Favourite photos of 2010- part 2

Happy Friday

Sorry there was no post yesterday. We had a little shopping trip into Oxford. Managed to purchase the longed for boots! he he! Will share pictures at a later date! Back to the photos!

One of my all time favourite pictures of my Mama. Taken at Easter last year. So candid and beautiful.

Love this girl to pieces. My mini-me. She was in her first year of secondary school and we struck up such a close friendship when she was a tad homesick. We are still so close and its lovely to see her growing up as I am about to leave school.

So many pictures of me and this lovely lady! This is one of my favs, mainly because the height difference makes me laugh!

Rowing camp in France over the easter holiday. It was such a laugh and so tiring. We had so much fun though rowing on an amazing river and spending time with amazing people! This picture makes me smile so much. Love the expressions.

The boy and an f-stop of 1.4 = dreamy eyes and soft focus! LOVE.

I laugh out loud when I see this picture. I gave the boy my camera to play around with. It had a fized 50mm lens with manual focus. Claiming his pictures would be fantastic he proceeded to take this photo focusing on the hedge rather than the intended car. I think it was slightly harder than he imagined! he still however claims this picture is "artistic"! ha ha!

The littlest brother on his birthday photo shoot I insisted he had! One of my all time favourites of him.

I treasure this picture because it captures such a special week. This is Rasha my lebanese exchange friend. She is a beautiful women living in a part of the world that isn't very safe. We had so much in common and she introduced me to so many lebanese traditions. One day I hope we can meet again.

The trip to Cambridge uni. The application didn't happen in the end but it was a fab day out visiting a lovely place.

Finishing with the boy and my favourite picture of the two of us. Leavers ball 2010. photo credit to our medical sister who takes incredible pictures!

Final installment tomorrow. New years day!

Hope everyone has a fab new years eve. Bring on 2011!

Thanks for stopping by

Loves xxxxxx

Favourite photos of 2010- part 1

Hi This post is something I did last year and really enjoyed! I want to share some of my favourite photos of 2010 over the next few posts! Its so nice to just look back at the last year!

Got to start with the boy! This was taken in the first few days of January last year. I know its badly focused and seriously grainy, but the eyes, the smile....the guitar! Enough said!

Last January we got a lot of snow. I used this picture in my photography AS portfolio. It was a spur of the moment picture where I decided to get lower on the ground and it turned out fab!

This isn't a fantastic picture. It was taken on a trip to london. I just love the concept through. The photos are fab, the colours and the layout with the heart. Still waiting to use this on a LO.

A visit to the royal opera house. We got to try on lots of hats and parts of costumes! It was such fun! Love this picture of the littlest. He looks very dapper!

The hardest but most rewarding photo of 2010! I wanted to capture flying water for my photography portfolio! After countless rubbish shots, one broken glass and very wet trousers i finally got this one. In the final edited version I edited out the football!

I love these photos of this beautiful young lady. It was a perfect day to snap some shots and work out my new lens.

THE funniest photo of 2010! The facial expression says it all!

A rare shot of the boys together.

So... before your computer crashes with an excess of photos, I will stop! Thanks for stopping by. Pop back tomorrow for the next installment!

Loves xxx

The Christmas aftermath!

Hi all

Hope everyone had a fab christmas!  The Beach household certainly did. Yesterday was spent catching up on sleep and today everyone is far more chilled!

 Like a lot of the country we were so lucky to still have snow on the ground at christmas. In fact we still had seven inches so it really felt like a winter wonderland!

A few snaps I took last week playing in the snow in the park. No my mum isn't really that tall-she likes to think she is though!

I have a lot to catch up on this past week! last monday we visited are local national trust house which is decorated for Christmas. This year there were these beautiful reindeer in the grounds.

During last week we also took the obligatory photo of the children at christmas! this year including the disgruntled cat! ha ha!

The other cat meanwhile was getting in the festive spirit and helping himself to egg and soldiers!

Bless him!

The snow persisted right up to christmas day and the littlest brother had great fun pulling these off the guttering! 

So Christmas eve dawned and we all stayed up till midnight to troop off to church in the snow for midnight mass. It was a lovely service, however the boys got rather hyper being up so late! It was an early start on christmas day at 7.00am! And yep I was up a good half an hour before that!

Santa had done a fab job and I got lots of lovely scrapbooky things as well as some clothes and chocolate! Santa has also added to by scrapbook book collection, so some more eye candy to look at!

Each year I try and make something for the table and this year everyone had their initial at their place

It was a lovely christmas lunch complete with make your own truffles!

My favourite present this year was this baby! It is incredible and I have already used up two rolls of film! Its a fisheye lomo camera so I can't wait to see what the results are like! The middle brother got a guitar and as he is somewhat of a musical genius has been serenading us having learnt in what two hours! Jealous much!

The littlest got what he has wanted for a very long time... I will just leave you with his adorable expression!

So a very happy Christmas over here! Back to revision now.. booh shucks! Hope everyone had a wonderful peaceful christmas!

Thanks for stopping by! Loves xxxx

Guest Post!

Hi all! Today I would like to welcome the lovely Jo to my blog! Her post is fab so have a good read! Here are a few random facts about Jo, that you may or may not know!

The midwives had decorated her cot for Christmas baby but she came on Xmas eve,

she has been in ''Hello'' magazine,

She has sung in The Purcell Rooms on the South Bank,

She has stood inside the head of the Statue of Liberty,

Her favourite Christmas song is ''Fairytale of New York'' by Kirsty Maccoll and The Pogues
 
So....Over to Jo!!!
 

