Almost There

Avast ye festive lubbers, what the hell happened to December?  I'm still just about keeping my head above water university work wise, normal work wise and Christmas preparation wise, but at the expense of cleaning, scrapping, blogging and relaxing.

I did however want to squeeze in one last post before Friday to say happy Christmas to everyone - I've a feelling it's going to be a really great one actually.  I haven't felt this festive in years (I thought to myself as I sat on my sofa last night drinking Babysham through a straw and eating Chocolate Orange segments) and now all the shopping (food and present) is complete, there's only a this afternoon and tomorrow morning left to do at work and everything is all but wrapped, there's nothing left to do but bask in wondeful relaxing, chocolate-y, amaretto-y, present-y joy of the season.

This is probably the last time I'll be able to check in before the 14th January (when my exam is) so have a wonderful time and I'll see you on the otherside...

It's Going to be a Big One

I know, I know, Christmas isn’t even here yet and I’m already thinking about 2010 but there’s going be a lot happening and am getting very excited about lots of it already. Sorry to do another list style post but ½ my life seems to involved working on one list or another at the moment and I’ve got rather good at them (if I do say so myself) so here goes:

1) After I hand in my assignments in January, there’s only one more set of work to hand in in May and then I’m all done with the teaching part of my Masters. The big dream would be to finish and be able to hand in my dissertation in November and be completely done by this time next year. Here’s to freedom (and qualifications!).

2) Obviously the wedding in September is going to be massive and I’m so excited about that and everything that goes with it, but I also predict that the hen weekend which we’ve been pulling together this week is going to be pretty amazing. However, as it’s going to be a surprise I shall say no more at this time (you’ll get no clues here Miss Harper).

3) Following on from that, it’s also going to be a big year for birthdays with both my best friends catching me up and turning 30. I am obviously (and perhaps selfishly) very happy about this as it means that I won’t feel so old anymore, but it also means that we’ll have lots of practice munching cake and quaffing champagne before September rolls around.

4) Now this one may be slightly sad, but I’m waiting on the edge of my seat for Eclipse (Twilight) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I, both of which will be out next year in June and November respectively.

5) Last but not least, going on holiday *sigh*. We so enjoyed the sunshine in Greece this year, we’re planning to go to France in June and re-visit a campsite I have very happy memories of in the Dordogne to hopefully lie in the sun, eat (not too much) cheese, read lots of books and splash around in the river. I can’t wait, it’s going to be so relaxing.

You see? I told you. It's going to be massive and now we're on the downhill slope towards Christmas (less than 20 days - eeek), it's going to here faster than we can say happy new year!

Ups and Downs

Things have been a bit up and down here on Walton's Mountain lately and I'm starting to get slightly dizzy from all the changes in direction.  I think the lack of chocolate may be getting to me...(see point 5.)

Things I Want to Increase:

1. The length of my hair and nails - I'm taking these Holland and Barrett suplements called 'Skin Hair and Nails Formula' which are huge and taste discusting even when you wash them down with huge amounts of water.  One of these days I'm actually going to throw up on my keyboard so any recomendations for alternatives would be greatly received.

2. How much I understand Travel Demans Analysis - I have an exam on the 15th January and although I'm super organised with my revision timetable, I really don't understand all the complicated equations.  Still haveing to refer to the instructions each time I use my scientific calculator has got to be a bad thing.

3. My bank balance - I completed my Christmas shopping yesterday so I am quietly smug about that, while also being left somewhat financially challenged.  Luckily I have my clubcard vouchers to buy lots of Chritsmassy treats from Tesco otherwise it might be spaghetti hoops on toast on Christmas day!

4. Time for scrapping - Sadly, all the scrapping stuff in the dining rooms has been piled onto the piano to make way for tedious text books and revision cards.  I hope to get a bit in before Christmas, but am finding it very frustrating.

