Review on activities with babies

Hi everyone,

Sorry I haven't done a post in a while, mammy duties took over. My beautiful daughter Hallie Ann was born on 09/02/2015 and weighed 6lbs 1oz, she is now 7 weeks and 5 days.

I have been really enjoying my time off work and have been spending my maternity leave doing lots of fun activities with Hallie. I know some people may think that she is little for baby activities, but I think it's very important to dedicate time to playing with them and taking them out around other children from a young age.

Two of the things I have tried so far are sensory play and baby massage, so I'm just going to explain and do a short review on each.

Sensory play:

I took Hallie and my cousin lyla (who is 6 months) to sensory play on Wednesday. I had never been in a sensory room before and it really entrigued me to see what it was like. Hallie was sleeping when I first took her in the room, when she woke up she was amazed at all the lights and was looking all around the room at the pretty colours. Lyla enjoyed playing with the soft toys in the room and took a particular liking to the butterfly below. During the sensory play the room had a calming scent of lavender, this is a feature that I really liked! I would recommend anyone with little ones to take them into a sensory room, Hallie who's 7 weeks and Lyla who's 6 months both really enjoyed it! I also found it really calming and relaxing for myself too. 

Baby massage:

I took Hallie to baby massage on Monday with my friend Naomi and her little girl Monroe. It was our first time for us to try baby massage and didn't know what to expect, but I had heard great things about the classes. When we got there, there was a circle of changing mats all set up ready for the babies with some extra virgin olive oil next to the mat. They use this oil because it's the most natural moisturising oil to use on their skin. During baby massage you leave the babies with just a nappy on and lay them on a changing mat with a towel underneath them. A nursery nurse then holds the class and demonstrates on a doll the different massage techniques and the benefits that they have for the babies. An example of the benefits of baby massage are there are ones done on the tummy which are good for wind and prevention of colic. During baby massage Hallie was really relaxed and made all cute cooing noises whilst in the class, showing that she did like it and she even had a few cheeky smiles. She particularly liked the back and the tummy massage, but she wasn't too fussed on her arms being massaged. After the class, the nursery nurses gave an option for the babies to be weighed afterwards. I thought this was a great feature of the class. After the class both babies had a sleep and we think it really relaxed them. A benefit of any baby class is it gives you an opportunity to chat with other mammy's and for babies to play together. Overall me, Naomi and both babies really enjoyed the class and we are going to make a weekly thing of taking them. 

I hope you enjoyed this review, from now on this blog will have lots of mammy features and I will try to blog as much as I can. Thanks for reading, bye xxx

Healthy pregnancy (slimming world and exercise)

Hi everyone, 

I've not posted since the new year. One of my New Years resolutions was to keep myself healthy. The year before last and the beginning of last year I done slimming world and lost over 5 stone. I then stopped slimming world and put some of that weight back on. As some of you may know I am now 35 weeks pregnant. Since being pregnant I have only gained 15lbs which is actually pretty good (the midwifes are impressed) .. As part of my New Years resolution I decided to go back to slimming world. So on Friday that's exactly what I did. The plan I'm doing is the 'extra easy' plan like I did last year. The only difference is now being pregnant I have to have more healthy extras, which means for example I can have more bread and milk, which I'm happy with 😉.

So for anyone who doesn't know slimming world, it's a very easy diet to follow, to be honest it doesn't even really feel like a diet, it's more like just being aware of what your eating. Your aloud to eat a lot, there is no limit to how much you can have and you never have to go hungry. Every day your encouraged to have 'healthy extra's' one A and a one B choice, unless your pregnant then you can have two A and B choices.

Heathy extra A - this is basically dairy, so you can have milk or cheese as an healthy extra A.

Healthy extra B - Examples of this is, bread, cereals, and breakfast bars such as the hi-fi light bars (they're lovely).

Free food - you can eat as much free food as you like. Free foods include things like chicken, turkey, ham, potatoes, pasta, rice, fish, beans, eggs etc. There is literally loads, soooo much you can eat.

