Moving house address change checklist- Free Printable!

We are currently in the process of moving house- the second time within a year. Everyone knows that moving house can be stressful and one of the most stressful things can be having to inform so many companies, services and people of your change of address!

SO I have created this comprehensive address change check-list

and have made it as a free printable when you click on this link: address change checklist

This list is particularly useful for anyone who has Cystic Fibrosis  in the UK or a health condition as it includes chemists and hospitals and disability benefit but it is a useful starting point for anyone who is moving.

Good luck to anyone out there who is moving house!

52 weeks of gratitude challenge : Spouse

Dear Robin,

It is often the people closest to us that we take the most advantage of, when you are with someone every day you begin to forget to notice all the little things, the small reasons why you love that person and the miriad of reasons why you are grateful for them. Today I am going to express some of the reasons why I am grateful for you and some of the things you do that I am so thankful for.

Firstly thank you so much for being a morning person! Anyone who really knows me, knows I am definitely not a morning person, if allowed I would stay in bed indefinitely and find it very difficult to get up and go everyday. You dutifully rise early almost every morning to start Joe’s routine of physio and medication, nappy changing and breakfast whether its a weekday or a weekend you jump out of bed without a complaint and tell me you love me as you leave me to sleep for a precious half hour more. You hardly ever complain, or ask me to take a turn, and sometimes, even when you have a chance to lie in you turn it down. I think this is a wonderful, kind thing and it makes my life so much better- without sleep I am a grumpy, miserable wretch- you understand that about me and you love me all the same. So thank you.

 

Thank you Robin for telling me i’m beautiful and that you love me everyday. I may not always believe you, and some days I think you must be completely blind, but without fail, everyday, at least once you tell me I’m beautiful and that you love me. Just those few words each day make such a difference to my self esteem- you help me feel like I can face the day and any challenges that come my way. So thank you.

Thank you Robin for understanding maths, and for not laughing (too hard) when I have to add up on my fingers, or miscalculate, or look up how to do percentages on line (again). You think my number dyslexia is cute rather than annoying and frustrating, so thank you for doing all our workings out and for correcting my mistakes without making me feel stupid.

Thank you for listening and attempting to understand me. I am a complex human being, often overtaken by some emotion or another that is often inexplicable. I burst into tears at inopportune moments, sometimes I blab out all my emotions in a torrid of anger, other times I clam up tight and still you always gently prise out my problems, not giving up on me, listening patiently. I really don’t know how you put up with me. And yet, you will sit and listen, really listen, to any concern I have, any crazy idea, any thought that pops into my head. If it’s important to me, it’s important to you. So thank you for listening and for helping me to know I exist and that someone cares.

Thank you for being a great Dad to our son. I know you find it hard sometimes, especially when Joe seems to have eyes for everyone but you. But trust me, one day he will realise how lucky he is to have a Dad like you. You are there, you are present, you are interested. That’s a lot more than many men do for their children- not counting the midnight get ups, the early mornings, the physio sessions, the doses of medication, the hours sat up worrying, the excitement on your face every time you see him, the love that you show him, and us, everyday without fail.

Thank you for providing for us and for not making me feel guilty for being a stay at home mom. When we found out that Joe had CF you did not question my desire to stay at home and look after him, in fact you supported me fully and still do. You dutifully go to work day in, day out and never complain or cast a jealous glance. You have no problem with providing for us and you often say how I deserve and earn the money just as you do. You never belittle my position and you often thank me for the things I do every day that a lot of people wouldn’t notice. You understand and appreciate that my job is hard and that I’m never really off duty. Whenever I have doubts about whether I have made the right decision to stay at home and give up my career, you remind me how important my role is at home, you show me how marvelous our son is and you say that it is a testament to what I do every day. And when you come home from your hard day at work and the house is a mess, the dinners no where near ready, Joe’s half dressed and I look like the dogs dinner you never EVER ask me “what have you done all day?”.

Thank you for being kind, generous, caring, handsome, funny, silly, romantic, interested, interesting, loyal, ours.

There are a million and one reasons why I am am grateful for you, the list is endless.

Thank you for being my Husband. The father of my child. My Confidant. My Best Friend.

Thank you.

Love from Rachel xxxx

 

Happy 2015!

Happy New year to all our friends and family and to everyone who reads this blog! I hope 2015 is your happiest year to date and that you all have plenty of things to look forward to over the coming 12 months.

The Christmas decorations are packed away, the Christmas cake has been eaten and the recycling bin is overflowing with plastic and cardboard boxes from all of Joe’s new toys and our new fangled doo dads. It’s sad at this time of year because all of the build up to Christmas is over but its also an exciting time too, not least because I got no less than 8 new notebooks for christmas (of the paper variety not computers!) and I can’t wait to start filling them all in with notes, lists, goals, and anything else that I can think of to write down.

