Day 90/365

Nothing beats a messy ice cream straight after your shower!

Sarah and Dave came over with the kiddies tonight to see farewell. We got Chinese (yum!) and Fin gave me a bag of holiday goodies, including a journal that I'm hoping to write our adventures in for them to read when I get back :)

I won't be taking my laptop with me to update the blog, so see you all in a couple weeks!

Day 89/365

Picked up some last minute essentials for the holiday...and for those who didn't know already...yeah, I'm going to Canada and America!! Finally crossing over the pond! And I just spotted those four words "In God We Trust" when editing the image for the blog...I will most definitely be trusting in him as we fly 10 hours across land and sea, and throughout the rest of our holiday! I'm so thankful for this huge adventure and cannot wait!

Day 88/365

So I'm going on holiday for two weeks in two days...I had hoped to make a start on packing today, so that I can pick up any missing essentials when I'm in town tomorrow, but work took priority! I'm hopefully all caught up and organised for when I return now though, so once I've posted out a few things tomorrow I can then spend the next day and a half packing!

Day 87/365

It was Fin's 'Sport's Day' yesterday, which involved his nursery class running one race and then going inside, leaving Sarah and I sat outside with the rest of the crowds, watching the bigger classes race, and wondering if Fin's group were coming outside again. I got a really cute photo of him while he was out on the playing field, but because there are other boys and girls in the photo I don't want to put it online without asking for permission and risk hearing from some unhappy parents.

So, instead, you get Elsie's adorable "Come Me Mummy" pose at the wee park beside the playing field. She's such a cool dudette, huh!

Day 86/365

Matthew and I raced (at the speed limit) back up the road on Sunday morning to make sure we didn't miss the end of term Students BBQ at my Aunt and Uncle's house in the afternoon. My uncle Ken cooks an absolutely feast of a BBQ, it's not something to be missed!

These guys hate it when I get my camera out, which I guess is quite a lot, so I suppose Gordy and John are getting their own back by taking photos of me...great!

Day 85/365

I didn't want to risk taking my beast of a camera along to Glasgow Green, so a photo of the tickets will have to do. It was a good day...I guess...I mean, we only saw One Direction, Bastille, Pharrell Williams, Ed Sheeran, Jake Bugg, Lily Allen, Calvin Harris...oh and COLDPLAY! And we heard about 2 minutes of Bombay Bicycle Club...but we won't talk about the disappointment of missing them, I'll see them another time!

Day 84/365

Matthew and I headed down to Glasgow on Friday afternoon, in preparation for Radio 1's Big Weekend, and stayed with his cousin Ali :) She took us out for Italian Tapas in a restaurant on Byre's Road. Absolutely delicious food! Italian is a favourite of mine, so getting to eat three, supposedly mini, Italian dishes in one sitting is very pleasing to my taste buds.

Day 83/365

Fin took my flash gun out of my handbag and asked what it was, so I told him it was a flash for my camera and I proceeded to show him how it works...this was his reaction. Enough said.

Day 82/365

I've wanted wooden USB's for quite a while now, to use when giving clients high resolution copies of their wedding images, but the places I'd looked at required bulk buying, and I didn't fancy doing that! I came across a lady in Ireland who carves whatever you want in to an adorable little box, and the USB stick itself, so I decided to try it out for one of my recent couples who have just purchased the high resolution copy of their images. I love it! It's a bit more expensive than buying in bulk, but this way I can specialise each box and stick to the couple :)

Day 81/365

Where's the baby??

We spent the evening out in Banchory last Tuesday night, as it was Dave's birthday :) Sarah surprised him with a great portable BBQ, and a rather delicious chunk of slow oven cooked pork which she then smoked on the barbie...seriously delicious!

 

Happy Birthday, Dave! Hope you had a great day...a whole week ago already!

Day 80/365

I got to meet beautiful Thea Falls-Fowler this morning :) She was so precious, with an unbelievable number of smiles during our 3 hours together. I loved it! 