Super free speed food - these foods again you can eat as much of as you like. Your encouraged to have 1 third of your plate of food to always be super free speed food, this will boost your weight loss! These foods include a wide variety of fruit and vegetables.

Syns - syns are treats. So you need to syn up things like chocolate, crisps, pastries etc. Your encouraged to eat between 5 and 15 syns a day and it's very important that you do eat them. My favourite syns are either a curly wurly for 6 syns, or a ripple for 8.5 syns to satisfy my sweet tooth. I'm not really one for crisps (since being pregnant I've gone right off them). 

Here below are some picture of the types of foods I have been eating throughout the day.

Here I had porridge with raspberries. This was really nice! I had never tried raspberries in my porridge before and I actually really recommend it, it gave a sweet flavouring mixed in with the porridge, yummy! The porridge counted as my healthy extra B and the milk it's made with was my healthy extra A, the raspberries then were my super free speed food part of the meal.

Here I had tuna mayo pasta, with a side of salad and low fat ceaser dressing. The only thing on here that was syns was the mayonnaise and the dressing, I counted 3.5 syns for this meal. It was so yummy and filling though and well worth the small amount of syns.

Here I had salmon, boiled potatoes and green beans. I absolutely love salmon, plus it's really good for you (VERY GOOD during pregnancy too). This meal was very filling which is lovely after a long day. The salmon and potatoes are free food and the green beans are my super free speed food of the meal. 

Just because it's a diet doesn't mean you can't have chips 😉. These are slimming world chips. They're absolutely gorgeous to snack on and you can eat as much of them as you like, guess what.. They're totally free and no syns! I make mine using my actifry where you just chop potatoes, spray them with fry light (low cal cooking spray) and pop them in the actifry for 20-30 minutes... If you don't have an actifry what you do is boil the potatoes for around 6-8 minutes and then cut them into chip shapes, then place them in the oven for around 20-25 minutes. They taste just as nice that way too! I highly recommend these if your on slimming world or just eating healthier and looking for something to snack on, yummy!

Thst pretty much sums up slimming world in a nutshell! There are loads of slimming world groups around and the consultants that run them are always really lovely and ready to help. 

http://www.slimmingworld.com here is the link to the website where there is much more info on plans and where the groups are etc.

I'm planning on keeping up with slimming world and following the plan as best as I can. Being 35 weeks pregnant I realise it's not going to be the easiest. I just want to stress that I am not going to loose weight being pregnant, I'm going to keep myself healthy and eating the right sorts of foods. I'm not expecting any losses, the main thing is I'm keeping myself healthy and eating the right foods for both me and baby. I am planning on doing some exercise, I have been recommended to go swimming and try water exercises by the midwifes. I have joined the gym and I'm ready to start doing it and keeping myself in good health (this apparently helps with labour to, I hope so, haha) .. Tomorrow I will be going swimming, I'm aiming to do some lengths in the pool. I am also going to be taking part in aquasize, the trainer knows I'm pregnant and I've been told it's a great exercise when you are pregnant, I'm really looking forward to it because when I've been previously I've really enjoyed it.

Thanks for reading everyone! Hope this post wasn't to long and boring 😚 

Abbie xxx 

Pregnancy in autumn photo's!

Hi everyone, 

Yesterday me & my friend Alex decided that we should be more active and going for walks and just generally exercising a lot more. 

I'm now almost in my third trimester of pregnancy, tomorrow I will be 27 weeks, I have been told that it is good to keep fit and active, this can even help with labour! 

So yesterday we went to the local park. We first walked around the lake and then we walked up into the fields/forestry area around the park. Everything looked so lovely! Alex brought her camera along and we couldn't resist taking a few snaps! I'm 26 weeks, 5 days pregnant in these pictures!  

Autumn is by far one of my most favourite seasons of the year! I can never decide weather my favourite is autumn or winter, I would say it's a joint favourite. I think everything about autumn is just so pretty! 