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Things I Want to Decrease:

5. How much I weigh - This is the big focus at the moment and I'm bouncing around on my Wii Fit and scribbling in my food diary everytime I even look at a cake for too long so I will look pretty in my bridesmaid dress next September .  Currently, there are 292 days until the wedding and so I have plenty of time but as I plan to have Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day off, I need to get ahead of myself as much as possible.

6. The amount of clutter in my house - Honestly, I cannot understand how other people manage to keep their houses looking so lovely all the time.  I lurch from one mad panic because visitors are coming to another and I wish that I could have a tranquil organised house to come home to everyday.  I need a cleaner, or even better to give up work and stay home being a house wife.  God, I'd love that.  Truly.

7. How quickly time is passing - Isn't it the end of September?  No?  Well early October then? Oh.  Where the bloody hell has all that time gone?  While I'm not going to go on about the inevitable passage of time inching us ever closer to the sweet embrace of the crypt (although you know I REALLY want to), I'm not quite liking how fast things are passing me by and not quite ready for it to be Christmas (apart from the shopping!)

Early To Bed

My goodness, the time is just flying by at the moment. I feel like I could get travel sickness just by standing still but Alistair's Christmas shopping has been started and so hopefully mine won't be far behind. I'm having a lovely time chilling out at home today in my pyjamas (I know it's early, but I did get properly dressed for a couple a hours earlier but then I went out in the rain and got soaked) after another great but busy weekend.

I saw New Moon on Friday afternoon which was totally amazing, so much better than I thought it would be and even Alistair professed to have enjoyed it. I'm just wondering how long I need to leave it before I suggest going for again, I'm not sure I like my chances. Yesterday I had another flying visit to London to see my homegirls, make exciting wedding plans and begin the hunt for the perfect wedding dress which got off to a strong start.

Anyway, to the important stuff. Check out SBK's fantastic festive blog candy:

And speaking of SBK, here are a couple of layouts I've made with the gorgeous Webster's Pages. The Christmas stuff is particularly beautiful and has a great Victorian look about it which I love so take a tour round their shop if you're interested:

30 Years of Waiting...

...and my time is finally here. Guess what? Never mind, that'll take too long, I'll have to tell you. 

I'm going to be a bridesmaid!

Perhaps even more importantly than than (how self involved would I be otherwise?), this means that Lizzie, one of my very best friends in whole world is getting married to the lovely Jarrad.

Aren't they fab?

There's lots going on at the moment as we get all excited about venues, dresses, flowers, cakes, shoes  and invitations (think the episode of Friends where Monica gets her wedding book out) and so I seem to have got distracted from lots of things which I really should have done. 

I have manged to squeeze  in a couple of layouts though which I'll post as soon as I'm home in daylight to take pictures of them. In the mean time, I'm going to get back to panicking over my revision timetable - I'd better not plan on actually having a life until the 15th Janury.

The Road to Avonlea

Most things have fallen by the wayside yet again this week, but now the Road to Avonlea kit for November has been published over at SBK, I can share my layouts properly - hurrah!

More BfS this weekend, I promise.

Sneak Peaks

I've been hard at work on  layouts using the SBK's travel themed November kit - Road to Avonlea and thought I would share a couple of sneak peaks. I'll post the completed layouts later in the week.

The Chickens and the Eggs

The bookshop at the Cider Press Centre in Dartington has traditionally been quite a dangerous place for me to visit. They have such a gorgeous selection of lifestyle books there that I never fail to come away with a head full of ideas (and most likely an arm full of books) about things to do or make when I get home. A few years ago, I chose a book called The Country Living Handbook which contains great ideas and pictures of things to do in the countryside for each month of the year and I was quite intrigued by the section about keeping chickens.

I’d always been quite keen on the idea of keeping poultry, but if truth be told, I was holding out for a goose because I love their orange feet and beaks and can’t get enough of their honking noise. The book really sold me on the idea of fresh eggs though and while it was suggesting buying fertilised eggs to hatch at home, it also mentioned that it was possible to rescue ex-battery hens and give them a happy retirement home.

