Scrap books and wedding album

A few weeks ago we started to sort through some of our photos and managed to get our wedding pictures down from about 1200 to about 400 that we got printed.

Since then we have gone through these again and discarded a number more of the photos. We have managed to reduce this by at least half that are that little bit closer to making e final cut.

We haven't narrowed this again yet as, after a while, we found that we started to go a little crazy and unable to decide any more. All of the pictures sort of blur into one and you're not sure if you've already seen some before or not. This is another job to carry on with at a later date when we get a bit more time to go through them again.

When we felt like we needed a break from photos, we started to look through our memory box of things that we have been collecting from day trips out, tickets to shows that we have seen and anything else we have collected on our holidays and travels around too.

We decided to start with making a book of our day trips and tickets to shows that we have seen as this seemed like one of the easier books to organise.

We started to go through sticking everything down to sheets of card and then we would be able to organise the sheets into the order that we went on the trips or to the shows that we have seen. We decided to keep the tickets separate from day trips meaning that we can keep adding to these as we go to see more.

We were quite amazed at all of the things that we have seen when we started to go through them all. This one is Starlight that we saw with my in-laws

Miranda and Elbow...

We had a few days out for my birthdays. We try to go out and do something each year. Crazy golf and cinema last year.

A trip to the Deep in Hull

And to the zoo another

We made the cover for this book from the page of the map that is from close to home. This page includes our home city of Nottingam as the nature of this book, day trips, is that we haven't gone too far on these.

A couple of years ago we made a similar photo book for my parents containing photos from one of our trips to Yorkshire. In fact, I think it was from the first time my parents introduced us to our favourite place. For the cover of this book we had then used the map book pages from the Yorkshire moors. We thought that this was a good idea and would also work from a number of different places, for our memory books.

We will be working on more books of other places that we have been. I think that our map book might be slightly depleted by the end of this and I am not sure how thick our Yorkshire trips book will end up being. A lovely way for us to keep our memories though. It has also been really lovely and good fun to look through our memory box and remember our trips. Although we haven't been on any big abroad holidays in the last few years, we have had some really good times away and done a lot more than we really thought that we had.

Lye in, pumpkin, weather runner and the start of Christmas

This morning was the first day that I have actually managed to have a good sleep and not wake up until I wanted to wake up. It's been a really lovely day as well. I have been really really tired recently from working as much as I have been. I have been doing 6 days a week for a long while now. I haven't even had many Saturday's off recently and no Friday's for a while either. I slept until 11 am today so all hopes of possibly going to any rememberance service were out of the window straight away. I woke up to the sound of e church bells. It was a fantastic 6 and a half hours longer than any normal day.

It has been a really lovely day today as well as I have started some of my Christmas crafting. Unfortunately I haven't been able to keep this one a secret but at least the contents will be. Last weekend we went to the Fabric Guild and I got some Christmas-y fabric so that I can start to make some things for Christmas. My plans are to make some cushion covers for the living room, a Christmas tree wall hanger made from triangles sewn together, and firstly I wanted to make a bit more of a special bag this year to make Adam's advent bag in.

I have therefore started to cut out some of the pieces ready for the bag and also to sew some small parts of it today as well.

I have cut my pieces of canvas into 2 squares, one each for the front and back and a long piece to wrap around the edge making the sides and bottom of the bag. It will be a bit like one of the bags for life that you can get once it's done. I am also planning on using patches to make pockets on the outside of the bag. I had to buy some new needles for my machine so that I had ones that would be good enough to sew through the canvas.

Today I started to iron the tops and bottoms of the patches, with a little help I will admit, and to sew the tops of the pockets to make the neat edges that I need. I have done this with contrasting thread so I started to sew the tops of the red patch pockets with grey thread and I plan to sew the grey patches on with red thread.

I chose the thread colour to most match the opposite colour material that I had.

I am not sure yet how I will add the handles or lining to the bag but I will cross that bridge when I get to it!

Now I plan to get all of the pockets ready to go onto the bag and then I will work on how it is all going to sew together as I go along.

I have also recently managed to catch up with my weather runner (I did get a few weeks behind recently) but am now up to date. Here is the progress to the end of October.

October has started to cool down slightly with the average temperatures dropping more into the purple 6-10 degrees category but it has still been really really warm with the average staying in the 11-15s a lot. There is more green in there that I would have expected. This seems to still be the case with the start of November too. Maybe we will get some more wintery temperatures into November. 

I almost forgot! Pumpikin! Please meet Jeff the pumpkin - this year's new addition to the family.

We bought him in Yorkshire a few weeks ago when we went up to Yorkshire for a night's escape so he is fairly well travelled.

During his carving I was at work so he was left to Adam for design and creation. I think he did a pretty good job though. And he definitely persuaded a good number of trick or treaters to visit us. We almost ran out of chocolate again!

For me, Halloween and more than anything, bonfire night, definitely marks the start of the holiday season and of my favourite time of year. I can't wait to finish studying for my exam and have some proper dedicated time for crafting again. Roll on 9 December (but not too quickly as I have a lot of work to do before then!)