Me and Alex both had a really nice day yesterday wandering the park finding all these pretty places! I enjoyed having these photos taken and I think it's lovely to be able to keep these and always remember the size of my bump etc at this stage in my pregnancy. I will hopefully have more photos similar to these taken later in my pregnancy (maybe a winter photo shoot) so that I can compare the difference!

Thanks for reading, bye!! Xxx

Pregnancy autumn pamper routine

Hi everyone,

I haven't done a post in a little while and since my last post autumn has began.

I love autumn, I love everything about it!

I would say this time of year; the autumn/winter months is 100% my favourite time of year, since I'm not really one for summer personally, espessialy since this summer I was pregnant, pregnancy and being too warm is an absolute NO NO! 

One of my favourite things to do at this time of year is pamper myself, take bubble bath's and just enjoy being all snugly at home.

So I'm going to take you through some of the things that I do;

Step 1) run myself a lovely relaxing bubble bath.

Lush now have their autumn/winter products out. I must admit I've already bought a few. This is "the Christmas hedgehog" bubble bar! Oh my god, this is amazing! It has a very relaxing, calming smell to it and it just had me completely chilled out in the tub. I've already used two of these and next time I'm in lush I will be purchasing more 

Step 2) light candles.

These 2 are my favourite candles at the moment. "Party time" is one I had as a birthday present off my mother, so I'm not to sure on where she bought it from. But if you do see it around, it's definetely worth giving a sniff! It smells lovely!

Blissful autumn is one of the Yankee candles brought out espessialy for this time of year, to be honest the only way to describe the smell of this is to say it smells exactly like autumn! Perfect relaxing, bath time candles.

Step 3) facemask

At this time of year in particular my skin seems to get really dry. I think it's really important to look after your skin! I have extremely sensitive skin so it's a struggle for me to find products that don't irritate it. When I came across this facemask in tesco for sensitive skin I thought it was worth a try. I must say it is amazing! For only 99p it always leaves my skin feeling so refreshed and soft and it's just like you've had a professional facial. I just love to chill out in the bath with this face mask on and totally relax. I really do recommend this for anyone with sensitive skin who does struggle to find a good facemask.

Step 4) Moisturise when out of the bath.

At the moment I'm loving the 'lush' massage bars I think they're great and leave skin smelling and looking gorgeous! This one is 'tender is the night' it smells absolutely gorgeous! .. Because I'm pregnant once I've used this I do also rub my bump and thighs with some palmers cocoa butter which I'm preferring to any of the other bump lotions at the moment! 

My skin always feels really soft after it and cocoa butter doesn't irritate my sensitive skin, plus cocoa butter smells amazinggggggg!! 

Step 5) New pj's!

Autumn/ winter time I find is a perfect excuse to treat yourself to new pj's. Plus I have a ever growing bump at the moment so I also used my bump as an excuse to treat myself! The checkered pj's are from new look. The fox pj's are from tesco and the slipper boots are from matalan. Slipper boots I find are also an absolute essential this time of year and these ones feel like how I imagine walking on clouds would feel!

Step 6) Pamper my feet.

I didn't want to display any pictures for this step because to be perfectly honest my feet are not very pretty right now and they are rather swollen at the moment. This step might mainly be for the pregnant women out there. Pregnancy does some strange things. One of the strange things it does is make your feet go swollen and you do feel rather achy. I find it really helps me to use a good foot lotion. The one I'm particularly enjoying at the moment is the 'soap and glory' heel genius. This works a treat. After using this I then spritz myself with 'the body shop' peppermint cooling foot spray. It cools my feet right down and it has the most loveliest smell.

You don't have to just be pregnant to pamper your feet mind. These products are worth giving a try even if your not pregnant! I'm going to be still using them after I've had the baby. 

Step 7) paint my nails/ toe nails

I'm loving the revlon nail varnish's at the moment. This colour is a gorgeous glittery pink, which I think is lovely for this time of year.

Step 8) fresh bed sheets!

I love jumping into lovely clean, fresh bed sheets after a relaxing pamper sesh and then snuggling up with a book! So this for me is an essential step in my pampering process! 

