Days out

Autumn is being so much better than summer ever was this year, so much so that Martin and I have had two days out this week, and a third day spent at home in the garden.

With beautiful blue skies and no supply work booked (I only managed to get work for Friday this week) we decided to take advantage of our English Heritage membership again and took ourselves off to Upnor Castle (via the Papermill for some card making supplies I may add.

Upnor is a rather strange little village, right on the bank of the river Medway, well its actually on St Mary's island in the middle of the river, but who is counting. The Castle itself actually juts out into the river as it was built as a sea fortification. The village consists of about 10 houses, 2 pubs and a castle, all set along a cobblestoned road.




We didnt take up the audio tour this time as they wanted to charge us, and since in every other EH building we have been in, it has been free we put up a principled stand. A shame really as it would have been nice to be a bit more informed about the few rooms we were walking through. There was an interesting re-enactment model of a sea battle against the Portugese though.




Then today we decided to just get in the car and go... well we didnt know where but to help us decide I grabbed our two circular pub walk books - not intending to walk you understand, just as a hint on where to go. We ended up in Pluckley, the village where Darling Buds of May was filmed, as it is not that far from us. As we meandered along the country lanes we passed a pub full of classic cars. And not just any classic cars, but sporty convertibles!!


Well it was a pub, there were cars ... Martin stopped.




Having looked our fill at the wheels, I happened to mention that the pub starred in one of the walking books, and before I knew it we were strolling across fields, crossing railway lines


and walking through woodlands




At this point I have to point out that not one time when following the instructions in the books have we managed the whole route without getting lost. And today was no exception. We thought we had followed the book to the letter, but found ourselves in a delightful field of mooy cows, with no sign of the promised style, gate or farm buildings in sight.





I think we managed an extra mile trying to find the road back, and that included barbed wire, a bridge out of Indiana Jones, and some pretty rough arable fields.

But the sun was shining, the sky was blue, the birds were singing, and the pub was shut when we got back desperate for a drink!! Oh and we did the whole thing in tee-shirts because it really was that hot. Who would believe it was October.

That was the week that was ...

reasonably uneventful.

Oh apart from thevery short lived stay of Danny the dog.

This is the sad story of Danny

Little Danny seemed a lovely little lad, very friendly, easy going and just suited. Mum and Dad bought him home and settled in with him.

On Sunday he had a bit of a growl at my mum for attempting to get him down off the furniture but nothing much so they thought it just settling in nerves.

In the afternoon he chased a cat into the garden and ended up in the pond. He allowed my mum to dry him off with the hairdryer, even letting her pull up his tail and dry underneath. He was as good as gold.

Then he got on his blanket, but he was still wet and his bedding needed sorting out, so my mum called him back out of his little corner. He refused to move, my dad tried, he still refused, my dad made motioning instructions with his hands re-inforcing the instruction.

And the little dog went mental, grabbing onto my dad's arm with his teeth, growling, the lot!!! My mum tried to beat him off with the newspaper, in the end it was only by covering him with the table cloth that he finally let go of my dad's arm.

Monday a very upset pair of parents had to take him back to the sanctuary Reading between the lines, my mum seems to think this may not be the first time he has been returned to them.

My dad says he doesnt want a dog just now.

I did a day and a half supply work in a lovely little village school, I did some gardening, (winter pruning and tidying up) I made a few LO's, did a little bit of scrap shopping (new tapes for my ATG gun and some Bo Bunny papers) and we sanded and re-oiled the kitchen work top.

So the week that was reasonably uneventful.




A double Layout using some really old Junkits and even older freebie paper from a mag. Technique for frame on my scrappy blog.

More from the Goose fair, at Challock. Lots of Crate Paper this time round.

And finally this week's Pencil Lines sketch.

Hello Danny

Yesterday I went with my mum and dad to collect their 'new' dog from the rescue home. Meet Danny a 6 year old Dandy Dinmont terrier, a very friendly little cutie.

New freebie

I love the free kits from Miss Minton Peppermint Creative. Within moments of downloading this months I had whipped up this simple creation from it (a few bits from last months kit too).

Its been pretty quiet this week, after last week being busy working full time and travelling to Deal there has been no work at all this week (guess its too soon in the term for courses and ill teachers) and things seem to have calmed down a bit on the emotional side although Laura and Wayne are not back together again.

