SEA

Oh to be beside the seaside today, sigh! 

The beautiful Northumberland coastline of an evening and said 15 year old's company - nothing finer! 

I hope you are making the most of your Sunday! 

VIEW

Morning all, oh its a bit surreal sharing these layouts at the minutes as they are from this time last year, sigh - oh for a sea view this morning. 

We stayed at Seahouses in Northumberland last year and were close enough to walk to the beach every evening.  We were treated to a fabulous week weather wise and loved the evening sunsets, due to the coastline we did actually see it setting over the sea, which seemed weird given we were on the east coast of England! 

TREE HOUSE

Morning all, well this time last year we were enjoying the beautiful coastline in Northumberland, one of these trips was to Alnwick and they have the most amazing tree house to explore (its also a restaurant) - it is such a magical place to visit and explore!  

Hope you are having a great Sunday! 

BAMBURGH

Morning all and I find us at Wednesday morning already - where does the time go. 

I have had a busy old week up to now, mainly due to being back at work, being up at 6am to do a one and half mile walk and being utterly shattered of an evening, the crafting table is still being sadly neglected - sigh! 

However, I still have some layouts to share, this one was taken from the beach at Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland.  

The Castle can be seen for miles along the coastline, on this particular day - hubby decided to head down a dead-end street - which I thought was a dangerous move given how busy the road was with cars.  At the end we found a car park and meandered along the beach to get numerous photos of this imposing castle. 

I first heard of Bamburgh through scrapbook magazines, Jane Dean who was a regularly contributor and one of my favourite scrapbook designers who appeared to to holiday in the area and this Castle appeared on a good few of her layouts. 

I miss those magazines and I miss learning about the things other people did in their lives as it prompted us to do something different. 

Bamburgh is privately owned and still lived in and you can visit it, so win win.  It was recently the filming location of Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender!

Layouts wise it was simply a mix of blues and greens and 'using up' some of the papers I had lurking on my desk using my hexagon die!

I hope you are having an awesome day and thank you for popping by! 

LAUGH, DAY OUT AND BOOKS

Morning all, well the week is fair tripping along at the moment, which is good although lots to do.  A mix of three very different layouts this morning.  First up said 15 year old and niece checking out the stocks at Bamburgh Castle

A trip to Holy Island on our jaunt to Northumberland led to a stop off for a drink and a natter

And finally visiting Barter Books - a place you could lose yourself in every day with the amount of books there are to go at! 

Hope you have a great Wednesday

TUESDAY - SHARE WHAT YOU HAVE, PARTY AND SMILE

Morning all, well I'm hoping my Tuesday is nicer to me than my Monday was, hope yours wasn't too tiresome! 

So three more layouts to share, first up niece, sister and said 15 year old at my Mum's in late September for an evening tea party, we enjoyed an outdoor fire, the photo isn't great in that said 15 year old is moving, but I love the natural smile of my sister and the natural beauty of my niece, isn't she pretty! 

Then the same three people at a family get together again back in September, I took loads of photos that night, most of which my sister and niece declared out loud that they didn't like, I'm hoping they are happy with this selection! 

And finally this one that was taken in a fit of giggles because we were trying to work out how my front facing camera worked on my phone, it kept flipping the photos and was driving us mad, hence the slightly mad smile plastered on my face! 

Hope you are having a grand week. 

THURSDAY - FUN, EXPLORING AND LIFE

Good morning all, well this morning's three layouts (two using yesterday's colour scheme), this first one based on squares lots and lots of squares.  Photo taken on said niece's 16th birthday where we had a fun family day trip to Mablethorpe and yes they did swap seats midway round! 

Next up exploring the tree house at Alnwick Gardens, it is such an amazing building but totally random, particularly when you end up walking through someone's office to get to the top section! 

And finally an evening walk on the sea front at Seahouses, made us stop and absorb the view!

Have a great Thursday people! 

Wednesday - My Men, Audrey and Holy Island Print

Morning all, well I had great fun with these layouts, I popped a kit together using a colour inspiration challenge, but didn't include lots of the other things so it ended up just a colour kit as it were.  I really enjoyed the pop of black as it isn't something I would have done with this scheme myself but feel it really works! 

This photo was taken at Brodsworth Hall earlier in the year, I use a couple of phone apps to create the white border before I sent it off for printing, I'm loving the square photos at the moment.  Obviously a photo of hubby and said 15 year old! 

Next up you can see the simple addition of glossy accents to the black cardstock makes all the difference sometimes.  The photo is of my Mum winding up my niece when she found 'the' book in the famous Barter Book Store, much to my nieces dismay!  The two of them were in wind up mode and we ended up in fits of laughter! 

And finally a piece of art work we found in the church next to the priory on Holy Island. Done in a Project Life style using up lots of elements of the kit I'd put together

Hope you are having a grand day! 

COUNTERFEIT KIT LAYOUTS 5 AND 6 - TIME AND LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE

I was asked recently why I particularly like the Counterfeit kits and it's down to the fact that I get to blend manufacturers.  It's always easy to buy a paper stack and make layouts as they are obviously designed to 'go together' but often you end up with sheets that at first glance you just don't think you'll use.  But with a kit you soon find you are blending all sorts of makes and papers and it's a great way to 'use up' papers that have sat dormant for a while.  This months kit is no different. 

