365 project frustration!

grrrrr! I have spent all day trying to figure out what to do with this - I thought I had it all sorted from looking at the Creating Keepsakes magazine - it has not been as easy as it looked!

I could not find any photo sleeves in the size I wanted and after lots of scratching my head realised that they had used 12x12 page protectors - not photo sleeves. Thankfully I had some spare ones, so after printing out 31 photos (and using up all the ink in my printer!) I sorted them out and arranged them on 12 x 12 cardstock. I had missed taking photos on a couple of days, so just added in a few extras - in fact the hard part has been choosing just one photo a day, from the tons I take!

This is one weeks worth of photos and journalling in a D ring album.

I have arranged it so that 2 pages show a weeks worth of photos. I am printing out my journaling via photoshop onto photographic paper so that it fits neatly on the page - but as PSE is a funny beast - this is not as easy as using Word.

Anyway I have learnt lots of lessons : -

1] print out the photo each day.

2] write the journalling each day.

3] wish I had done what SJ has done by printing her journalling directly on to her photo - I am sure that would have made life easier- here & here.

4] Don't crop these photos with a manual setting (as I usually do) crop to 6x4 as this is the size I have to print out for this project!

Here are a few of my pages - sorry for the blue tinge on the photos - they are much whiter than this in real life. I still have to add some stamped flourishes or something similar to the white space on header and journalling spot with white space - after todays frustrations don't quite feel up to that yet.

I have a new kitchen ...nearly!

The kitchen fitter finished this week - it only taken since 16th August! There are still a few things outstanding such as a black extractor fan and black American fridge freezer to be bought and black tiles to be added - but at least I can function again. I have spent this week cleaning away layers of sawdust, cleaning windows and putting away all the food, crockery etc. which have been lying about the dinning room for months.

Its lovely having so much worktop space - I only had one area in the old kitchen. I got carried away with the excitement of it all yesterday and made a coffee cake and coconut tarts.

I hope it does not take Steven another few months to do all the finishing touches because I really would like to post some pictures of the finished thing soon.

new boots

I have treated myself to some new walking boots today! Even though I really love my old ones they are 3rd hand - passed on to me from Eleanor & Jessica and the grip had practically disappeared from the soles. I have had a couple of slips in them lately which could lead to an injury if I am not careful so took the plunge today. They are Scarpa leather boots with Goretex in them, so hopefully they will keep my feet dry and be easier to clean the mud off than my old ones.

Back into Wales.....

but not the part we really wanted. After our lovely day out at Barmouth last week Thelma & I arranged to go back and do some geocaching around the lakes on Cader Idirs - however the weather beat us, but as we had the day free we ventured just over the border to Wrexham and the Erdigg Estate run by the National Trust. Then onto the Pontcysyllte aquaduct - the underneath of which here is my photo of the day.

The house and immediate gardens of Erdigg are closed until March but the park is open and that's where some new caches have been laid. We found 7 caches on the estate but 2 evaded us! We could see the house but only through these fine gates. We did a cache here at the dovecote - there were lots of lovely white doves on it - but when I came back to take a photo of it they had all flown away.

After a picnic lunch we drove to Trevor and did the cache on the Pontcysyllte aquaduct. I found it quite easily - having looked for over an hour unsuccessfully in the summer with Steven.

This is the view over to the Chirk viaduct from the aquaduct.

365 project organisation

I think I have come up with a plan for these 365 photos, its no good just having them posted on my blog never to see the light of the day again. I had thought that I would do a scrapbook of them all at the end of the year, with 31 pages each having 12 of the themed photos on - but as I have not been able to live up to each theme I had planned to do - lots more exciting things happened which needed to be photographed - I needed to think again. Que the article in January Creating Keepsakes magazine :-

It utilises 6x4 photo sleeves to showcase a weeks worth of photos with room for a little journalling as well.
I like this idea of making it a photo album that I can do as I go along - I am more likely to finish this project then. I have some of the 6x4 photo sleeves left from when I did the big photo sort out last year and they will be ideal - will have a play about today and start printing some of the photos out and see what I come up with.

