The twins' first birthday party invitation - by Bex

I had a photo in mind for the twins' invitations for
a long time and would have loved to pay someone to take a properly good picture in a studio (as outside isn't really an option any more with the cold, wet weather) but given that I'm already a month late going back to work (I was supposed to be starting my new job today but it's been delayed AGAIN!  Paperwork issues down here are bonkers!) and my maternity pay ran out in March, we've now run out of savings!  Therefore I had to make do with my own skills to try to get the image I had in mind.  It isn't perfect, I may *slightly* regret filling ALL of our walls with various things as I have no plain backdrops to use, but I'm still pleased with it.

This is obviously a blog version without our personal details on but I love the font - Quicksilver.  It was tricky getting both babies happy and comfortable in the basket (kindly on loan from Jude) at the same time and looking at the camera, smiling, etc., etc..  I ended up with a couple of contenders though.  We experimented with placement of the basket, length of balloon ties and having the rug in or not.  I love the colours of the rug but felt in the end it kind of took away from the colours of the balloons.

As you have probably guessed, we're sticking with what has become the colour scheme for the whole of the twins' first year and having rainbow colours again!  (As we did for the nursery decor, playroom decor and naming ceremony decor.)  I'll hopefully have time to write a post about a few birthday party ideas I have.  There will also be a bit of a balloon theme as Kalyan absolutely LOVES balloons!

Anyway, here are the other photos I took of the 'hot air balloon'.

37 + 2

by Bex

I obviously meant to post this back when the babies hit the milestone of having been on the outside as long as they were inside me.  I asked Dad to take some photos of us in a lovely corner of diffused light I found in their house (as we were still in Saudi at the time).

I also put on my new T-shirt which had the perfect quote for such an occasion ;) and here are the iPhone snaps of me with the twins at 37+2 inside and 37+2 outside:

"Completely and perfectly and incandescently happy"

I loved the light so much, I then sat Priya on the stairs to take a few more photos and when she was starting to get fed up, swapped for Kalyan.  She started off a bit unsure of sitting on a step but soon got all excited and loved kicking her legs - and just look how brown they are!

Kalyan was similarly unsure at first but was clapping his hands and grinning away once he got used to sitting on the step :)

I then even managed to get a couple of quick shots of both of them before K had had enough.

A quick blog makeover

by Bex

I've been meaning to update the blog and give it a bit of a fresh new look for a while now - I originally thought I'd time it to coincide with moving and give it a brand new look when we started our new life in Sussex but then everything happened and with the moving as well as pregnancy, well... it just wasn't going to happen and ended up way down the priority list!

Now that the twins are a bit older and sleeping better, life is a bit less knackering!  It means I can hopefully manage to get back to blogging a bit more consistently and hopefully have some time to smarten the blog up a bit more too.  Anyway, for now we have a fresh new white and pale grey backdrop replacing the old swirly black and grey.  I originally chose that as I know black screens use less energy and it was also a bit different to everything else I was seeing but I just don't like it any more and wanted a brighter look.

Gone too is the old wedding photo banner.  Although I started out my blog all about our wedding planning, it's much more than that now so a new updated photo banner was required.  Again, I'd like to work on something a bit better but for now this showcases a lot of what we're about with a few fashion, food, home, craft and family pictures.

I've simplified our blog description, added a profile picture (I need to get one from Roz to add too) and tried to make it a lot smarter.  We have a new, more modern, font and will hopefully updating you soon with some more blog posts about life lately including our first family holiday to Turkey and my plans for the twins' 1st birthday party!

So what do you think?  Do you like the new look?