apartment therapy

I heart our apartment - it's my little nest, my escape from the world, home to all our treasures and collections and memories (and soon to be home to our not-so-little family of four). This time last year we had just started renovations which only ended in September (!) ad I have been meaning to take pics of the end result since then. But you no what it's like, a home is never really "complete" - we are still changing handles and putting up shelves and hunting for certain light fittings and all that stuff - so if I wait until the apartment is complete, pics of the place will probably never grace the pages of B&D.

Until now that is. Last weekend, Dylan and Emma (of Hello Harbour Creative Co -Op) came to take some preggy pics for us (more on that later :)) and ended up taking some beautiful pics of our lovely little home.

Welcome in...

a nice winter thing

I believe one can never have too many throws. Multipurpose textures perfect for snuggling, blankets, beds, and creating toasty environments just folded up on the edge of a chair. I find them them hard to resist when we reach this time of year...

Clockwise from top left:
Kors blanket by Anderssen Voll
Quilt by bonjour-celine
Lina Rennell Wool Throw
Ribbed grey by Drifting Arrows
Eco Chevron Blue

Hello Friday*

My weekend actually started today (yippee) as I had to take a day off work to get a whole lot of things done, including going to the MammaMagic baby expo (wish me luck)! What are you up to this weekend? It's another busy busy one for me but as I approach 30 weeks time is flying and there are a millions things to still be done.

{via here}

Here are some lovely links if you feel like a Friday browse...

Rocking chairs with style

Too true

iPhone case for winter

What would you do to get into the university of your dreams?

OH YUM

Gorgeous fabrics from this African designer

Love this packaging

I could quite easily snuggle up in this grown up fort for a weekend

xoxo

womb tones and heart beats from the inside

It amazes me to discover how my tinies are developing every week. From the weekly fruit size changes (from poppy seeds to cucumbers) to the development of tiny finger nails and eyebrows. I especially love that babes start to hear in your womb at about four and a half months... It connects you to these little creatures inside you. I speak to the twinlets all the time, and sometimes I sing to them (captive audience if there ever was one), I play classical music for them and apologise to them when I shout at fellow drivers in traffic and somewhere deep down they can hear all of this mixed in with the voices they hear around me.

{via here}

Walter Murch, an Oscar winning picture editor and sound mixer, wrote about hearing within the womb which I find rather beautiful. Here is just a snippet:

"Hearing is the first of our senses to be switched on, four-and-a-half months after we are conceived. And for the rest of our time in the womb—another four-and-a-half months—we are pickled in a rich brine of sound that permeates and nourishes our developing consciousness: the intimate and varied pulses of our mother’s heart and breath; her song and voice; the low rumbling and sudden flights of her intestinal trumpeting; the sudden, mysterious, alluring or frightening fragments of the outside world — all of these swirl ceaselessly around the womb-bound child, with no competition from dormant Sight, Smell, Taste or Touch."

And you can listen to what that sounds like here.

I like that there's a name for it

{source}

mothers day

Today we honour mothers. It's a pretty special title which feels closer to home to me this year as I am about to embark on the journey of motherhood. In a way, I sit in limbo today, as I feel I am already a mother to these two tiny creatures inside me, although I know some monumental shift must occur inside of me when these babes actually enter the world and I truly become a mother. I am blessed to have such beautiful examples of mothers in my life - of course my own mother, but also my grandmother and my sister. It's empowering to think of all these women in my life who are already on this journey, and will be on this journey in the future.

I bookmarked this poem by Pablo Nruda ages ago, before the twins were even a twinkling in their father's eye, as I was inspired by this idea of finding strength in all the women who have gone before me and entered into motherhood.

los nacimientos (births)

we will never have any memory of dying.
we were so patient
about our being,
noting down
numbers, days,
years and months,
hair, and the mouths we kiss,
and that moment of dying
we let pass without a note -
we leave it to others as memory,
or we leave it simply to water,
to water, to air, to time.
nor do we even keep
the memory of being born,
although to come into being was tumultuous and new;
and now you don’t remember a single detail
and haven’t kept even a trace
of your first light.
it’s well known that we are born.
it’s well known that in the room
or in the wood
or in the shelter in the fishermen’s quarter
or in the rustling canefields
there is a quite unusual silence,
a grave and wooden moment as
a woman prepares to give birth.
it’s well known that we were all born.
but if that abrupt translation
from not being to existing, to having hands,
to seeing, to having eyes,
to eating and weeping and overflowing
and loving and loving and suffering and suffering,
of that transition, that quivering
of an electric presence, raising up
one body more, like a living cup,
and of that woman left empty,
the mother who is left there in her blood
and her lacerated fullness,
and its end and its beginning, and disorder
tumbling the pulse, the floor, the covers
till everything comes together and adds
one knot more to the thread of life,
nothing, nothing remains in your memory
of the savage sea which summoned up a wave
and plucked a shrouded apple from the tree.
the only thing you remember is your life.

So happy Mothers Day to all my mother readers out there. Crazy for me to think that this time next Mother's Day I will have two babes sitting on my lap...


Ps. In case you missed it:
Cheska's great Mothers Day gift guide
Mothers Day 2012
Mothers Day 2011

A little big foot

The bump is 26 weeks big this week and is growing daily! Which makes sense since the little twinlets are probably close to 1 kilogram each. I got to see this little foot yesterday (which pretty much breaks my heart every time I look at it - I can't believe there are four, real life tiny feet inside!). Although this is a rather large tiny foot (little beast). I am not usually about sharing pics from scans (you usually can't see what is going on unless it is your own babe! Besides, I like the idea of keeping my two little secrets), but this little foot is going to be an exception.

 Right foot of bottom left babe, 26 weeks