All posts filed under: Life

Today

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First there were these clouds as we looked forward to a windy, wet, warm, crazy weather day. Then we baked and ate these Cranberry Orange breakfast buns. I made them yesterday and kept them in the fridge overnight. If you are even thinking of making them, you must, they are delightful! The weather took a turn for the windier and wetter. Following the crazy in the weather department, we climbed over this tree on the trail. In the stream this pretty leaf was taking a dip in the reflections. Over the little bridge, no trolls in sight. Ye Olde Tappe No trolls under the green bridge. Home to pretty pink leaves. Hope you had a fab weekend and have a good week ahead.

Foggy morning

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Last night was rainy and warm and this morning was humid and foggy. I do like interesting weather, so fog is a good morning for me. A good storm (if I am inside or on the porch) is also a winner in my view. Even pouring rain or bucketing snow make a change. I of course love the blue skies we usually see, whether the temps are warm or freezing cold, but the weather odd bods are what makes the interesting days.   Thankfully it was only the air full of fog today, I started with a fab boxing class which is my favourite class ever, I love to beat up an inanimate object once a week! I picked up the new (still one issue behind Australia though) Frankie magazine and finished getting ready for the Halloween party at school tomorrow. Now I am here chatting to you and listening to the new ‘London Grammar’ album. Are you trick or treating for Halloween? It may rain here, so let’s hope not (no, not even an …

Too many scarves

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  I brought all of my Autumn/Winter clobber up from the basement yesterday as it seems that shorts and t shirts are no longer welcome.  Thank goodness, I am not a hot weather creature at all.  I like clothes on and scarves and hats too! Up came the giant zip loc bags and out came the sweaters and scarves and scarves and scarves and a couple of pairs of gloves.  It seems I have a scarf problem.  I just keep them.  All of them.  Some are years old, I mean you don’t grow out of a scarf do you? I do have rather a lot of them and I do wear them (mostly).  Some I have been given, one I knitted and the rest I have picked up everywhere from Thrift shops to Target. My favourites are the fur one (no of course it isn’t real, it’s from the Gap!),  the giraffe infinity scarf (Primark), the cream one with all the fringe is a shawl from a thrift shop and I love my Muji striped …

Photo filters and apps for Halloween

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October is here and apparently so is Halloween fever!  My youngest fetched up our bag of Halloween decos gathered mainly from November sales, so it has taken us a few years to gather a spider or three. I did like that he squished a pair of skelly-bob gloves behind a drain pipe, to rather good effect I think!  So I took a snap and then I added a few (too many) finishes and got a spooky photo as a reward! For this shot, I used Snapseed and cropped and added a ‘grunge’ finish and a texture and a creepy frame.   Spooky huh? I started with this – After this one, I had to do the spider too!  An innocent giant spider chomping on a glow in the dark skelly, add a few photo finishes and creepy spider with a swarm to help him…. For this one, I started in Camera+ , cropped and added the ‘Dreamstate’ filter, then on top of that I used the ‘Pinhole’ filter.   I messed with the intensity to get …

September 2013 photo a day

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It’s nearly nearly nearly October which surely means we are all gathering pumpkins and making apple pies with freshly picked apples.  You know, with the apples you picked at the apple orchard and ended up with a quadrillion pounds even though you told everyone to only pick a few! I haven’t been apple picking yet, but I am sure we will and I am also sure we will bring home the required quadrillion pounds of apples! In the meantime, September whizzed by and brought us a few cool mornings and plenty of afternoon sunshine and here are the photos I took this month.  I have been playing with Flipagram too, so the photos are also all on Instagram zipping past your eyes in the new video format.  I am @catseatdogsmakes on Instagram, go and see what you think. Day 1. Together Day 2. My name begins with. Day 3. Lines Day 4. Alone.  Had I eaten the rest?  Or was this one the only rice krispie treat which wouldn’t fit in the box? Day 5. …

Blogging is fab!

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I have been blogging properly for a year now, so here I am going to share why I still am doing it and enjoying it.  When I say ‘properly’ I mean regularly I suppose, I actually started a blog over a year ago, but I only wrote when I thought I had something to say.  Now I just babble on about anything three or four times a week.  Lucky lucky you! I must say the regularity has been a good thing and I remember reading somewhere when I started to blog that even if you blog weekly, that is enough.  I disagree totally with this, people don’t come and read and join in when there is nothing new.  I don’t over examine my numbers, but it is clear when I haven’t written for a day or two as lovely readers don’t come to play until I write a new post.  I also try to have a bit of a blog schedule, so with any luck you might get a Halloween post before October 29th when …

Vintage of the future?

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I passed Urban Outfitters last week and in the window was a whole display of retro looking record players.  It didn’t make me miss my record player as I never had my own, I used the one in the living room which was attached to the giant stereo system. I did however own a cassette player and I admit I would be totally into a window display of these.  This year also celebrates 50 years of the cassette tape (nice fun fact to make you feel elderly).  Most of my music was on good old C90 tape. Never C45, which only held half the music of a C90, I wanted an album on each side of my tape thank you very much. Anyway, the lotso record players made me wonder, will the same window be full of 1st generation white chunky iPods in 30 or 40 years time? Are you keeping your old iPod or smart phone so that your kids and grandkids can marvel at the ancient technology of the heady past of 2013? …

I am scared of techy crap – there I said it

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Are you good at technological computer stuff? I am not. I can barely operate Microsoft Word and to demonstrate my crapness at this I am currently re writing a piece because I thought that number points would be cool. When I finished I decided they were certainly not cool and had to go. Ha, not so fast Miss Crap. I could not, I repeat, could not get rid of those sodding numbers which my evil document ‘helped’ me put there in the first place. They just appeared by magic everytime I started a new line and sentence. I just don’t have the required magic to rid my essay of them. So, I am doing it all again. At least I am just copying….. I am currently avoiding working on a newsletter for my blog, Etsy store and general catseatdogs bits and bobs. What’s that? The laundry needs doing? You need to make peach and blueberry muffins for no reason at all? Sure. Facebook browsing? Come on over. Why oh why do I find these things …

‘A Beautiful Mess’ 30 day self portrait challenge

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The 30 day self portrait challenge is done and dusted and it was a hard one.  I admit to some artistic license on some, but they are all me! Taking pictures of yourself on a daily basis is weird, vain (there I said it) and frankly a bit boring, after all, not much changes.  Having said that, it was a fun challenge and I made it to the end! Thanks to the A Beautiful Mess girls for throwing it down!

Chocolate chocolate chocolate

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Really, that is what the place is called! Yesterday we visited the Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate factory in The Hill area of St Louis. It was an adventure as I don’t drive, but it turned out to be an easy peasy and successful one. I am pretty well versed on the public transit of St Louis (yes, there is an app for that!), so we caught the bus at the end of our street and off we went. The bus stop at the other end was about half a mile away from the factory, so we turned the corner and walked down South Kingshighway (sounds posh, isn’t), crossed the bridge and we were there. See, easy! < We had a lovely morning in this little chocolate factory, samples and smells and a good time! Didn’t see any Oompa Loompas though, bit disappointing. We did get to see huge slabs of caramel and vats of chocolate all around. So, that was the last day of school, all back this morning bright and breezy. Perfect morning for a …