So a chance for me to 'spring clean' the house from top to bottom and do a bit of crafting. Luckily its been nice enough to get all the curtains washed

Harvester

I forgot to add, they have finally opened a half decent family eating establishment near us. We have heaps of them in Canterbury but parking is an issue, the next nearest being on the coast, a good 14 miles drive away, so we were really pleased to see a branch of Harvester being build in the nearby town.

On Friday it had been open a week so we ventured over, just Martin and I, and had a really good, stuff your face meal. We like the eat-all-you-want salad bars in the Harvester, and this one had a particularly good one. Even though the place was packed with the remnants of the Early bird cheap menu, they managed to keep it topped up with fresh goodies, and hot rolls.

I can see a fair few meals being eaten there.

Goose fair LO

I've just uploaded the details and class for making this LO on my other blog.

Blog count

This week my blog count seems to have gone up big time .... and I cant work out why. So if any one knows why I have suddenly jumped from averaging 2/3 visitors a day to a whopping 109 in one day (when I hadnt even updated for a week) please let me know and I will try doing it again LOL.

So on the news front ... mum and dad have 'ordered' their dog!!!!!!!

Its the longest dad has ever been without a pet or a dog in particular, I am amazed they have stuck to it for so long, but after seeing all the dogs at the fair last weekend he was determined to get one of his own again. Obviously not a puppy as they are too old to start training again, and they didnt want anything too big. Plus they couldnt afford the prices of buying from a dog rearer. First they tried the Dog's Trust as it is only a mile away from our house, but they only had big dogs and still wanted £75 for allowing you to rehouse one.

Then they spotted a little doggie in the local paper, advertising the Lord Whiskie S!ancturary. Danny is just what my dad is after, a six year D old Dandy dinmont terrier. They have to have their house inspected but if they pass that this morning then they can go collect him next saturday

Followers

I have just added Followers to my sidebar, what an interesting new blog development? Should be interesting.
Goose Fair Apparently my Son-in-law Ollie wants to know why I have not updated my blog. I have actually got an account of our weekend outing to Challock Lee's Goose Fair to add, but I have been covering in a school in Deal, a round trip of nigh on 60 miles a day, and have done full time for the last week and a half. I have also had to do half the planning for the class, so I simply havent found time or energy to update. The lady I am replacing is on Jury service, so I have at least another half a week work there if not more, dependant on the case she is judging.

So, to my weekend. Saturday was spent catching up on housework as the house looked like a bomb had hit it with Laura moving back in and me not being around. I also had to sort out the bedroom for Laura properly, getting hangers down out the attic, putting boxes and spare beds back up there, etc. etc just so she could fit in. I finally got to do a decent food shop too, I dont think the fridge has been properly full since Christmas.

On Sunday since I had it in my head that Martin was working, I persuaded my mum and dad to come with me to Challock goose fair. I wrote about this a couple of years back, I had really enjoyed it and wanted to go again. Turns out it was something dad had always wanted to go to anyway. The weather was fab, and the place was packed, yet we managed to get a parking place near the gate,. The first thing we watched was the dog racing, and this year, knowing how fast those hounds run I positioned myself in a much better place to get some photos. Dad was pretty impressed with the owls, and the traction engines, and I was facinated by these little critters. This was a new event to us, can you spot it? Its an egg hurling competition! Anyone willing to run the risk of getting covered in egg could enter. I think it was meant to be a lot messier, but the soft ground and the brilliant throwers and catchers meant only one person ended up with egg on their face! We were dissappointed that we couldnt see the goose herding on the timetable of events. Neither had we discovered where the dog show was being held. Loads and loads of lovely dogs wandered around but no show, until we got back out in the carpark to discover it being held there.
We had a great day out, and dad finally admitted he wanted a new dog himself to replace Charlie dog, and would be going off to get one asap. We dropped in to see Kelly and Ollie on the way home, making me even later than ever getting in, only to discover Martin had not been at work at all, but at golf. Boy was I in trouble for not getting that right, and being out when he got home!!! Ooops!!

Sad

Ater two weeks of trying to sort things out, Laura has finally left Wayne and moved back in with us.

And the rain came down

Yesterday, after my appointment at the dental hygienist, Martin and I drove down to Deal to check out where the school I am supplying at next week is. Its going to be a big of a trek but not too hard to find.

