Picture 232 Castle Howard

Today's picture is if one I took in our visit to Castle Howard, looking very nice in the Yorkshire sun...

Day 204 Sunshine Crops

What a lovely sunny day it has been, unfortunately most of it had passed by with me being indoors decorating the old house we are to vacate tomorrow, however the scenery on the drive home is nice....

Day 171 Countryside

Today I had some more time to myself, the family are due back later and so I decided to get some tasks done and take a trip to York, where we will be moving to in a months time. I needed to submit some paperwork so I hoped on the train, listened to my music and enjoyed the scenery passing by the train...

Day 156 nice scenery part 2

Back in February I took a picture for my 366. It was of some scenery on my way to work. I stated then that I would take another picture later in the year, so today I followed through on that and took this....

As you can see its quite a pretty sight in the summer, the leaves are overlapping and it's nice and peaceful, perfect scenery to relax to before or after work.

Day 88 Stop Thief There's been a Robbery

Due to the lovely weather e were having we decided to have a stroll out into town today and had lunch on one of the benches in ton. It was great, I have a chicken and Chroizo Pasty, Mummy had a Steak Pasty and eldest plumped for the cheese roll. We all enjoyed it until eldest dropped hers on the floor by accident and a opportunist pigeon decided to steal it.....

Life's a beach

Last weekend saw us embrace the sunny weather and hit the seaside with the kids. Although the weekend started with a sombre affair for my OH having to attend a family funeral it gave me time to look after the girls by myself, something I don't get much to do.

We decided this was the perfect opportunity to go shopping for mummy's mothers day and birthday pressies. We got our tools and started work, eventually we ended up making this rather nifty looking card for mummy....

The next day mummy again left me with the girls as she went to the salon to be pampered for her birthday. I fed the children whilst youngest decided to have a 3 hour nap straight after hampering our days activities. After this we headed towards Scarborough to grab a bit to eat before meeting up with mummy who looked very relaxed and refreshed after her mornings worth of pampering. We then headed towards the seaside, this was the first time youngest had ever been to the seaside, and the first time I've took eldest there. In Scarborough there's the old tram that takes you down, we opted for this route, although I can never remember going on this as a child myself....

As we reached the bottom if the hill we decided to nip into one if the arcades.....

But eldest was a little scared of them....

As we reached the seafront a thousand memories came flooding back. I hadn't been to Scarborough since I was about 10, but can remember walking along the seafront scaring my mum half to death thinking I've run off when I was busy playing on the games in the arcades trying to persuade her to give me some more money. We then went to get an ice cream, mummy insisted on going to a certain ice cream shop that she'd always go to as a little girl so we each plumped for our individual tastes, mummy went for a full lemon ice cream....

I went for a strawberry topped Ice cream....

And eldest went for a milk lolly....

Youngest didn't think much about daddy's ice cream....

And eldest didn't think much of mummy's....

But as we strolled along the seafront with our ice creams, in what then turned typical colder weather mummy then said, "oh wait, that's the ice cream shop!" she'd made us go to the wrong place, silly ! On our way back we let eldest walk along the beach which she enjoyed but myself and youngest had to walk on the Path as the wheels to the pram wouldn't move in the sand. So eldest was looking cute walking hand in hand with mummy....

As walking on the sand, the temptation is too great not to play with it and allow the small grains slip through her fingers so eldest must pick up the sand and throw it around, I'm just surprised she didn't get any in her eye....

And of course just was the girls get off the beach and back onto tarmac, they must get rid of all the sand that has collected in their shoes, after all we love the beach but we don;t ant to take it home with us....

On our way home both girls had a nice sleep as of course the day was long , and I couldn't resist but take a picture of eldest as she slept, she'll probably kill me for this photo one day when she's older....

We promised her another trip back to the seaside so she can build a sandcastle next time, that'll be interesting!

Pottering madness

Last week saw mine and my OH's 1st year anniversary. Yes I know, 1 year anniversary and we already have a child together, we've moved fast!

Our first date was originally in February 2011 but we recognise march as when we were an official item. So to mark our first official anniversary we arranged for my mam to have both kids. We drove up to drop them off on Thursday night, stayed at my mams before making a swift departure on Friday morning.

Ahead of us was a 2 hour drive. I hadn't told my OH what I had planned for the day ahead, I just dropped hints that I hoped would make her think of something completely different. I kept telling her she needed old clothes (truth) and making sure she wasn't scared of confined spaces, or darkness and the occasional creepy crawly (all these being false) can you guess what she thought we were doing? Yes that's right she thought we were going pot holing.

Instead after a 2 hour drive through some beautiful North Yorkshire countryside as pictured above we pulled up outside our destination, we of course were going to be doing pottery for a few hours taken by a skilled tutor, just me and my OH. I remember on our first few dates we had talked about doing this as it was something she had always wanted to do and something I had previously studied so it seemed like a good idea to spend part of our anniversary doing something like this, OH was pleased at the days activity and, I think a little relieved it wasn't Pot Holing

We got to the pottery venue and was greeted by our tutor for the day, she was a nice lady with over 20years experience, she had a shop full of home made items that were very impressive. We went through to the studio and we began working on our individual masterpieces. Our first project was to make a bowl, first we had to design what we would decorate our bowl with....

Then we had to roll out the clay and start sculpting out designs onto the clay....

Once this was done we then had to cut out our designs and start sculpting the bowl itself so it actually looked like a bowl that could be used. This meant getting a bowl and making some funky shapes and lining the bowl with it....

And viola our bowls were complete....

Once we had done the bowls there was time to use the wheel. Our tutor taught us first and made it look very easy. The OH had a go firstly and was quite unsuccessful as she struggled to get her pot started it eventually collapsed.....

Then it was my go, I found it a lot easier as first anticipated and nearly managed to finish the pot only to fail at the last hurdle of trying to raise the walls of the pot. Eventually we managed to both make a pot with relative success we are both quite proud of these....

After pottering was a trip to hawes for some lunch, I always remember going to Hawes as a child and I didn't like it then, I found it boring and a waste of my time that could be spent playing football or hide and seek but now as what I'd like to think a sensible adult I could appreciate the town it's beauty and the surrounding countryside....

After our trip out and drive back through the beautiful countryside we went home to get changed for our meal. We plumped to go to Deanos in Harrogate after hearing much about it. It's a Tapas bar that doesn't restrict itself to Spanish tapas and instead does smaller versions of other dishes. It was very nice and each dish was perfectly presented and was gradually brought out, they were brought out one by one so you could enjoy them each and didn't feel rushed to eat them do the others don't go cold. Dishes we decided on was the mini steak pie with black pudding, eggs and steak, king prawn salad, roasted duck and 2 others that escape my mind at the moment.

After the meal we escaped to our favourite bar in H Town, the blues cafe bar we enjoyed some live music before going home and enjoying a peaceful house with no children and a well deserved lie in in the morning.

Here's to many more anniversaries.

Day 62; Beautiful Yorkshire

Today has seen me and OH dump and leave the kids with my mother and spend a day celebrating our anniversary, and I will be blogging in due course about our days activities but in the meantime I couldn't resist sharing this glorious picture of the beautiful Yorkshire countryside.....