THE QUEEN OF QUIRK

at it again

Picnicking, that is.

By now I'm sure the whole world has heard of the "heatwave" we had here in most parts of England. A heatwave here means that it has been above 75 everyday and it only rained once in a week.

Don't get me wrong. We loved it. The weather had been absolutely fantastic and we'd been eating outside and just enjoying our little village. What we're not excited for...the fact that this weather will probably be very short-lived. sigh...

It's just not fair. In the meantime, though, we plan to make the very best of it.

I hope there's a picnic on the horizon for you, wherever you are! :)

tudor day

I just love the days that Lara and Mia's schools have planned for them. Victorian Day was fun, but I'm especially pleased that the kiddos get to partake in Tudor Day. Over the course of a couple of months, the kids learn a ton about the way people lived in the time of Henry VIII and then they get to go on a fantastic day out with authentic food, lessons and demonstrations on this particular way of life.

Here's Lara with her buddies that she walks to school with.

I can't wait til they get back this afternoon. I'm sure our dinner talk will be taken over by talk of Henry VIII and his wives and how 16th century people lived. Yay! Just my kind of dinner conversation! :)

punting on the cam

You just can't live in England and not go punting. Well, if you're living here as an expat and are a die hard traveler hellbent on doing everything, well.. then you can't live in England without punting.

There's something about the English and their water. It's all so very romantic.

So, Colin took the day off and we went to Cambridge (such a gorgeous city by the way) to hang out and just be with each other.

We have the luxury of having all 3 girlies in school for 2 days a week, so that means my first true "days off" in many, many years. The fact that my man took a day off just to spend time with me means a lot to me. :)

So, we drove to Cambridge which is about 45 minutes from us. As soon as we got into the pedestrian zone, we were greeted by guys on the street trying to sell us punt tours. Funny, that even though this was our one goal for the day, we still stood there and deliberated about it...like we really even had to think! ha! Just keeping the sales people on their toes, I guess!
This was the guide in the punt in front of us.

Our guide is a local and he talked nonstop about Cambridge and the history of the colleges. It was a really neat experience. We would have paid double, though, to have a punt all to ourselves. :)

This is our guide. Glad I wasn't sitting right in front of him as the poor girl who was was sprayed the entire time with water.

My favorite part was going under all of the bridges. It was really sunny but the temperature difference was drastic for just a few seconds under those bridges. Heavenly respite.

I also saw a baby bat clinging to the underside of this bridge. So sweet. :)

Heading down the river.
This is the chapel at Kings' College. We've been in and I have to say it really is gorgeous. The woodwork is phenomenal and the art is absolutely breathtaking.

This is the "Mathematical Bridge" at Queens' College. It was first built in the mid 18th century. Next to it is the oldest building on the Cam. (around 1460)

You can't see it here, but some of the windows have been bricked up. Our guide told us that a window tax had been imposed on the good people of England and to avoid it, many buildings had their windows permanently sealed up. Kinda sad...

Me and the hubs. :)

Below is St John's College. So beautiful hidden there among the trees. Our guide talked all about the rivalry between St John's and Trinity college. There was only allowance for 1 clock tower on the river and at the time these 2 colleges were both building clock towers. So the race was on. The first to finish got to put their clock up. Supposedly, Trinity college cheated by constructing the last bit of the tower out of wood instead of stone. So they won. And now the clock at Trinity College rings twice on the hour. Once to tell the time and twice to remind St' John's College that they lost. :)

All the punts lined up, ready for service.

After our tour, we headed into town to try and find somewhere to eat. Just across from Kings' College, there is the Cambridge Chophouse. The menu looked interesting so we decided to check it out. We were pleasantly surprised although Colin tried jellied eel...I don't think he'll be making that mistake again. I was a bit tamer in my choice and had trout. I'm no fool.

Just out the window from where we were sitting, there was this amazing clock.

We overheard our waiter explaining it to the couple next to us. The cricket actually moves and his creepy little legs actually pull the big disc around and around. See all the little slits? Behind them there are blue lights that light round and round the clock and either pulse or stop for a split second on the place they're supposed to be at. So you have to look at 3 different rings of light to figure out the hour, minute and second. The clock also stops randomly and will then speed up to catch up to the proper time. It's encased in bulletproof glass and cost 1 million pounds. Pretty crazy. But it really is beautiful to watch.

