Lovely day out with Liam but............

no photos to show! So only boring ones of me today!

Liam is feeling a bit fed up at home now he has finished school so I offered to take him out walking and was very surprised when he agreed to come with me - on one condition - that I took no photos of him!

I enjoyed the walk up to the War Memorial in Montgomery so took him there and he found the cache. We then went on to the castle ruins and had a nice wander around there.

He was up for another walk before we went home so we went to Roundton Hill and did the geocache on there. Liam found the cache easily again. He is not a convert yet but we might convince him as he was very excited to find a book of lateral thinking puzzles in it - which are just his cup of tea.

The drive up to the car park at Roundton was quite scary as it was very steep and very narrow - thankfully we did not meet anything.

More sagas on the mobile phone front. Ross came home yesterday and had had an accident with a quad bike at work and had smashed his phone up, so wanted the new one which he did not like and that I am now using. Trouble is I love it and did not want to part with it so I managed to fob him off with my old Samsung one - which is a bit rubbish as the battery only lasts for a few hours. He is back home on Monday so I expect that he will want the nice LG one - and as it is his really I must be prepared as a good mother to hand it over to him!

Look what was waiting for me when I got back from Norwich

Yes this lovely yellow box of goodies and this month it is really lush.
There are loads of lovely embellishments - particularly journalling pads. There are some square cardstock ones from Sweetwater - gorgeous and some fab journalling stickers from American crafts - I really love the look of these and can't wait to use them as I always add journalling somewhere on a layout. The papers are really sweet - but I am not sure how how I am going to use them - need to put my thinking cap on.

Jessica is home now for the summer - I drove down to Norwich on Tuesday and came back with her and a car load of luggage yesterday. Its lovely to have her home. We have quite a full household at the moments as Ross is home as well. He flew to Germany for a weekend break and the flight damaged his ears. His eardrums perforated yesterday so he was sent home from work - so he is lying on the sofa feeling sorry for himself but refusing to let me put any ear drops in his ears. He has had bad ears all his life and has had me putting drops in them for ear infections and perforations since he was little - and now hates them!

Liam is not well either complaining of tummy pains and not being able to sleep. So we will have to see how he gets on.

Lambananas!

What are they - well apparently some interesting new sculptures popping up around Liverpool to celebrate the city of culture year. They have been designed to comemorate the trading links with the Caribbean. Lamb was exported from Liverpool and on the return journey bananas filled the ships hold. So Lambs feature at the front of these sculptures and bananas at the rear - so it does make sense!

Eleanor has sent me these photos of her out with friends following the trail of them around the city - she looks as if she has been having fun on the trail. I can see a layout coming on featuring these!
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glorious walk along the coastal path

Steven and I had a fantastic day out in Wales again. We ventured further into Wales this time and went to Aberystwyth. We had a few geocaches planned along the coastal path so started off by climbing Constitution Hill - aptly named because you clearly need a good constitution to climb it!
Lovely views over the town when you get to the top though.

We found our first geocache on the hill - but due to the growth of the gorse over the summer it was a bit of a battle to get to it. Steven did not go in because he was wearing shorts - so I had to do it!

After we stopped at the lovely cafe on the top we then set out along the coastal path to pick up some more geocaches along the way.

We couldn't have chosen a better day - glorious sunshine & blue skies. I did catch the sun a bit though!

Along the coastal path overlooking Clarach Bay.


We found the next one easily, but the we were foxed by this one - clue not helpful as there were lots of trees! trying to find the piece of string holding the cache was like looking for a needle in the haystack.
when we arrived at Clarach bay we very surprised, lots of things to see & do. We had never been here before and really liked it, so we stopped and had lunch and dreamed about owning a caravan of our own here!

We then ventured on towards Borth,this walk along the coast cliff top was gorgeous. The geology of the area was very interesting and the views fantastic. We only managed one more geocache at Wallogg before time got the better of us and we had to turn back. We left the lovely Dolphin geocoin here at this one because it wanted to be placed by water - so overlooking the sea was an ideal place.

When we got back to Aber it was so lovely & sunny we sat on the front and tucked into fish & chips!

This mornings purchase!

These new chipboard embellishments.

At the last crop Anne & Caroline told us that they had some new chipboard coming all the way from Australia from a company called Buzz & Bloom - they have an excellent blogg. We were quite excited and wanted first dips before they put them up on the web site shop - they arrived yesterday so were all had a rummage through the box this morning and it would have been rude not to buy - wouldn't it?

I was quite restrained and just bought 4 items - could have bought lots more. This lot came to £18.00 which is not too bad considering it is all the way from Aus and not widely available here.

I actually don't use chipboard! So now with these there is no excuse and you should see it cropping up on many layouts from now.

3 layouts from this mornings crop

These are the layouts I finished this morning. 1 DLO and 1 SLO taking my total now to 71 towards my 104 target for the year.

This Glastonbury layout was dictated by the title. It was the front cover of the programme which I scanned in and then printed out onto A4 photo paper. The black card stock is from the coredinations range. I sanded the top parts of each page for the smaller photos - not quite sure of the result. The journalling is under the photo by the date - I could not find any room to put it directly on the page.

This layout shows Eleanor playing with her new doll and pram on her first birthday and I actually cut up some genuine old photos - they are scanned into my computer just in case I made a mistake! At least I am making a start on using the old ones up now.
Paper is Prima Angelique Collection: Heavenlies. Rub ons - Karen Foster ( rub ons that actually work! they are a delight to use), Pocket frames by Heidi Grace - have had these for a while now and initially was not really sure about them - but have used them a lot lately and only got a couple left which is a shame as they are really nice & useful. Tab - Kelly Panacci. Heart tag & brads - Papermania. Stickles - glitter glue.

My new book -

This new book arrived from Amazon today and its gorgeous. I can't wait for bedtime so I can start reading it.
I love Francesco da Mosta - he is so intelligent but a bit cheeky at the same time. His BBC programmes on Venice and Italy have made me desperate to visit there - have not made it yet but still keep hinting to Steven!

When I saw this book on Amazon ages ago I popped it in my basket and have been patiently waiting for the price to come down. It was £25 but this week it went down to £11.25 so I grabbed one and boy it is actually worth £25, the photography and writing are just fab.

Unfortunately I missed the start of the programme on the TV but luckily it only started this week so I was able to download them both on BBC i player to watch on the computer and have set Sky + to record all the others. Its on on Tuesday & Wednesday nights BBC2 at 20.30 hrs.

This is a map of the journey he took from Venice in Italy all the way around the Mediterranean to Istanbul.

The book is huge! It is a large hardback book and is really heavy with 240 pages. It will keep me quiet for ages.

Because the book is so big you can really appreciate the beautiful photography - I wish I was there now!