Lemon & Poppy Seed- no better combo

I stumbled across an amazing blog today....London Bakes....this woman will keep me busy in the kitchen for the next wee while.......

I would describe myself as a 50/50 kind of baker.........basically 50% of the time I get it wrong and the other 50% I get it right...but I was on form today with these babies:

 Lemon and Poppy Seed muffins were adapted from London Bakes 

These are great for people who do not like SWEET muffins and play around with the different types of flour and sweetener

WARNING I am not a good photographer and use my i phone, hence to poor quality of pics 

Lemon and poppyseed spelt muffins

Adapted from London Bakes

Ingredients

• 1 cup spelt flour
• 1 cup wholemeal flour
• 1/4 cup white flour
• 1 cup brown sugar-soft
• 3/4 tablespoons baking powder
• 2.5 tablespoons poppy seeds
• Zest of 3 large unwaxed lemons
• 1 1/4 cup almond milk 
• 3 large eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon melted coconut oil- to this I squeezed the juice of 1.5 lemons and added
• Icing sugar to dust (only if desired)

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 220C/425F. 
2. Grease a muffin tin or use paper/silicone cases.
3. Whisk all the dry ingredients together- I included the lemon zest
4. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, vanilla, and coconut oil.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and quickly combine; the key is not to OVER STIR just 10-15 seconds
6. Fill the muffin tin 2/3rd of the way full and bake for about 10-15 mins 
7. Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin before transferring to a wire rack.
8. Once cooled on wire rack dust icing sugar and ENJOY

SOOO many choices

Once we made it past the 20 week scan I felt I could finally start to get properly excited about this Baby To Be!  One thing I must admit that I did get very excited about was choosing a diaper/nappy bag.  I love handbags especially Mulberry bags...they are my weakness! So getting a diaper bag was something totally new and exciting and let me tell you there are SOOOO many bags out there and such a range of prices.

I have noticed that these Yummy Mummy Nappy bags seem to be very popular with many of the mums I see around town. 

The Cath Kidson Nappy bags are also really cute and very popular with mums. A new mum I know has one and raves about it, plus it totally suits her style.

The Pacapod changing bags also caught my eye as they were not as obviously a 'changing bag'

I know there are tons of Orla Kiely fans out there and one of my good friends has already decided she will be getting one of these bags once she is pregnant

Another brand of diaper bags that caught my eye is Storksak...so many choices and like the Pacapod they are moving away from the 'obvious diaper bag' and are in the running!

Now ever since watching her tv show I have lusted after the Rosie Pope Shopper bag...so chic 

And finally I stumbled upon Sugarjack diaper bags...again SO many choices and they currently have a sale

SOOO as you can see major dilema. What do you have or do you have any favourites?

We are having a...........

I knew right from the moment I found out I was pregnant (if not before) that I wanted to know the gender of the baby.  I am not very good with surprises and just wanted to KNOW what we were having.  SO the next decision was HOW would we find out??? I hated the idea of being told in the clinical 'scan room' by someone I barely knew.......we both agreed that would take away the magic!  So we decided to look across the pond to get some ideas.........

Coloured balloons is a SUPER CUTE way to reveal the gender! See more pics here

Cut into to the cake...what colour will it be?

Fortune cookies..GENUIS! 

All of these were fantastic ideas, however, I couldn't bear the idea of someone else knowing the gender of the baby and not US (plus to be HONEST I couldn't be bothered with all the organising)....so we decided we would keep it simple.  My husband printed BOY or GIRL onto card and we asked the woman who was carrying out the scan to circle the gender and put it into a sealed envelope.  
"What do you want me to do?????" was her reply....obviously the FIRST time she had ever heard of anything like this before.....after explaining she agreed although I think she thought we were BONKERS..
So off we went to a lovely little coffee shop in a nearby village to open the envelope.  It was perfect....intimate and lovley. So we are having a .........................................................................

GIRL!!!!!!!!!

We are over the moon and obviously know this is not 100% accurate but the shopping has already begun!

Parents to BE

I am almost 27 weeks PREGNANT! 'Over the moon BUT cautious' describes how I feel.  It was not an easy journey getting to this point but it is an amazing feeling to be here. And I just hope it continues to go well for us.
It started with tons and tons of these (this is the least scary one)............to be honest they were not FUN but were not as bad as I thought they would be...I just kept the end goal in mind with each injection.

Then a lot of waiting and hoping.....I did a lot of healthy eating-especially protein to help my little eggs GROW. I also did some visualisation CDs at nighttime...I recommend the Zita West CD. And then we were called in for egg collection which went very smoothly and there was NO pain and then the BIG transfer day.  We just kept everything crossed that this was OUR time and things would work for us.

AND IT DID and we were OVERJOYED! 

although I was sent to the hospital for 5 days with Ovarian Hyper Stimulation and a stomach so full of fluid that I gained over 1.5 stone in 4 days (about 21 lbs)

Sorry for the grainy picture but this is our little bundle of joy all healthy and growing as it should be!

But it has taken a LONG time for me to start this blog.....because you always think 'it is too good to be true' and do not want to jinx anything.

But this is the start of our journey to becoming first time parents!