2015 Twins Christmas Card - by Bex

I already posted about the photo shoot we did with the twins for our Christmas card this year with out takes and behind the scenes pics.  Now that I've sent out [most of] the cards, here are the final images and designs we chose.  (I still have a few to write and some to send with parcels which aren't ready to post yet so apologies if you see this before you receive your card!)

I used Vistaprint for the cards this year as they were the cheapest with a Black Friday deal (the only one I purchased) giving 60% off.  This meant I got 100 of the following cards for about 30p each.  I liked being able to use more than one of the photos since I liked quite a few in the end.  I managed to get all of my favourites on this design with 4 on the front and 3 on the back.  These ones were so cheap as they are just flat like a postcard.

I also made a few slightly less traditional ones with a rainbow coloured font so I changed the photo to black and white.  I got 30 of these ones for about 40p each.  These were proper folding cards with a cheeky extra photo on the back too.  (They had the same inside as the back of the other one.)

I'm really pleased with them both and hope our friends and family like them too!  The twins did so well and we got some lovely ones as well as the cheeky ones which I think are the best!  :)

Sea Life Brighton - by Bex

We had such a wonderful day in Brighton on the twins' first birthday.  We started off in the Sea Life centre and the amazing Laura was there to capture all the fun for us.  I am absolutely delighted with the photos she took, they are exactly what I had in mind when I planned our birthday day out knowing she'd be there to record it.  Despite some difficult, dark lighting in the aquarium, she's managed to get some truly gorgeous portraits of the twins as well as the photos I had hoped for in the tunnel and some brilliant close-ups and family shots.

I can quite easily say that she will always be my first port of call if we ever need a family photographer.  I only wish I'd known her sooner and booked her for our wedding.

Laura has kindly sent me way more photos than usual due to the tricky lighting so I had plenty to choose from.  I think she also knows just how much I love photos of the twins!  And anyone who reads this blog will also know that and the fact that I am useless at narrowing down my favourites.  As a result of my useless ability to edit down beautiful photos, I will write another post featuring the lovely photos she took of us outside the aquarium and on Brighton beach as they have a completely different feel anyway, back in the daylight!

I do have some super-duper absolute favourites which will be the full size single pictures below.  ;)

Anyway, about our day; other than Laura recording the morning so beautifully, we had a lot of fun in the aquarium!  It's the first time we've taken the babies to one and they loved it.  We'd never been to the one in Brighton before, and in fact, it's been years since I've been to one at all.  It was really good and the staff were lovely.

They even had rainbow effect lighting on the ceiling!

We particularly loved the touch and feel areas (I have no idea what they are actually called) where we could get wet and touch sea stars and anemones and a member of staff held up a crab for the babies to touch.  Priya wasn't convinced but Kalyan was very interested and gentle.  I love his face in the first one - like he's saying, "Really? I can touch it??" and in the last one - "what on earth IS that thing you let me touch?!"

They were both more keen on sticking their hands in the water to touch the sea stars and anemones.

There was also a sandpit full of "treasures" to find.

As well as plenty of other fish, terrapins and rays to see.

Priya again was a bit unsure when taken into the dome to see the terrapins.  She didn't mind being in the tunnel though but was happier when her and Daddy came back out.

One of my favourite bits was the underwater tunnel.  One of the main reasons I wanted to go to the sea life centre was because I thought it would be quite photogenic in the tunnel but also I love seeing sharks and rays swimming right above.  They didn't disappoint on any count, despite part of the tunnel being closed while they install a new area, there was even a huge turtle in there too!

All in all, we had an amazing morning exploring the centre.  I will definitely be going back (especially since we got free tickets to return due to part of it being closed on the day we went!).  I think it should be a new birthday tradition.  I can imagine the twins will love it even more when they're two!

Christmas Inspiration - Our 2014 decorations - by Bex

It's almost December.  Almost time to get the decorations down from the attic and make the place festive.  Can you tell I'm excited?!  I LOVE Christmas!  To inspire myself (and hopefully you), I thought I'd finally post some pictures of our decorations last year.  For obvious reasons (newborn twin survival), I never got around to much blogging but I did manage to take a few photos!  I'm only managing to blog about it now because my Dad's here unexpectedly for work and managed to book his flights to give him a weekend with us at either end of a week of meetings!  He's playing with the twins in the living room while I write this up on my desk this afternoon.  (But don't worry, we did also have lots of lovely time playing together this morning, I didn't just scarper immediately!)

It was my first time decorating the new house so I changed things around quite a lot from what I used to do in the flat in Glasgow.  For starters, the new living room has plum colours now so all of my beautiful olive green stuff was mostly re-purposed in other rooms.  As I don't have a mantel any more anyway, it was going to have to change but I also changed the main colour on the Christmas tree and on those shelves Nik and I made a couple of years ago.  Instead of green being the main colour, I stuck to neutrals - white, taupe, silver and wood.  (Although my green NOEL was placed here temporarily and stayed.)

The same went for the tree with all of the green decorations and baubles kept for another idea which funnily enough never happened last year but hopefully will this year!  Incidentally, I am NEVER buying a spruce again!  What a nightmare with the needles!!  I never had a real tree until I met Nik and we moved in together in Glasgow and I was pleasantly surprised that they weren't really a problem.  Nordman firs.  Definitely buy Nordman firs!

The pictures are clearly quick snaps and not the usual timely beautiful pictures with glowing lights all perfectly 'styled'.  Sometimes life is just too real.  Note the 'breastfeeding box' and pump on the arm of the sofa!  So glam ;)  I did love sitting there feeding the twins next to the glow of the tree though, so much so I'd often bring them downstairs to feed at 1,2,3,4am...  :)

Us with the tree on Christmas day

We also had some lovely personalised decorations specially for the twins' first Christmas from both sets of grandparents.  I had planned to make hand print baubles but, meh, two babies who don't like paint!!  It was enough of a struggle to get some on paper for their baby books!

