My hubby bought me this yesterday in a gorgeous little coffee shop full of treasures up in Rothbury, the coffee shop is a treasure trove of little vintage decor items and costume jewellery and I knew when I saw this it was destined to end up on my wrist, I have a bit of a thing for bracelets!

Thanks to same gorgeous hubby for yesterdays blog post, I have to admit that I have been pretty darned ill since last i blogged, I think as hubby said I inhaled just a few too many fumes when decorating our master bedroom, ooh and on that very subject I must say I achieved my goal, the vintage schreiber wardrobe and all the dark chocolate mixed in with the duck egg blue just looks sumptuous and in the end it kind of reminds me of a hotel room in Brighton in the 1920's, even if hubby did comment that he keeps sliding out of the chocolate satin bedding!! I got the most fabulous wicker picnic basket from ILVA (click to see it!!) and it's now the new home for all my knicky knacky Knoos!! Pauls undergarments are in some rather fabbo vintage hatboxes picked up from Ikea. Iain commented on how I had done a marvellous job it's just a pity that I have ended up so ill because of those darned gloss fumes and i must point out that is hubbys fault as he wouldn't let me buy satinwood!!

So after a bowl of soup in Rothbury and a walk to the park we had to come home and that was when I got put to bed, there I remained mostly sleeping and trying to breathe properly until this morning. I'm feeling sort of better yet still pretty yacky today but i feel the hearty lamb stew we have cooking in the oven might be just the thing to finally sort me out. I snapped this lovely photo if Abigail in the coffee shop, sorry for the lack of photos but with decorating and being ill I've taken less than 20 this whole week, never mind though i'm sure I'll make up for it soon. 1 more thing, I need to know which room to start decorating next, its either :- The bathroom, the sittingroom, the girls room or iains room, answers on the back of a box of Heidi Swapp Chipboard letters! mwahahahaha!!

Just watching!

Another Looby photo today, I was playing with my 70-300mm, not much else I can do as it's freezing cold outside though not enough snow to do anything with and Abigail has ulcerated tonsilitus and Scarlet Fever, my doctor hadn't seen Scarlet Fever for years and I've had to inform school so they can send letters out to everyone seeing as it's very contagious, not a nice thing to have so I'm hoping that we don't all end up with it.

Anyway back to the photo, as I was testing out my lens I managed to get a few without Looby even noticing, my favourite sort of photography, it was shot at 800iso as it's so dark indoors today, after taking it in raw I processed it in photoshop, first applying a sepia filter, then adding a layer of gaussian blur, then using the channel mixer to turn to black and white and finally adjusting the opacity of the top layer to around 50% to get a really soft muted sepia ish photo which I think adds to the dreamy feel of the photo. What do you think, I would love to hear!

Fountains Abbey

We went to Fountains Abbey near ripon in north Yorkshire today, the first real test of my new camera, of course I still only have the kits lens, the 2 lenses I really want will be purchased on Tuesday and I suspect they will be the first of many! Don't think I did too badly though! I really loved Fountains Abbey, we only got to spend a couple of hours there today and the kids all thought it was brilliant, I suspect that come the warmer sunnier days of spring and summer we'll be having a lot more trips there, we never even got as far as exploring the large deer park so i think that will be first on the cards for next time.

Tonight I'm kicking off my heels a little and enjoying a lovely glas or two of some quality red wines and then tommorrow although hubby doesn't know it yet I'm dragging him out to the park for more photographic opportunities and then hopefully back fro a large Charlton Family Sunday Lunch.

I'm not sure whether you can tell in the photo but hubby has lost around 3 stone since he became a postman, he has a waist size of 29", something I would kill for, lets just say he's quite fit and deserves a lot of attention!!

I've cracked it!

it was staring me right in the face, I need to convert to Jpeg instead of DNG, so these are the first photos from Cate the Canon Camera and yes I am quite pleased considering it was the first time ever I have used a DSLR!! Oh and before you ask, no it wasn't in automatic!!