Happy Easter!

Seattle gave us it's best for the Easter weekend - rain. Tons of it! And everything was shut. Which scuppered my plans for a bit of retail therapy before we head out of town and whilst Chris was watching the motorbike racing on TV (which was being held in the desert in Quatar and it got rained off! - unheard of!). Anyway...

To be honest we did a lot of sitting in the room today. Chris wasn't feeling great anyhow and eventually after a quick trip to Panera Bread for lunch and Walmart (ok, I was desperate to get out and to a shop of some sort!) I settled down to do some long overdue digi scrapbooking. This is the second of my class assingments from the 'Digi in Deep' class I took with Jessica Sprague. Fantastic class and excellent teaching style but I just didn't have the commitment to follow the class at the time so I'm playing catch up now. I'm pretty pleased with the results and with the extra time to prepare I unearthed this great old photo of Chris to pair with a more up to date one of him and his bikes!

Our 7th Wedding Anniversary

We hopped a flight to Dublin for our 7th anniversary weekend. (this is LAST weekend - I haven't had time to update the blog for a while!) After Ryanair cancelled the first flight we then had 9 hours waiting for the alternative, but we got there in the end! I'd booked an ideal hotel right off O'Connell Street in the centre of town. Perfect for exploring the city on foot. We didn't delay in heading out on our first night (in fact on all three of the nights we were there!) We enjoyed open mic live comedy in a pub, drank plenty of Guinness and Irish cider, caught up with 2 old friends of Chris's, took a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, wandered the cobbled streets of the Temple Bar district, sat and relaxed in the grounds of Dublin Castle, stuck our fingers in the bullet holes at the GPO building where the 1916 Easter Uprising took place, walked along the river Liffey and drank some more Guinness and Irish cider. Dublin is a beautiful city. We just enjoyed the short time we had wandering aimlessly. It's all very compact so ideal for strolling and plenty of pubs for some liquid refreshment en route - and they seem so attractive - all cheerfully painted and decorated - how could you not stop by!On our last day we took a bus tour out into Co. Wicklow moutains and the medieval monastic settlement of Glendalough. We lucked out on the weather - it was mostly dry and blue and we relaxed and enjoyed listening to the lovely dulcite irish accented tour guide! We also visited the village of Avoca and the oldest handweavers in the country - dating back to the 1700's. Their weaving was gorgeous - but far too expensive for us gypsies so we satisfied ourselves with lunch in the resturant instead!

But all of this was because 7 years ago Chris and I thought it wasn't such a bad idea to get married after all - and with 7 years of getting used to the idea it was one of my better decisions!! Happy Anniversary Chris! - 7 years, 7 different countries and not an itch in sight!

Change is good...apparently

Once again our lives are changing. This is our final weekend in the house and most of belongings are packed. It's sad to be going and right now it doesn't even feel that exciting to be setting off again (I know we'll be loving it again once we're gone) I've been so comfortable and cosy in the house, I've enjoying being a homemaker. From here we visit Chris's Mum in Cheltenham, then Thursday we fly to Dublin for our anniversary weekend. Then back again and 3 nights with my Mum & Dad then off to Seattle...phew..busy huh?!

Last weekend we cleared out some of our stuff at a car boot sale. SUCH fun! We had glorious weather which helps when you're sat around for 5 hours at Cheltenham racecourse and we made £85 and like I said got rid of a box or 2 of unwanted stuff! I've also squeezed in some scrapbooking the last couple of weeks. Went to a crop last weekend at Paper Arts so got a few layouts completed;This is only a year behind schedule. Photos from our trip to Amsterdam last winter we were home! Christmas Lunch in the Mills household... With Mum waking up ill on Christmas day and not making it out of bed the task of cooking lunch for 13 fell to Chris, Dad and I. We pulled it off, even if it was 3 hours late!I am not Irish, and I didn't even want to go out on the night of St Patricks Day, but Ian was visiting us and fancied a pint, and one thing led to another....We acquired St Paddys Day hats, lumnious glow sticks and a few too many pints inside. But it was a fun evening and Ian took these reputation-damaging photos on his iPhone!

3 things...

3 New toys to play with...

We picked up our new lens from the post office today - a 50mm f/1.4 which already we love! This is the first prime lens we've ever had - it's kinda wierd for us to not have that capability to zoom in some form or another but I do love the blur on the backgrounds when taking still life or portraits. (no doubt there is a techinal term for that blur!!)

I finally got to drive the car for the first time since we've been back! This is our old car - the Mercedes SLK, the one we debated over colour, extras, finishes etc when ordering it back in 2002 (gosh it sounds so old!) We sold to my Mum and Dad and they are great enough to lend it back to us when we're around. But their insurance didn't allow under 35 year old drivers! And yesterday I drove all the way to Tesco. And it is a lousy uncomfortable ride as a passenger but I do oh so love driving it! Top down, good music through the Bose speakers - this is the life. (Until I got to the gas station and couldn't for the life of me work out how or where to get the filler cap open!! - had to phone Dad at home to ask!)

And finally the biggest addictive time-sapper (after facebook!), also known as my favourite birthday present ever - my still very new, very shiny, very sexy iTouch! LOVE THIS. love, love, love it! (and I love Chris for giving me it!) Of course it's good for me....I have bought the Brain Trainer game and that is the main cause of the addiction. Honest gov... (And I played Sudoku in the post office queue waiting to collect lens mentioned above!) (AND the photo is taken with the new lens - obviously!)

Ruby Wedding Celebrations!

My Mum and Dad celebrated 40 years of marriage today - wow! I've got quite the example to live up to! And so the last few weeks I've been busy. Delving through old photos and some memorabilia. They were thoughtful enough to vacation in Florida last week so I had some uninterrupted time to dig deep (but next time Dad; can you sort and file a little better!)
So, like I said I was busy...creating this;I just hope it does them justice. I split it into 3 sections - photos of them before children - their courtship and wedding and newlywed years. Then the second section was of a family of 4 - the years from when I was born through till my brother and I left home. And finally the 3rd section was of their later years - the here and now, them with their friends. (You can see the full album here)

Congratulations Mum and Dad! I love you.xx

My Mosaic

Grabbed this idea from reading through the lovely Anna's blog and thought I'd play along too (thanks for passing on the fun idea Anna!) and since Anna explained so well, here are the rules copied from her website!;

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into FD's Mosaic Maker.

The Questions:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favourite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favourite colour?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your Flickr name.

1.Helen (duh!) and I've visited here Mt St Helen's in WA St. Helens Sunset, 2. Curry probably Thai but a good English / Indian curry is awesome too! A Pot of Gold..., 3. Taunton - Queens College, 4. Blue Aurora Borealis in Singapore. Turning Night into Day, 5. Sean Connery (yes I know he's ancient now but he got oh so better with age!) Happy Birthday Big Tam, 6. BloodyMary, 7. Machu Picchu, Peru, 8. Baked Alaska, 9. Comfortable (this would be so my idea of camping too!) Camping, 10. Home Through the eyes of a puppy, 11. Content Perfection, 12. Brit_Chick (I was a skydive Brit Chick for the 2004 record of 60 girls (which isn't this photo!) and this photo is taken by one of my friends Andy Ford!) Brit chick record

I am such a lovely daughter!!

We've been down in Somerset for the last couple of days. I've been been a busy bee putting together an updated website for my Mum & Dad's cake decorating supplies business - The Old Bakery. This was something I started about 8 years ago using Frontpage...and well!! This time, with no job I really have no excuse!! It's just using a basic tempate wizard that was a free option as part of their hosting package with Easyspace but it's still taken me the best part of 2 days (that included taking all the product photos!)