A new addition last year was the snowflake display in the bay window.  I bought them in TK Maxx - £5.99 for the small ones and £7.99 for the big ones.  I saw similar ones this year for around £10 but I can't remember where.  Nik put up 3 hooks for me (which also came in handy for the twins' birthday decorations) and I hung my beaded snowflake candle holders.  It was difficult to get a good picture of those with the light behind them and with the reflections at night, even with the lights off.  They're beautiful in real life, I love them!

The only downside is that they can only take electric tea lights due to the heat of real ones obviously.  I've struggled to find any good ones but I still love the overall look.  I have another one in our box window but the photo of that is even worse, lol.

My favourite thing to decorate was probably by new dresser!  You might remember it arrived just two weeks after the babies were born and I still love it to bits!  Of course, our dining room and kitchen still have green features so I was able to use all of my favourite green bits 'n' pieces in there.

And finally, the hall.  I used some of my very old red decorations in here, including my old red berry wreath which actually goes very well with the red stained glass flowers that I hate in the front door!  The red ones have been banished to the 'red box' for a few years now so it was nice to get them out again.

The garland was also an old purchase from Ortak which I added some of my butterflies (also from Ortak) and dragonflies (from a pound shop) to.  (Mum and Nik tied this on to the banister for me as I was struggling!)  The big green balls were meant to be hung in the hall but ended up staying on the end of the banister for the duration!  Mum bought us the lovely Poinsettia and I put my mini tree on the sideboard too.

Considering that we were all just trying to survive last Christmas, I think the place looked pretty festive.  I do love Christmas so I was glad I still managed to decorate the house.  It's always extra fun the first time in a new place.  I'm really excited about this year though, although quite apprehensive about K&P and the tree this year!  Kalyan is going to absolutely love the lights and pretty shiny things and MIGHT be content to stare and point (his favourite things to do with lights and balloons) but Priya is bound to be in there trying to grab everything - I wouldn't put it past her to try and climb the thing!  We'll see.

I'm still not back at work (loooong story and very frustrating, although I'm loving this stage with the twins so I am glad not to be missing anything) so we're on an even tighter budget this year but I have bought a couple of very cheap pieces from Wilko and TK Maxx.  I have to say, TK Maxx is my absolute favourite place to shop for Christmas stuff!

Behind the scenes - Christmas card 2015 - by Bex

I have become one of those people.  I thought I'd just do it the first year, the cheesy Christmas photo of the babies (lets face it that will always happen) made into a Christmas card.  I just can't resist though and I love trying to get that perfect photo!  (The enjoyment is in equal parts to the stress!)

Anyway, it's happening and this year was actually a bit easier than last year.  Last year we were trying to get the babies to sleep and look all cute next to each other, on top of my old baby blanket placed over some fairy lights.  At 5 weeks, it just wasn't happening - had I not found my recovery and those first couple of weeks getting to grips with twins and breastfeeding so difficult, I would have tried to get some decent photos of the twins in those first sleepy weeks after they were born.

This year, I was prepared.  During their morning/midday nap, I got the 'stage' set, practised settings using stand in 'models' and made sure it looked right in the camera before we tried putting the babies anywhere near.  I also had props on standby to keep them occupied/entertained/in one place!

I settled on Christmas jumpers with jeans for their outfits, with the back up of their Christmas day outfits for if we needed/had cooperation for a change.  I had a couple of plastic star baubles and a couple of pine cones to give them in the hopes they'd stay put and I had my own headpiece to try to get them looking in my direction!  (More on that little DIY Pin It Do It project on the blog soon!)

My set up this year was to put a lot of fairy lights all over our headboard, cover them with a sheet to hide the wires and let the lights shine through.  I put a white sheet on our mattress to hopefully blend into the background.  Unfortunately only a few lights were shining through as the sheet was billowing forward due to the lights pushing so I had to try to stretch it as tight as possible to show all the lights.  Pegs helped but keeping it taut at the top was tricky so I stuffed some jumpers down the back which pulled the sheet tight and held against the wall.

Nothing is ever simple though of course and when the babies woke, the sun had come out and was shining full force onto the bed.  Nightmare!  Shadows, harsh light, not what I wanted!  I hastily pegged up a sheet in front of the window as closing the blind would make it too dark.

Finally having my diffused light, stage set and models ready, rested and not too hungry, my two fabulous assistants (Nik and Mum) plonked them down and we hoped for magic!  I'll share my favourites closer to Christmas, once I've actually sent out my cards, but for now, here are a few out-takes!

Priya liked the pine cones a little too much!  Munch munch munch.

Kalyan trying to escape from Priya's kisses!

Later in the day, I happened to go back into our bedroom to find we'd left the fairy lights on and they were much more noticeable.  I hadn't wanted to leave it so late as I thought the dark light would be difficult (blurring moving babies and all) but tried another test shot on the bears and liked the result so thought it was worth a try.  It was!  The lights showed up so much better without so much light shining into the room and I managed a few shots with the ISO cranked right up.  There were still a lot of blurry ones though.

Fighting over pine cones.

And the lights being more obvious meant Kalyan was a little too interested in them ;)

I also tried a few with the big Santa hats I bought for a different idea which needs to be done in the dark.  I have to say, those shots were mostly of the hat in the process of being removed!  Priya especially did NOT want to wear a hat today, lol.  Cue even more blurry ones as I frantically tried to focus before the hat was removed!

She even helped to release Kalyan from the evil of the hat!  lol

It soon got to late afternoon nap time and they started losing it so we had to give up but I'm pleased with quite a few of the hundreds I took!  :)