One of the first things I have done is write a list of 12 things I’d like to do this year- not necessarily new years resolutions but just a little reminder to myself of the small and sometimes large goals I would like to attempt to achieve this year. To help me with this I printed off this lovely list to stick in one of my journals which is available as a free printable download from livelaughrowe.com

Free printable from livelaughrowe.com

Here are some of the things I’d like to do this year:

1.  Continue to write my blog– I have really enjoyed writing my blog over the past few months, it’s been a great way for me to keep in touch with family and friends, it has helped me through some tough times with Joes cystic Fibrosis and made me feel part of a community and it has helped me to focus my creativity encouraging me not only to write but to photograph, research, bake, cook, draw, make and sew. So this year I would like to continue writing my blog- who knows where it may lead!
2. Use my gratitude journal- For those of you who have been reading my gratitude Friday blog posts you will know that I have been trying to practice gratitude in order to improve my well being. This year I want to keep up with my gratitude journal, writing three things down every night before bed that I am grateful for. Look out for future posts on Gratitude.
3. Try and tackle my disordered eating  This is not something that I have really discussed on my blog before- I could probably write a whole other blog about my issues with food, so I won’t go into great detail now, but this year I would like to try and find ways of keeping my disordered eating in control which kind of links to my next goal…
4. Treat myself kindly  This year I would like to practice self acceptance and to encourage positive self talk- finding new ways to combat stress and to generally be less critical of myself and improve my self esteem.
5. Take Joseph swimming Joseph having CF means that physical exercise is going to be very important to his quality of life in the future, so I want to start as early as possible in encouraging him to take part in exercise recreationally as well as for health purposes. Joe has been swimming a couple of times but while he was really little we avoided it mostly to keep him well, now he is a little bigger and stronger its something we can do together and will hopefully help him to get a taste for enjoying physical exercise.
6. Read 10 books  This may not seem like a lot to some people- before I had Joe I could read 10 books a month if not more, but now I find I don’t quite have enough time! So I would like to attempt to read 10 books this year. I’ve started by beginning to read Sarah Waters latest novel “The paying Guests” that Rob brought me for Christmas.
7. Make more art/crafts This doesn’t really need much explanation! I want to make sure I be creative this year whether it be drawing and painting, making cards, sewing, pom poms, baking…whatever!
8. Do date nights regularly For Robin’s birthday I made him a set of cards, all with a different, free date night ideas written on for him to choose from every few weeks- I want to make sure we use them to get some quality time together and to remember we are a married couple not just parents!
9. Make some gifts   I would like to try and make some home made gifts this year, I often see ideas on pinterest and in books that i’d like to try but never get round to it, so hopefully this year i will make some time to make some gifts!
10. Write in my journals and notebooks I did have 8 note books for Christmas. What more excuse do I need?
11. Use my printer I had a lovely new printer for Christmas from Robin so I want to make sure I use it! whether it be to help my journaling, to make cards, to use in crafts there’s so much potential!
12. Use my sewing machine this links in with some of my other goals like making gifts and making more art and crafts- what’s the use of having a sewing machine if you don’t use it?

What things would you like to do this year?

2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,300 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 55 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Happy Christmas Eve Everyone!

Hope you are all having a great Christmas Eve and festive time up until now!

 

Here are some of the things we have been making in the run up to Christmas!

The cake above I started making in Late november and is based on a recipe from Nigella’s Christmas book. The original recipe can be found here.

I used dates in mine and had no raisins so used mainly currants. I used mixed chopped nuts and lots of sweet sherry. To decorate the icing holly and berries were from Asda, the ribbon from Adli and the cake toppers were presents from Christmases in the past!

I served my Christmas cake this weekend at a buffet style meal we did for Rob’s parents. My Dad and his wife to be were meant to be coming but unfortunately they were full of a cold and couldn’t come visit for fear of passing it on to Joe (one of the many pitfalls of CF.)

We also made yummy scrummy rocky road and soy and cranberry glazed sausages both of which are Nigella’s Christmas recipes too.

It’s not just me who’s been crafting away! Joe and I had a great time making these jolly Christmas pictures for all the grandparents- it was the first time we had done a proper craft activity together and although Joe did try to eat the glue and crayons several times it went quite well! His favourite thing to do was stick stickers on and he really loved the buttons.

As I mentioned before we have been going a little pom pom mad these past few weeks and have used pom poms to embellish some of the christmas wrapping- Joe thinks pom poms are great fun too!

