Ground open up and swallow me PLEASE moment

I knew today was going to be bad/evenful. I was very naughty and made a cheeky remark to Mr Patience when I got in the car. Oh dear what a mistake...I was punished good and proper lol ...He took me out of my comfort zone today to the congested city...it really took all my concentration and energy away and I have learned something...do not try and engage in conversation when you are doing something else that is mentally demanding. Why you ask? Well the reason is that somehow the concentration it takes means that normal things like speaking in coherent sentences goes right out of the window. I was trying to explain that I had a conversation with my family the night before in which I pointed out that Mr Patience was very good in not letting me off of things, or getting away with stuff. Unfortunately I got it all mixed up and announced to him that it was good that he wouldn't let me "get off" in his lessons, realising what I said I tried to amend it only to say he was good at "stopping me getting off" by which time I had completely lost all sense of the English language and couldn't even hope to redeem myself by explaining what I really meant. That has to be one of my most cringe worthy moments EVER! It's only rival is the "underwear/ blackboard incident" at college... which I may share with you one day...if I am brave or stupid enough...I still cringe now even though it was over 20 years ago.

Embarrassement aside, some twit decided to walk in front of the car on the way home, I swerved to avoid him which was not good ( not that I mean I should have hit him lol ), but it was better than an emergency stop as the car behind was travelling right up our boot!

Oh what fun this driving lark is...I will certainly remember my lessons forever, sadly I think my instructor might remember me, but for all the wrong reasons!!!!

Doxie who is cringing still ( truly! )

Things NOT to do indoors

Don't play tennis...things get broken...ooops

Thankfully it was just a HIDEOUS ornament/souvenir somebody had brought me back from Paris...The crashing sound it made when it hit the ground, kind of brought us back to reality.Oh well at least my DS can't say his Mum was never any fun ( ahem!)

Doxie trying to remember she is a responsible adult!


Ooooh just realised it was Friday 13th...should have brought a lottery ticket, my Dad won £2000 on Friday 13th and that was in the days when 2 grand was a lot of money! Too late now, ho hum.

A new twist on the pennant idea

There is always somebody out there that puts an individual twist on a well run idea and this is no exception, check out this link for a beautiful take on the pennant. I love the recycling idea , the one colour theme and best of all the idea of gathering them slightly...great look!

Doxie

We're the new kids in the class again

I am quite blessed by the fact that Mr Doxie and I share many interests. One of these is photography...He is streets ahead of me in knowledge, understanding and technique but that is okay, at least he can explain things to me when it all goes pear shaped, and when we go out to take pics I can compare...I find I learn much just from the differences in our individual "take" on the same subject...That said, there are times when you'd never believe we were in the same location when I look at what we each chose to photograph. I have noticed he tends to go for landscapes, whereas I tend to go for individual features...He records the big picture, I record the elements within it! :o)

Life does tend to get in the way of leisure time and lately we found that we were indulging in our hobby less and less...we really needed "a kick up the butt" ( Mr Doxie's phrasing on the situation ) Well I think we have found the solution...we have done a trawl of the local clubs and found a super little band of fellow snappers. The folk are friendly, willing to share their knowledge and have a dynamic attitude in embracing modern techniques. We have been to this one 3 times and each week we find ourselves more inspired, it's just the ticket!

last night there was a lecture on colour management. This is something that I personally had not even dipped my toe into yet, however now I realise if I am to enter into competitions etc it is an absolute necessity as there are fairly strict rules about how you present your images. I probably only understood about half of what the speaker said so I think I need to do a little homework! It's like being back at school...I think this will be a challenge but as long as I have fun along the way I don't mind. :o)

The group go out on joint outings in the Summer...it'll be so nice to be in the company of people who understand WHY you just have to stop and take a picture of an interesting stone, tree, or cloud formation! At times my non-photographer friends look at me as if I am slightly deranged!...or should I say more deranged than usual, so this will be very fulfilling I am sure.

I guess what we are learning is...Why go it alone, when there are ooddles of others out there with the same passions?...Sharing with others really does make life more interesting. :o)

Are you going it alone with your hobbies, go on try a club. From what we have experienced, most let you go a couple of times before they ask you to sign up and part with any money, so if you don't like it the only thing you have lost is a few hours of your time. :o)

Doxie

Today's driving lesson

I had my lesson a little earlier today. Even though it is November it is very hot sat in the car...I must remember NOT to apply my fake tan the day before driving because even with 3 baths I can still smell it when I sit in a confined environment such as the car, and when it is hot, well YICK!...I could go for the pale and interesting look...I can do the pale but I'm not so sure I can carry off the interesting!

We did some bay parking in a fairly busy car park...got it right second time around. We spent most of the time driving around the local area, it is incredible how you can eat up 2 hours of driving going very little distance.

I did a parallel park which I ruined as I was looking through the wrong window...I was following my routine for reversing around a corner by mistake...oops! Oh well I won't beat myself up over it.

I feel I am getting more confident on the roundabouts which pleases me as they held such terror before. I have lately tried to analyse my fears with the idea that if I can find the root cause I can "get over it". My brother had a rather horrific accident on a roundabout on his motorbike many years ago, and I think this has stuck in my mind unbeknown to me until now when I really have forced myself to think about it. I was told I need to start looking in my mirrors earlier when overtaking parked cars etc, I hope I read this to remind myself before my next lesson!

Doxie who I think is evolving :o/

welcome

Welcome to my new followers Cantora Lauriete and RM. Lovely to have you here...I hope you enjoy what you find and stick around.

