personal

It's coming up to our 12th wedding anniversary and I always wear my wedding dress again. Well, almost always. One year our son was only a couple of weeks old, and one year we were on holiday!

Anyway, we always just have a special meal at home and I wear my dress. Not just a ploy to get my husband to do all of the cooking because he enjoys cooking. It's a lovely tradition which means that the dress isn't just stuck in a box never to be seen again.

Last week on 21st March, it was International Day of Forests. Celebrating all types of forest across the world, and why they are so important for us and the environment. As somebody commented on my facebook post, I'd celebrate this every day of the year!

I hope you've all had a chance to enjoy some half term sunshine this week! We had a family christening in Maidenhead over the weekend and stopped off on the way back to visit Kedleston Hall. It was a bit of a grey day but we were very lucky and didn't get rained on.

Yesterday we went and did part of the Derwent Walk which we hadn't done for absolutely ages! We used to take our son's scooter or bike and he would always whinge about being tired when we walked down the path which is the old railway line. I think it was because it was long, straight and boring!

While we were making our way to the Castle Gate Centre in Newcastle to see our son collect his Chief Scout Silver Award certificate, we walked past the Holy Jesus hospital. This is an area of Newcastle which I very rarely walk around and I loved the repeating arches along the front of the building. On the way back, I took this shot and I've had a play around with some effects.

An eventful weekend with a night out with friends, son on cub activity day to Kirkley Hall and the enjoyment of watching the tennis (doubles that is, the men's final was a bit too one-sided to be particularly good.) The most eventful occurence was Sunday evening when my husband accidently cut the side of his wrist with a glass bowl while he was doing the washing up! We grabbed a neighbour to babysit our son and I drove him to A&E.

It's been a busy couple of days around the house and garden. Our son used to have a homemade den which unfortunately got damaged over Christmas last year. As I like to recycle and re-use as much as possible, I wanted my husband to cut the pieces of marine plywood into oblongs. I am going to attach the painted boards onto the fences to create some interesting artwork. I already have two boards with some iron flowers on them.

We met friends at Seaton Delaval Hall yesterday so I took the opportunity to take my camera. The pro camera is quite heavy so I restricted myself to the lighter 60mm lens.

Another lovely weekend which was cool enough to actually get some work done in the garden. I started off just tackling the weeds between the patio paving slabs, and ended up hosing the dirt off the slabs. Mind you, it does look a lot better! And I did get a bit of reading time afterwards.

I've done some work on the computer to bring aout the details of the slabs.

I hope you all enjoyed the sunny weekend! We had the usual jobs to do, and moving all of the things back to the lounge/dining room after having the carpet fitted. But most of the time was spent keeping cool in the shade in our garden. We got the hammock out and I managed to be on it for a while. Our son was hogging it for most of the time though.