That's the end of my pregnancy pamper routine. I enjoyed writing this post because I enjoy reading posts like this myself. Hope you enjoying reading it! Thankyou bye!! Xxxxx 

Lush dream cream review

Hi everyone,

Today I'm going to do a rather long review on the lush hand & body lotion called 'dream cream' I bought this product back in May, I've waited a while to review it so that I could give it a proper review.

I suffer really badly with eczema and recently it has gotten a lot worse since I have been pregnant, not too sure why this is.

When I popped into my local lush shop and explained to them I needed a body lotion that is ideal for sensitive skin, they recommended this one. They told me that there is oat milk in the product which is very helpful in soothing irritated skin. I was instantly intrigued by this. When I first tried this cream it wasn't really what I expected, the cream is quite thick but goes onto the skin rather oily (not usually the way most exzema creams work) but this actually leaves the skin with a stunning healthy looking glow. 

It has an unusual sort of smell it reminds me of cocoa butter but you can also definetely smell the oat milk, the scent of the product in all honesty isn't my most favourite of lush scents and isn't the usual smell you would expect in lush, but it is still a very nice sort of relaxing smell. There is in fact rose water and lavender oil in the product which may explain the relaxed feeling I have when using the product.

I used this cream on my skin for around 3 days and then I started to notice quite  a difference, it really did calm the redness of my eczema down and took away the inflamed soar look to it. I continued to use it and it did in fact keep my eczema away and under control, this I was very impressed by. The product has a very cooling effect going onto the skin and when my exzema is at it's worst that is exactly what I need, it just feels very soothing, hydrating and moisturing.

I have recently stopped using the product due to trying out a couple of other products. But then earlier this week my skin has had another one of it's exzema flare ups so I decided to use it again, and it has worked it's magic yet again and calmed the rash and the itching down. This time I don't think I'll be stopping using this trusty product because it really does make a massive difference to my skin. I'm not really sure what dream cream would be like on normal skin, but I would definetely recommend it to anyone with dry, or sensitive skin and most definetely to anyone who suffers with irritated exzema prone skin. 

This product is currently £11.50 and for such a good moisturising cream I would say it is definetely money well spent, once I have used up my pot I will be repurchasing. https://www.lush.co.uk/products/dream-cream here is the link to the lush website where you can purchase this product.

Thankyou for reading my review I hope I covered everything and that I didn't babble on too much. There is pictures for you to see below.

Thanks, Abbie xxx

Pregnancy first trimester

Hi everyone,

I have not done a blog post in quite some time now and since my last post I discovered that I am having a baby. Me and my fiancé are thrilled with this news and cannot wait to meet him/her. I am now 14 weeks pregnant so I thought I would do a post on my first trimester. In all honesty I have not been having an easy pregnancy I know some people have pregnancies where they experience no symptoms at all, I'm jealous of these people!!!

SCANS:

Okay so first things first I found out I was expecting the baby when I was around 4 weeks pregnant I've had a couple of complications so I have had 3 scans by the time I'm 12 weeks. Here are the scans, you can really see the baby growing!

This is my first scan I was around 4 weeks 6 days as you can see the baby just looks like a little blob, aw!! 

 

This is my second scan, in this scan we could see a tiny little flicker of the heart beating I'm around 5 weeks 6 days here.

 

This scan is my most recent scan and it was my dating scan at 11 weeks 1 day. And here the baby is looking like a baby, I'm due on the 15th February. 

Everything is looking perfect with baby and I will know what I'm having in 2 weeks time, I can't wait to see if I'm having a little boy or a little girl. My fiancé and I are really excited for that scan!

SYMPTOMS

As I mentioned above I haven't had the easiest of pregnancy's I definitely have had my fair share of symptoms. My morning sickness started at exactly 6 weeks, I will say morning sickness does not just mean the mornings, I would mainly get it in the afternoons and in the evenings and often if I start early In work I would have it in the mornings in work. Morning sickness was so unpleasant, it has luckily worn off slightly now but it can strike you at any time, 4 days ago I was driving my car and ended up being sick in the actual car, really not a nice experience at all (the car has now had a thorough cleaning.) I didn't really find anything helped with my morning sickness other than drinking little sips of water and avoiding anything heavy on the stomach. Crisps are also making me sick in this pregnancy so I'm not eating them at all. Some people say to try ginger biscuits, drinking flat full fat coke, and peppermint tea. These tips may work for others if you are currently experiencing morning sickness.

