Websites galore

So, I've always been generally indecisive when it comes to music versus photography. Music has been my eternal passion, yet I find photography so easy, so beautiful, so enjoyable that I can't just dismiss it. To that end, when re-launching my website, I decided to include both music (my love) and photography (the money) instead of one or the other. So... they're not perfect just yet, but almost complete are my two new websites, both based at kimcleaton.co.uk and accessed via a landing page. Go have a peek if you like!

Click read more for page previews.

The REAL mum experience...

"You can't shut being a MOM off. In the old days, you could be all, "Man, I'm tired and it's Saturday, I think I'll sleep all day," or "Man, I'm in the mood to dance, and it's Saturday, I think I'll drink too much and make bad decisions." But now you're a mom. It doesn't matter if it's Saturday or Christmas or your sister's wedding, you've got to take care of baby first." - Rachel Hollis

This is so true. The baby comes first. (Or, in my case, babies.) Before even my best friend's wedding plans - which is very weird indeed. 

Do read the whole article here - it's very funny and so true!

Three songs and counting :)

This is one score my limited version of Sibelius
definitely wouldn't be able to create!

I did some more writing today. My musical now has three songs! I really need to get a midi keyboard - I have all this amazing stuff in my head and then all I write down initially is words and chords, followed by transcribing these later on. But really I need to jot down the big arrangements, and in the first instance, before I forget them.

I often wonder if I'm going to need the full version of sibelius sooner or later. There have literally only been one or two things that I've not been able to do - create a breve, for example - but I'm pretty sure that at some point I'm going too want to create a score with more parts than are allowed, which is kind of a crucial thing!

Grow, grow, grow...

I sorted out the new set of baby clothes on Saturday. The trouble with babies is that they grow too fast - we're on 9-12 month clothes now (they are nearly ten months old) and this is their fifth set of clothes. Fifth! Now you see why I don't see the point of buying baby clothes new...

Toby, in one of my favourite suits!

Sleep - or lack of it.

So there I was on Tamba's website updating my address and such, when I see their 'Sleep' page. Mmm. This'll be good, I think. Generally it was filled with the usual advice, and then I get to this fabulous list... followed by my comments.

Tamba’s tips for good sleep

1. Establish and follow a flexible routine for sleeping during the day and at bedtime. - flexible how? A routine isn't really a routine if it's too flexible... not sure what they're getting at here.
2. Allow babies to get to sleep on their own rather than rocking or cuddling them to sleep. - ALLOW? Yeah, that'd be nice. To allow my babies to go to sleep. Force them to finally shut up after hours of whining, more like!
3. Try not to rush and pick up your babies if you hear them stir. As babies sleep they go through cycles so will stir and seem to be waking at various times. If left alone, they will learn to get themselves back into a deeper sleep. - Yeah... they also have a habit of suddenly crying very loudly, and almost always disturb their twin.
4. Take your babies out in the fresh air every day. Research has shown that babies who go out sleep better. - Yes, when we're outside. What about when we're inside?! Waaaah.
5. Some parents find that once their babies reach six months or so, they will entertain each other when they first wake up. - Or rather, play with each other at the beginning of naptime...for hours...until they're shattered and it's almost time for tea!
6. Once your babies have reached nine or ten months old, you can try a number of sleep training methods.  For example the ‘Checking Method’ or ‘Controlled Crying Technique’ to build good sleep patterns, or Pantley’s No Cry Sleep Solution. - Now this, we have tried for sure. It has had mixed results. A lot of these things are easy peasy to do with one child. When you have twins (and an older one that can be disturbed at night) things are much harder!
7. Visit ISIS, a research based infant sleep website for more information. - Again, fantastic for the single child of parents with masses of time. ;)

Keep smiling!

Dressed up and ready to face the snow :)

If I thought one child was hard...

Well, if I thought I had very little time while being a mother to one child, I was wrong. These days I have three kids, and barely ten minutes to call my own!

Yes, long time no post, but I've not been away long enough for two further pregnancies - last March I gave birth to my beautiful twin boys, Jacob and Toby. So, needless to say, things like this blog went rather on the backburner. I see it as a good thing that I stopped being bored enough to blog all the time, but even so, I miss it somewhat. So every now and then I will try to come back on here and post about some tidbit of my life :)

About 12 hours old. (Toby is on the left)

The value of naptime...

...at the moment, is pretty low. Isaac suddenly had issues going to sleep in the day, and while those are now slightly improved, he'll only sleep properly if he's on my lap. Again. Sadly this means the tasks I'm able to accomplish are limited. I've not tried him in the sling for a while but I'm not sure he'll like it much (he went off it a while ago).

People were making comments like, "Hopefully he'll have a nice long sleep this afternoon, since he's been awake for so long. Then you can have a sleep too!"

These comments are pretty unhelpful when he'll only sleep on me. Yeah, I might be able to get a nap like that, admittedly. But do they not realise the immense amount of STUFF I have to do around the house - that I leave and leave coz I don't have the time or whatever and then it just gets hideous and terrible to deal with, and makes me more depressed and is harder to face...

That's not my kitchen.. but it could be. Well, I just tidied mine somewhat so the whole messy thing doesn't have the same wow factor.
(Photo: Rob Thurman)

Flowery Dress - the making of (Part 3)

Here we are at the 3rd instalment of the flowery dress. In the previous post, I'd just finished gathering the skirt, so next is sewing it onto the bodice.

Sewing the skirt and bodice together.

Flowery Dress - the making of (Part 2)

Only after finishing the bodice did I realise that the design flaw that I thought would be a design flaw was indeed a design flaw.

Oh well. I sort of fixed it. Although in doing so it meant the rest didn't work.

Read and enjoy!

