Skip to main content

Family visits...

I'm fortunate to live in a wonderful place for friends and family to visit for a pleasant bit of down time.  This week which just happens to coincide with summer I'm spending a lovely week with my daughter, her partner, and my two gorgeous grandchildren.... Its a reminder that I am the matriarch and while defo the oldest it seems I can still build fab sandcastles
queen of the castle
and make great dens in the garden and thats what counts.. we also managed a good experiment on the beach - a sandcastle every two metres to see how quickly the sea came in -
experimental sandcastles

work in progress
A great idea for keeping a lively 7 yr old entertained on a sunny day after 4 hours on the beach and a walk round the fields - we got an old double sheet from the charity shop - I wanted white but settled for pale pink and we put it over the garden table and tied knots at each corner to make it nice and tight right over to the floor - then we cut a door in it and some windows and then set about decorating it inside and out with the trusty felt tips.... it has flowers, trees, owls and apples all over the walls and then an airline landing strip on the roof complete with landing jungle jet and a hang glider just about land next to a flock of birds carrying cherries...  it has its own outdoor swimming pool Its a work in progress and will be added to over the next few days- very much a work of art and when its finished and the occupants have gone home it will pack up go live in the loft until next time.  Both the baby and my eldest grand daughter love it... however a minor problem.. because we pegged the sheet to the ground with tent pegs to keep it anchored and firm we left it out overnight and the felt tip pens 'ran' creating an interesting merged look which (thankfully)  all of us agreed is quite effective and gives us an psychedelic canvas to continue to work on.. and then tomorrow that will have merged and so on - last night we were able to pop a tablecloth on it to stop any planes landing and we could eat our dinner on it... multi purpose...

The good weather extends the living space which is very useful as an extra four people (some which are rather messy) makes our little cottage very small and the extras you need to contain an active smiley 9 month baby take up so much room... it will feel like a huge house and very quiet this time next week...
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...
1 comment
Read more

Isle of Bute

 Another Landmark Trust tick - this time Ascog House on the Isle of Bute - stunning as always... a very comfortable warm accommodation for the usual 8 suspects. This time we had a wee tower house for Dr Fred and myself - a lovely bedroom up the stairs with a big window and a bathroom al to ourselves - having said that all the other bedrooms in the big house were large and serviced by two bathrooms so there was no hardship for any visitors!   The grounds of the house were very extensive with ponds and secret passages - hidden paths and we even spotted a deer late afternoon - there were lots of old features - ornate staircases and a lovely hidden door which I did a quick sketch of. Bute provided quite a lot of entertainment as well - the weather was kind and we did a a muddy wander down the south of the Island taking in St Blanes Monastery and Kilcannon Bay.  The views were spectacular and it was fabulous to be out in the fresh (and it was fresh on the tops) air and we...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...
Post a Comment
Read more