Author: Clare at CatsEatDogs

Through the Lens Thursday. Door.

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Well this prompt threw me a little bit, I thought ‘door’ would be easy peasy, but I clearly over-estimated the local door population.  Dull dull doors as far as the eye can see. If I was in the village I grew up in, there would have been the church doors, many of interest, stable doors on the local farm, heck some of the residential doors are old and interesting. Alas, no cool doors around here, so I plumped for my shed door adorned with toys which I used for my little toy post yesterday.  I think it needs a lick of paint…. Of course, now I will be spotting interesting doors left and right! Got any interesting doors near you? What about a trap door? How cool would that be! Thanks again for the prompt Alison and Greta who invented Through the Lens Thursday to challenge everyone’s manual camera techniques.

Things I Collect…

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I have ended up with a little collection of little toys. I never intended to collect toys, I haven’t consciously collected anything since I was a kid when I collected stamps and rocks and postcards among other things. Nowadays I tend towards gathering rather than conscious ‘collecting’, I gather buttons to use in jewelry and some special ones are kept for just gazing at. I gather stamps off letters and parcels which are pretty or interesting. Unfortunately stamps are few and far between, but I do like to cut off a special edition stamp with a date franked on it, especially from a parcel which has a ton of stamps on it! I have a few vintage postcards and am always on the lookout for more, but I wouldn’t call my little pile of cards a collection. The toys I have do follow a theme in that they are all small, the biggest among them is a vintage wooden soldier I found at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History’s flea market last summer while …

Weekly photos 11/52

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This past week saw a couple of very nice sunny warm days which was a very nice peek at Spring.  The garlic is growing healthy green shoots and the bulbs are starting to come through.  The rest of the week was pretty chilly though. Here are last week’s photos, starting with a funny doggy face!  He was barking to get me to throw his ball when I snapped this. I took a few photos for a post I wrote earlier last week, but here is a photo I didn’t use which shows the vintage tray off. It poured with rain one night and in the morning everything was damp, but not soaked.  I spotted this solitary leaf with it’s load of raindrops so I got a picture.  When I went back later in the afternoon, it was still there, with just a few less drops, so I got an update! I took this photo of the sun behind clouds behind the magnolia tree.  Then I mixed it in with a photo I had taken of …

Through the Lens Thursday. Dark

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This was the hardest theme yet, I don’t have a very high ISO option on my camera – 1600, so couldn’t take much at all in the dark! I considered using some artistic license and finding a ‘dark’ object and photographing that, but I wanted to try and figure out how to get a photo in the actual dark. I ended up taking a photo of me taking a photo (!?) reflected in the back door with the dark outside. It was a bit (ok, a lot) wobbly, but I don’t hate it. I quite like that the wall outside and the bare trees are in there as well as the door and the dark outside. The second photo was taken this morning when it wasn’t pitch dark, but shadowy enough to need a high ISO so I could practice and get the photo in focus at least! I like this photo best even though I didn’t take it in full ‘dark’. Thanks to Alison at Writing Wishing and Greta at GFunkified for pushing me …

A Cup of Tea with Me

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For the past month I have been a student in the classroom of Blog with Pip and I have a folder full and a notebook bursting with ideas. Now we have graduated, we have been invited to write this post by our fearless leader,  Pip Lincolne of Meet Me At Mikes, so here I am to chat about me over a cup of tea.  If you pop over to Pip’s blog, you can read posts by the other lovely students.  I got to spend time with some creative, inspiring folk I can tell you. Today’s cup of tea features a gorgeous vintage pink willow pattern teacup and saucer.  My youngest picked it out from a flea market while we were on holiday in Cape Cod last year.  I must admit, I don’t drink out of it, I need a big mug of tea, but big mugs are not so pretty. Being from the UK originally, I should be a tea drinking monster, but I tend to gravitate towards coffee more and more since I have …

Weekly photos 10/52 and Living Arrows

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I am a day late with the weekly round up this week because yesterday was ‘Ten on the 10th’ day.  Never fear though, here is the weekly collective from last week.  It snowed on Monday and we had a snow day off school which is so strange to think about now we are looking at near 80 degrees today.  All seasons in one week! Blue was the colour of the week  and it was the last in the #colorcolour series.  Here is my Blue selection. I made pretzel rolls to have with hot dogs for dinner which were a hit and fun to make.  I used the A Beautiful Mess recipe which I have used a few times and it has not failed me yet. The school art show was this week too and I got a little photo of Mr Y’s ‘Inside my Head’ piece. I went into St Louis for a class headed up by the lovely Lindsay of Heartland Underdog, met some lovely local bloggers and got some snaps of some city …

Ten on the 10th March 2014

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A gorgeous Spring day, hurrah! It is amazing how mood boosting a spot of sunshine and warm air is. For ten on the 10th this month, I have all sorts of things to show you!  It has been a lovely sunny and warm day and even though the dastardly clocks went back an hour over the weekend, everyone is in a good mood. Today I have been admiring the flowers I bought last week. Wondering what I should do with the treasures I found at the antiques mall?  I bought a perfume bottle stopper and some chiffon ribbon which by coincidence is the same colour almost exactly as the stopper, so pretty. Pablo has been enjoying the sunshine too.  Chasing his tennis ball up and down the garden! I made and listed a couple of new bracelets, I think they are both beauties!  If you want, click on the image to magically fly over to my Etsy shop. My new notebook and my favourite scarf. The garlic is starting to peek through.  Remember when I …

International Women’s Day

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Sunday is International Women’s Day and one of the ‘day’s I like to remember.  I first encountered International Women’s Day while I was in Italy for a while,  and all of the women were given a sprig of Mimosa flowers (as opposed to a swig of Mimosa cocktail) in celebration and to honor the ladies. I couldn’t find Mimosa flowers in Trader Joes today, so I bought some yellow Forsythia and a couple of bunches of daffs. I read a lovely post by City Hippy Farm Girl about International Women’s Day and giving lavender to celebrate the ladies who have inspired her.  I thought I would have a quick run down of the women I know who are fab. Ms C was one of the first people I met when we moved here, she called to us as we passed her house and our boys played cars and we chatted and drank coffee. Mrs K is my mum and amazing.  That’s all. Ms L  inspired me on an almost daily basis to make jewelry, mix …