What colour christmas tree should you have??

Spotted this over on Sarahs blog - I like purple but not for my Christmas tree!!

You Should Have a Purple Christmas Tree

For you, the holidays represent a time of creativity and expression. There's no way you'd do something bland simply for tradition's sake. You are an independent person, and you definitely do the holidays your own way. And you're decadent enough to go way over the top with any unusual holiday ideas you have. Your purple tree would look great with: Purple lights and ornaments You should spend Christmas Eve watching: A Christmas Story What you should bake for Santa: "Kitchen sink" cookies - with a ton of things in them

What Color Christmas Tree Should You Have?

No more elves - I can't stop laughing!!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

More Elves

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

More Elf Yourself

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Elf Yourself!!!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Anyone for cake???

It was the school Christmas fete today and as usual I said I would contribute something towards the cake stall. I'm afraid I cheated though and bought 4 packs of the Tesco ready made fairy cakes. One box of icing sugar and some edible decorations and 48 little beauties ready to be sold. the cake stall is always the most popular stall - but to my disappointment there was no tablet this year - what is the world coming too.

Hope everyone is keeping warm today - it was minus 6 degrees earlier - but has now warmed up a bit so its only minus 2!!!

The best news

I couldn't wait for the postman to bring a letter from our solicitor - every day I was rushing home to see if one lay on the doormat - so today I took the bull by the horns and went to our saleswoman in the show house. She finally confirmed that we are getting the house for the new lower price and that the hold up is that a new set of missives is being drawn up ready for us to sign. This is such a weight off out mind and we celebrated with a takeaway and a bottle of wine - hopefully I can sleep tonight without this all going round and round in my head.

All systems go now - just got the small thing of a mortgage to sort out.

Here are the first picture I took of our house back in the middle of August - and the most recent one taken this week.

Weekly challenge

Here is my LO for the weekly challenge over on UKS. This was the brief:

We’ve come up with four things all beginning with P for Pop Dots to include on your layout. They are:

• Pagemap (10pts)
• Punch (5pts)
• Pop Dots also known as foam pads (5pts)
• Pink (5pts)
• Polka dots(5pts)

I used the November Scrapagogo kit as I seem to have a backlog of them at the moment - I have got 3 yellow boxes where all I have done is open the box. have a quick look at it and then put it away in the cupboard!

The photo shows Sam and Callum sharing a tender (!)moment during a walk around loch Na Bo earlier in the year.

Journal Your Christmas

Less than a week to go till this all kicks off. My track record on Shimelle classes isn't too good - don't think I have ever actually finished one yet - I tend to lose interest about half way through.

Whether I can keep up with this one remains to be seen - especially as we have a house move to contend with (will today be the day we hear something??)

My covers are made - just need to get a wriggle on with the pages.

Downloads

Andy bought me an itunes voucher for my birthday earlier in the month so tonight I thought it was about time I learnt how to use the site. So now I have 2 new discs to put in the car and have topped up my ipod with new tunes.

Now all I have to do is turn the volume up - loud!!!

New house pics

Even though things seem to have hit a slight hiccup I couldn't resist going down to look at the house in the snow. Almost fell over on the ice - much to the boys delight!!

The scaffolding has all come down - and the sunroom is going up. It all looks brilliant now - so have everything crossed for the right outcome.

Chuffed

Have just found out that I won the recent sketch challenge over on Scrap Paper Scissors.

I did the LOs at the last Aberdeen crop and I wasn't very pleased with the particular LO that won.

Never usually win anything so I am well chuffed!!

Snow fun

We had to go out and make the most of the bit of snow we had today. All 3 boys we soaked before we got very far on the walk - snowballs flying in every direction! No one would own up to the one that hit the back of my head!!

We walked up through Monaughty woods as we haven't been there for at least a couple of years - just a shame there was nowhere to launch the sledge from. But fingers crossed we will get more snow this winter.

The game itself.

In amongst all the excitement there was actually a match to watch - and although I don't understand all the rules I was cheering and jumping up and down with everyone else (so much so I managed to lose my woolly hat!!) It was a brilliant atmosphere - although Andy says its not a patch on standing the the Millenium Stadium filled with Welshmen singing!!

We had brilliant seats - only 2 rows from the front - and had a birds eye view of the 2 tries that happened down our end of the pitch. The boys stood down at the front cheering the team on.

When we got home we had to watch the match all over again. Couldn't quite see call um as they panned across the line of players - but Sam was pleased to be able to see himself waving in the crowd (those bright red gloves were good for something!)

Happy faces!

The boys had the best day out they said. Sam thoroughly enjoyed himself and really enjoyed the behind the scenes part of the day - he can't wait to go another match so hopefully we can get tickets for Murrayfield Magic next year and have a whole weekend of rugby down in Edinburgh.

Their faces in these photos say it all.

A day to remember

Callum was lucky enough to be chosen from the Kinloss Kestrels to be a mascot for the Scotland vs Canada game at Pittodrie in Aberdeen yesterday.