After lunch we took a stroll through the farmer's market that was going on and I bought some fresh cherries for Colin since they're one of his favorites. I got a fresh apple and ginger juice that had a bit too much ginger in it. I could barely drink it! :)

Before we headed back to the car, we strolled through the garden at King's College. It was so pretty and bright and cheerful.



I have no idea what this flowering tree was, but it smelled absolutely heavenly. We were walking through a tiny little courtyard and we were just hit full-on by the smell of it. Yum.

I was half tempted to move the sprinkler...hahahaha

This was one of the gates to the garden. I love that it's black metal, but so very modern compared to the rest of the metalwork throughout the colleges. We especially liked the glass disc in the center of the door. We will definitely have something like this in our dream house.

Preferably right in the front door so we can greet our visitors like this.

We're suckers for a good shrunken head.

Thanks for coming along with us! :)
I hope you are having a wonderful day!

mini memories

I created this little book for the girls to house some of their favorite trips. We've been so many places, but I am absolute rubbish at getting real, tangible albums into our hands. Why is that?!? I think that's one of the curses of scrapping digi. :(
However, I did make this sweet little album for the Garden at 2Ps. And I just love the way it turned out!

And here's the way the pages are set up in Photoshop. It really was super simple once I figured out how I wanted the album to look.

So, that's about it! It's simple, but that's the way I like things! LOL :)
I hope everyone is having a wonderful day!

merging photos

There's a really fun challenge going on over at 2Ps right now with Sande Krieger. It's all about merging your photos together to create a montage of sorts. I merged a couple of photos from our most recent picnic and put them together in this layout which is all about how our kiddos are moving further and further away from us...

layout credits: bare branches paper pack, caramel swirl paper pack

I really like the way it turned out and I thought it was a happy chance that I had taken photos like this that I could easily merge. Although, the photos mostly happened because our girls simply would not stop running around and I just sat there with the camera, clicking away at every possible good shot. Still, I got it right!??!

note: the alphas and heart are not yet released in my store...will update when they are. Thanks for  looking!

pics from the 4th

This year we were invited to a wonderful party for the 4th of July! It's been years and years since we've actually had the chance to celebrate this holiday. It just doesn't seem the same when there's no one else to celebrate with. The 4th just seems like such a social time! :) It's no fun tailgating with just one car, right!?!?

So, this year we got the kids all gussied up in red, white and blue and headed to a mutual friend's house for fun, fireworks and new friends! :)

This is me (I won't tell you just how many drinks I'd had at this point!) with my dear friend Tracy (middle) and a new friend, Karen, on the right. :)

Colin with Tracy's husband, Keith. These two were ridiculously inseparable the whole night. I love it when boys start drinking. ;)

The whole gang :) Such an incredibly fun night. Fireworks, a bonfire, incredible food...

And I'll have you know there are only 3 Americans in this photo and we failed MISERABLY in the American Facts quiz. Yikes! Need to dust off those history books! :)

I'm standing next to our lovely hostess, Kari, and her lovely lively husband, Ray. Thanks, you two, for an unforgettable night!

The photo is, of course, all gussied up with my newest designs, available for free at 2Ps! :)

I hope everyone is having a lovely day! :)

searching within

The blog, that is :)
Now you can search through my blog without having to read through pages and pages of endless rambling. I was so tired of searching through my own blog for things to reference, that I decided it was time to have a wee search engine here. Hope it makes reading this blog easier! :)
It's on the right hand side, called the Lijit Search.
If any of you are interested in adding the Lijit widget to your typepad blog, here is an excellent tutorial.
Adding Lijit to a Typepad blog
It really did walk me through it, step by step, and it couldn't have been easier! Hope it helps!
Thanks for stopping by. :)

the garden is blooming

At 2Ps that is!

