Clare Davis Etheridge

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Weekly Photos 30/52

1. My dining table has been taken over by a week of model making and painting! No complaints from me, they can take over the house if it keeps the kid off screens!
2. I am a little bit over excited to see my little eggplant plant growing an actual eggplant/aubergine. Yay! My gardening skills are not up to much, so I am very proud and I hope the bunnies or squirrels don’t eat it up.
3. We went for a walk at the Shaw Nature Reserve this weekend and in the historic Bascom house they have tea and coffee ready to serve up in a lovely selection of mugs or cups. We opted for the lemonade as it was a very hot day.
4. The teepee at Shaw is always a magnificent sight, even without the cover which hasn’t been on for a few years now. Some cool clouds too.

I am posting the weeklies today because tomorrow I will be at the St Louis leg of Vans Warped Tour with my teenager. It is supposed to get to 94 degrees tomorrow so I hope I manage to stay upright with no passing out, which is a very real threat when I have to stand around for a long time. So, yes, I will be the crazy mama who is walking about for no apparent reason while lining up to meet bands (I will not be getting autographs, that will be my kid, I am just there for the standing around!!). Autographs? Do people even say that anymore? When I write it down, it looks so 1985 to me! Signings, we will be getting things signed….autographs…pfft, so old fashioned.

See you later in the week for a Warped round up. Fingers crossed I don’t faint! I will be armed with raisins and Gatorade, so I should be good and yes I will have a couple of sarnies in my bag too.

Enjoy your Sunday and rest of the week x

Six Word Saturday

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

Today was a hot day for a walk, but walk we did! Five miles around the Shaw Nature Reserve made for a very pretty walk in very hot temps! We took water and made lots of stops for water fill ups, took some snaps and saw some wildlife. We spotted lizards, birds, bugs and butterflies as well as lots and lots of flowers and grasses. A great place to visit.

So this was my ‘Six Word Saturday’. Share yours on Instagram with #sixwordsaturday!

Through The Lens Thursday #30 Vintage

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

I just couldn’t decide what to photo for this week’s Through the Lens Thursday. Vintage covers most things I own!
So, I decided to work with an old cassette player and a couple of tapes for good measure. I got this player at an estate sale and it needs some work to get it to play properly again. It plays tapes, but they play very slowly, so that it sounds like a drunkard! Remember when a tape got jammed or the player ran out of battery? That is how this baby plays.

I never owned a tape player when I was a teen and listening to music on cassettes, I either used the main stereo in the front room (much to my family’s joy I am sure!) or I monopolized the car tape player wherever we went.
It was only when I went off to college that I got my very own portable tape player. Yay for the 80’s and early 90’s.

To be honest though, I really don’t consider tapes and the relevant playing machines to be vintage, I am sure I am in denial and that may never change, but if I can remember it, how can it be vintage?!
Do you remember listening to tapes? Still own any? I got rid of some of mine, and I wish I had kept them all, I do have some, but not all of them.

Weekly Photos 29/52.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

1. We bought Kerplunk this week! I had forgotten how much fun it is to play and it is a nice reminder for the kids that humans are as much fun to play with as computers…
2. Homemade butter is science in the kitchen. Get some cream and whip it through various stages of thin, thick, lumpy and separated until you are squeezing buttermilk out of your very own homemade butter. We used some buttermilk in cupcakes and I put the rest in an ice cube tray and popped it in the freezer for future cupcakes.
3. Over the weekend we saw the ‘Lost Buildings of St Louis’ exhibit at the Missouri History Museum. I love looking at historic buildings and these photos were no disappointment. It is a shame they are no longer standing, but I am pleased someone took photos of them for us to see now.
4. Mushrooms are starting to appear in the humid, damp woods. These are teeny tiny ones, but I don’t know which variety they are.

I hope you had a lovely week and have another lovely week planned.

Six Word Saturday

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

We went to the Missouri History Museum to see the ‘Lost Buildings of St Louis’ photography exhibit and the ‘Walk in 1875 St Louis’ exhibit. They were both super interesting and of course told lots of history about St Louis. The 1875 exhibit is fairly new, so it was busy, but that just made us want to visit again in the week when it may be a little quieter.

If you have a Six Word Saturday, pop in in the comments or share on Instagram and share your Insta name in the comments, so I can find you!

Through The Lens Thursday #29. Four

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

This week’s Through the Lens Thursday was ‘Four’, so I planned to snap four cupcakes, but we ate one….

We made butter yesterday which was true science in the kitchen and we got buttermilk too, both of which we used in the red velvet cupcakes in the photo.

To make the butter I followed the instructions from She Who Rambles and the cupcakes are from the Hummingbird Bakery book. I had to crack out the scales as the book is British and in grams, non of this measuring in cups business.

Thankfully the weather has not quite got to melt the frosting temperatures today, so I took the cupcakes outside for their photoshoot.

They turned out light, fluffy and delicious which I put down to the homemade butter and buttermilk!

Time to put the kettle on for a cuppa and cake methinks.

Next week is ‘Vintage’.