Day 79/365

  Who doesn't love a snuggled-up-in-bed-under-hideous-leopard-print-bed-sheets-with-your-old-chum selfie?!

Day 78/365

Happy Birthday, boys :) Lookin' good!

Day 77/365

I've been wanting to have the girls from Church out for an evening of food and chat for ages now, and when I saw Macmillan's 'Night In For Cancer' I thought it was a great reason to finally plan that get together :) So last night a dozen lovely ladies came over for the evening and spread themselves throughout the living room/dining room and back steps where my amazing Chiminea awaited them. I can't believe I didn't take ANY photos the whole time they were there. I had the brilliant idea of making all the food from scratch so by the time everything was ready I was ready to just chill out and chat. So this was taken shortly before midnight, after the girls had gone.

We've had the Chiminea for...oh my life, 5 years!! Time is going way too quickly. I thought it was just a few years, 5 is way more! Anyway, it's not been lit for about 4 years, ha! So when we got it going last night I was pretty excited!  I want to sit outside every night now. I also want to eat home made pizza and filo pastry parcels all the time now too.

Day 76/365

I got to photograph this adorable little lady on Thursday :) Just 7 days old, Claire's a tiny cutie, with a lovely head full of hair! She was such a delight to photograph, sleeping away quite happily while the camera clicked away...until I decided to move on to my floral pink blanket for the next round of photos. She clearly gets a dislike for pink, girly stuff from her Mother, as she woke up and pooped all over it! It's a good thing she's cute! Haha.

Day 75/365

I gave my room a freshen up on Wednesday, cleared out a few boxes, and a few drawers...it got a little bit out of hand. I've made jokes about just throwing out that bottom drawer because I can't even remember what's in it, well it broke a few weeks back...so now it's gone!

Day 74/365

I like candles...but I don't want to burn them, because then they'll melt and I'll need to buy new ones. The beautiful purple one at the front was given to me as a gift from one of my Lewis families back in April. Love it!

Day 73/365

So tonight I headed along to Loch Skene at sunset, and could have cried I was so in 'awe' of how beautiful it was! My jaw literally dropped when I headed along the path at the far side of the loch, which I hadn't set food on in all my 8 years of living in Westhill. The perfect view of the sunset across the loch, sailing boats out on the far side, swans chillin' and thick dark clouds over the loch made for very atmospheric viewing. I stayed for an hour to watch the sun set fully...shaking my head on occasion in utter disbelief at how beautiful it was.

Day 72/365

I couldn't decide between the two of these...so both of them it is! Don't you just love her chocolate mousse cake covered face (and hands...and arms...and clothes)!!

Day 71/365

Sarah and Dave got an allotment plot this month! It's all very exciting :) A few episodes of The Big Allotment Challenge have since been recorded on our telly.

There's a lot of work to be done to clear out the plot so Mumsy took the kids for the afternoon while Sarah and Dave attacked nettle bushes and weeds, then we all headed up to the plot to check it out. Fin is very keen to help dig!

I think I'll be purchasing a pair of dungarees and heading over once a week to help Sarah out, surprisingly...I know nothing about gardening, but the view from the allotment is breathtaking so it's a great place to be!

Day 70/365

Friday wasn't just any receipt filing day...it was a Marks & Spencer's receipt filing day. Haha. Okay, they're not all from Marks & Spencer's, but still, it was funny. Well, I thought it was funny.

Day 69/365

I headed out to a wee forest to get a quick blog photo before dinner last night...but didn't manage to capture the image I had in my mind. It was a selfportrait, and because I'm taller than my tripod I couldn't frame the shot the way I wanted. I even tried hanging it on a tree branch. Ha. But I'm happy with this shot instead :)

Day 68/365

I don't know whether to give this photo an explanation or just leave you all to soak it all in and ponder what on earth is going on...

Day 67/365

Last time I put a photo of my washing line on the blog I disappeared for about 7 months...I promise that's not going to happen this time!

