Take a photo a day throughout May

I have just come across this idea on Jessica Sprague blog. Basically you do what it says on the tin - take a photo a day throughout May. I quite like the idea of that so will try and give it a go.



Went around the house this morning taking lots of photos and then collaged these few. 

the one photo I am going to choose for today is:-



This very bizarre photo of lots of brightly coloured tatt is Stevens pride & joy!
This used to be the children's playroom and then became the office as they grew out of a playroom, but as we now all have laptops and
 the whole house has become one huge home office
 - Steven has taken it over for his 'collections'.

I think the saying goes 'one man's rubbish is another man's treasure' - well that's exactly how I see it - he adores all this plastic tatt and is very excited when yet another parcel arrives from eBay containing more of the same. 
He thinks exactly the same about my scrapbooking! 

I know I should only choose one photo but as I have been talking about our personnel spaces & hobbies -  thought I would show my craft room as it is remarkably tidy, for a change - perhaps because no scrapping is taking place! - but as you can see the photo albums are out on the counter top being sorted - so something constructive taking place.

I did also see Shimelle's next project - take loads of photos on 25th of each month for a year. Also really like the idea of that as well, but I was unable to get hold of an album and on the 25th April it was so manic that I could not find a spare minute to take photos - so do I start on 25th May or choose a random day and do the same each month. I am not excited about mini albums yet, so could do a 12x12 layout instead and make it another year album - like Liam's last year but with a general twist rather than a specific one. Lots to think about - especially as I don't seem very good at sticking to things - I only did one layout for Shimelle's home project!

I have just discovered that I am in the orange team for the Scrapagogo getaway retreat - apparently this has been up for ages - I have been really slow in following the club house chat about it. I also should have been making an orange name badge. I have also left it too late to book on the photography session with Cheryl Johnson at the retreat as well! Considering I spend so much time on the Internet I have been incredibly slow here!

another walk and another geocache!

Rachel & I had a walk today to Haughmond Hill and found another geocache. This my second geocache, but the first for team: shropshire lasses. This is a group set up for us girls to geocache together.



I had not been to Haughmond Hill for a while now and it was a really nice walk. The weather was glorious with blue skies and sunshine. This gave us beautiful views over Shrewsbury and the Welsh Mountains. The bluebells were in full bloom so it was really pretty.




Rachel's two dogs.

I was pleased with my GPS skills as we were walking to where we thought the cache might be - but then noticedthat the compass was pointing the wrong way and the time to cache was getting longer - so we turned around and soon found the right route. Once we got to the site it took us about 10 minutes of searching to find it. It was hidden in a good spot. I am really looking forward to finding my first geocoin as most of the stuff in the tins is trash! We left a packet of pens.

thank you cards

I am not a card maker but inspired by the card making goodies I bought at the NEC I have made my first card.

Ali kindly stamped out a few of this Penny Black stamp image for me to use. I did the colouring and glittering! I quite like the card and I always need thank you cards so may invest in a few Penny Black cards and have a card making day to build up a stock.

photographs are getting organised, but its making me sad.

I spent a constructive evening last night starting to file my photographs in to the new archival binders. I am so pleased with these and it makes it much easier to look at all my photos and store them safely in a tidy chronological order. In their old albums the glue was changing colour so starting to damage these photos, so I am glad I have rescued them in time.

However going through my photos made me quite sad because of the really poor quality of my photos when the children were small. These were taken in the pre-digital days when we had to wait for a week or so after the event to see the photos, so you did not know how good or bad they would turn out until they were developed - ie when we got back from holiday when it was impossible to retake them. Printing was expensive - so we could only take a few and my photo technique was so poor that the children are far away in the distance - no lovely close ups of their beautiful faces.

These are a couple of typical old photos and when you compare these to the type of photos I take now (this one of Liam below), it shows how difficult scrapping with theseold photos is.

When I look at the photos that scrapbookers take of their children today - using digital cameras and much better techniques I am so very envious and wish I was a scrapbooker with a digital camera when they were little.

Look at this layout I have found on 2 peas.