Todays photo is a frosty morning seen from my bedroom window. It looked really enticing when I looked out - but as usual it does not look as exciting when photographed. I took this other photo from the back window - red sky in the morning - shepards warning- thankfully I am not going out walking today.

todays photo is...

my beautiful daughter! This photo was taken today at Attingham Park and shows her new short hair cut and her new coat - you can see her new wellies in the next photo.


My husband is beautiful as well so here is a lovely one of him - wish he had had a shave first though!At the moment they are feeding the deer each weekend at Attingham Park so they come up really close. We went last Sunday but I forgot my camera - so a return visit was needed today.

todays photo is..

of one of the shops in town - Accessorize. I plan to take one photo a month of local shops and I had planned to use independent shops - not chains, but I thought the window display here was so lovely that I could not resist this one.

Another day out...

Considering January is usually the coldest and wettest month I have been lucky to go out again on a delightful day, which was a little chilly but dry with blue skies. Today Thelma and I went to Barmouth & Arthog to do some hillwalking and geocaching - which included the strangest cache I have ever done - in the middle of the sea - well a slight exaggeration - it was sited in the Barmouth estuary and the tide was out - but it was a bit unnerving walking across sand that is usually submerged under the sea. Thankfully Thelma had done her homework and we had a few hours grace before the tide came back in.

Me in the middle of the estuary!

These rocks in the middle of the picture are where the cache was hidden and are only accessible for a few hours each day when the tide is out!

We walked up this huge hill behind Barmouth itself - Cader Olau, which was very hard work and involved scrambling over rocks etc - not bad for 2 old women! but with very rewarding views at the top of the Snowdonia mountains and Cader Idris.The gorgeous sight of Cader Idris as we arrived - thankfully we were not climbing up this snowy capped mountain today!

The old wooden toll bridge (60p) between Arthog and Barmouth

The Cache at Frenchmans grave halfway up Cader Olau.

Out and about with friends

I have had a couple of days out walking with friends lately. Last week I walked up Caer Caradoc with Rachel - it was huge but I did it. The summit is behind the clouds at the right hand side of this photo - so it was a very good work out.
I was so chuffed with myself but as you can tell from this photo -I am still not fit enough to go climbing hills - my face is so red I look like I am fit to burst. Rachel is not even pink!

It was cold and frosty so we did not hang around for long - managed to admire the views - clouds in one direction (we were above them!) and clear skies in the other.

Yesterday I was out with Cathy and we went to Tyrely locks at Market Drayton - we did 3 caches around there and had a lovely walk along the canal. Cathy had new walking boots so managed the walk much better than last time when her hips really played up.

We had lunch at the lovely canal side pub (the Tavern wharf) I had seen a few weeks ago - it was gorgeous food. Then we did a picture cache around the village of Hinstock in the afternoon to wear the huge dinner off.

I have been away..

staying with my sister and her family in Hemel Hempstead for a few days. I had a lovely time - did lots of walking, lots of geocaching (28 finds!). We walked along the Grand Union Canal and I introduced them to geocaching. Sian was quite good at finding them and got a bit annoyed when I was the finder of one really hard cache that we had spent ages looking for! Here they are getting to grips with the GPS.and here is Sian still looking happy before I beat her to the cache!There are some lovely pubs along the canal - I would love to come back here in the summer.And I saw some lovely wildlife - lots of Herons but no kingfishers sadly.We came here to the tree cathedral. Someone planted all these trees in the 1930's in the shape of a cathedral And we walked around Dunstable Downes - which looks a lovely place but the mist was down when I visited but you could still see that it was an impressive place - again I want to come back here in the summer.

We went to the cinema to see Slumdog Millionaire - which was brilliant - one of the best films I have seen in ages - loved it. I had planned to go to a Photoshop Elements workshop at Willow Tree Crafts in Watford, but got the day wrong and it was Sunday not Saturday as I thought - but I still popped into her lovely shop and bought a few goodies - more stamps - I think I am going mad - I keep buying stamps but never ever use them!! Perhaps I should make a concentrated effort and try to use them - I hope you will see some appearing on some layouts very soon.