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.