My favourites from The 100 Day Project.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

This mandala was the final one for my time with The 100 Day Project hosted by The Great Discontent magazine and the fabulous Elle Luna. I loved the process of drawing a mandala every day and I came up with many surprises, the main one being that I could draw something every day, not get bored and I liked most of them!
It just shows what you can come up with a bit of a boost, a great idea and a little structure. If I had to draw ‘anything’ every day I might have struggled more with the blank page for three months, but the mandalas were lovely to draw and paint and photograph.
I have picked ten of my favourite mandalas to share from my 100 days of making mandala journey.

This one started with the lettering in the middle and I enjoyed using the cupcake colours. Number 16.

Doodles was the name of the game here. It was nice not to have to draw the grid to start the mandala. Number 28.

Another doodle using uneven circles and different thicknesses of pens. Number 34

This one started with the middle houses and garden paths, the barns pretty much added themselves along with the fence. A good example of what you can come up with if you let yourself play around with an idea. Number 44.

I just love drawing these colored sticks in various formations, so it was only natural that I draw a mandala with them! Number 49.

This one is a very floral mix of grid and freeform. Number 56.

I spotted this thistle on a walk and I love the purple and the shape of Musk Thistles, as is the case with most flowers, there is a mandala in there too. Number 75.

I did a couple of mandalas using collage and I liked how this one came out, it looks much better as a photograph than on the page! Number 95.

Monster mandala! Teeth and eyes and tails and ears! Number 97.

I also followed some other fab 100 dayers on Instagram –

Leaf and Petal Such great collages, every day.

Dainty Dora 100 haiku, soon to be an e book.

Holland Loop Abstract and beautiful colour use.

Hey_jules_studio A daily rainbow still life. Inspiring.

JJ Pockets Collaged postcards.

Giving Nature A super idea, to give a plant to someone deserving every day.

Superleftee One of my favorite projects, all of these drawings make me want to sketch more.

I give you the verbs Pausing, 100 photos of ideas and inspiration.

Such_lovely_Things Photos of loveliness.

They Draw and Cook Another fantastic idea, drawing on Pantone color cards. They look so great!

So now what shall I do? ‘The next 100 day project’ anyone?

Did you do #the100dayproject? How did you like it?

Weekly Photos 28/52.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

1. We had lovely frozen yoghurt in the sunshine alongside the railway tracks.
2. I mixed up photos on the Diana app.
3. My eggplant/aubergine plant has had a couple of flowers but, none of them seem to want to grown into a vegetable.
4. At the weekend we went to Slide the City in St Louis, which was a 1000 ft slip and slide. I did way more slipping than sliding, but it was fun!
5. We caught the MetroLink train to Union Station for sliding, I took this photo on Hipstamatic.
6. On Sunday we met friends at Cafe Osage for brunch.
7. Cafe Osage is part of Bowood Farm shop which has some great stuff.
8. The cat was not for sale!

Phew the weather has got hot hot hot here over the past few days. Just walking to the gym to get into the pool is a sweat-fest, and I need a water bottle with me to walk to the library!

Six Word Saturday and Printing Photos

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

I try to make sure I print and album photos fairly regularly so that I don’t end up with a box of photos with no idea of when or where they were taken.
However I did manage to get behind with 2013, I made it up to 2012 and I started 2014, but for some reason I neglected 2013. Then I did the worst thing and printed the photos, ran out of sleeves for my album and they ended up in the dreaded box…..
This year I made sure I had enough sleeves and got to work using the diary to keep everything in order as I popped the photos into the album. It was lovely to look back at photos as it always is and now all of the photos are in their place.
I find it very difficult to find albums now, so I started to use the Becky Higgins Project Life range which is great because they make sleeves to go in folders which hold regular prints and Instagram squares as well as smaller pockets for little cards to remember what the photo was of.

I know Project Life is aimed more at scrapbookers, but I love the versatile sleeves you can get and the little cards to write dates and events on. I like to remember where and when everything was, so I will be writing cards like ‘Slip n Slide in the garden, June 2014’. I always think I will remember these moments, but in only a few years it is amazing which details are erased from my busy head. Between the diary I keep for the family and the photos, it is a super way to keep the memories over the years.

I love to look back at old photos and I want to be able to look back with my kids too and remember slip n sliding in the garden as well as trips out and good times with friends and family.

Do you print photos? They are so ace to look back over aren’t they?

Through The Lens Thursday #28. Dress.

Published by Clare at CatsEatDogs

For this week’s Through the Lens Thursday, I picked a dress from my past and from someone else’s past. I bought this dress in a vintage shop in Paris in about 1988 on a college trip with Lincoln Art College. I was 18 years old, studying for my BTEC in fashion design course and we were in Paris for research and a trip up the Eiffel tower!

I thought this dress was the best thing I had ever found and I have worn it lots over the years. I think it was handmade but I am not sure of the era, maybe 50’s or 60’s and it is a classic little black dress. I have worn it with Dr Martens and high heels and I wore it on my 40th birthday.

Next week’s Through the Lens Thursday prompt is ‘Four’.