And if by chance you are in need of some last minute gift tags please check out these beauties which I have recently printed out to test my Christmas pressie from my lovely husband (a bit early I know) a brilliant new printer! Free printables from Kelli Murray here.

Free gift tag printables

 

Once again hope you all have a great Christmas and a fantastic New Year!! Love from the Crawshaws!

Christmas cards

Hi everyone hope you are all having a wonderfully festive December!

Just thought I’d share with you some of the Christmas cards I have made this year- it’s one of the things I love to do and I re-use material from all sorts of sources on lots of cards so many of the cards I make are semi environmentally friendly. I also used some card making sets that my mom brought me from Wilkinsons.

This is Robin’s card- he has a thing about stags at the moment so I cut out a silhouette that I drew by hand on fabulously glittery card, but had to add a festive red nose to make it a bit more fun and christmassy! I also used old buttons, washi tape and christmas ribbon that was from a set from lidl.

The girl card in the centre was painted by me using water colours- the image is based on a vintage card I saw on pinterest. The “wonderful time of the year” card was also hand drawn and based on an image from pinterest. The others are made from a card making set from Wilkinsons and the snowflakes and reindeers are pre-cut, but I added my own buttons and washi tape embellishments.

The following card was made for our number one pepper pig fan Joseph! I used the box from a pepper pig gift set for the pepper image, and I had to add a star shaped button for our “super-duper star”!

 

Christmas Decorations!

Hi everyone and happy First of December! Christmas has come to the Crawshaw family household, come and take a peek at our festive decorations!

Our Christmas Tree

We have a 7 foot fake tree in our lounge (Real fir trees can cause complications for people with CF due to mould spores) in the bay window, decorated with a real mix of old and new, vintage decorations displayed next to the hand made and supermarket finds. We haven’t gone for a colour theme this year, we have a mixture of reds, greens, silvers, golds and purples- most of the decorations are individual and have a little history behind them.

Knitted Santa

The santa above was knitted by my great Auntie and was always on my family tree as a child. When I moved out my mom gave us a selection of decorations from our childhood so that santa has been around for nearly 30 years! And the red glass bauble in the background is also vintage- it adorned my moms tree many years ago and still sparkles brightly on ours today.

More Santa decorations

This cheeky chap is metal and was a gift from Rob’s parents from there travels in Brugge. The bauble in the background is glass and belonged to my mom- another one from my childhood.

A new addition- beautiful peacock decoration from Rob’s parents

This lovely big bauble is new this year- a thoughtful gift from Rob’s parents from a trip to Harrogate, a lovely addition with links to our wedding (we had a peacock themed wedding and ever since our home has always contained hints of peacock.)

Peacock feathers are quite prominent in our house as we had a peacock themed wedding- this decoration was given to us by by mom

One of my favourites- a traditional glass santa from brugge

I love these traditional glass German decorations. The Ribbon round the tree comes from a pack of three from Lidl and the beaded strings were from Next a few years ago.

Glass angel

These glass angels were from Avon quite a few years ago now, and the red and white christmas tree was from a selection at Tesco’s last year.

A lovely sparkly tree to adorn our lovely sparkly tree!

Toad stools are one of my favourite things, and also look at the hand crocheted snowflake crafted by my mom

My mom made a large selection of knitted and crocheted decorations last year which we sold to raise money for the CF trust. I was lucky enough to be given a few- they are very special to us and remind us of the generosity of others.

Little house that contained chocolates…notice the use of past tense…

Details on the fire place

Above is the famous “snowman lamp” which Joe is obsessed with that we were given this year by Rob’s parents, we also received the hanging globe from my mom which flashes different colours. The santa opens up and plays a tune and tiny sleigh pulled by reindeers turns round and round to the music in his tummy. My Nan gave me this one year along with a ginger gingerbread house version and I think they are so magical!

the fire place

The fire place is lined with gold tinsel (vintage too, probably 20 years old) gold beads, tiny gold bells and snowflake lights which I brought this year from homebase for £3.99. The snowman candle holder was a gift I had as a teenager from my auntie Heather and it’s one of my favourite Christmas items.

Decorations from my childhood now delight and entertain Joe 

Choo-choo lamp

Joe loves the train christmas lights we brought this year from the holly bush garden centre in Cheslyn hay. Christmas was always so magical for me as a child, I loved it especially the decorations and I really love that Joe can experience and gain joy from some of the decorations that delighted me as a child. I have always loved the santa and tinsel mobile pictured above and even though its getting pretty tatty now I still put it up every year.

Joseph’s tree

We have put up a little tree for joe, which we did last year for his first christmas, with lots of his own decorations, and more special decorations that I remember from my childhood. It’s a bit more gaudy than our tree in the living room but I think its really fun and bright, i really love putting on the brightly coloured vintage baubles and old wooden decorations.