A little googling later and I’d discovered the Battery Hen Welfare Trust and got on their waiting list to adopt some hens. The BHWT work with farmers to provide new homes for their hens which would otherwise be sold off for slaughter and also campaign to inform consumers about the importance of insisting on free range eggs, not just in the actual you eggs you use but also in the prepared food such as biscuits, cakes and pasta that they buy. As it turns out, unless your cakes are bought from Marks and Spencer’s or Waitrose (who use free range in all their own brands), the eggs in your food are probably from caged hens.

However, there are some superstars including Hellman’s whi have just switched to free range in no small part due to the BHWT campaign and strangely enough, McDonalds also only use free range eggs in their mayoniase and yummy Egg McMuffins. The BHWT are now focussing their campaigning efforts on Mr Kipling as one of the leading producers of cakes in UK.

Armed with this information, I stopped eating food made with eggs from caged hens and also set about looking for a suitable house for our new girls as and when they arrived. When I stumbled across the Omlet website and the wonder of hen-house engineering that is an Eglu, I was hooked. A few weeks later our (pink) Eglu arrived and our first batch of hens followed soon after.

They weren’t the featheriest, strongest, healthiest or happiest hens you’ve ever seen but it was such a joy to seem them stretching out their wings, enjoying the sun on their feathers and scratching about in the garden, knowing this was the first opportunity they’d ever had to just be chickens, rather than part of an egg producing machine.

That’s not to say our ex-batts don’t lay us plenty of lovely eggs, but they sometimes have a bit of holiday, particularly during the winter months when they tend to focus a bit more on growing feathers which is fine by us. We’re now up to 6 hens and also have a lovely purple Eglu Cube in our garden too and we love to spend time with our hens as they each have such distinctive personalities.

Over the last year or so I’ve been working for the BHWT in my spare time, talking people through the adoption process, taking people’s bookings for hens and occasionally helping out with rescues the weekend which means I’m pretty busy in the evenings but it's totally worth it.

I don’t really want to go into the terrible conditions in which these poor hens generally live their short lives now as it would be a bit of a bring down but if you’re interested, you can read more about it here. Othewise, I would urge you to consider your shopping habits though, to see if you can become a caring consumer and cut out battery eggs from your all food (I warn you now, it does mean sometimes turning down cake). The BHWT also have co-ordinators all over the country and so if you think you may be able to offer some of our girls a happy retirement, get in touch. You’ll be so glad you did!

Current Sources of Fabulous-ness

A few things which are currently filling my world with light and happiness:

1.    Straight in at number one is the Twilight saga which has been occupying at least 75% of my brain at any given time since I first started to read it while we were on holiday – Alistair couldn’t understand why I suddenly had no interest in leaving the hotel whatsoever. I love stories that continue over multiple books anyway, but Twilight had taken it to a whole new level. I’m totally captivated by the beautiful love story surrounded by dark themes and gothic imagery, so much so that I found myself looking at Forks on Google Streetview to see if it might be a good place to go on our next holiday, although I was forced to conclude probably not. Needless to say, I’m completely in love with Edward Cullen and I can’t wait to see the film of New Moon which is out on the 20th November.

2.    The second thing I’m currently obsessed with is the Crabtree and Evelyn home fragrance in Noel which is only available for a few months of the year and as soon as I catch sight of the little red boxes on the shelf (I get the oil), I start hearing the jingle of sleigh bells and the rustle of wrapping paper inside my head. It smells of everything that is great about Christmas, a mixture of pine trees, satsumas, chocolate coins, mulled wine and mince pies and puts me in the festive mood whenever I come home to the scent of it. I buy mine from Place Settings in Topsham which is chock full of gorgeous things (as is Topsham itself for that matter) and well worth a visit if you’re in the Exeter area.

3.    On a more practical note, I’m totally in love with the little Innocent Veg Pots which I’ve been having for lunch the last few days. There’s a range of flavours but my favourites are the Indian daal and Moroccan giant couscous one and they’re full of lovely fresh veggies, beans and herbs and leave you with a full but virtuous feeling of being at one with nature and brimming with healthy loveliness. Essentially, they’re just grand.