After, we went to Deal and had fish and chips on the beach. Well I say on the beach but by this time it was chucking it down with rain, so we sat in the car and looked at the water driving down the windows.

The plan was then to spend the rest of the day at Dover Castle, making the most of our English Heritage membership, so undaunted by the rain (which did ease off a bit as we meandered round the country lanes) we made our way there.




When we arrived the guy checking our tickets told us that included in the price was a tour of the secret underground tunnels, next tour starting in 20 mins. He booked us in and helped by the wind forcing us down the hill, we made our way down to them.




The tour was quite interesting, and despite not liking tunnels, you didnt really feel you were in one. More an air raid shelter that went on and on. The war time engineers had built a whole network of tunnels, one layer containing a whole hospital, complete with operating theatres and all.




Other levels hid a repeater station,

a telephone exchange,



a barracks and a war combat control centre, as it was from here that Ramsey controlled the Dunkirk landings.

When we came out though, not only was the rain coming down in droves, the wind was now lashing it across the ground. Dover Castle is set on a very steep hill, so wearing heavy sodden coats and fighting the bitting wind and rain was not giving us any pleasure. I am afraid to admit we gave up and came home. I did feel sorry for anyone who had paid the £10.50 entrance fee and so was more or less obliged to stay (and there were a fair few) but equally very impressed with the spry old dear in only a thin rain mac carrying a walking stick who carried on regardless.

NB Photo's curtesy of the English Heritage site as you are not allowed to take photos underground, and above ground the weather was just too horrendous.

Announcing my new scrappy blog!!!!

You may have noticed that in my profile I have another blog. This one is going to be for uploading my Layouts only - along with descriptions/classes of how I made them and the credits/supply lists that go with them.

I decided to do this as A) I am not very good at listing the info when there is other stuff I want to record on here, and B) the craft stuff is getting lost amongst all the real life stuff, and C) I have noticed a huge return to cardmaking and a decline of scrap (purely scrap) blogs and want to redress the balance a bit.

I will however continue to put photos of the Layouts and other crafty stuff on here, you just will need to go to Scrappy Layouts if you want to see how it was done, or for my stories behind the LO's.

Nice to know

According to the UK Smack Blog I am now considered a Diva!

Back, but limping.

Scroll down if you want to see pics of Herne Bay Festival, as I just found an entry I hadn't finished due to pc meltdown.

Still no sign of a fixed laptop, Wayne is too busy at the moment having just started the ground clearing work on the second housebuild, and also having sold the house they are in, with the threat of being homeless in 5 weeks.

Kelly understood my absolute frustration at having no computer access, and since they have an abundance of laptops and pcs in their house, she very kindly has given me her extremly old - ancient even - laptop. Poor old 'Dilbert' limps along at a very slow speed, cant cope with big programs like photoshop, has to be permenantly plugged into the mains or he dies, and weighs a ton, but already I love him!

Having been round to dad, downloaded all my camera memory cards and burnt them onto disc, the first plan of action was to get them all uploaded to net. I was in the process of doing that before my own lappy died, but this was a slow process as I was uploading for printing and cleaning each one up before loading. This time round the whole lot are going online and then once saved, I will slowly replace each as I clean it. There is no way I want to loose these photos.

The latest ones are a little special anyway. When the girls were small, I was at college doing my degree, and mum was working so it fell on good ol' G'dad to do the childcare bit. Often on nice days they would, on the spur of the moment, decide to go off in the car on a picnic. Now, G'dad's idea of a picnic was simply to get a large box, and sweep the contents of the cupboards into it. No buttering bread and wrapping it up ready to eat when you got there. Oh no. You just throw in the whole loaf, the butter dish, and a knife, and sort that out when you get there. Laura only ate salad cream sandwiches, Kelly ate whatever was on offer (except brussel sprouts) so whole bottle of salad cream went in, plus anything else dad could find, including the tin opener. Drink was a flask of hot water and oxo cubes.