Gingerbread man

Hand knitted decoration complete with train button made by my mom

I hope you have enjoyed looking at some of our christmas decorations! Hope December is full of festive cheer for you all!

Inspiration Wednesday

Hi everyone here are a few things that we have found interesting and inspiring this week!

We are very inspired by Richard and Sarah (My big bro and his lovely wife) who have taken the plunge and started there own businesses which they have dreamed of attempting for a long time. It takes a lot of courage to set off on a venture like this and I wish them both the best of luck!

You can find lots of beautiful handmade vintage gifts and inspiration at Mrs A’s vintage gifts here. We have a beautiful embellished family tree print that was commissioned by my mom from Mrs A’s Vintage gifts for our wedding anniversary and we love it!

Our family tree by Mr’s A’s vintage gifts

 

Love Birds photo frame

Also if you are in the Staffordshire area and you need some DIY doing look no further than DIFY! click here for facebook page.

This is a local business, based in Great Wyrley offering
Handy man services
Man with a van services
House/Garden/Office Clearances
Bulk Items removals (Sofas/Beds etc..)
Garden maintenance
Day Labouring
Pressure Washing
Window Cleaning
Gutter Cleaning and Repair
Decorating
Free estimates! No job too small! Discounts For OAPs!

If its not on the list just ask!

We have all also been very excited about the arrival of our very big, very comfy lovely new leather sofa! Thank you very much granny and grandpa Crawshaw for your extremely generous gift!!

 

 

And of course we have started to think about Christmas! Here are some of the ideas we have been thinking about- lets see if you are inspired too!

Ginger bread hot chocolate! yummy!

Hope you have an inspiring week!

Interesting things Wednesday

Here are a few things we have found interesting or inspiring this week!

I have just finished reading this:

Mr Mercedes by Stephen King

I love Stephen King books- a passion that I  have inherited from my mom (reason my mom is great number 272)- and was very excited to hear that he was writing a crime trilogy. I read this in about 3 days which is quite a feat when you have a toddler about! A great read. I borrowed my copy from the library.

How i cheated death by Tim Wotton

I am now reading “How I cheated death: A short and Merry life with Cystic Fibrosis” which my mom brought after I recommended Tim Wottons blog which you can see here. I am finding it very compelling reading about Tim’s trials and successes- I think its a must read for anyone who knows someone, is related to someone or who deals with someone who suffers from the condition.

The Edge of the Woods

Above is the beautiful work of textile artist Karen Nicol: The Edge of the Woods. I am amazed by these beautiful textile artworks that are created with mixed fabrics, embroidery and fine jewellery and pearls, collaged photographic negatives and other gorgeous materials like taffeta, chiffon and leather. My particular favourite is the turquoise blue hare adorned with pearls.

warm wooly socks

hats, scarves and tights

Autumnal boots

I’m loving getting out my snuggly knits and dusting off my trusty boots now we have finally reached Autumn! This is my favourite season for clothes and also activities such as baking, going for chilly walks, watching movies and drinking hot chocolate!

Even Joe has worn a hat and scarf! (for around 15 seconds…world record) and below you can see us doing all these things- wearing knitted garments (both jumpers hand knit by my mom- reason my mom is great number 12) and going for chilly walks!

Hope you have found lots to be inspired by this week!

 

Interesting things Wednesday

Hello everyone- here are few things we have found interesting or inspiring in the past week:

After receiving a lot of fresh, home grown veggies from my grandad’s allotment and Lex’s garden including onions, leeks, cherry tomatoes, marrow, cabbages and sweetcorn I have been looking at some recipes to try out! Here are a few of the recipes inspiring us this week.

tomato and mozzarella tart

click here for recipe.

tomato focaccia

Click here for recipe.

tomato cheese balls

click here for recipe.

marrow chocolate cake

you can find the recipe here.

leek onion and potato soup

find the recipe here.

After receiving the wonderful impromptu gift of a glue gun from my mom I have been looking at ideas on how to use it! Here’s a few things that caught my eye:

Glue holes in bath toys

This is a great idea for us as Joe cannot use bath toys as they collect mould and this can be dangerous for his CF.

button lamp

This is such a simple but very visually appealing idea! Just use a plain lampshade and go wild with glue and buttons!

Button Christmas star

Another great way to use buttons thats so festive!

And of course we have been inspired by all things rockets!

Cardboard Rockets!

plastic bottle rockets- heres the link!

yummy rocket!

Get the original how to make these rocket sandwiches here!

old school rocket!

Rocket mobile!

Get the how to here!

Hope you see lots to inspire you throughout the next week! Happy Wednesday!