4.    I’m not actually feeling super inspired in the crafty sphere right now, largely because of the state my dining table is in yet again but I’ve a very strong feeling that the imminent arrival of the Handwritten Fonts design card for my Slice will reawaken the slumbering beast of creativity because I do so adore handwriting fonts and can’t wait to be able to use them on my layouts and, with the added bonus of never ever running of Es (eek, nasty run on sentance). Making Memories have brought out lots of new design cards recently and other favourites include Farm Life, Mix and Mingle and Home Sweet Home(are you listening Santa?)

5.     Finally, and perhaps this should take it’s rightful place at number one, is this little fellow who we adopted from the Cats Protection League on Saturday, although we’ve only just lost out little Tessykins and still miss her dreadfully, we’re suckers for an emergency appeal for new homes and decided it couldn’t hurt to look, in case they had someone we thought would fit in with the rest of our furry (and feathery) family. I’d seen his profile on the internet before we left and planned to check him out, but I was not quite prepared for the huge, fluffy and purring ball which jumped into my arms as soon as I opened his window. It’s always heartbreaking to go to the CPL and pick one cat, when you have leave so many behind, but they’re so good at finding homes for them all we knew that he was the one for us.

He came in a from family who couldn’t afford to keep him because he’d been hit by a car and needed expensive surgery to pin his back leg in place and he’d been on cage rest for a couple of months before being available for adoption. I can safely say he is one of the softest, floppiest, cuddliest and most inquisitive cats I’ve ever met and he just follows us around the house trying to climb into various appliances and cupboards to see what’s going on. The other cats are still a little unsure of him and coming around very slowly, but Morrissey (we changed his name from Bandit) is taking it all in his stride.

This has gone on far too long now and I can’t imagine anyone is still reading. Hello? Anyone? Thought not. Anyway, because that was the day we got Mozzer (that seems to be what we’re calling him – all our animals have stupid nicknames – Elvie answers to the name Schnibble, Sophie is referred to as Snuffalupps, Clementine gets called Clomp or Wumpus and Tessy was always know as The Weasel), my Halloween pumpkin had a fairly dominant cat motif (i.e. was a cat) and this seemed like an appropriate arena in which to share it before I forget and Halloween becomes irrelevant (actually that may have happened already).

'You Must Remember This...'

This picture takes me right back to the winter of 2005/2005 when we'd just moved to Devon.  We were still exploring the local area and in those few magical free days between Christmas and new year, we ventured on to Dartmoor to enjoy the winter sunshine. The first few months after we moved were a bit of struggle for a number of reasons, but I remember this being the first time I was sure we'd made the right decision and that Devon was the right place for us to be. 

I love how tiny Elvie looks in this picture and how I'm bundled into my old university coat, because I couldn't afford a new one at the time.  This is the picture that Alistair has on his desk at work and so I know it holds happy memories for him too, although who knows?  That may be as much to do with the fact it preceeded our first taste of Molly Mac's ice cream (as much a Dartmoor institution as Hound of the Basketmeals) by just a couple minutes.  Now that's another very happy memory and maybe my story for another day.

Blogging For Scrapbookers

I have returned from my mini digital hiatus which was I actually rather enjoyed because it reminded me of a simpler time and was a bit like having an accident and waking up in 1973 (but with less Gene Hunt). All good things must come to an end though and it's not like I could really live without the internet, it's just that with the hinges on the computer having gone to hinge heaven, looking at the screen requires a great deal of commitment and possibly a PhD in the art of propping.

Anyway as my sidebar has been telling people while I've been away, I've signed up for Shimelle's new class (anyone who mentions my as yet unfinished LSNED will be escorted from the premises) which is Blogging for Scrapbookers and also very exciting. I'm really hoping that taking this class will encourage me to blog more often, without necessarily having a layout or specific photograph to share in order to record memories and details of my day-to-day activities and special events which I might otherwise forget. I also want to try to be more present in my life and take the time to notice, think and hopefully blog about the little things that make me happy (while glossing over the things that make me cross because I don't think I want to remember them).