As younsters, both girls loved these improptu outings so while on holiday Laura asked G'dad to take her for 'one of his picnics'. So yesterday we went together with her to Knole Park to see the deer. The park is only £2.50 to get your car into (as National Trust Members Mum and Dad get in for nort) and you can go in the house but this was not what we were at. We had a quick look at the many many deer,

admiring the many deer

a quick race up the hill

watch some more deer

set out the picnic, note the box of food behind mum

'I think this goes here' - note picnic box and bags of more food

Happy but hungry bunnies we settled down to admire the view and munch away to our hearts desire. But nothing is ever that simple with us is it? First came 'THE WASP'. Only one (and the only one we have been pestered by all year) but Laura is terrified of them so there was lots of jumping up and down (not easy from that table) waving of hands and shouting.

Having got rid of that pesky thing, we then had more trouble!



He was very persistant, and very tame.


Despite warnings about not feeding the deer because they might bite, mum still wacked it on the nose, flayed it with a tea-towel.



Dad pulled his antlers away (gently)


and Laura tried to entice it away with some bread.

Finally it got away with an apple which was way too big and hard for it to eat, so back it came.




In the end the only thing to do was eat quickly and pack everything away fast.

Finally, realising we had nothing left to pinch it went off to the next picnicing party, and mum did laugh when they started to attemp sending it back to us!!!

It really is a beautiful picnic spot, and was good fun (the deer actually made the day) so if you are close and get the chance do go in for a look see and a spot of lunch.

This might be fun!!

On Monday I had a disasterous day. In the morning my laptop caught a virus and while scanning with AVG Kelly sent me a text. I had to go downstairs to get my mobile, and when I came back the laptop had turned itself off. When I turned it back on, it had completley lost explorer and all my peripherals had gone. I could neither back up or load new software, so couldnt even do a complete restore of windows. It is now with Wayne, patiently waiting for him to have time to mend it (fingers crossed).
Luckily I have at least hooked the wii up to the net so I can manage to get some limited use online. Game consoles are amazing!

Then at lunch time half of my tooth fell out!!! Which meant yesterday it was a trip to the dentist. I havent been for about 3 years but when I explained why he was very understanding. He said that apart from the £500 for a new crown my teeth and gums are fine (unless anything comes back on the x-rays.

Life with no computer is a real pain. To start with I cant scrap as I cant print out any of my 'new' photos (all on discs or pc and needing the printer) and neither can I clean up my older photos, or do any of the 101 hybrid scrappy things I normally do using the computer.

I cant read my emails, as the wii will let me onto hotmail but not open anything on the page.

I cant find out anything. I have lost count of the things I think of durring the day to go discover more about, only to realise I cant now. Its too much hassle hooking up to the wii (having waited for the telly to be free), plugging in a key board, trying to find pages using a wii remote.

So, no photos to share this time round, and lets hope for a speedy recovery for my little lappy. :(

Not all of the seaside towns are dead.

Yesterday was the official opening of HerneBay Festival.Undaunted by our recent experiences at Margate, Ramsgate and Whitstable I phoned up mum and dad and they agreed to come with me (Martin being at golf). Dad was a little reluctant - Whitstable really had been a sad affair - but agreed to come pick me up.

An aside while we wait for him to turn up LOL - Whitstable local papers had been full of complaints about how the Oyster Festival and Regatta had been handled. It appeared that it had been decided somewhere to double up the two events and the result was

• Overcrowding, there simply was no where to park, literally, making the whole town a nightmare. Many more popular pubs had no room at the inn, etc etc
• Tankerton (where the regatta is held) got left off all publicity and no one knew there were events going on up there. Everything was centered around the town
• Many traders said trade was down because visitors to the town would have come twice or those who normally come for the regatta didnt come as they didnt know about the move of date - true since my cousin who lives in Dartford was one of them, who phoned me up a week later to see if the regatta was on
  
• The carnival ended up getting left out of the mix altogether and with no planned events on carnival day many traders had no extra trade

Anyway back to HerneBay. We parked on the seafront, no problem with parking as Herne Bay has 4 big car parks and plenty of off street availablilty. We walked along the sea front. There was obviously going to be lots going on but we had arrived a little early as the planned events all started after the Parade of the Giants. In the town the Classic cars and bikes were parked available for all the guys to have a squint at, so we whiled away a pleasant 20 mins remembering the ones my dad had first driven when I was a kid.


