No show snow

Despite most of the UK getting a good healthy dumping of snow, here in Lancaster all we got was a few hours of very fine fairy dust type snow, which had no chance of settling. As I'm a lover of snow I was very disappointed. Especially as my daughter in Anglesey was posting loads of photos of all the snow they had there. If it wasn't for the fact she's got a tyre on the edge of being legal, I would have been hot footing it back to Anglesey as fast as I could !!

Last week was a very busy week for birthdays !! It was Jim's oldest daughter Kate's birthday on Monday, and also my granddaughter Rheanna's, Tuesday it was Jims youngest daughter Mary's 21st birthday and my grandson Jamie's, and then Jim's on Friday !!!

Saturday night, it was off out on the town to the Kashish restaurant. I have to say I was extremely impressed with the decor in there, it was amazing. I couldn't fault the service, it was very polite and attentive. However as there was 12 of us,  we were upstairs and when the main course arrived brought up from the kitchen downstairs, Jim and his daughter Rach's biriani meal was slightly cold round the edges, personally I would have complained but they didn't want to. Everyone else's was fine though, and the nan breads ( as you'll see from the photo's ) are the biggest I've ever seen at about 18" long !! At the end of the meal, a waiter brought over what we thought were peppermints ....wrong lol. Much to our amusement the waiter poured really hot water on the "peppermints" and they swelled up to 3 times the size and turned out to be wipes to wash our hands with.

The birthday girl herself.



Front left is Jims daughter Kate, who's birthday it was on Monday.



The peppermints lol

Snow at last

Snow at last hit most of Anglesey, including our little village that seemed to keep just missing it, up till now. I know it's caused a lot of disruption in most of the UK, and a lot of people must be cursing the white stuff, but I love to see places transformed into a winter wonderland.

Other countries must laugh at us though, as the whole country seems to grind to halt because of it. On the news already this morning, there's been nothing but warnings about closed roads, airports, no trains etc etc. This bad weather has been on the cards for quite a while now, so why is this country so unprepared ?

The snow certainly didn't stop us from taking our dog out for his daily run though. We'd been told by his previous owners that he doesn't like snow, but he seems to love it when we take him out. I did notice last night, he was a walking a bit stiffly though, so I'll give him some of his painkillers for arthritus today I think. He forgets he's rather an elderly dog at times, and behaves more like a playful puppy, than the 14/15 yr old OAP he is lol. We couldn't resist taking loads of photo's of course, of this magical snowy weather and I'll put 3 on here but save the best for my new photo blog, and I'll put some more photo's on there later on today. So if you fancy a wander over there just click on the link above this post.

New Year New Blog

Between Christmas and the New Year, I set up another blog, this one will be just for the photo's my daughter and myself take when we're out on our wanderings. The link is at the top of the page, and I hope you enjoy our journey into the world of DLSR photography. We're at the very beginning of this journey, and are learning as we go, how to use this camera that has so many settings.

The New Year crept quietly in for me, unlike most people I wasn't seeing in the new year the traditional way, I spent it sat outside taking photo's of the moon lol. As it struck midnight I could hear cheers going up followed by loads of fireworks echoing off the mountains, for a split second I almost wished I was out there enjoying it with everyone. Then I remembered I'm not the party animal I used to be, that went out with mates to the pub 3 or 4 times a week, so I quickly decided I preferred doing exactly what I was doing, and not waking up with a hangover !!

We've had a few trips out since Christmas, exploring the countryside in and around Anglesey, on the hunt for snow, which seems to be very elusive in our little village this year. In fact as we were taking the dog for a walk one day, we spotted loads of cars coming towards us, with inches of snow on them !! How could that be as we were only half a mile from home and not a snow flake in sight. So us being us, we decided as the snow wouldn't come to us, we'd go to the snow lol. We decided to stop when we got as far as Newborough as we were low on petrol, and as it was New Years Day there probably wasn't going to be many garages open. As we parked up in Newborough forest, the snow started coming down thick and fast, it was brilliant. Once we'd had out fill of snow we headed off home, hoping that we might have some snow in our little village now .... no chance lol.

We also took a drive deep into the mountains another day, and on our way home we got caught in a really good snow storm. We parked up and my daughter jumped out of the car to enjoy it properly, as I had slippy soled shoes on, I decided it was safer to stay in the car, not wanting to end the day in A&E. The snow was coming down really heavily, and as we weren't sure what the weather was going to be like further on, we reluctantly decided we had to go, as the roads were very quickly getting smothered in snow. As we got further on the snow slowly stopped and the roads were clear, we were gutted, we could have stayed in the storm for longer ....never mind.

Yesterday when I got up it was -3 the coldest day yet here, and I fancied trying to capture frost on leaves etc. So off we went trying to find some frost even though it was 2 in the afternoon, surprisingly it was still pretty easy to find even though the sun had been out most of the day. Using the macro setting on my camera, I started snapping away, what I didn't account for was how badly my hands would shake with the weight of the camera, due to the arthritis in my hands at the moment. Added to that the arthritis in my back made standing longer than a minute or two very painful too. So I was on to a bit of a loser before I even started. I really will have to start carrying my tripod around with me. However my daughter came to the rescue and took some photo's of things I asked her too, including a really brilliant one of a little robin.

Great Christmas

I hope you've all had a great Christmas, I certainly did. Our Christmases tend to be slightly unconventional, as many years ago I decided I just didn't want to be one of those women that had to spend all day chained to the kitchen lol. I'm so lucky that my daughter isn't into those kind of Christmases either.

Our day started when my daughter got up and I gave her the presents I'd bought her, and within the hour we were off up into the mountains for 4 hrs. As always it was stunning up there, unfortunately it was pretty slippy in most of the places we went to, so I stayed in the car, while my daughter jumped out taking loads of photo's. It didn't take away from my pleasure of being there though. In a forest park we went to there was thick ice, which made some very loud creaking and cracking noises as we drove over it, I loved it but my daughter was glad when we managed to get away from there lol.

As we've only had one day of snow here on Anglesey, it was lovely to see snow covered mountains and frozen ponds and lakes. There is however another cold spell due to come in next week, so maybe we'll be luckier then.

Brrrrr it's turning colder

Brrrrr after all the rain, it's started to turn colder now and we've got a sprinkling of snow on the mountains now. It looks gorgeous and makes it seem more christmassy. My daughter took me for a drive up there yesterday, and I loved it. I just wish it wasn't so expensive to turn the heating on *sigh*

Sadly the firing of the kiln never happened on Monday, because Mike at the gallery had a couple of commissions to do. So it's been rescheduled for Saturday now, but I've just remembered my daughters got a friend visiting ..so I'm not sure how we'll fit it in.

I'm on a mission today to get some bits and bobs I need for my new style mosaics. That's the one good thing about tempered glass mosaics, they are much more versatile than the stained glass ones I usually make. Also not having to cut the glass gives my hands a rest, so no pain for a few days I hope.

Here's a few photo's I took yesterday in the mountains.

More mountains photo's

I thought I'd just add a few more photo's of the mountains as they're too beautiful just to be enjoyed by me. While a lot of the UK is covered with a blanket of snow, here on our little island there's not even a flake of the stuff :o( I do hope that the snow doesn't affect my trip to Scotland on Weds I will be very annoyed and that's being polite about it lol.A couple of these photo's were taken by my daughter by the way, just to give her credit where it's due lol. I've been tagged ...but I'll do that later on cheers Dave lol.