I'll be adding a picture to this post later when I have access to more than just work related photographs so watch this space (unless you like pictures of roads, junctions and traffic lights in which case email me, I can make your day).

UPDATE - OK, here's the picture now.  Sadly not of anything scrapbooking related but it is a picture of the world's largest mirrorball (allegedly) and that green blur in it is me - hello!

Time Flies

I love it when the clocks go back, a whole extra hour in bed is like a wonderful super-early Christmas present and always leaves me feeling brighter eyed and bushier tailed for the following week. A feeling which persists despite being patronised by my mobile phone when I tried to change it’s clock manually before I went to sleep, apparently it had the situation completely under control and my interference was entirely unwarranted.

I had a lovely weekend in London, particularly meandering about in the Harrod’s Christmas shop buying tree decorations, resisting the very strong urge to make a frivolous purchase from the Ruby Slippers Boutique (imagine – a whole shoe shop full of red sparkly shoes) and eating my body weight in grilled cheese sandwiches and coke floats from the American style diner.

Still so sad about the loss of my little black and white friend, but the sharp and intense pain of having to make the decision and say goodbye is receding towards the dull ache of adjusting to life without her; and while stopping myself from pouring cat food into a 3rd bowl and catching myself wondering if she’s been given her daily injection brings it rushing back, I suppose it’s one of those things I’ll learn to live with in time *sigh*.

Anyway, that was a bit of bring down so sorry about that. Before I get even more maudlin, perhaps I better finish with the last couple of layouts from my holiday picture scrapping frenzy from last weekend.

Tess

So sad to say that we had to have our little Tessykins put to sleep last night.  She just wasn't getting better and her liver had started to fail so we had to say goodbye which is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.  At least we were both there to cuddle and stroke her so she knew that she was loved right to the end, but we will miss her more than I can put in to words.

The Very Best of Weekends

Even though today is Monday and no one, not even Bob Geldof likes Mondays I'm still a happy little button, because I had such a nice weekend relaxing at home and recovering from the last few weeks. On Saturday, we stayed home and I scrapped holiday pictures to my heart's content whilst making the (seeming permenant) mess in the dining room quite a lot worse (but in a good way).

I really like how this layout turned out actually, particularly as I wasn't super keen on the ScrapaGoGo kit that a lot of the stuff came from. Shows how much I know, I suppose because it really suits these pictures.

On Sunday, we decided to take advantage of the fact that now October is here, dogs are allowed all over the beach at Exmouth and took Elvie down for stroll and a few throws of a tennis ball. We even managed to enjoy some turkish delight flavoured ice cream, despite the fact it was freezing already and had to follow it up with a few seaside chips just to warm our fingers.

Both evenings, we snuggled up in front of our log burner (not that good at heating, but old, beautiful and locally manufactured) and took in turns to chose films to inflict upon the other. I chose Twilight for Saturday night which was of course, amazing but the downside of which was I had to sit through the Shawshank Redemption last night when I really wanted to watch the Mighty Boosh.

So all in all, exactly what I needed after the frantic time we've been having since we got back from Greece and a welcome break (not a service station) before I head off to London on Saturday.

Random Picture of the Week #7

It's been a while since we've had one of these isn't it?  I'd forgotton all about it until I had a mid-stairs revelation on my way down this morning.

Another Place, Crosby Beach - September 2009

Exciting Times

I'm finally able to reveal the exciting news I've been muttering about in my last post and non-post and the news is that I've been invited to become of a member of the design team for Scrapbook Kit Club (SBK) which is a monthly scrapbook club specialising in small kits, with enough beuatifully co-ordinated supplies to create a couple of pages - perfect for busy scrapbookers and people with tonnes of stash already but who can't resist the lure of monthly pizza box fix (actually, I think I'm both).