The one we owned when I was small,



The one dad admired (because he is in to Mercs at the mo)



And the one I wish I had had (although I really wanted a Triumph spitfire or MGB GT)

The town was packed but there was nothing that looked like the official route so it took us a bit of time to choose the ideal spot to stand. In the end we watched from the very beginning. It wasnt a long parade, only 3 giants and a couple of bands - this is a recent event and I guess its to make up for the fact that we cant have street walkers at the carnivals any more (Health and Safety dont 'cha know). But it did look like all were having a great time and there was a good community atmosphere.

Herne Bay's giantess

The biggish bloke at the back is Whitstable's town giant.

Music to dance to

Sea creatures

This week

Since coming back from Dorset we have been very busy enjoying the rest of the time that Martin has had off on holiday. A bit of a run down on what we have been up to - just to show we can have just as much fun holidaying at home.

Friday - washing, shopping, gardening, ironing, ...

Saturday - popped out to buy me a new pair of trainers (£15 for a pair of Rebok Classics!!) and then went to see Kelly (who was not doing her kitchen as it was raining and they needed to get outside to cut wood) The neighbours had a domestic ending with the police being called.

Sunday - Martin played golf for most of the morning and saw his dad in the afternoon. We were going to have the kids over for a BBQ but ...it rained.

Monday - We live right on the coast so I wanted a day at the seaside doing all the seaside things, candy floss, fish and chips, ice-creams, sandcastles, paddling etc. I also wanted to give Mart a go at pitch and putt golf so we headed out to Margate. What a huge huge dissappointment. The pitch and putt had long been shut down (although it is a public park and the council still own it so we couldnt see why, since they need little upkeep), the dreamland site was a building site/car park, most if not nearly all of the shops on the seafront had been boarded up and then covered in grafitti, there was rubbish blowing down the street, and the place, which is usually heaving in August was all but deserted. We couldnt believe how a place could deteriate in such a short time. Dreamland going can not be the only cause as many of the seaside towns we had visited lately do not have that attraction, but it did seam as if the local council had just given up on the place.

Disgusted we continued around the coast line to Palm Bay were a new (to us) pitch and putt had sprung up. It prooved fairly popular too and although the wind was blowing in off the sea, the rain clouds meneced overhead and I was pretty useless, we had a brilliant time.

It wasn't the right place to get the fish and chips though, being practically all there was there was a few beach huts and a pitch and putt course so we got in the car and drove on to Broadstairs. We hadn't realised that last week was the Folk Week in Broadstairs, so this was one seaside town that was packed to the gills with hippy types and those enjoying the Morris men and folky music. We had some really tasty fish and chips on the prom looking out to sea, walked round the craft stalls on the cliff, ate an ice cream and then decided to complete the coast line by buying our doughnuts in Ramsgate.

Encouraged by Broadstairs we were devastated to discover Ramsgate was in much the same state as Margate. The huge arcade and fun fair on the front had been knocked down to make way for apartment and luxury hotel development but was nothing but a pile of rubble, the casino now replaced by two others in the nearby locality, was boarded up and looking very sad - a beautiful Victorian building going to rack and ruin.

Tuesday - we were going to go out for a picnic with Laura but she wasnt feeling too good. Not liking the look of the weather we decided to stay home. I scrapped all day and Martin watched cricket and football and the olympics.

Wednesday - Ollie had given us a new shower head for the shower but when I put it on we discovered the old shower did have a leak and we needed a new one after all. I was off to the flicks with mum and Laura to see Mamma mia although Laura was still ill so didnt come in the end) so left dad and Martin putting it in. They were still putting it in when we came home 3 hours later, only to discover it was faulty and they had to take it off, take it back and start all over again.

Thursday - Again Laura was feeling too ill to join us on a picnic so we decided to go pick up some leaflets from our threatened Tourist Information Center to see where we could go. (Please go sign the petition on the prime minister's web site to sav e our TI centre). Biddenden Vineyard looked good on the leaflet and was free. It wasnt that brilliant when we got there, as there was no tour, you had to walk round the vines on your own, no information notices, only the names of some of the grapes and when they were planted, and no promised look at the cider making or bottling. The woman in the shop, although helpful was not really interested in her customers, most of the stuff in the shop was bought in and not made on the premises, and as we turned to leave and eat our lunch the heavens opened.