Day 66/365

Rach and I (no longer dressed like twins) headed to Stonehaven on Monday for some deliciously ginormous ice-cream cones, and then went a wee spin to Dunnotar Castle. Of course I needed to take a blog photo so I got my camera out, and expected to take about 20 selfies before I was happy with the photo, but this was the first photo we took! Hooray!

Day 65/365

#TWINS

So Rachel was staying with me for the weekend, and on Sunday we ended up being twins! I had worn my pencil skirt to Church in the morning and wanted to change in to something a bit comfier in the afternoon...Rachel was at her brother's for lunch, so we didn't see each other again until Church in the evening...where she quickly pointed out my outfit choice was identical to hers! We laughed. 

And we laughed some more when we took the picture because I am so lanky next to her.

Day 64/365

Well...where do I start...haha. The students from Church decided to head to Balmedie beach for a BBQ on Saturday afternoon, and I had high hopes of getting lots of beautiful photos of everyone, enjoying the sunshine and yummy food...well, that didn't quite happen. Ha. There was a family in our usual spot, shielded from the wind behind the dunes, so we set up camp round the corner...big mistake! Even with my retro wind break stumped in to the sand! Everyone got stuck in to a game of frisbee soon after we arrived, but I was super hungry so decided to get the BBQ's fired up. Once the coals had turned white, we threw on some sausages and burgers...and within a minute, they were all coated in sand. Bleugh. It was hilariously awful. But we all powered through, and eventually attempted to eat the cremated, sand coated, meat, whilst wrapped up in blankets/coats/hoodies/scarves, before giving up and throwing a lot of it away for the seagulls.

So that's the first half...a group headed off to do some dune jumping, whilst a few hung back to deal with the remains of the BBQ, and play 'kick the football back and forth with your bare foot' and 'see how far you can hit the tennis ball with the cricket bat' (great games!). On our way over to the dune jumping group I looked and couldn't see Matthew in the group, then all of a sudden he appeared behind me, stating calmly that he'd stood on some glass and cut his foot open. Yaaaay! Gotta love it when people throw their glass bottles away after some fun on the beach! I'm just glad he didn't land on it after jumping from 15ft up! We headed over to our 'camp' and Gordie appeared, to save the day, with his first aid kit, so we got Matthew plastered up, but the wound was so bad that the plaster didn't do much! So, it was time to tidy up and head back to the cars, and get Matthew to A+E to get checked out and make sure there wasn't any glass stuck in his foot.

Thankfully we only had to wait just over an hour to be seen, and after some poking around with a pair of tweezers (which Matthew handled with great manliness), the doctor didn't find any glass in the wound. He then gave Matthew a local anaesthetic (which Matthew handled with great manliness...) before giving him a few stitches, which I found fascinating!

After 5 days of limping about the place, I'm pleased to say that Matthew has recovered well and has now had his stitches removed. Ha.

Day 63/365

Just chillin'...

Day 62/365

I took a couple of my dresses over to Sarah's as they needed some stitching, and it's much safer for her to do it than me, because I wouldn't have a clue what to do!

Day 61/365

I think I look a bit like a Minion in this photo...ha. A really tall Minion...Anyway, I got back in from Neighbourhood Fellowship, on a miserably wet night, and was incredibly thankful for my mammoth coat and ginormous hood, so I thought I'd taken another bathroom selfie.

I tried to find a bathroom selfie I took on my first 365 project, which was also dedicated to a coat I had with a massive hood, but I couldn't spend all day searching through 365 blog posts...good story! So, basically, I like big hoods.

Day 60/365

Oh, shocker, some more tulips! Haha. I just love them so much, and these ones in particular as they were a gift from a lovely someone to brighten up my day.

Day 59/365

I snapped this while out on a drive through the shire, listening to the Chris Martin interview on Radio 1, and enjoying the yummy golden light.

Day 58/365

A quick snap during a Sunday afternoon stroll with a few members of the Lipp family and a couple of the lovely girlies from Church :)