Originally based in Hungary, the kit club is now going international and the beautiful new website has gone live today so head over and check it out! The first monthly kit – A Walk in the Woods is available from today and is deliciously autumnal (and we all know how I feel about autumn) and fantastically easy to work with.

As well as the kits themselves, the SBK site includes a member's gallery to show off your work, a forum to chat with scrapbookers from across Europe and a monthly challenge which this month has been set by me - hurrah! And is all about lovely autumn-y pages and Keats - double hurrah!

You'll see more about SBK in this month's Scrapbook Inspirations, but in the meantime why not check out the new site, sign up to the forum and maybe even enter my challenge? Hopefully see you there!

Don't Blink

My goodness, that was a bit of a longer break than I technically meant to take, but hopefully things are getting back on course now and I firmly believe that sooner or later, my life and house will be back in order and I will stop having that struggling to stay afloat feeling.

Tess has been checked out by the vet again today and while she’s still not right, she’s much better and appetite stimulators are being prescribed to encourage her to eat her dinner and get stronger.  In the meantime, we'll contiue to feed her with a syringe which is not entirely fun.

The good news is I have signed up for my first scrapbooking retreat and this time next year I'll be super excited about heading off on the Go Go Getaway.  I was a little nervous about going alone even though I'm sure everyone will be lovely.  However, luckily for me Sarah stepped up an selflessly agreed to accompany me and so I just can't wait.  In truth, I wish it was this October but I'll suppose I just have to practice being patient *sigh*.

I have more exciting news to come over the next couple of days, but until then here are a few pictures of my first few pages of travel journal. 

Actually, in all honesty these are the only pages of my travel journal which do not consist entirely of scribbled notes and and folded bit of paper hanging out the sides. Oh well, one more for the 'will finish very soon pile' next to my LSNED and the Back to Future Project. At this rate, I may be giving Journal your Christmas a miss this year, but I imagine it would only have been moaning about Doctor Who regenerating so perhaps it's better that way anyway.

Keep On Keeping On

Well I'm back and I have hundreds of lovely pictures and lots of exciting things to share, details from my Travel Journal and the rest of my LSNED. 

However, this isn't a proper post as at the moment as I have a very poorly cat (she spent 12 days in the vet while we were away), I've just started back at University today (Did I mention I was studying for an MSc?), I've still a huge amount of unpacking to do, my parents are coming to stay this weekend and I can't seem to put down the Twilight books (did I mention that I was in love with a vampire?).  So please bear with me, normal service will resume shortly.

As no post (even an un-proper one) is complete without a picture, here is Tess my poorly little friend.  Isn't she a poppet?  I really hope she pulls though.

Wish you Were Here?

As we've finally found a hotel with WiFi which has justified me lugging my netbook around 1/2 of Greece (information addiction is a terrible thing), I thought a quick mid-holiday update was in order.  Mostly I've done lots of lying in the sun, cocktail drinking,  tacky souvenier buying and  far too much deep fried cheese eating but I have also managed to keep reasonably up to date with my LSNED and the travel journaling has contined (realtively) a pace. 

We're starting the UK leg of our tour in a couple of days so will maybe be able to catch up more comprehensively then, in the meantime I have a few(straight of out the camera) pictures just to set the scene.  I have around 700 photographs in the bag (not all fisheye) already so there'll be lots of scrapping to do when I get home which makes the idea of coming home that little more bearable.

I'll get back to 'getting away from it all' then...

Preparations and a Welcome Return to Form

I think this will be the last time I manage to post anything before fleeing the country, and I’m actually strangely relaxed about the whole thing. This morning I even spent a few minutes scoffing coconut cake (balanced breakfast - coconut is a fruit, right?) and reading a few chapters of the adorably un-PC ‘Five Have Plenty of Fun’ – George has just been kidnapped by some wayward gypsies and Anne has to wash up and make beds while Julian and Dick look for clues.

Tonight I need tidy up for the house-sitters, sort out the clothes I want to take with me, probably get those clothes clean and dry and burn a load of CDs of old Russell Brand podcasts for in-car entertainment, so come to think of it, I may not be quite so relaxed later. My holiday crating kit for my travel journal is all packed and ready to go though, so you can’t accuse me of having my priorities in the wrong order!