No good for a picnic because even when the rain eventually stopped, the ground was way too wet. We drove for nearly an hour round the countryside looking for a place to stop. Not that many years back you could stop anywhere to take a picnic but not so nowadays. Anyway eventually the sun came out, and we stopped in Beneden by the church

and sat in the car eating our goodies and watching the learner car drivers practice their three point turns.

Today - another doing nothing day, as we bought Laura, still feeling ill, over to us just to get her out the house and to get some food in her, and sortedout most of the 'Save the date' cards for the wedding, ready to be posted.

Looks like little effort spent

.... but this weeks Pencil Lines sketch LO had taken the best part of a day. Mainly because I have made most of the elements from scratch.

Here is what I did;

Supplies

BG Lolipop
Valerie Brown digi kit - 'A good Life'
Chipboard sheets
Ellison qk alpha Curlie Girl
Bazille cardstock
MM Notelette (thankyou Mel)
Scraps of cs
glitter
shimmer paints
sheet of transparancy

One of the examples on Pencil lines this week was a LO by Janine which had used several photos instead of one large one. I wanted to do the same, but am usu ally hopeless at croping them to fit. This time I decided that while I was cleaning the photos up in photoshop I would use a layering technique to fit them all into the larger space. This took a while but did mean I could change the pattern and size of the photos until I was happy with the spacing, something you cant do when you are cutting with scissors. I flattened the image and printed it out as one photo.

I gutted the sheet of bazille so that I could double mat photo. Thats when the fun started.

I wanted to match the colours in the BG cs but didnt have anything to hand so I decided to use some of my digi elements as hybrid stash. The flower is from 'A good life'kit although I altered the colour and flood filled the middle with blue. I printed it out and glued on to chipboard to provide some texture. The 'remember this' tag was part of the kit but the summer fun I had to make myself in photoshop. The Butlin book plate was also a digi element printed out onto white cs, glued onto chipboard and then chalks were used to give a fawn appearance. This was glued on using foam pads.

The other chipboard elements I cut from a variety of dies on my zipemate, and either covered in paper, painted with cosmic shimmer or glittered. The title was cut from the curlie girl die cuts in chipboard and blue paper scraps, which were glued over the top of each other and stuck on.



The journalling is computer printed onto transparency.

The florishes on the flower are rub ons from the French twist kit from Scrummy Cafe.

Waiting for glue to dry

While waiting for the glue to dry on the letters for my latest layout, I thought I would write up what I did to make it again, as it prooved so popular last time.




This layout was done as part of the Summer Stash Bash being run on UKS throuhout August. This one uses a Becky Fleck Page map and is part of the Tuesday Technique challenge - to use stamps somewhere.

Supplies

Fancy pants Floral Chic My sweetie paper
Autumn Leaves florish stamps
MM alphabet stamps
glitter
Some chipboard or back of notepad
Green and white acyrlic paint
Cosmic shimmer powder (blue, green, red, yellow)
Transparency
Doodlepack digi kit by Iona Havenaar
Sheet of transparency
G;ossy accents glue

The sketch called for four photos but I didnt have four in a 'set' so as last time, I had to mess around in photoshop before I could get started. Having picked these photos they seem to match the paper so well I just couldnt resist. And the paper was way too prrruudy to cover up, so instead of using the sketch as it stood I changed things a bit. In order to use ALL the pretty pattern I used my snap off craft knife and a glass cutting mat to cut out the flowers and swirls in the pattern just enough to slip the photos underneath.

I gutted the back of the top photo in order to use the back of the double sided cs as the journalling block.

For the stamping part of the challenge I used the swirl stamp on the naked chipboard, using stazon black ink after painting the chipboard with acrylic paint using a sponge brush. I dabbed white paint into the green to match the green paper. When dry I carefully cut the swirls out and glued on to make the journal frame.

Still using black stazon I stamped the title with the MM foam alpha (gosh its a while since I used those) and then using the same technique as before, smeared glue over them and then glittered with pee wee glitter.

Finally, the bubbles are printed out from a rather old digi kit by Iona Havenaar, called Doodlepack. I resizes some of the round tags which looked a bit like bubbles, printed them out onto a transparency, then used red, yellow, blue and green cosmic shimmer powder to paint a rainbow effect. Once glued onto the LO I added a 'bubble' of rangers glossy accents to make them 3D.