The one with the return of sleepless nights

The last few days have involved sleepless nights such as I only remember from when Oliver was a newborn. Well ok, nowhere near that bad. But he took to waking at around 3am for three straight nights and refusing to settle for around 1-2 hours. That is a lot when you're used to a full night of sleep. Fingers crossed, last night was back to normal so I hope tonight will be the same!

I am very behind on all my Internet stuff (except Twitter haha), Oliver's 365 project needs some major updating - although I have been taking the photos so it's just a question of uploading them. I have so many potential blog posts in my head, funny anecdotes (like the 5 year old in the pushchair or the idiots that queued behind a parked car in the street), yummy recipes I've tried and would love to share and just general chit chat but I just don't seem to get the time. I suppose one of the downfalls of moving to a bigger house means there is more cleaning and tidying to be done, not to mention Oliver temporarily (I hope!) becoming a demon baby requiring constant attention - this seemed to coincide with his wakeful nights though so I'm hoping they'll both disappear together!

Oliver's "9 month" birthday is fast approaching... A date marked by some as the '9 months in, 9 months out' point. Although of course not technically true for Oliver (we passed this point about 4 weeks ago) its still a bit of a milestone to reach. My little boy will be one in just a few short months.

Now how in the wide world did that happen?

The one with cakes

Blog, I apologize for neglecting you, it wasn't my fault... it was the (lack of!) internet! However, that's sorted now and I hope resume (and improve) service ASAP. In the absence of a 'Meals on a Monday' post this week, I thought I'd share with you a photo of the birthday cake I made yesterday (Monday) for my star loving friend!

Also a coffee and walnut cake that I made sometime last week... just because it was pretty and delicious.

Enjoy :-)

(FYI - both of these cakes were made using recipes, guides and tools from the My Cake Decorating magazine in case you wanted to know - I wasn't sponsored or anything, I just love it!)

The one with (An update on Oliver)

I'll keep this one short as it's a phone post (which I hate!). We have just moved into a bigger house as our lovely 2 bedroom flat was practically bursting at the seams with all our stuff (yes we do need it all!)

So back to the star of the show... Oliver is coming along in leaps and bounds at the moment! Now that I think about it, this makes sense - he turned 8 months on Monday so his corrected age is about 6 and a half months - I'm told that 6 months (ish) is quite a big month in development. He is now the proud owner of three teeth, can sit unaided for about a minute (if he's in the mood) and is desperately trying to crawl (and managing a sort of belly flop - bum in the air, ends up flat on his face haha!)

Weaning is continuing at a furious pace and we are now having three meals a day. He seems pretty happy to just eat mashed up, baby friendly versions of whatever we're having most of the time and also loves finger foods!

A new 'batch' of babies has just joined our baby group, one of whom was 5 weeks premature - it really hit me then how my baby isn't really a baby anymore! He looks so big and grown up and has learned so much... I can't wait to see what's next!

The one with the Avon review - part 1

An unforgivably long time ago, I was given the opportunity to review some Avon products.

I started using them straight away but have neglected to write about them until now... still, better late than never!

Being a yummy mummy in training, the product I was most excited about was the eyeshadow so we'll do that first.

I am notoriously bad for not being very adventurous with make up. I've worn the same three products (or variations of them) for practically the last five years and I don't even vary them for day wear, evening wear etc. It's just those same three products (a black mascara, a black eyeliner and a grey eyeshadow - in case you were wondering!). I've tried to branch out but I've never liked how they look, particularly in photos and I always end up back with my holy trinity (seriously I love them that much). Anyway so I have tried two colours out of these four so far, the darker pink and the darker greeny grey. While I have decided that pink is not really my colour, I LOVE the greeny grey and seriously, this stuff applies like a dream. A dream I tell you! I can do a much neater job with it than I do with my regular eyeshadow. Plus, as someone pointed out to me, it matches the colour of my eyes (oh and apologies for the rubbish eyebrow maintenance, they're overdue a wax!)

I also found that unlike my other eyeshadow, this one actually lasts the whole day and I don't end up with lines of powder residue built up in the creases of my eyelids which is never a good look!

Perhaps I've found a new 'must have' eyeshadow after all..... if you like the look of it too, it's an Avon True Colour eyeshadow quad and comes in a fab range of colours if you're braver than me - the one I tried was called Smoke and Mirrors.

Next time.... we'll take a look at the adorable froggy towel and mitt!

** I was sent the products for the purpose of this review! **