Last night was spent largely attempting to apprehend a mouse which one of the cats kindly brought into the sitting room. It was scurrying about all over the place and despite successfully trapping it on about 5 occasions, it escaped and so continues to elude us and our (humane) traps. Hopefully he’ll be locked up nice and safely in a little box tonight waiting for a ceremonial release in the garden, otherwise I’m not sure how we explain it to the people taking care of the house.

However, inspired by the beautiful ScrapaGoGo kit and the Martha Stewart punches that landed on my desk yesterday I managed to take a step away from the real-life game of Mousetrap, get over myself and do some scrapbooking. September’s kit is probably my favourite ever – the combination of wood grain, butterflies and rusty brown/minty green tones is a perfect reflection of what I’m all about at the moment. I didn’t really even mean to put this layout together, it just sort of happened as I was sorting through the yellow box and seeing what looked nice together and then I thought I might as well see it through to its logical conclusion.

Everything on here is from the box, except a few tiny bits and bobs which are included because I can never quite work exclusively from a kit and I rarely make anything that doesn’t have at least a dash of Cosmo Cricket on it. If, you can spot where I’ve used each of my new punches on this layout I’ll award ten points to Gryffindor.

That's all for now, I'll catch you on the flip side dudes, or alternativly insert other faux-cool sign off of your choice.

Learn Something New Everyday #15, #16 and #17

Ooh, I think I almost fell behind there but I may just have caught it in time.  Not that it matters really I suppose, because while I will still be learning things over the next couple of weeks, I don't think I'll be able to post them until I get back.

On the 15th, I leant that a happy dog is the very best welcome home you can have (thanks Karen).

Yesterday, I learnt there is an awful lot to learn about digital photography - a 3 volume book of instructions  on how to take better pictures arrived and it's going to take a while to get through them all.

And today, I've realised that packing light is defintely easier said than done. Travel hairdryer? Eeek.

Hope the rest of everyone's LSNED goes well and lots of useful lessons are learnt.  Can't wait to catch up with everything in October.

Scrapper's Block

I tried to scrapbook tonight - I've been thinking about it all day and couldn't wait to get home to start but somewhere between home and work, something went wrong and suddenly I felt all anxious that whatever I did wouldn't be right and I couldn't bring myself to actually cut any paper.

Hopefully it's just a passing phase and while I can't scrapbook, I can work on photography instead. I've been really enjoying my new 'semi fisheye' lens that I got for my birthday and have got some great pictures, particularly of the animals so far...

And of course, some of us at the beach too...

In LSNED terms, yesterday I learnt that carrots you've grown yourself taste better than anything you could ever buy at Tesco. We had our first roast dinner of the autumn last night and believe it or not, the carrots were the highlight! Today I learnt that you won't get what you want if you don't ask - I saved myself £200 of additional Easy Jet fare to make changes to our booking just because I asked them nicely. Hurray for good manners.

Learn Something New Every Day #11 and #12 {and another catch up}

This has been a really lovely weekend. We've been relaxing after last weekend, spending time with the dog and cats, watching the X-Files and getting into the holiday frame of mind ready for next week. The weather has been beautiful throughout and although, I would have preferred it to been lovely last weekend, the sunshine on my skin was certainly a very welcome end to the summer.

We has a great time at Michael McIntyre on Friday night and I realised that watching stand-up comedy, particularly live is one of my very favoutite things.

On Saturday, I went shopping for holiday clothes and found that it was much harder than I thought to find nice summery things to wear in September. Although there were lots of lovely jumpers, boots, cardigans and bags, sunglasses, straw hats and cropped trousers were rather thin on the ground. I did manage to find a few things though so we're almost good to go on the packing front.

I've also got up to date on my LSNED pages, including the missing page for 7th. I think the page for the 10th (at the bottom) is my favourite so far. It's fairly simple but the photograph speaks volumes.