A bit of a catch up

I haven't blogged for a couple of weeks now as its been a busy time really. Lots of work to do and a couple of nice evenings out with friends has meant that I have been pretty tired and not had too much time. I have also had a lot of college to do recently too so have been pretty busy with that work.

A couple of weeks ago my lovely evening out was to the WI meeting again. This was my first official meeting with them so I was a little nervous about it as I wasn't sure what a normal meeting would be like. One of my friends said that she was quite interested in coming with me and seeing what it was like too so that made it a lot easier. At least I knew I would know one friendly face to talk to even if I didn't fancy chatting with some of the women that were already members. As it turned out it was lovely to have her there but straight away I bumped into someone that I knew as I used to work with her and the other new ladies from the walk last month were there again so at least we all recognised and vaguely knew each other.

This months theme was vintage craft and upcycling so there was a lady there who did a talk in front of the group about her business in which she makes things out of recycled fabrics mostly. I personally don't think I'll bother with the make again but it was really quite a nice evening. It was lovely to catch up with my friend and nice to chat to the people that I met last month as well.

We made this broach. Like I said, not really my thing but ok to make with people while I was there.

I was a little disappointed that it was a rose as they're really not my favourite flower, almost especially if they are red but when I got home Adam pointed out that it does match the England rugby rose pretty well. That made me like it a little more!

Also last week we went to a pub quiz with some friends which was good fun. I think we did worst out of all of the teams that were there but we were sat next to a table of very smelly old men who had bought their dictionaries with them! We didn't care as we all still had a good laugh. It was fun and made a nice change for a night out.

Last weekend really was one of catch ups as I managed to just about get up to date with my table runner. Back to mid temperatures this month, hence there are copious amounts of green coming though at the minute.

We ordered our wedding photos at last - it's only taken 4 & a half years! They're not quite sorted out yet but we have found the book that we bought before the wedding that they will go in but we plan to go through these and sort out the best ones for the album next week when we have a week off. We managed to narrow down our photos from about 1200 to 406 that we printed. There are still a number of duplicates within these but we got to the point where we couldn't tell the difference on the screen any more. We needed to get them printed and see them for real I think to weed out the ones where people have their eyes shut or that are too dark, at the wrong angle etc. I'm really looking forward to spreading these all out on the floor and looking through them all again.

Finally, the last exciting thing that has happened this week is that...we have a BBQ! The builder that we employed to make it has finally managed to borrow a saw to chop the bricks in half and here we have it - our new brick BBQ!

Please excuse the rubbish photo - it was taken v quickly when I ran round the back of the house as soon as I got home. He is coming back v soon to fit the patio slabs back down as well. He just needs to borrow the saw again to do it!

Now all we need is some nice weather and some time at home to try it out. Fingers crossed for a bit of sunshine during our time off next week.

I climbed a tree! And a few other updates...

A couple of other updates from the weekend to show you...

I climbed a tree!

At the BBQ on Sunday there became a challenge to get the apples out of the tree in the garden. John had already climbed it and shaken most of them down but it looked great fun so I thought I would give it a shot at getting a few more down from the last few branches. I wasn't the best at getting the apples down but I have to admit I had a great time trying. I don't remember the last time I did something like that. I felt like a big kid again!

Sunday evening I also got my table runner up to date with the weather stripes. I have even sewn in the ends up until yesterday.

August was still looking fairly warm with the red stripes still being in there. I was using high temperatures still for August. At the end of the runner now there is also the start of my September stripes. There is a lot of green coming through now but this is because I have switched back to using the mid range temperature for each day again. This in theory, should be a lot like May really as these are both months each side of the summer ones where I went to high temperatures. May so far seems to be showing a lot more purple than this month is and I don't think I ever got as far as a average being yellow in May. This month has got to a mid temperature being yellow as it was so warm last Friday. 

It has been a little bit strange the weather at the minute I think, it's been really quite cold in a morning when I have been going out to work in a morning but then turning out to be quite warm still during the days. One of my biggest pleasures with going out at that time each morning is watching the sunrise. Some days there can be so many glorious colours within it.

This weeks hiding place for Henlow was in a bag, hiding behind the shoes in the hallway. He does sometimes make you feel so guilty for going and leaving him. He was here looking out at us the other morning when we were on our way out.

The rest of the time he can be dead grumpy and we won't see him all evening as he'll just hide away in his house.

Finally the pretty nails for this week are purple.

Have a good one everyone.

Good luck at university Eleanor

Today we went to a BBQ party to celebrate our cousin Eleanor going off to uni. When her brother went last year, we made him a box of goodies to take with him. A kind of a Red Cross parcel of things he might need and also a fair few embarrassing things in there too. I'm sure he really appreciated opening them in front of his whole family!

This year we were slightly nicer to his sister and packed her up with some hopefully quite useful things as well as only a couple of embarrassing things.

Duvet cover - for John (her brother) we got a periodic table set as he was doing Chemistry. Eleanor is going to do environmental studies so this one was the most educational set we could find. Hopefully she will never be stuck with this definition in an exam.