Making the ties for the lace-up back

Time For Change

I've always been a self-help sort of person. If I have a problem, sooner or later I want to fix it. Myself, of course. None of this going to counsellors, doctors or others (however beneficial they may be).

I don't know when I started pigging out on stuff (I'm pretty sure it was at about 6 weeks after having Isaac when I was just suddenly terribly terribly tired all the time) but it got to the point where I was just eating all the time, and having chocolate, biscuits, cake and all sorts of horribly bad things! And of course eating bad things all the time and sitting around all the time that I'm not out walking Isaac meant that I was feeling pretty bad all the time.

Time to fix that.

Isaac's Christening Cake

The original plan was for our old friend JN to do the cake. She did our wedding cake, and on our wedding day, in conversation about whether to save the top tier for our first child's Christening, she said, "Oh don't worry, I'll make you a cake for then too!"

Then we found out she couldn't come to the Christening, meaning she couldn't make the cake. They live quite far away, so was fairy snuff I suppose.

What to do? Well, I wasn't too worried about having anything fancy, and nor did I want to spend a fortune on a cake, so I started a hunt for something that would fit.

Turns out M&S had the solution.

Flowery Dress - the making of (Part 1)

Hi everyone!

As happens often these days, it's been a fair long time no post. I haven't been up to nothing though. I've actually been doing more sewing. Yaya. I promised my ickle sister Lucy that I would make her a dress for her birthday. Well, her birthday was 12th of July and as of yet I've not put a single stitch into her dress... but with good reason! Being rather skint at the moment, I can't afford to waste the lovely black polka-dot fabric that I bought for her dress, and since I'm making a design of my own, I figured it would be a good idea to make a test dress. Otherwise known here on in as my flowery dress. Made from great charity-shop-bought material which once upon a time lived a better life as a duvet cover. But don't tell.

So anyway. I'm making this test dress to my measurements so that it won't go to waste, but also because I can then test it on myself as I go. As yet the design seems fine, but then, I've only done the bodice and straps so far, and you can't go far wrong with some straight straps on a shapeless bodice! It's the next bit - the lace up back - that will tell me whether or not my design is a complete loada trash... ;)

Check out the flowery goodness.

Isaac and his cuteness

Yeah, sometimes I can't get over how cute kids can look. Here's mine, learning to play the piano at 10 weeks old...!

Two Years and Counting

Last Monday saw our 2nd wedding anniversary... two whole years of being married to my mister man, and I'm proud to say we have a lot to show for it! A house of our own, in a town that we love, and a gorgeous little boy.

We weren't able to do anything on Monday but last night went out for a meal - just us! SJ's mum babysat for us and we had a lovely few hours to ourselves out a the indian. There are two in our town and we normally go to the large popular one, so decided to go to the other for a change of scene. It was very lovely and had a very smart colour scheme of red, black and white...

Rearranging

Today we pretty much decided that Isaac hates his little carry cot thing that is currently his bed. He'd only ever sleep in it if you put him in  v e r y  s l o w l y  a n d  c a r e f u l l y  after he fell asleep somewhere else - usually in my arms! Of course this means that he spends most nights in our bed, which although lovely, means that none of us sleep very well. Not that we sleep that well anyway as we are (or rather, I am) constantly getting up to feed him, but you know what I mean.

It occurred to me sometime in the night that actually we could probably fit the proper cot in our room, and since it's much more like our bed, he might actually like it enough to fall asleep in! When we first moved here I thought we'd never be able to fit a cot in there as well as a double bed and a chest of drawers, but rather surprisingly it works quite well and the room feels (if anything) bigger than it did with a thin table bearing a carry cot!

Friday Favourites

I feel like I'm stealing the name here, but I wanted to start a 'favourites' listing, and it's friday, and, well, they go together well. However, one of this week's favourites actually has their own 'friday favourites' on there... hmm, great minds think alike I suppose! I did, however, steal the idea for the purdy presentation. Consider it flattery ;-)

But anyway. Here we go.




It's official: blogger images SUCK. Can't do ANYthing with 'em. Thank goodness I can (sort of) do HTML!

Have a good weekend!

Baby gyms of the coat hanger kind

Ah, how rubbish I am at remembering to post a blog! Mind you, having a baby doesn't exactly promote activity. At least, not activity of the non-baby-related kind. Ho hum.

Yes, I've barely touched the piano since Isaac was born. That makes me sad. One more thing to try and remember to do, and when something doesn't count as 'useful' (i.e. related to housework, baby things or shopping) it easily gets forgotten at the moment.

On a brighter note - who needs expensive baby gyms?

Red dress - the making of

After the announcement of the birth of my cousin's daughter Z, I decided this was a perfect opportunity to try making something. Y'know, something proper. After all, my poor neglected sewing machine has only done mundane jobs such as turning up jeans and darning socks as yet! To be fair, though, I only got it at Christmas, and even if I had thought about making Isaac something before he was born, the massive belly would've rather scuppered plans, I feel.

This isn't a tutorial - most definitely not! - but does show how I put this dress together and might help anyone wanting to try out the pattern. Speaking of which, the pattern is a freebie from the fab Made By Rae - do check out her blog! I happened upon her pattern when searching for 'baby dress pattern' or something along those lines. It's a great pattern in that it's easy for newbies, because it has no fastenings, buttons, or anything else like that which I would totally screw up.

All the fun stuff after the break.

Sewing, washing, sleeping...

Well, the dress is coming along, but not entirely finished. Just got the bottom seam to do, and I really wasn't sure how to do it. Because of the pattern being slightly different to what I was doing, I should have done the bottom seam before everything else, not after! But oh well, I think I can make it look okay. I'm going to be sad to give this dress away! I couldn't really make another to give away though, this one's taken me far too long already - Z's already nearly 3 weeks old, so goodness, it'd better fit her!