COLD

HSMSHS has now moved to a new Facebook group which means I am more likely to join in as I spend a fair amount of time there!

Taken at Nantcol Waterfalls - his face says it all!

Today Pete goes to the hospital for a heart scan to see if there is any reason that he ended up in A&E with a dodgy ticker a couple of weeks back. Fingers crossed that they don't find anything.

RED TAMIFLU

I seem to be feeling a little better today not 100% but not as awful as I have over the last few days. My appetite is not back to normal but at least I can now eat a small amount. and the headache has not gone completely but is definitely not as bad. I'm not complaining though as I have lost 7lbs since last weekend. Pete came home yesterday and said he had been listening to the radio and thought we had Swine Flu. This is something that hadn't crossed our minds at all until last night so we went and did a symptom checker which told us to phone the GP. As it turns out there is a good chance we have Swine Flu but seeing as they don't test you now we will never know for sure. I always thought that you got a runny nose etc with flu but apparently not. My temperature, chills, sweats, nausea, lack of appetite, fatigue, aches, pains and severe headache are all major symptoms. The Doctor said that Pete had to go on to Tamifu straight away as he is 2 of the high risk catagories and it is "better to be safe than sorry". and that there are lots and lots of cases of it in our town.

That only leaves one thing which is my photo for today's HSMSHS my beautiful RED day lily.

2 DRY CRACKERS AND HALF A PACKET OF QUAVERS.......

..... is all I have had to eat over the last 48 hours so not really up to doing a long blog today. I don't think the 48 hour long (so far) headache is helping much either as I can only look at the computer screen for about 5 minutes at a time.



so there you have it my pictures for HSMSHS for yesterday and today.
x

Fun and bugs

I'm sitting here with both of the boys off school with some sort of stomach upset, bug type thing. Not fun at all. So while they wallow in self pity in the Living Room I have been playing with Photoshop, stopping every so often to throw the boys a sympathetic comment or bottle of lucozade.

I have been scanning a lot of pictures lately and have been playing with some old family photos, removing scratches, stains, creases etc. I'm rather pleased with the results.

My Grandma - Violet in about 1927ish

My Great Grandfather Alexander Robert Farrow in India

Over the weekend I decided that my empty chimney breast needed a little bit of something to liven it up so went and bought myself a load of black frames to arrange into a collage. I have 4 pictures being printed in Asda as I write this - can't wait to pick them up. This is one of them. I will show the whole collage when it has been completed - don't hold your breath though it could take me years!

Seeing as I am here anyway I may as well have a go with HSMSHS so here are mine for yesterday and today.

I took this one at about 6.30 this morning while the sky was still blue

and this one is being printed for my wall

Look at me!

Posting 2 days on the trot there must be something wrong. It might have something to do with it being too hot to do anything else - time will tell.

I have managed to get outside with the camera in the last couple of days and play around with some macro shots. Including this little "beauty" for todays's prompt at HSMSHS a Wild Orchid that we spotted whilst walking the dogs.


I'm off now to go and do some more pratting about with photos.

Back for Good ????

I have been meaning to get back into blogging for a while now but never seemed to get around to it. Yesterday I started a new Flickr account and deleted my old one which meant that all my pictures on here have now disappeared so that means I have to come back here and sort it all out. While I am doing that I may as well blog too!

Today's word over at HSMSHS is Forbid and I couldn't resist sharing this picture that we took in Oman in Febuary - it made us laugh. Click the picture to see it larger.

Birthday Bonanza

Last weekend to celebrate my 39th birthday, Pete and I dumped the kids and took ourselves off up to York. This little break away nearly broke the bank as the room cost us £9 a night, how good is that!!

On Saturday we got up real early so that we could get into York while it was still empty to take some photographs in the wonderful sunlight. This is after I got breakfast in bed with it being my birthday which involved Pete throwing a banana at me from the other side of the hotel room - who says romance is dead?