I always forget to post my Garden seeds, but here are my latest ones. :) You can go HERE to click on the layouts and get the full  credits. :)









Thanks for looking! I hope everyone had a lovely weekend! :)

legoland for father's day

We took off Friday night for some much needed down time/family time. We'd been planning a trip to Legoland Windsor for weeks and the kiddos were so excited to finally be on the road! Colin is a big kid himself and Legos are his absolute favorite toys, so we knew we were going to have a blast. I'm a big Lego fan myself, but the rest of my family? Absolutely bonkers for them.

They say that getting there is half the fun. Well, it is if you have the Doots along for the ride.

This would be called: Sponge Bop Square Doots, Norah's impression of Sponge Bob Square Pants.

Doots then insisted on playing with the camera, so I showed her how to use it and she took a photo of me. This one came out considerably better than the one she took of Mia.

Considering just how much Mia is drooling in this photo, that may not be such a bad thing...

At last! Now the fun part begins...trying to please 3 princesses who all have very different ideas of how these two days are going to play out. Everyone wants to be first to do everything.

So we told them that if they fought over anything as ridiculous as who gets to what with whom, when and where, then we would feed them to the dinosaur.

It didn't work...but hey, we tried.

We rode the Space Tower first since it was closest.

The sun kept playing hide and seek with us, so all our shots have wonky sunlight. This is Lara trying to pull herself up while being blinded by the sudden rays of sunshine.

Mia and I took a turn on the monorail together. Love that we got this shot. Yay! One of my kids looks like me!!

A shot of miniland as seen from our ride.

YOU can dance!!! YOU can JI-IVE!

I think this one of the first highlights of our trip. ABBA, immortalized in LEGO.

Groovy.

The English seaside, complete with windbreaks. It looks just like Hunstanton!

Doots, completely ice-creamerific, having the time of her life, sooo wanting to go Godzilla on miniland. I could tell.

More shots of miniland.

I forget which castle this is...I think it's here in England, though.

One thing we didn't take a photo of was the model of Minack Theatre. However, I was so impressed with the model, that I made it a point to look it up when we got home.

We are so going here. 

photo courtesy of falmouth-cottage.co.uk

The model of Sacre Coeur, one of my favorite spots in Paris.

A rare treat...a family photo in which I do not look barfilicious! SCORE!

We watched the Johnny Thunder Adventure Show and the kids were tickled pink. These guys were having a good time jumping off this tower, you could just tell.

After a full day, we made our way back to our hotel. Colin set up the entire trip and we were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at our hotel, St. Anne's Manor. It really was beautiful, inside and out, and the staff was super friendly and talked to the kiddos endlessly about Legoland.

photo courtesy of hilton.co.uk/stannesmanor 

The Doots crashed pretty hard that night and we had a hard time waking her up the next day. She looked so peaceful that we didn't really want to disturb her. But, hey, we had another fun-filled day waiting for us!

Besides, it was Father's Day and we needed to have some very important Daddy time before we headed to the park!

Wakey wakey!! :)

I so want this at the front door of our dream house. Everyone would be so jealous.

Next up: driving school. Mia was absolutely hopeless on the track. Lara, on the other hand, kept a very cool head about her. She was just so dang excited to be behind the wheel of a car!

We then went on a fairytale boat ride.

Look! A fairy godmother!! I made the kids stop asking for wishes and I asked her for a $500 gift certificate to Anthropologie. I know she heard me because her little animatronic arm swung her clear lego encrusted wand right down on my head. And then she winked. She loves me.

By the end of the second day we were all a little bit tired. Lara and Mia were still all smiles and rarin' to go. The Doots, however, was full of stink and bile. Little stinker. She's supposed to be having fun!! 

That's normally how she looks at me. Don't let all these smiley pictures fool you!

But kids never act how they're supposed to, right? So, with a sulky, cranky Doots, we stopped one last time at the gift shop/blackhole and then we headed home.

Goodbye, dear Legoland. Thank you for entertaining our punks and lifting the burden of all that cash we had in our wallets. What would we do without you?

(((HUGS)))

happy 4th!

For those of you who celebrate it, happy 4th of July! :)

I've got a cute kit available to download at 2Ps! :) I hope you like it!

It's similar to one I offered before, but I completely revamped it and added some new goodies! :)