My Week in Pictures #2

Hi Everyone,

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I know, where have I been, right? Well, that's a bit of a long story, and the main reason behing this "My Week In Pictures" post. As well as the reason behind me posting on a Sunday. Normally the weekends are a time when I spend a bit of down time with the family and don't think about blogging. But right now my son is asleep and my boyfriend is watching football, so here I am!

The reason for my absence is actually a last minute trip away to Paris. We decided to go after I wrote the last blog post and booked immediately. It was a bit of a disaster. Stupid weather, see below for...

My second Mother's Day (third if you count being pregnant) and Caleb got me a
lovely card with one of my fave photos on!

The weather was like this in Kent when we were on our way to Dover.
We got stuck on the motorway, took snowy country roads, then missed our ferry.
It had been cancelled anyway, so they put us on one to Dunkerque rather than Calais.

By the time we got on the ferry, our car was filthy!

And then it all went even more wrong! We were fine from Dunkerque for a little while, then we hit the road out of Calais. Abandoned lorries everywhere. We slept on the motorway that night, we were stuck from past 8pm until nearly half past 4am...

Traffic at a standstill...

Only just moving again, it's 5:20 French time and absolutely freezing.
We've been stuck for 8 hours...

Then we got to our hotel eventually at gone 7 in the morning. There was snow everywhere and we weren't happy with the hotel. The Disney New York Hotel... Do not stay here!!! We slept until about 1pm then went to the Walt Disney Studios Park for a little while, that was nice. Had an okay sleep that night and woke up a bit fresher on Thursday.

Here at last and the snow isn't falling anymore!

Extended 20 year anniversary... I was 2 when this was built in 1992 

Mickey Mouse in the parade

Friday... Time to go already! We left really early, about 10.30am for our 6.30pm ferry in case we got stuck again. We flew through and got there at 2.30pm! We paid for new tickets and left at 3.30pm, we just wanted to get home!

Checking out the duty free! 

My purchases! Nein! Nein! Nein! and Don't Talk Bach to Me were under £6 each!
I also bought My Vampire is Buff from the Euro Centrale collection.

I was so excited to finally see the White Cliffs of Dover!

 All in all, not a great trip, but my son loved it! He was really good in the car given the circumstances and we got lovely photos of him and Mickey Mouse. Our hotel was terrible but Goofy was there the morning we left so Caleb got photos with him too.

We got back Friday night, had the rest of the plastering done in the living room on Saturday, and here we are!

I haven't forgotten that the 10th of this month was the 1st birthday of Truly Polished, and this coming week or the next one I should be announcing my celebrations! Thank you all for sticking by me, even in my absence I have gained new followers here and on Bloglovin and that means so much to me!

Five Favourites: OCTOBER! And a catch-up...

Hi Everyone,

This is the first post I've sat down to write in a while, the last ones have been scheduled and I've just been popping in every now and again to adapt them and check for comments etc. So thanks for bearing with me! I know I've been absent for a while, since I got back from Holland, but I've been really busy and stressed out! 

Basically my last few weeks have been like this: Son has a tummy bug for a week, boyfriend gets home from being away for a month, we have a week of stress before our son's birthday and party, we pack and travel to Holland, I think I have seasickness but really I've caught the bug from my son so I'm ill for three days and can't eat, I get better and we enjoy our holiday, boyfriend gets ill the day before we travel home, we get home and have a stressful week buying things and trying to plan our house move (next time boyfriend gets home)... And then this morning we got up at 5am, drove the hour and a half to Heathrow only to realise my boyfriend's flight is tomorrow, so we have to do the whole thing again then!!!

So I've tried my hardest but blogging has been about #2182984 on my priorities list! I have my friend staying from tomorrow until Friday so I should still be able to blog then, and then I'll be back to normal! For November anyway... God knows how I'm going to handle December. We're moving everything about 200 miles away and we only have a couple of weeks to do it in, and it's Christmas!!!

Anyway, that's my update! So onto my Five Favourites for the month!

1. My son's first birthday and party!

Caleb's first birthday cake!

This month my son turned one! It makes me feel so old to say I have a one year old, and I think he's growing up too fast, but nonetheless it's amazing to see a little person you created grow up from a newborn into a real human!

I made his cake and I'm still so proud of it! The only think I didn't make was the cubes with Caleb's name on and the number 1, I bought those from eBay. Everyone was really impressed with it and wants me to make cakes for their kids! It took a lot of planning (about a month and a half of research and practice bakes) but I really enjoyed the process!

2. My holiday.

Martinikerk, Groningen - photo from Google

Vomiting aside, I had a really lovely time! My Dad has lived over in Groningen for 8 years now and I wish I could go over and see him more often. We went on the ferry this time and took our car and it was so nice, we had everything we needed and it was a lot less stressful even though it took longer. Having our own space was amazing in comparison to sitting in an airport and then on a plane with a hyperactive child!

3. My boyfriend was home

Photo from Google

Even though we've had a stressful time while he's been home, it's been lovely to have him here. We had a few nice family days out, and he's been helping me with my driving (like forcing me to drive on the motorway!)

4. I got a car!

My actual car!

This month (the day after my son's birthday in fact) my boyfriend bought me a car! Originally I wasn't going to get one because I was going to drive our family car (a BMW X5) but I wanted something little to call my own so I got a Renault Clio. It's a 2007 (but 56 plate) silver one and I love it. I did hit another car within the first 24 hours and scratched the paint off my rear bumper, but I bought a paint pen and it doesn't look TOO bad! I've been promised that if I don't hit anything else for 6 months, I can get the bumper re-sprayed, so we'll see how that goes!

5. We're moving!

Photo from Google

This month we made the arrangements for our move. We're moving from Hampshire up to Norfolk, which is where we're both from. The house we're buying is really nice, with a big garden, room to extend and a lot of potential. Yesterday we went and bought nearly the whole of the IKEA kids section for our son's nursery. I've had a jungle room planned out for him since before he was born but we've been renting so we couldn't decorate. Doing his room will be so exciting!

OK, so those are the highlights of my month, it's been quite an eventful one! I don't think much will be going on in November so we'll see what my Five Favourites look like then. 

Hope you've enjoyed this post, leave me a comment and let me know what you think!