Edinburgh Castle

We were in Edinburgh yesterday, the weather was a bit blustery, but we were lucky and avoided any heavy showers. We took the Edinburgh Open Top Tour Bus which takes you all round the city and explains the history of the old town and the new town, well worth it if you ever visit Edinburgh. Later we visited the castle and saw Scotland's 'Honours' or Crown Jewels.

Glenkiln Reservoir & Threave Gardens

Glenkiln Reservoir near Shawhead, Dumfries. The weather was a bit unsettled, but created some great atmospheric clouds. Around this reservoir there are several bronze sculptures by Henry Moore and others, the route is not marked and some of them require considerable hiking to reach them.

Above is a statue of John the Baptist by Rodin.

The King and Queen by Henry Moore was inspired by the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

After visiting the sculptures we moved on to Threave Gardens in Castle Douglas. This is a beautiful garden where the National Trust for Scotland train their gardeners.

These beautiful plants were in the green house at Threave.

This is Threave House, it wasn't open on a Monday, so we didn't see around it.

New Blog Banner

As will soon be on my hols, I thought I should have a summery Blog Banner! Having just used the Bugs and Butterflies kit by Muriel Butler (Granny Scrapper) for the LO of Sunday Breakfast, I liked the idea of basing it on that. I also used the Freebie given out by Kathy Watkins for National Scrapbooking Day, 'Flowers for You', both designers for Digital Craft Cotage. So from now on, every day will be a sunny day - right?

Two versions of the same thing!

Yesterday morning the sun was out and it was really warm. So we took our cooked breakfast outside and sat on the patio. The cows were grazing in the field making an idyllic pastoral scene behind us and Jenny the Cat decided to join us on the table. She was ejected as soon as the photo was taken!

The top LO is for Digital Craft Cottage, you can only post digi LOs using their kits or your own designs. The kit is Bugs and Butterflies by Muriel.

This LO is for Scrap Orchard - Apple Cart Challenge. The kit is provided free and you post it in their gallery. It was quite challenging to use only the pieces in the kit as there were not all that many. All the other LOs seem to have A's on their report cards, so I wanted to do something different, the report card is for Jenny and she 'could do better' in many areas hee hee! I did this LO first, then recreated it using the DCC pieces so I could post there too.

Time to move on

The wedding is over now, so it's time to move on to thinking about my holiday - yipee! Only one more week to work then two weeks off. We are not going away this year, but our friends from California are coming over to visit us. Here they are with me (don't look at my shorts -argggh) at the Sequoia National Park last June. There are lots of these huge trees, it was quite spectacular. There will be lots of photo opportunities during their visit, but I may not be blogging much till after they have gone. Even next week will be a bit of a whirlwind with preparations.

Another wedding photo

Here is another photo from the wedding transformed into a digi LO. All of us 'girls' worked with Mhairi (the bride) before she left to run the haulage company with her fiance. The four of us in the middle have worked together since 1999.

All papers and embellishments are from Digital Craft Cottage, Designer Gift a Day May Kit. The Journalling 'stamp' is by Traci, Junior Designer at DCC and the font is Calligraph.

Congratulations to Envys on 40,000 posts

Wow, 40, 000 posts is quite an achievement and indicates a very special blog indeed! Envys is giving away some blog candy to anyone who visits her blog HERE before 4th June.

The Wedding

Looking out on the grey and wet day today, I realise how lucky we were to have such a glorious day yesterday. The day started with a visit to the hairdressers for a colour and cut and to put in my fascinator, I also had to pick up my corsage and Brian's button hole. Back home and a quick lunch and time to get ready for the wedding. We were in the bedroom, fully ready with about 20 minutes to spare before another friend came to collect us to take us to the church, when we heard a bang, looked out of the window and half of our calves had jumped the fence into the field next door.

Brian got changed and he and Steven started to try and get them to come back through, by 2.30pm when my friend arrived they were still not through, I had to send her on to the wedding and I stripped off my finery and put on my old clothes to go out and help. We finally got them back through and then moved them to another field, by this time it was 2.55pm and the wedding was at 3.30pm. We left the farm at 3.07pm and got to the church at 3.28pm, the bride had arrived but, fortunately, they were having pictures taken outside the church before going in.

It took us most of the ceremony to calm down. The first hymn was 'All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small' we had a little smile at that one! It was a lovely relaxed service, the minister was a school friend of the bride and she made it feel very personal. Outside into the sunshine and lots of photos as you will see below.

The wedding party.
The family outside the church.

The bride and some guests.

Here we are in all our finery.

With my friend Avril.

The reception was held in a marquee outside the haulage business that the bride and groom own and run. The meal was excellent and there was a ceilidh band, disco and a singer to entertain us. My dancing was somewhat curtailed as someone 'stilletoed' me on the front of my foot during the 'Gay Gordons', dancing backwards in a crowd is never easy! We got home around 1am, so rather tired today.

DCM Shaped Card

The Daring Cardmakers have thrown out a challenge to make a shaped card, so here is mine.


It's my MIL's birthday tomorrow and we are getting her a new chair as she is having some difficulty getting out of the one she has at the moment. When I saw this template at Stampington, I knew it was ideal. I printed the template, cut it out and copied it onto the lilac card, because my printer wont take card, after I had cut it out of the card, I stamped all over it with the Inkadinkadoo stamp I have with all the herbs on it. I made the 'cushions' from the 'Simply Fabulous' Making Memories paper pad cut with decorative scissors.