The tratditional giant bottle of vodka of course had to be included. We also packed some chocolates for sharing with her friends when she arrives, shot glasses and mugs (she needs something to drink the vodka out of!) and of course the traditional student medication-flu relief to combat freshers flu, pro plus to stay up all night studying and painkillers for when the night before might have got a little bit too messy. There needed to be a little soap etc thrown in there as well.

A decent start with some packet food, soup, pasta etc and of course the plastic cultery. Always usefull when you can't be bothered to wash up!

She has decided that she will mostly be eating vegetarian food while she's away so we were slightly limited on what we could pack for her. I did however notice the other day however that a bag of smoky bacon flavoured Frazzles that I was eating happen to be vegetarian. A bag of these had to go in on top of a load of stationary for her just in case she is missing that bacon-y taste and smell.

Once it was all packed into the box we thought we should really try to make it look like a proper Red Cross parcel. We printed out some signs to put on the outside of the box

As well as a full contents list of the box

All were stuck to the outside of the box and it was all taped up ready for to go this morning.

I think Eleanor seemed to like the box and its contents. We really did go light on her and managed to not really embarrass her at all. I think one of her favourites was definitely the hat

The big bottle of vodka didn't go down too badly either.

The duvet cover is looking like it will be educational already. I think her bother was pointing out how useful the plastic cutlery would be in this photo too.

Really good luck at uni Eleanor. We hope you have a great time and do plenty of studying too.

Pretty nails and one more cocktail

Sunday evening, after I had finished telling you about my day, we did end up having just one more cocktail. It's really bright again in colour but this time was very pink. This one was a "sex on the beach" cocktail.

Very nice. Stilł probably not the best of plans on a Sunday but even so, it was nice and good fun.

I also treated myself over the weekend to some new nail varnishes. Each time I have tried to paint my nails recently, I have ended up finding that my varnishes aren't really very good any more. They don't like to dry too easily any more, they just tend to stay tacky all of the time so as soon as you touch anything they start to come off.

So I treated myself to these pretty colours

Four to choose from. I went for the blue this time and it's amazing how much better it is than the old ones that I had. I didn't manage to take any pictures before today but they still look ok at the minute. It has meant that I have had to try and wear my bluest clothes to work the last couple of day! I feel I should at least try to be coordinated.

I didn't feel too good yesterday. I think it must have been a bit of a combination of slightly hungover and absolutely exhausted from working so much so we had a very chilled out evening after work. I wanted to go to bed at about 7:30. That plan didn't go down too well so the compromise was to go up to bed and watch catch up TV on our iPad. I feel so much better today for having had the extra sleep so I think I might suggest we do the same tonight. I don't think I'll make it to stay awake for too much longer! Maybe a TV in our room might be something we have to look into getting for Xmas or birthdays next year or something. It's really nice to just go up and chill out so you don't have to move after finishing watching the telly. Night all. Have a good one. Make the most of all of sleep you can get. Believe me it is sometimes the best possible way to spend time!

Happy day off!

Well today is the first day that me and Adam have had off work together in 4 weeks. And it is very very much needed. It has been lovely. Before that the last time we had a day together we still had to go out to see family which was all a little bit stressful so this was so well anticipated day off in which we had absolutely nothing planned other than the worlds most epic lye in ever!

I don't remember the last time we didn't have to have an alarm set to wake us up in the morning so last night after I had got home from skiing was the start of all of the fabulously looked forward to fun! It started with a shower, clean bedding, clean PJs and on Friday afternoon I treated myself to some new slippers that I have been wanting since just after last Xmas when I decided that I couldn't get away with wearing Xmas ones any more. A cup of tea and enjoying our comfy sofa just topped it off nicely.

Hmmm. So this morning started with a bit of a lye in. No alarm set so we woke up at around 8am instead of the 4:30 that we have had almost every morning for the last month. There was a bit of an annoying alarm thing going off outside but it was still nice not to have to get out of bed straight away after we woke up.

We had to wait in for our new fridges to arrive today so we sat this morning and caught up on some naff TV while we waited for it. Henlow was very good this morning and stayed in his house with the door shut until they arrived so that he wasn't in the way when they were bringing the stuff through to the kitchen. We have treated ourselves to a wine fridge to replace the freezer that wasn't getting cold any more and a new fridge as well. We think they look pretty smart in the corner now and we love that we had enough wine to fill the wine fridge too.

We had to nip out this afternoon to get a few bits to finish a bit off a red x parcel that we are making to send our cousin off to uni with and through our search we found these mugs for us. They work well with cider in...

But I thought they would look better with a colourful cocktail in...

We are now slowly getting a little bit daft with our afternoon together so perhaps I should finish this post up before it turns into gobbledygook!

I have also been adding the last few squares to my blanket this afternoon while watching "How to train your Dragon 1 & 2" that we got recently...and drinking our cocktails!

There may be more later as we have got the fruit juices to make a "sex on the beach" too. I will be sure to update you later in the week. Hopefully I will get some ore time again now...maybe.

As I have just asked my hubby "How do I get this to sync?" meaning updating this post and the response I got was "put it in water..." I think it might be time to call it a night. I'll make sure that I talk to you again soon. Have a good week!