We entered the city through here



with these guys looking down on us


We strolled around the nice and empty walls


to look at views like this


we then dropped down into the city centre

took a walk down the very empty "Shambles"


a visit to the castle


a phone call from my boys to wish me Happy Birthday



luckily Pete took this shot of me pointing at something I was telling Matt about on the phone which is my shot for today's prompt over at HSMSHS


and last but not least we went shopping where Pete got me this


which contained this

CROWD CONTROL

Last weekend we moved the doggy area to the back of the garden and as soon as we put the picket fence up Bilbo the border collie decided that he could jump it. For 5 years that dog has stayed put behind the exact same fence but now he decides he can get over it! Resulting in me spending the weekend painting lots of trellis so that it could be used to put him off jumping the fence anymore. A very tedious job but very handy for today's prompt of "paint" over at HSMSHS

The dogs are allowed in the rest of the garden when we are out there with them but left on their own they find their own amusement in the form of digging up my plants and swimming in the pond with the tadpoles and newts. This is the number one culprit don't be fooled by those sweet eyes he is trouble on legs and stupid with it.

Two plants that benefit with the dogs not digging are my 'tatoes which are growing very nicely and have loved all the sunshine

and my beautiful budding blueberries.

BRIDGE 32

Just a quick one from me today as I have loads to do and I am in work at 2pm so I can only hang around here long enough to do today's prompt at HSMSHS.

To divide, wound or detach with an edged instrument.

Taken on the canal last week. We had to go through a lot of cuts like this one. We spent a night in a cut under a haunted bridge we never have found out why a screaming monkey would haunt a canal bridge in the Midlands???

NO APOLOGY NECESSARY

It's been a while but I'm not sorry about it, I just didn't feel like it.

I'll just do a quick catch up with a couple of photos. On Mother's Day we went to Llandudno where we did this...

.... that's right we went all that way to look stupid at the top of the Great Orme.

Kyle had a birthday which turned him into a dreaded teenager, no photos of this I am afraid as for some reason I gave the camera to Pete and lets just say the delete button had to be pressed more than once.

Last week we spent the week ships ahoy on the four counties ring with 101 locks on a not so leisurely holiday.

Day number one about an hour after setting off while everyone was still walking and reasonably awake.

Towards the end of the week even I was brave enough to drive. Oooo aarrrr me hearties.

In another attempt to keep up with my blogging and photography here are my HSMSHS pictures for the last 2 days.

Taken at Coney Island Aquarium last year and I promise the only editing I did was to unsharpen it a little bit.

Taken in Oman in Feb

I know I haven't taken them today but at least I have managed to edit 2 pictures out of my HUGE to edit file.

I now consider myself caught up, even if it is very brief, so tomorrow I will hopefully start afresh and as I mean to go on.

A DAY AT THE DRINK

Today's word over at HSMSHS is "drink" which is perfect for the next instalment of my holiday pictures as it is the day we spent at Sefeer Beach.

Feb 16th 2009

I couldn't believe it when we got to the beach and saw this it couldn't have been more perfect. We had gorgeous blue skies, blue sea and a stunning beach.

For the boys we had rock pools to investigate.

This little guy made Pete jump out of his skin and squeal like a girl.

I spotted this dead fish when we were beach combing.


and then accidentally kicked this poor little puffer fish as I was walking past. I say little but he was rather on the large size as you can see by my footprint below him.


After a lot or searching we eventually found an empty spot to set up ready for our picnic


ready for the locals to drop by for a spot of lunch.


Whilst sitting we saw this.

After lunch it was time for a little walk along the coast where all the shells seemed to move.


Just to show that we did put him back and no wildlife was harmed in the making of this blog


The beach was littered with coral.


We clambered over some rocks at the far end of the beach and came across this


The boys did a lot of this


and Pete did a lot of pebble searching


and throwing. I will add here that it was hot he just doesn't strip off due to the fact he burns easily and with the immuno-suppressants he is on he has to be extra, extra careful in the sun.


These are the only other people we saw all day

The journey home was equally as spectacular

A couple of days later I read the local paper and there was an article in it about Sefeer Beach. Unfortunately it has been earmarked for development and in the very near future 4 hotels, a golf course, some residential flats and many other things will be springing up along that beautiful beach it really is a crime.

It went on to say that they need to get it right unlike Dubai. Apparently Dubai has grown so quickly that the infrastructure is not sufficient. Sewerage over there is collected and transported to the sewerage works via tankers. Oman has green, yellow and blue tankers for fresh water, used water and sewerage. In Dubai the amount of sewerage has grown but not the works so the tanker drivers, instead of queueing in large queues, have been piping it out to sea to save time. Consiquently the waters around Dubai are now contaminated and will remain so for many, many months to come. They are now looking in to starting a flag scheme for their beaches similar to the one we have over here.