Hello bloggers and welcome to a new day and a small event between myself and the wonderful Abi. We are doing guest posts on each other's blogs today. Mine is about some of the knitting I have been doing for Christmas.

So without further ado, here are 2 of my knitting projects. They are not 100% completed. I decided that as part of my Xmas fun I would make some Christmas stockings for the mother and the dad. I first saw a stocking on Rachel B's blog which was gorgeous and then happened to picked up this magazine Woman's Weekly which had this beautiful stocking in it.

For this stocking, you knit like any traditional piece of knitting with 2 needles. I used 2 shades of wool - red and ecru - and it has actually come out much bigger than I thought it would. It was a lovely simple knit one row and purl one row pattern with some work with weaving in another colour and design. I just need to sew this one up. This one is for dad.

The second stocking is for the mother and I searched on Ravelry for a more feminine design. I found this one called Hearts and downloaded the pattern. Now this one gave me more of a challenge as I have never knitted using double ended needles and certainly never with 4!!!! So off I went to Youtube to search out some lessons and I actually found alot of helpful stuff. It took me a few attempts to get going without dropping the stitches and twisting everything around, but once I got the hang of  it I was away. The second thing I had to get sorted was wrapping and turning stitches, again nothing I'd heard of before. This turned out to be so simple anyone could do it, you just work the number of stitches, bring the wool to the front, slip ur stitch, bring the wool to the back and turn, then repeat the process. I am really proud of this sock, it is NOT perfect at all b ut I so glad I gave it a go.

Now all I need to do is do the finishing touches and put in the Santa presents.

Finally I have to complete my friend's Lucy Bag, which is a crochet design. I just have to complete the handle and do the bag edging design.


Love Jo Jo xxxxx

"Thank you I made it" Christmas blog hop.

Hi
Isn't it lovely when someone compliments you on something?  It is even better when you can reply "Thank you I made it." There is such a sense of accomplishment-well there certainly is for me!

In light of all things crafty, spreading the love and christmas I would love you to come and join in my blog hop. Each year I make something Crafty to put on the table on christmas day. Last year I made these. I realised this year there is a wealth of crafty loveliness on the web and that it would be wonderful to share it so..

If you want to join in the instructions are simple.

1. Post either a link to a christmas craft tutorial or make up your own. It doesn't have to be long, can literally be just a link to another site.
2. Publish it on Wedneday 22nd December at 11.00am GMT (that might mean an autopost for some!)
3. Link to the next person on the list.

If you like the look of this can you email me at abigail(dot)beach(at)hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk by Monday. Then I can email the list so you know who to link to!

I think it will be such a nice time to share christmas spirit and some last minute crafty tips. I know it is near christmas day and people are busy but it needn't be a long post at all!

Thanks for stopping by! So excited by this!

Loves xxxxx

Christmas touches

Happy Thursday!

Unless you have been away for a long period of time, you won't understand how incredible it is to wake up in your own bed with the smell of fresh laundry and the cat calling at the door. It is amazing! Darling brother has only just woken up in time for lunch! We like our beds over here! ha ha!

The other lovely thing about coming home is noticing the little changes. This is the best time to come back as the house is decorated for christmas! it looks so warm and friendly so I thought I would try and capture a bit of this.

Isn't the poinsettia huge! Its like a hedge! Please stop back tomorrow as I am posting about something exciting and christmassy!

Loves xxxxxx

And it looks like the end of term...

One more morning, then home, and boy are we ready for it!

Picture take at 4.00pm today. Someone was a little bit sleepy!

A proper post will come within the next few days! Christmas hols! woooh hoo!

Loves xxxxxxxxx

Unblocked

Hi!

After weeks of weedling, hoping and scheming, my blog is now unblocked! I didn't realise how much I really loved posting until I couldn't. Each day I would think...oh I;ll post this or "I'll put that picture on my blog" And the irony is that I am home for christmas holidays on Wednesday so a post would be coming soon!

It is lovely to be back though. I have so much I want to say, firstly its nearly christmas!! wahhhhh! I have a really exciting crafting post about christmas coming up soon so please check by!

Secondly, whilst I took a break I had some fantastic news...you ready? I got an offer from Durham!! (And all four of my other choices! hope that doesn't sound vain!) I am so chuffed and now I really have something to work towards. They are asking for AAB so I am hoping that with lots of work that is within my reach!

 School has been hectic and busy as usual. Lots of coursework and prep, inspection, typical boarding school shinanigins and plenty of laughs. It would be very easy to go on and on about everything I could have posted the last few weeks but one it would be boring and two, i have far too much planned for the next few weeks already. So I will leave with a few pictures that sum up whilst I was away...

So about two weeks ago, the weather was still in Autumn and I ran around taking pictures like this!

 Do you like the new header? The other weekend I headed out on a walk. The weather was so crisp and cold and there was a lovely fog. I love how the picture turned out. So dreamy. (Oh and yes there is a theme going here!)

We swiftly moved into winter within a few days. The snow came thick and fast and for a few days we had a lovely covering. Not enough for school to be off but definitely enough to play in! Doesn't the view look incredible?

And then...best of all we had hawefrost (I think thats what its called) It was amazing. weird and spiky but beautiful. A thick fog sat around all day but all the photographers in school were out manically trying to take as many pictures as they could!

This is my favourite picture. It was an effort to try and find the perfect red berry but its so christmassy!

I am thankful that I took so many pictures the last few weeks. Thank you for stopping by and coming back after so long away!

Loves xxxx