So here is my 'time' layout documenting two sculptures from Chatsworth's Beyond Limits this year.  I love the head, book tree one with the roots from the tree intertwining the book and head - genius! 

Next up one of my favourite layouts from this month, I would never have put a pale grey with those colours, but how well do they work.  The photo is a panoramic shot taken on Seahouses beach of the coastline including the beautiful Bamburgh Castle (used in the new Macbeth film) to the left.  

ROCKING YOUR WORLD FRIDAY - 33RD OF 2015

Morning lovely people, tis Friday which means only one thing - it's time to reflect, take stock and look at the happy moments from the last 7 days, this week you get a double helping as it's more a reflection of the last two weeks.

First up these two - utterly amazing people, having great fun playing pool whilst we were away - hysterically funny because we have a full sized pool table at home that no one ever uses, which I've threatened to get rid of for quite some time!!

We had a fabulous afternoon at Barter Books a second hand bookstore in Alnwick with 350,000 titles to choose from.  I loved this central piece of sculpture in the book store, inspired by the fact that the building was once a train station.

Two very happy people when we were there my little sis and my niece and 350,000 books to choose from!

We set ourselves up on a table to check out the books we had found, we also found the coffee pot with its honesty box for 30p so we were all a little whizzy from the coffee if I'm honest!  My Mum was very pleased with herself finding a book on Audrey - my niece was a little less pleased as she secretly wanted it, although you can't tell from this photo

Although this one makes it look a little more apparent

We had quizz nights

And a day out at Alnwick Gardens, which I absolutely adore!

My niece looking uber pretty as always

We found the magical door (doing the quest backwards as usual).

We saw some great light phenomenon in the sky and look a pigeon!

The highlight of the holiday was that we could literally walk to the beach which was only about a mile away and if you've never been to Northumberland it is first and foremost one of the prettiest unspoilt coastlines that I know!

We ended up walking from Seahouses to try and get a closer shot of Bamburgh Castle one evening, we came across this Castle and we walked for above 4 hours in total managing over 28000 steps on our phone counters

And this was as close as we got!

We managed a visit to Bamburgh Castle by car, it's a strange little place if I'm honest but it had a nice tea room!

One of my favourite places to visit is Alnwick Castle as it was the castle used in the first two Harry Potter films it got us very giddy!  We did the movie tour where they point out all the areas of the castle used in the filming.  We also discovered that it was used for Robin Hood Prince of Thieves and the Hollow Crown Series amongst other things and apparently the first series of Blackadder

This lamp appears on the Harry Potter film and it's weird when you see it because you sort of recognise it but don't understand why, so we did lots of film spotting when we were there and then spent the next couple of evenings with the first two films on trying to spot the places we'd seen.  We also discovered that a lot of the interior and some of the exterior has been used for Downton Abbey so it will become probably just as famous for that as it is for Harry Potter, they still do the broom stick flying lessons where Madam Hooch did hers in the film (I kid you not) and you now have to get there early to partake!

Our only 'wet' day was our trip over to Holy Island, but we still got to walk around the priory and enjoyed a drink outside!

This is the causeway from Holy Island back onto main land!

And some more shots of Alnwick Castle, I love the water garden, being the height of summer there were lots of children there enjoying the serpent's water garden too.

Evening walks

Finding a comfortable bench to enjoy the view

Spending time with loved ones

Enjoying amazing sunsets

Time with my hubby

Finding sculptures

 Fun taking photos

Exploring the tree house

Making Viking Furniture at Bamburgh

More sunsets

Beautiful little harbour

And finally getting 'that' shot of Bamburgh Castle

It was quite honestly an amazing week, which we all enjoyed, the house we stayed in was clean and comfortable and allowed for extra space to spread out in the loft area.  Overall a fabulous week was had.

This week has been just as quick if I'm honest.  I'm grateful for the dry weather when we got home as by the end of Sunday all the washing was done and dried and ready to be put away.

I enjoyed a relaxing PJ day on Sunday scrapbooking and watching TV, including watching The Woman In Black, a fabulous film that scared me immensely, said 14 year old was not enamoured either and it is only a 12 certificate, he is like me in that we don't like 'jumpy' films - you know the ones, he didn't like the ending either but it falls in line with a typical Victorian Gothic style film.

We've enjoyed exploring Amazon Prime recently, I 'bought' it for the free speedy delivery but now we are enjoying the TV side of it and the music, we've found 'The Following' and 'The IT Crowd' a good watch, saves us watching repeats anyway!

Travelling to work on Wednesday, I could smell freshly cut grass and it was lovely, we also had a night out but I'm going to save that one for next week's grateful moments which are not likely to be as extensive!

Eating some great home cooked food too!

And that my lovelies is the epic two weeks that was!

If you fancy joining in pop a post together, pop back link up, it doesn't have to be war and peace like mine (but it can be if you like), it's lovely to see other peoples positives so come on join in, it's good for your sense of wellbeing and keeps a positive perspective on life!