I have 2 distant photos of Eleanor just standing up in her dress up nurses outfit. This scrapper has photographed her daughter playing nurse - so a much better context and the photos are lovely & close up.

I also cannot remember, the finer details of their lives, what silly or special little things they said & did - which I see frequently on today's layouts.

Its obviously too late for me to recreate my children's childhood, but I will try and ensure that I don't make the same mistake with any grandchildren I may have. I am glad I have a scanner so that I can try and crop and enlarge some old photos. I am not confident that this will be the answer as the actual quality of many of the photos is not good and will deteriorate further being scanned & cropped, but I can try and make them a bit more presentable.

scrapbooks etc, Oxford visit & Frasier weekend

This arrived in the post yesterday.

I have still not finished reading it, but so far it is a really good issue. I am so glad I sub to this (direct from Artbase) rather than CK which I have not been so pleased with lately.

Eleanor went back to Oxford for the day on Saturday to meet up with her old chums and she had a wonderful time. It was lovely for her to see Sarah, Charis & LLian (sp?) and go back to visit St Hilda's again. She bumped into loads of people she knew and it made her feel quite homesick and she had a real longing to come back. It would be nice if she was able to settle down there eventually.
They were so lucky with the weather, so they took a boat ride on the river and then went and had a meal together.I have been very lazy watching TV most of the weekend. It was Frasier weekend - loads of series back to back and I have been trying to find an episode I saw many years ago and thought it was hilarious but have never seen it again- so was determined to catch it this weekend. I did find it but in fact it was not as funny as I remembered! It was in Series 5 and called room service where Niles ends up in bed with Lilith.

Our first Geocache!

We have been out and found our first one! This one was at Nescliffe (GCGAXC) and we even managed to use the GPS.
Steven was very non-plused with his present yesterday as he had never even heard of Geocaching and could not understand who hid the treasure etc. But came out this morning and actually quite enjoyed the hunt as he was better at the GPS than me and he found the cache.
Steven & Liam climbed around the barrier to climb the precarious steps to Kynastons cave and persuaded me to have a go as well - bad move as I found it very scary. Fascinating to think that a family of 9 lived in the cave in the eighteenth century - it was tiny.
Liam confidently exploring the cave & steps, but I was a total woss and needed help up and could only come down on my bottom!

This is not a smile it is a grimace!

Steven is keen to find some more now, but working this weekend so will have to wait a while now. I even managed to upload lots of caches into the GPS last night from geocaching.com - which was very easy and better than I thought as I had visions of having to type in all the coordinates etc.

2 walks in one day!

Yes - I have been very active today. First walk was with Thelma up the Stiperstones. Fab weather and glorious views. We went out so she could show me how to use the GPS I have bought Steven for his birthday, as she has one. It looks very complicated!
Shepards Rock

We also tried to find 2 geocaches - Shepard's pie & Winberry pie and could not find either- So I don't hold out much hope for Saturday! I did learn something though - get all the clues you can. I did glance at the photo for winberry pie on the computer and thought it would be easy to find a bit of green in a rock face - Wrong - there were lots of bits of green. And I did not look at the picture clue at all for Shepards pie and needless to say we were looking in completely the wrong place - lesson learnt anyway. Cranberry Rock

Then in the evening Steven wanted to go for a walk around Attingham park - it was very nice and deserted. I was worried we were going to get locked in as it was quite late but we were ok . Took this lovely photo of him. All the family do get fed up with me taking the camera everywhere, but its worth it.
I am now on the second reading of Stacy Julian's Photo freedom and I think I am going to reorganise my photos totally into her system - not just half hearted as I initially thought.

The trouble is finding proper storage for the photos. Thanks to a discussion thread on UKS - started because everyone was having trouble, I have located 2 places to buy storage binders from.


The first is Jessops but they have very limited stock. I have managed to get hold of 2 black albums and 3 packets of the clear archival holders. I have started moving my photos from the old sticky albums into these, but I am going to need a lot more and in different sizes because most of my later photos are 5x7.
The second place is arrowfile - 0nline- and they seem to have a huge choice of albums and archival folders so think I will get more from here.