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!)

The names' SNOW.....Sergeant Snow!!

Meet our new friend, or rather security guard - Sgt Snow! Oh the things you get up to when you don't have a job to go to!!! A carrot for a nose, a couple of tuppence pieces for eyes, a woven peice of elastic I had lying around for a mouth and tea lights for buttons, and adorned with a few of Chris's military medals and badges - just for a little status you understand! The neighbourhood is quite tickled by it - we've had so many come by and pose to take photos of him

Snow hits England - Swindon BC runs out of grit!

Hilarious and sadly oh so typical. England crumbles after the heaviest snowfalls for 18 years. And Swindon Borough Council make national news headlines today after reporting that they've almost run out of grit. Which begs the question - where the hecks it all gone?! Because there doesn't seem to be a lot on the roads!!

This was the view this morning from outside the house (the house is the end of terrace on the far left of the photo) and of our car all packed in it's nice soft white blanket. We woke to maybe 3 inches or so - I love it, but then I don't need to go anywhere or do anything... (lucky me!)

Before & After photos (part I)

So happy! Finally I feel the house has really come together. Almost all the new carpets are done. All painting done, including, and in particular the dreaded and hated gloss woodwork. And finally I've downloaded the photos. Wanted to get some before and after shots posted together. I think there are some pretty big changes and improvements to be seen. As for us we're really enjoying just living in this lovely little house. With all our possessions out of storage and around us. There's been some wonderful discoveries of things we'd forgotten we even owned and memories of happy times collecting and buying said items!

The bathroom (this was the orignal root cause of the problem - the toilet overflow was broken and water was leaking into the exterior wall cavity saturating this room and 3 of the downstairs rooms) Thankful for the wonderful, helpful insurance people at NFU...!The 'Blue' room as we affectionatly called it (only as it was painted and carpeted blue (though not the hideous blue in the before photos - that was the awful job of some tenants - we'd picked a refined and classic 'shakespeare blue' - anyway now all that remains are the blue curtains.) Living life now as the study (or scrapbook room?!)The Attic bedroom and Main Bedroom. No major works here other than a quick paint and carpet. Chris had to mend the doors to the under-eaves storage. (OK - in fact the bedroom REALLy doesn't look any different!)

Some scrapbook layouts

Got to a crop at local scrapbook store; Paper Arts and got some new layouts done - the first scrapping I've done since we got back the UK! Had such a great day, will be going back again in another weeks time! All the layouts were based on the Cathy Zielske class 'Design your Life' I took last year at Big Picture Scrapbooking. My 'homework' was long overdue!

Absolutely loved these photos I took at new year. (you may have seen them earlier on the blog!)

These photos were from this time last year! Our trip to Eden in Cornwall with my Mum and Dad. I seem to recall I had trouble with a whole host of the photos when we were moving from the different bio-spheres the temperatures were changing so much the lens was fogging! But we really were that close to the cute robin (before the days of our zoom lens!)

And finally for now one from our family trip to Chicago for the wedding. This was our bus tour outing to the city and the Chicago Bean - all very cool!

The New Year

Already a week in - wow! I'm not a resolution-y kind of person. But I have joined a gym and I plan to finish my Week in the Life scrapbook album (OK start AND finish it!). And for now I'm not in any way commiting to anything else.

The house in Swindon is coming along; raring to get back into it after the Christmas break. The kitchen really is pretty much finished (haven't downloaded the last photos so they'll come later!), there's a couple of rooms to paint and lots of 'little' jobs plus painting the outside of the house. Then we'll get around to seeing if it's worth selling or if we're to be landlords again for a couple more years. Looking forward to catching up with some friends whilst we're back in the UK, and getting in some more hiking (we aren't aiming for a specific distance this year so we have to be careful of not getting lazy and still get out and explore this glorious countryside!)

Happy New Year

Welcome to 2009!

We had a wonderful glistening frost on New Years Eve - here are a few of my favourite photos!

We finished the year achieving our 2008 'resolution' of hiking 1000 miles. Though I have to admit it was done only in the nick of time. Having been laid up ill all last week it set our targets back a bit. Thankfully we had some wonderful hiking weather to romp around the Quantock Hills near my Mum's over the Christmas break.