Carmen's Year's photostream  

Spots or stripes? That was the emergency decision I made this morning dressing Freya. However making life saving choices every day are RNLI.

The RNLI is the charity that saves lives at sea in the UK. Providing 24 hour lifeboats and seasonal lifeguards as well as advice on how to avoid getting into trouble in the first place, the RNLI is an independent charity, funded by voluntary donations. Today is RNLI SOS Day: join in with the RNLI’s biggest fundraising day to show your support for our volunteer lifeboat crews and lifeguards.

www.rnli.org.uk/sosday/donate

Amelie shows off her new gloves. I am seriously in love with them, as is she, although she bit half of the appliques off at school so I now have a sewing job on my hands!

Amelie started Rainbows today. She was a baby when I put her name down as I'd heard the waiting list is very long here and it paid off as she got a place soon after she turned five and became eligible to join. I was advised to put Freya's name down tonight too. It went well, she enjoyed it and came home with a lovely thistle fridge magnet she'd made, a picture shoe'd drawn and her little bag of tuck (sweeties).

...comes around. Last week Amelie was poorly. We just get her fit again after a week off school and Freya is poorly. Typical, we thought she was going to be lucky and not catch Amelie's bug. Off we go again with the sleepless nights, raging temperatures, huge quantities of washing and ruined soft funishings!

This carousel box lives on my bedside table with all my essentials in (tweezers, nail file, teething gel etc) so I can pretend to myself I am a tidy minimalist.

Amelie and Freya were sent these necklaces from Hong Kong for Christmas. Only problem is I mixed them up before I realised they were personlised and now I don't know which is which. Two years ago when Amelie started nursery she came home and told about us her shiny new year project. After questioning her more and a lengthy conversation about dragons it turned out she'd mishead 'Chinese New Year'. Still there's something apt about a shiny new year, even if I'm not Chinese so the phrase stays. Happy New Year to anyone celebrating.