Doxie ( delighted to know that someone actually reads this lol! )

Halloween

A few weeks ago Mr Doxie got sweet talked around by the little horrors darlings who live locally to agreeing that they could come and knock on our door at Halloween. I never encourage this personally ( I look upon it as begging ) but Mr Doxie is a bit of an old softie and in this case he knew the kiddies and in their defence,they did ask so I guess we can let him off this once for saying yes... Of course this meant that we had to go out especially one night to buy in supplies of tooth rotting delicious candy to dish out to them on Halloween night.

Now somehow I had been dragged into this as I was told that apparently if you are going to do it at all, you have to do it properly!...cue lots of frantic sewing to make up suitable bags ( complete with appliqued bats on of course! )to put the candy in.

Cue the day in question...We had a very pleasant day on 31st October visiting a local abbey. I had not been out with the camera for some time, so thought wandering around the abbey grounds looking for something with the theme of Halloween would be a good way to get back into the swing of it.

It is hard to think of Halloween and not think of scary or morbid but hopefully my pictures fit the bill okay. I came across a pet cemetery...it was quite moving to think that people so many years ago were just as "animal nuts" as us today, well you'd have to be, to have little tombstones made up especially...somehow I think they wouldn't have been using a power tool to make these up...so much love/labour would have been involved, if not expense.BTW there were much older graves than this, but it was rather difficult to read the names.

...for the day of the dead I give you Grip, Mike and Barney's final resting places...I'm sure they were much loved pets for someone to have gone to all the trouble of making them a beautiful place to rest in. Unfortunately I forgot my monopod ( groan ) so the pics of the little building that was built in their honor are not as clear as I would like, other wise I would have posted them too. I have a shakey hand these days, must be all the gin!








I took this silhouette of the tree and the building with the idea of placing a rook on the end of the branch but alas it has been a busy 24 hours since and I have not had time to do this...perhaps by next halloween I will have got around to it...I have the pic of the rook in question that I took a few months ago with this kind of project in mind, but hey ho other things take priority don't they?

I also found some interesting lamps...I thought I'd try my hand at creating two looks, menancing and friendly...Below is the lamp as was pretty much, just normal digital dark room processing, no fancy stuff...It is not very atmospheric really isn't it? You will have seen my attempts at my little experiment at the top of the post...I focused ( excuse the pun ) on the top of the lamps...I am not so sure now whether the first shot really is friendly, but it sure as heck isn't as grim or menancing as the other two. I don't know if you see what I see what I see in it.

Anyway, on with the story of Halloween...We rushed back, which meant that Sharp End sacrificed his walk at the local wildlife reserve to make sure we got back in time for the little darlings that would be calling ( don't worry Sharp End had a good sniff and mung around in some woods near the Abbey earlier in the day )...and yes you guessed the delightful little cherubs didn't turn up! I am now stuck with a bag full of sugary empty calories that I would never go near in a million years...and I am talking a BIG bag...oh well, at least I had some banal televison to placate me in the form of the X Factor...that with a prawn curry and a bottle of red meant I had almost forgiven them by the time I went to bed...anyone want some candy?

Doxie

Going back to my VERY old ways.

Are you a girlie dear reader? Or should I ask are you a person who wears makeup? If so what kind of makeup wearer are you and where do you keep it all?

Are you terribly disciplined and only have one of everything, discarding items after 6 months of opening as the manufacturers would have us believe we should do... or are your cupboards bursting full of potions and powders ...are you due to creep in the back door of some dark building to attend a secret meeting where you will stand up in a room of strangers and and say "Hello my name is.....and I'm a makeup addict? I think I am the latter only I am out in the open...I am Doxie, I love makeup, always have, always will and the only way you could take it away from me would be to prise it from my cold clammy hands.

....And so we come to the question of storage. I have a million and one...no wait...make that a zillion and one makeup bags...they are all lovely quality pretty girlie style ones ( if I could get more adjectives in I would, because they really are quite quite wonderful )... mainly having arrived in my possession through the generosity of lovely MIL who often pampers me with cosmetics for Christmas and other gift giving occasions. Like all makeup addicts my collection has grown to obscene proportions AND this is after I purged a carrier bag full! It pains me to say it but I put such a lot straight in the bin...I can't think of anyone that would want opened make-up...I have a shoe box full sorted ready for something else but I will write about that in another post.

I did think a while ago I would use one bag for foundations, another for mascaras and so on....but that means that every time I go to make up I need to sort through some crazy number of bags and that just ain't practical is it girls?

Something I did hit on which seems to be working out is using my "Hello Kitty" smoothie cup for eyeliners...that seems to be practical... but as for the rest, well I am running out of room and ideas for storage... and it really doesn't look that nice to have lots of bags around no matter how pretty they are.

Well that was the mascara curdling situation yesterday and this is the brighter today. I've had this light bulb moment...or perhaps you could call it a flashback! I was thinking... when I was a teen I used to keep all my makeup in a fishing tackle box. No don't worry it was new, no essence du Mackerel lurking in any corners...I'm sure it was a purchase from Argos MANY years ago, the cantilever type...It was perfectly practical... lots of little compartments in the top trays and plenty of rummaging room in the main compartment below. When did I ever stop using it I wonder...not only is a tackle box roomy and easy to organise it is also very easy to clean, the lid means you can keep the dust out and they have a handle to cart them around...Never mind fancy purpose made makeup boxes with bling exteriors and strangely impractical interiors that stain, what ya need is a good sturdy fishing box...open it out and "voila" you have practically everything in view in one place...close it up stuff it in the bottom of the wardrobe, job done... Flat surfaces clear, time saved not searching all over for the right lipstick and the comforter on the bed stays cleaner for longer because when you empty out a makeup bag on it no matter how hard you try something always escapes be it powder or liquid.

Seems that somehow we do know best when we are young. Back in with the plain and boring....it's what's inside that counts ....or it's not where you store it, it's what you do with it!

Doxie the practical ( who makes no apologies for being a total out and out girlie )