Darcey has her first birthday!!

Darcey celebrated her first birthday on Sunday and it was just perfect! We had a lovely little afternoon tea party at the shop complete with a cake that my sister and I made plus a chocolate brownie tower covered in pink glitter and fairies!!
I have found the weeks leading up to Darcey's birthday really emotional, I think because of the dreaded post natal depression that I experienced, I had never imagined celebrating her first birthday and being truly happy. But I was and I am, I love being Darcey's mummy and am so incredibly proud of everything she does!

 I haven't updated you lovely people for a while as to how she is doing, she has her two top and bottom teeth which makes her look pretty cute; we are very close to walking, she is pulling herself up on everything so I don't think that it will be long until she toddles off! She can say two words, Dada and Lola (my sister's dog) she sometimes says them to the right people but we're working on it! She loves books (thank god) she has a big box of them in our lounge and she likes to get them out, every single one and look through them. I try and read to her every day, sometimes she is happy to sit and listen and sometimes she just wants to chew the corner of the book! Everyone says to us how very content and chilled out she is and this always makes me smile inside as I hope it means that we are doing an okay job as she seems to be pretty happy and that is all that matters!

Apologies and Birthdays!!

Dot Scribbles has been very quiet of late! For one reason or another I just have not been reading as much, I am really enjoying the new Cecelia Ahern book but I feel like it is taking me ages to get through it and I have been very lax on the blogging front! Hopefully this shall change this week and I will be posting a bit more!
I celebrated my birthday yesterday and it was really lovely, everyone made a big effort and I had a brilliant day! Mr S completely spoilt me and got me an e-reader, it's an Elonex one from Borders and I LOVE it!! It came with a 100 books already loaded on to it, ranging from Shakespeare to Beatrix Potter, there's quite a few that I have been meaning to read so I already have plenty to choose from. As soon as I have finished my current book, I am going to download something and read it on the e-reader so I shall let you know how I get on. I don't think that I will have any problems though as it is ever so light to hold and I can't quite believe how much the screen does actually look like the page of a book! I am never going to stop buying books but I think that I am going to get a lot of use out of this present, it will be great for on holiday, no more over-weight luggage charges for me!

Birthdays and Celebrations!

It is a day of balloons and banners in the Dot Scribbles household today! Mr S has turned 25, a quarter of a century, bless him!! We had to get up bright and early to open presents as he still has to go to work today unfortunately. I got him a DAB radio which he has wanted for a while as the reception on normal radio in our house is dire and the Star Trek film box set because, well, he is a complete Trekkie geek! I will no doubt regret buying the last present as I am sure I will be subjected to watching at least one of them! Alfie bought Mr S some presents, some jelly sweets as they are Alfie's favourite too and some new slippers as Alfie left us a present in the kitchen earlier in the week which Mr S stepped in, hence needing new slippers! So he has gone off to work a happy man and we have his family coming over later for a nice meal and possibly more presents!
I also had a little mini celebration yesterday as I finally completed writing the first chapter of the book that I am working on, 2,833 words so far! My lovely sister read it and said she enjoyed it (although however much she protests, she is going to be a little biased!) so now I just need to crack on and write the rest.
One last thing for today, Kim, over at Still Reading has read and reviewed Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. This, as I am sure I have mentioned many times is my favourite book, so go and take a peek at Kim's excellent review, especially if you haven't read it yet!

You can never have too much icing!

I am a very lucky lady indeed! My beautiful Sister and her lovely Husband came to visit us in the Shire for the weekend. It was my sister's birthday on Friday and she bought her own cakes with her! Before you think I was being stingy, I should explain that they own and run their own cupcake company, Cupcakes and Peonies and therefore are much better at baking then I will ever be!
So we put the balloons and banners up, poured the Pimms and chilled the Champagne and had ourselves a little party. I had requested extra frosting on my cupcakes and managed to eat two before giving in and saving my other one for the next day! It is very useful though having a master cupcake maker as a sister, although we can often be found searching the Internet for new sparkly sprinkles rather than doing any real work!!

26 wasn't too bad after all!!

Well I had a lovely Birthday! Mr S bought me lots of lovely presents and cooked me a delicious dinner last night! My beautiful sister and her husband sent me some gorgeous cupcakes and came over for dinner last night too! They also bought me lots of lovely presents, I was very much spoilt yesterday! We had lots of cake and apart from one little glitch I had a really special Birthday!

Alfie arrived on Sunday and is settling in well! He is tiny- when he sits down he just looks like a fat owl! Yet for something so tiny he can make a lot of noise!! We want him to sleep in the kitchen at night rather then upstairs with us and this is when he kicks off. It is such a strange noise, kind of a cross between a flock of seagulls and an excited chimpanzee! He just needs to get used to it though I think! Mr S and I look as though we have not slept for about a week, we are purchasing some ear-plugs this afternoon and will hopefully get a full night's sleep this evening!

Well that is all for today, thank you to all the people who made my Birthday very special, means a lot!

Catch up!

Well this writing malarkey is not going well is it! I have been so busy these past few weeks, feels as though there just aren't enough hours in the day. On a positive point though I have had a fair few ideas recently and they have been jotted down in my trusty notebook, doesn't sound like much but it is further than I usually get. I had to write a really difficult letter this evening; I have been putting it off all day but forced myself to sit down and do it about an hour ago. As I've mentioned before I haven't been having too nice a time recently, it's a really long story and I'm sure extremely boring to those not involved. Anway I needed to return something and it did not feel right just popping it into the envelope, I felt that I needed to write a letter to accompany it. So I had a good think and eventually got it down on paper and that is where the problems began, I knew the exact tone that I wanted this letter to deliver but reading it back I was worried that the receipients may get a different message from it. I showed it to Mr S and he understood it in the way I intended so it has gone in an envelope and is waiting to be posted on the morning walk tomorrow. It has really made me think about the audience when you are writing and you can understand why writers go over and over their work and edit and then re-edit. I know that any piece of writing is open to interpretation but I imagine that when you put something out there for others you want them to get your message and ideas as you intended.

Anway onto lighter things, I have had such a lovely weekend, Mr S took me for an early Birthday meal on Friday night at the new Italian restaurant that has opened in town. Italian is my absolute favourite so of course I managed all three courses, several glasses of wine and a capuccino. On Saturday we went Birthday present shopping, I picked lots of lovely things which have now been hidden away and will hopefully reappear next Monday. Mr S usually likes to surprise me on my Birthday but there were lots of things that I needed (wanted) and I am hoping for a very surprise free Birthday this year anyway. Saturday was topped off by my beautiful best friend coming to stay, we kicked off her visit to the shire with a trip to the pub for some guinness and a catch up before returning home to change into our Pjs and settle down to an evening of X-Factor with Mr S!

So back to work tomorrow for another week, we have only 7 days until we get the new puppy! Think we will be picking Alfie up on Sunday and bringing him to his new home. Mr S and I are are very much like two excited 5 year olds at the moment and had to stop ourselves from buying up the entire stock at Pets at Home when we went to get provisions! I shall leave you with a picture of the little man, I am sure you will be hearing a lot more about him in the next few weeks!