I have also been experiencing tiredness, I'm feeling tired all of the time. This is no matter how much sleep I get, I seem to spend a lot of my time in bed since being pregnant. 

Other symptoms I've had is - aching muscles, disgusting taste in my mouth, feeling emotional, dizziness, fainting and needing to pee a lot. 

CRAVINGS

I have not yet experienced any weird cravings as such but I have had a few cravings, I've craved lollipops, I now eat about 10-15 of them a day. I've also craved milk, I'm not really a milk drinker at all but I have been drinking milk in pregnancy. Also I've been eating a lot of ice, I think this is due to heat also, where I'm living we are having hot weather at the moment. I can't wait till winter already, haha!

OVERALL

I know I've had a rough pregnancy so far but I am really looking forward to meeting my baby and I'm so excited for upcoming scans to see how the baby is growing. I can't say I'm loving pregnancy because I'm not so far due to the symptoms and things that I have had. I'm hoping that my second trimester goes a lot easier, fingers crossed! 

Thanks for reading, bye!! Xxxx

Lush product review

I have been meaning to do a post like this for quite a while now but just haven't got round to it.. Basically I love 'lush' id say my obsession with lush has increased over the last year more than ever. That is because I used to have very easily irritated skin but now that it's under control it means I can use the products more. For Christmas one if the gifts I had was a box filled with lots of lush products. I've decided to review a few today; 

My lovely box filled with goodies :)

This bath bomb is called butterball. Butterball is one of the more boring looking bath bombs from lush. Most of the bath bombs are usually more colourful and exciting.  Do not let the appearance put you off! This is the most moisturising bath bomb I have ever used! I can really see why it is called butterball! It leaves your skin smelling gorgeous and so smooth it smells exactly like cocoa butter. When I got out of the bath after using this I didn't even have too moisturise it was that good! This bath bomb retails at a really good price of £2.50 it's one of the cheaper ones that lush offer. I highly recommend trying this!! 

This bath bomb is called Avobath. I love it! This bath bomb is definitely going to become my go to bath bomb when I am having a stressful day. It smells very citrusy and left a gorgeous scent in my bathroom all day. I used this bath bomb when I had a day off from work and treated myself to a pamper day. I was instantly relaxed in the bath and found the bath bomb very soothing! This bath bomb is £3.25, I think it's well worth the price! I recommend buying it and using it when you have a day where you just need to relax! 

Sex bomb! This is one of the more floral scented Bath bombs. I have good and bad points about this! I must admit it did leave my skin feeling and smelling lovely for hours after using it. Plus it turned my bath water pink which is always great in my books. The only problem I had was the rose that's on top of this bath bomb; it didn't melt in the bath it just sort of stayed there in the water with me. I think if they made this bath bomb with a melting rose then it would be 10/10 but at the moment I'll give it an 8/10 which is still pretty good! The price of this Bath bomb is £3.25. 

  

This is a massage bar by lush that's called Wiccy Magic Muscles. I suffer a lot with back ache so when I got this in my box of goodies I was so happy. It smells very herbal and healing if that's even a smell. It reminds me of a spa sort of scent. This bar is perfect. The little stones that are inside it give you the most perfect massage ever. It lets it proper dig into the little nooks and crannys that need massaging. I highly recommend this espessialy if you get achy muscles! It also leaves skin very moisturised and smooth and smelling gorgeous! The only problem with this is it is £6.25 but it does last ages so it is worth the purchase!

That's going to finish off my review I do have dorm more products to review but I won't do them al in this blog post :) I want to keep some for another post. Does anyone else have any lush reviews? I'd love to read them! :) thanks for reading. Abbie xxx