The weather was against us with overnight snow and as we had to leave early the roads weren't fully clear and it was near blizzard conditions in the more exposed parts.

His nerves soon disappeared when he met all the other mascots and the Scottish Rugby Union staff really did look after us. We were all fed and watered when we arrived and the mascots recieved thier kit - couldn't believe the price labels on some of the stuff - £40.00 for a childs rugby shirt!!

We were allowed to have a look around and watched the pitch being cleared of snow and both teams warming up and having a practice. The mascot went out to practice what they had to do - strict instructions not to wave at mum or turn around to look at the team!!

I would imagine it was mighty chilly standing out on the pitch in just T shirt and shorts - Callums face says it all! He samg the first verse to Flower of Scotland perfectly and had eyes forward at all times. Callum was chuffed to be standing in front of nathan Hines who he says is his favourite player - he was also the tallest!!

After the game we were all given hot drinks and soup to warm us up while we waited fo the team to get showered and changed. Then the mascots were all taken down to meet them - they spent and hour with the kids - chatting to them and signing autographs. Callum cam back up - chuffed to bits to get his ball and his shirt signed by the whole team (including the manager and those who didn't play). The shirt can now not be worn - and the ball has pride of place in his bedroom.

Self portrait challenge

Thought I would join in with the self portrait challenge over on Shutter Sisters:


Mixed media artist extraordinaire Kelly Rae Roberts crosses over to photography today with this delightful self-portrait challenge. Let's give her a warm Shutter Sisters welcome...

I love the idea of capturing images of ourselves in the company of the earth. Today's challenge is simple: go outside. Hold your camera down a bit and capture a shot of yourself with the sky as your backdrop. Then point your camera down and capture your feet on the ground. Put the images together to create a lovely diptych that reveals a small, telling moment in your day.

I love what these kinds of images say about where we are. about our physical surroundings, the season, and even about what we're wearing. And it's so fun to capture our shoes, the earth, and the motion of a day lived well. I so hope you will join me...cloudy skies and all.


So a quick dash out into a chilly garden about 10 minutes before I left for work - am sure the neighbours think I am completely barmy!! Quite difficult to take a SP from this angle - and not very flattering (even with the help of Photoshop!!)

Photoshopped!

It was our last beginners class at camera club last night - so on a cold and windy night I headed over to Buckie High School for a lesson in Photoshop. There weren't many of us there so we were lucky to get some one to one tuition - have just got to try and remember how everything works.

Am pleased with some of the results.

Managed to get rid of the ugly chains around the cow sculpture at Chatsworth.








Used the gaussian blur filter to blur the whole filter and then a large feathery eraser over the gravestone to make ti "pop" out of the photo.






And finally I used the straighten, sharpen and crop tools to make this photo a bit more pleasing to the eye. Alan asked if I had entered anything in the small print competitions that the club run - told him I didn't think my photos were up to the required standard. He suggested I enter a couple and I might be surprised - praise indeed from him as his photographs are suberb.

Charmed

Whilst shopping in Mrs Macs shop yeterday for secret santa pressies I came across these little beauties. They will be perfect for Shimelles Journal Your Christmas class I am doing. The class runs from 1st December through to 6th January and we are supposed to do a page a day - whether I manage to keep up remains to be seen. But if not I can do it all over again next year for nothing.

Weekly challenges over on UKS

As I am now the proud owner of Photoshop Elements 6 I have no idea how to make my photos small enough to fit into the UKS gallery - so until this techno phobe learns more about it I will be posting my pics here!




This is my take on the November week 2 challenge:

Use one or more of these words in your title: Credit, Crunch, Money, Broke or Free - 10 points
Old Stash (From at least last year) - 5 points
Use a recycled/painted/old element - 5 points each up to a max of 15

Used the Kelly Pannaci Scrapagogo kit from last year, the journalling tag is a tag that Andy was given at the Farnborough Airshow earlier in the year, a painted photo turn and an old button out of either my mum or nans button box.



And this was my take on the November week 2 challenge:

Use the Sketch = 10pts
Use Pink, White & Green = 10pts
Use Brads = 5pts
Use RikRak = 5pts

Used another old Scrapagogo kit - this time a Heidi Grace one. I am on a mission to use my old kits up before I can start resubbing again.

More house pics

Andy got to go inside our new house today - to make sure the elctrician had done what we had asked him to do. The TV is going to be wall mounted and we don't want to see wires trailing everywhere - so they are being hidden behin the walls - along with all the wires for the surround sound system.

Can't believe how much has been done inside - the kitchen and bathrooms are being fitted this week then the tilers can come in - and they were hoping to start on the sunroom this afternoon.

So here is a little guided tour:




This is the back of the house - the part that hasn't been rendered is where the sunroom is going.



This is looking into the lounge from the dining room.



Our bedroom with the one door leading into the walk in wardrobe (which the chippy is going to put some shelves and hanging rails in for us - all for a bottle of something at Christmas!!) and the other goes into the en suite.


The family bathroom which is going to be all done out in black and white.



My craft room - which when the portacabins and building materials have all gone I will have a wonderful view of the hills behind.