3rd February photo

Well in Shrewsbury we only had a little layer of snow, so we seemed to have escaped quite lightly, compared to the rest of the country. But I thought I should try another snowy photo to capture the occasion and this is what I have come up with!

It is a statue of Charles Darwin covered with as much snow as we got, outside our Library (his old school). I think it is quite apt as we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of his birth - here in Shrewsbury - on February 12th. There are lots of exhibitions and displays planned - I should take lots of Darwin themed photos this month I think.

I need to have a play with photoshop to try and reduce the brightness behind the statue. Photo taken with my 50mm lens on my Nikon again.

***(edited to say I have now photoshoped the photo and it looks much better - left both on so you can see the difference a bit of work in PSE makes - though I am sure those with more experience could make it even better!)

2nd February photo

We woke up to snow this morning, so todays photo had to include the snow. So I rushed out bright and early (in my dressing gown!) and took some shots. I decided to go with this photo of snowdrops in the snow. It was taken with my 50mm lens on my Nikon D40.

just added this photo as well to show what a puney little layer of snow it was!

surprise present from my hubby..

Steven surprised me yesterday with a little gift - joint membership of the Ramblers Association! It came totally out of the blue and what a lovely idea. I had never actually talked about joining but he thought I had become so interested in walking that I would like this - I do! So I spent a few hours reading all the booklets and magazine that came in the pack and then dreaming about all the new places we could visit.So today photo is this info from the Ramblers Association.

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.