Sun & Moon

There have been a lot of lovely sunsets in Aberystwyth recently. I often find myself driving home and looking at it, wishing I could take a photo from my car window … but it’s a bit tricky when driving! Luckily lots of other Aber people have been thinking similar thoughts but they’ve taken action and taken photos. I’ve seen them cropping up on  Twitter and wondered if there was a way of looking for pictures of a particular thing/place on Twitter. I discovered a couple of good sites that allow you to do this – this is what I got from searching for Aberystwyth Sunset on Twitcaps.com (click on it to do the same search there):

Beautiful isn’t it I’m so lucky to be able to see this lovely sunset frequently!

Another site I found is Twicsy.com – not quite so beautifully laid out, but again it picks the pictures from Twitter for you, and seems to find more – a search for Aberystwyth Sunset comes up with:

Twicsy.com made me smile – I got a couple of tick boxes in the preferences … one was a standard tick to follow us on Twitter, but the other one said something along the lines of “Take those broken wings and learn to fly again”! I decided to tick it as I was intrigued … and I got a DM in response linking to a youtube video of the song Well, it made me smile anyway!

Also this week there was an amazing full moon and Richard got a beautiful shot of it:

Fantastic Gig

Really had a brilliant time last night at the Ultimate Eagles gig (their 2nd gig ever in this form). Enjoyed their amazing sound, enjoyed singing along, enjoyed the atmosphere … they’re a group of really talented guys. And they’re nice too I shyly asked for a photo with Danny first, and he was really nice … then I was brave enough to go and talk to Christian who was so friendly and got the rest of the group together for a photo with me I just wish I was a little less starstruck and could actually have a sensible conversation with them instead of just grinning madly!!

Me & Danny Vaughn

Me & The Ultimate Eagles

I would highly recommend you go to an Ultimate Eagles gig when they’re touring later in the year. Brilliant stuff!

Here’s a pic of them in action:

Ultimate Eagles on stage

There are more photos on Facebook – should be set for anyone to see, so take a look

Ultimate Eagles on Facebook

mlog & plog

My definitions:

mlog = blogging through the medium of music

plog = blogging through the medium of photography

I suppose if the word blog orginally came from web log, then I’ve got it wrong … should it be clog from music log and ylog from photography log … or should the b still be there … so maybe cblog and yblog? Or maybe I’ll just shut up now…

Anyway my point is, that you (my gazillions of readers, ha ha ha!) may have noticed the mlogs that have begun to appear. Hopefully one day there will be an easy way to share a flow on mflow on WordPress.com, but at the moment I’m doing it manually. It seemed like a good idea as I was flowing tunes based on my day, and what I was doing or thinking about. So the mlog was born. I’m sure I’m not the first to do it. The plog thought is something many people do already but tend to call it photo-blogging or something like that. I’m just being weird and calling it plogging. That’s just the way I am. So plogging will be done probably via mobypicture when I see something I want to share and mlogging from mflow. My blog is actually coming back to life! Shocking!

End of Changing Colours

There are no colours left in the garden to watch change. The trees are bare and Wintry. They do look good in sillhouette against the evening sky though …

Today is the last day of November and it seems that the year has flown by. We have been a little naughty and put the Christmas tree up yesterday … only two days before the start of December though! I know some people leave it until closer to Christmas but I like having the decorations brightening up the house for longer, so we usually put the tree up at the beginning of December. It’s nice to cheer up these dark wintry nights. I’ve nearly finished my Christmas shopping now, so I can relax and enjoy the run up to Christmas

Changing Colours 7

Yes I know, it’s Monday! I did start doing this every Saturday but I didn’t get round to doing it on Saturday this week. I’m off work today – having a day off with the children who have an INSET day.

The trees are looking very bare this week – it’s looking more wintry now, and less autumnal.

Garden week 7

Changing Colours 6

This is how the garden looks today – very yellow and many bare branches.

Garden Week 6

The willow tree is very nearly bald:

Baldy willow tree!

