Well hellooooo there

Bonjour, bonjour (rhymes with 'sewer' and has to be said in the voice of Del-Boy please).  I'm ba-ack!
Before I go any further, what do you think of this little Lego set up?  I made the mistake of saying to Mr N and the assembled crowd of mickey-takers that I thought the hen was probably my favourite Lego figure (clearly there are two things wrong with this: 1) that I know any Lego figures is worrying, but the fact that I have an opinion on them is almost too much; 2) I need to get out more), which prompted Mr N to hilariously put said chicken on the head of this rather fierce-looking blacksmith-slash-warrior and say that he thought it looked much better laying a human in the manner of an egg.  Cue raucous laughter from everyone else.  Oh, the japes we have chez Nut...
Anyhoo, I have survived my journey to the big smoke and I'm back, refreshed and ready to plough on for the next two years without a break (hmmm, slight exaggeration maybe, but god, I needed to recharge my batteries big time).  I foolishly forgot my camera, but managed to take a couple of slightly dodgy photos of an amazing rooftop garden with my phone:

I quite badly want one of these for my garden:

Oooh, and look at the view:

I kept saying 'oh, hang on a mo, I just need to take a photo of this for my blog' while my friend wisely walked ten paces ahead of me, whistling casually to herself, pretending she didn't know me.

One thing I didn't take a photo of was the mojito we had sitting outside, at a great Cuban place Mr N and I used to go to when we lived in north London - it was lush and I could have had about twelve, but then I'd have been bankrupt and lying under the table in an undignified manner, so instead we went back to my friend's house and had pasta and watched a crap film.  Perfick.

It was just brilliant to be away for a while (hmmm, that makes it sound like I hate being at home, which I absolutely don't, but sometimes it's just nice to be reminded that you exist outside of your children and that, indeed, you are an adult - albeit one who has opinions about Lego men).  Even the train journey was great - on the way back on Sunday, I was in first class - facing the direction of travel (no travel sickness for me, no sireee), no-one next to me, with my crochet and free food and drink brought round by a man with a trolley...happy days.

And blimey, it's been a whirlwind since I got back - it emerges that poor old middle nut's been getting abdominal migraines (I'd never heard of them until now) I did my impression of a mummy trying hard not to panic, but failing completely, when he calmly announced that he'd been suffering loss of vision and seeing shimmering lights for 'a long time now, mummy'.  Cue mad dash to optician (20:20 vision and full colour vision too), followed by mad dash to doctor: 'okaaaay, so he's been getting migraines you say?  Uhm, isn't that a bit unusual in a five year old?  WHY shouldn't I be concerned about this, exactly?'  His consultant's appointment came through this morning, so I'm hoping they'll be able to shed a bit more light on it for me.

I've also been a busy bee painting our sitting room - I blame Julia - she inspired me to get off my bum and just do it.  It's taken me two days of blood, sweat and tears and I still haven't finished it.  Ha ha - that makes it seem like we have some sort of palatial sitting room.  We don't.  I just get very easily distracted and the paint doesn't seem to be going on very evenly (I absolutely love Farrow and Ball colours, but blimey, it's hard work getting the stuff on the walls properly...)  In my head, I had 'Nordic vintage seaside handmade-esque' as my inspiration; so have plumped for muted blues and greys with bright white and natural fabrics.  What I now realise is that there's a fine line between that and 'Prisoner Cell Block H-chic'.  I'll keep you posted.  Photos will follow, if the warders will let me smuggle in a camera.
Finally, I have also been working hard at my crafty bits and bobs - my African flower creation is finished - I'll do a ta-dah when I do my monthly round-up in a couple of days.  And I have also finished the skirt I was making for baby n.  Now, before I reveal this item of clothing, I want to point out that this was clearly going to be cursed from the moment I started it - I should have taken the 'chopping-fabric-to-exact-width-of-waist' incident as a warning, for what she has ended up with isn't, in fact, a skirt; it's more of a ruffle.  It would fit a newborn baby who happened to have the girth of a sixteen-month-old.  Now, trying to get the girl to stay still long enough to take a photo was like trying to nail jelly to the ceiling, or maybe she was just embarrassed by the fact that her nappy was on show, but anyway, good luck with the following series of pictures:

The amazing one-legged girl

She's clearly spent way too much time watching what I do every day

Check out the tummy on her

Introducing bun-bun #3

Oh, and before I go, here's another little snippet of my life post-London - and let this serve as a stark reminder that we all need time to recharge our batteries, because god, sometimes they are drained in the blink of an eye: on Monday night, after a full day at work, I got into bed looking forward to a good night's sleep...twenty minutes after nodding off, middle started throwing up.  After clearing up said vomit, the sweaty-headed boy got into bed with me and Mr N got into his bed (the top bunk); shortly afterwards, baby decided to have a bit of a cry.  We gave her some milk and a bit of a cuddle thinking she would go back to sleep as normal children would - Mr N climbing back up on his bunk bed and me getting back into bed with my sweating, slightly delirious son.  SIX HOURS LATER she finally stopped yelling and went back to sleep.  Let's just say that none of us was firing on all cylinders the next day x