports cars.
So yes, nice things, cheers! In terms of sensible testing, they do both require a bit of ironing which isn’t generally my biggest forte, so I do my best to leave that to John. One strange thing though is that the children’s clothes in Vertbaudet are 0-36 months or 2-14? And as my son is 18 months he looks a bit weird in baby clothes now so I struggled a bit to find something that looked like the ‘right’ age for him, I just can’t see him rocking much in the way of pastels these days, although maybe that’s just me.
If anyone else would like me to product test huge diamonds, 4×4’s filled to the brim with petrol or holidays in the Caribbean with baby sitting thrown in, I’m your girl. Just don’t send me the dodgy teapot, ok?