The trees growing out of the side hedge are also pretty bald and make a nice sillhouette against the sky:

Trees in sillhouette

The grass is now almost covered with the leaves!:

Leafy lawn

Gorgeousness

I may well be rather biased, but I think this school photo is gorgeous! I’m very impressed with Tempest Photography. Pictures of this gorgeousness can even cheer me out of my grump a little!

Ben & Abi

Changing Colours

I had an urge to start a weekly photo post to see the colours changing as Autumn progresses. And it’s also a chance to play with my new phone’s camera, which is way better than my old one. So the plan is to step outside the front door and take a photo of the same part of the garden, and see the colours changing week by week. So here is today’s photo to start it off:

Garden week 1

The little willow tree in the foreground is starting to go yellow and if you look carefully at the beech tree behind it there is some quite orangey colours developing in small patches. On the left is a tulip tree which is still looking pretty green. I think it will be interesting seeing the colours changing. May not be interesting to anyone else, but still!

School Photo Time

Ben and Abi had their school photo taken yesterday – we have the proof already, and it’s a bit different from the usual ones. This time they’ve gone for a more relaxed look. Here’s the proof:

[Photo by H Tempest Ltd]

Looking forward to getting the real thing And of course there will be copies for all interested relatives

Just in case you are like me and want to look back at previous photos they are over there to the right (click to see bigger versions).

Ben & Abi 2007 School Photo

Ben & Abi 2006 School Photo

Fun weekend

At the weekend we were very busy! Richard had booked his birthday sky dive for Sunday and as it was an early start we decided to stay in a hotel Saturday night. And then we realised that Chester was on our way, and a visit to Chester Zoo was in order!

It was a beautiful sunny day on Saturday and we really enjoyed walking round the Zoo. Our favourite animals were the Orangutans and Chimps and it was great seeing all kinds of other animals too. We were lucky enough to happen to be coming to the chimp enclosure just as they were being fed, so we saw them all come out for their lunch

The new “Realm of the Red Ape” exhibit was really interesting and gave you good views of the Orangs in quite natural looking habitat. Me and the children are particularly fond of the Orangs, so we were really pleased to get a good look at some of them as they swung by

After a night at a hotel we got up early in the morning and headed for Black Knights Parachute Centre. Richard did the paperwork and the children and I waited around until it was time for him to do his jump. We watched several other people do jumps and it was very exciting to see them coming down to earth!

Then it was Daddy’s turn! We were very exciting watching him heading off to the plane in all his gear, with his expert sky diver with him ready to go tandem. We watched his plane head off into the sky and disappear through the clouds, then it was a matter of waiting and looking up into the sky to see when he would reappear through the cloud and the parachute would be deployed. We were getting stiff necks looking up into the sky, and then there he was with a rainbow coloured parachute! His friend Andy got some great pictures for us from the dropzone (the children and I had to stay in the spectator area). He landed back on the ground with an enormous grin on his face! A very successful 40th birthday present!

As it was still quite early in the day we decided to stop off at Llangollen on the way back home, and followed a sign for the Llangollen Aqueduct. We all found it really interesting and exciting watching the boats and following the tow path. We found a boat that did Aqueduct Trips and went on one which was very exciting – on one side of the boat is the tow path across the viaduct with railings, but on the other side there is nothing to stop you falling out if you were to lean over!! Eek! Nobody fell out thankfully!

The view from the aqueduct was beautiful and we really enjoyed going on the narrow boat. It got us thinking again about going on a narrow boat holiday and we are all enthusiastic about this – Ben is keen to help with locks and moorings, Daddy would be the driver, and me and Abi would be generally helpful I’m sure! I guess I would be spending time in the galley as well! Anyway – we picked up some information from Anglo Welsh Waterway Holidays who had a base there, and will have to start saving up!

All in all we had a really fun weekend and have come back tired out but happy

There are lots more photos that Richard and I took, as well as a few that Andy Starr (Thank you!) took of Richard skydiving, on our gallery: Chester Zoo, Skydiving, Llangollen