We chose a rainbow theme for Florence’s 1st Birthday party and along with the decorations and games we also tied in the food with it. I got a lot of inspiration from Pinterest and loved creating the menu for her big day. I thought I […]
I can hardly believe it’s over! I’ve spent the last month or so planning Florence’s first Birthday Party and on Saturday all of my plans came to life. 60 of our friends and family came to celebrate our little girl turning one and we honestly […]
Last week, in preparation for Florence’s first birthday we headed out to a local park for a little DIY First Birthday photo shoot and an attempt at a cake smash. Having turned to Pinterest for some inspiration, I knew exactly the look I was after.
Florence wore a pink stripe romper from H&M. We borrowed a white teepee from our friends and took along a white bed sheet to use as a blanket. I laid some pink roses close by and hung some ivy around the entrance to the teepee to symbolise her name – Florence Ivy. We took two balloons – a giant silver ‘1’ and a pink latex balloon.
Florence adores Teddy bears & soft toys at the moment so I thought it’d be a nice idea to include some of our favourites in here too. I set them up like a little teddy bears picnic. Each of them have their own little story as to why they’re special to us – one used to be mine as a little girl, one is a collectors bear that Sean and I bought years ago for our future babies, another is a bear from my childhood and the bunny is Florence’s First Build – a – Bear that my mum bought her.
And then for the cake. I chose this pink rose celebration cake from Sainsbury’s for our cake smash and placed it upon a white cake stand. Despite our best efforts, when it came to actually ‘smashing’ the cake, Florence just wasn’t interested! She just looked at us as though we were bonkers.
Instead though, we just let her play with her bears and the balloons which made for some beautiful captures, even if I do say so myself.
I shot these using the SCN, kids setting on my canon 750d. Some are zoomed in but most are not. I edited them, just a little, in PicMonkey adjusting the clarity and exposure.
And there we have it, our attempt at a DIY Cake smash / first birthday photo shoot.
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Oh little girl, I can’t quite believe I’m writing this already. Today you turn one. A whole year. Words cannot describe the joy you have brought into our lives. You’ve filled a piece of my heart that had been void for as long as I […]
When it comes to things1 you absolutely must buy for a baby, a car seat is at the top of the list. When we had to start shopping for a carseat, despite my previous years working in the baby industry, this was the one area […]
We have reached that stage, with Florence about to turn one, when the conversation has started to include ‘the next baby’ and we’ve had a few questions lately as to whether or not we will be having another little one any time soon. I know for some, this can be quite a difficult question to answer, but for us talking about our future plans for our family comes pretty freely.
The truth is, I’ve been ready for another baby since the moment I held Florence in my arms. I remember laying there in the hospital bed about 10 minutes post birth and saying to Sean… “shall we do it again?”. Becoming a mother seemed the most natural thing in the world to me and right then and there, I promised myself I’d never allow myself to feel desperate for a baby again. I’ve always pictured myself being surrounded by children of my own. This past (almost) year has been the best of my life and for me, motherhood so far has been everything I ever dreamed it would be.
In short, and this is probably the most detail I will ever go into when it comes to this side of baby making, we never really stopped trying. The goalie never resumed his position. And while there have been times where a bit of the other hasn’t been on the menu thanks to baby induced sleepless nights and the sheer exhaustion you experience as new parents, there have been many a month where we thought a positive test might be possible.
Here we are in May, 10 months since my periods returned and we are yet to see those all important two lines. I’m not freaking out just yet, it took us quite a while to fall pregnant with Florence and it turned out that the two large cysts inhabiting my ovary was probably to blame for that because pretty much as soon as they’d been removed we fell pretty quickly.
The only thing that is making me a little nervous is the return of some of the nasty symptoms I had in the lead up to them being removed. Ovulation is incredibly painful and often sees me lose a day to illness. I have this horrible niggling pain on my right side, just near my groin, which can knock me for six sometimes and In the lead up to my period being due I feel…. well… pregnant! I guess it’s probably been going on since just after Christmas and last week I finally called to doctors to see what he makes of it. He’s booked me in for an ultrasound to have a look at what’s happening in there and I’m really hoping it’s all just a hormone / scar tissue thing but if it’s anything more we’ll just deal with it at the time.
In the meantime though, we are hoping to grow our little family very soon. Watch this space lovelies.
What was the age gap between your little ones?
If there’s one thing that comes with babies it’s mess. Especially once weaning begins! Over the last few months we have been testing out a number of products designed to make messy meal times (and messy play times) a little easier to clean up! Two […]
With so many lovely responses to my recent Simple Baby Play posts, I thought I would finally get around to sharing with you a list of items I class as baby play essentials. These are all things that I have built up over time and […]
