new camera

Happy Boxing Day :-)

We all went a lovely boxing day walk, Andy my gorgeous two sons that are staying for Christmas and Rannoch and Sparky.
We have a mini Lochan with stunning views surrounded by woods.
I got a lovely new camera from Andy for a combined xmas and birthday present
So you will all be bombarded with pictures galore in my blogs from now on.

Catch up

Gosh life has been really busy lately.

Organising farm fun days in one of my jobs.

Getting deliveries of windows, doors and lights for the cottage.

Preparing for visitors Andy's mum, friends and our respective kids.

Blogging has taken a back seat.

So if you haven't noticed I am very much into collage photo's at the moment.

I find its a great way not to bore you all to death !

Let you catch up on what's going on

My garden still needs lots of work but its coming together slowly

The Gravel path has made all the difference.

The fully glazed new back doors let the light flood in

 

Lots more pics to follow soon.

It's surreal living in the highlands and those of you that do will know all about

Highland time.......things happen when they happen and not before

I work in the nearest town about a 30 min drive away, its a pretty amazing

drive to work. The road is coastal and I have a sea loch at the side of me the

whole journey, with mountains, lighthouses etc. en route.

There is only one way for me to get to work, the road network in the highlands

is somewhat limited. So I drove to work yesterday and then due to the road being closed

for 9 hours. It meant a ride home in the dark on a very fast rhib.

Anyway enough of my chatter there is a huge pile of ironing and a glass of chilled rose

with my name on :-)

Toodles for now Annie

and breathe.....

Not had chance to post on here for a while, or catch up reading all your great blogs.
Work has been really stressful, writing 2 funding bids with not enough hours in the day.
Then doing a house up when there's time too.
So met my second deadline Monday lunchtime :-)

After work the sun was glistening on the sea and the warmth was finally in the air
Andy suggested a walk to one of the locals pubs for a relaxing drink here
So sipping a chilled glass of rose in the sun on the jetty we relaxed ..........

Then a lovely walk home.

 

cheerio Sparky .....

Sparky journeyed south today.
He has relocated, he has gone to live back with my son.
This is a pic of him in my son's car .... heading home.




I have grown to really love this little man and he has lived up to his name.
He will be missed but will come back to visit.
He arrived back in the town he used to live in and soon began to retrace his old stomping ground

rain,hail and thunder !

Only one dog walk today so far sadly
We have had none stop rain with hail and thunder thrown in.
The rain is washing all the snow off the mountains, the stream in the garden is gushing.

Somedays all one can do is gaze out of the window and watch

 

stoke up the log burner

 

warm up some of that scrummy lamb tagine leftover from last night

 

and wait for the storm to pass

So what weather have you had this weekend ?



 

 

 

2013

Hello and " Happy New Year" to you all.

Well 2012 has truely been a year of ups and downs for me.
I am hoping 2013 has more ups than downs.

For the first time in my life there were just two of us for Christmas Day !
It was weird but nice too.
My boys and my mum then descended on us a couple of days later for a few days.

DIY ....has pretty much taken over our lives recently and a short break from it
to recharge our batteries is well overdue. We are kitchened and bathroomed out !

We did manage to get out for some lovely walks.

Dreich

Dreich (Old Scots origin)

"A combination of dull, overcast, drizzly, cold, misty and miserable weather. At least 4 of the above adjectives must apply before the weather is truly dreich."     I love the word dreich and today I can truely say we have had at least 4 adjectives. So returning home from work it's lamps on  cook a scrummy chilli con carne for tea curl up in front of the fire and sip wine thats the plan for tonight.   ........and oh before I forget our gorgeous pup now just over 5 months old passed puppy class   have a lovely weekend  :-)

He's growing.....

Brrr the weather is changing the trees and bracken are all changing colours.
The temperature has dropped and the nights are drawing in.
Up here in the highlands in summer its still light till midnight.
Now its pitch black at 8pm but the dark skies allow for great stargazing.
A grabbed my down jacket for a beach walk with the dogs
Rannoch now 4 months still has lots of growing to do.
The difference between him and Sparky is now obvious.
They had great fun playing fetch with the ball.

chilling Sunday

Andy had come back from a week away recently we have been really busy doing up our

new home, so we decided to take a whole day off.

A sunday morning sleep in till about 8.30am, we put the coffee pots on and

 had fresh coffee, scrambled eggs and smoked salmon with fresh granary bread.

 

Andy loaded up the car I prepared a picnic and we were off....

 

 

 

We did a few of the touristy things that are near us below are the

 Glenfiinnan Monument and Viaduct

 

 

The Glenfinnan Viaduct below is the one featured in the Harry Potter films.

 

 

 

There are lots of gorgeous beaches on our doorstep so we drove to one of our

favourites and we had it all to ourselves.

 

The beach is pure white sand with shells that glisten in the sun.

The sea is crystal clear.

 

 

Sparky and Rannoch ran up and down

Rannoch is now 11 weeks old he  braved the sea and actually enjoyed playing in it.

 

He also discovered he enjoys digging

 

 

 

Then we had company for a while, some big boys came to play.

 

Hmmmm Sparky and Rannoch not too sure at first.

 

 

The sun shone we ate our lunch, we paddled and splashed with the dogs.

 

 

 

we relaxed

 

We stopped at a pub on the way home and had wine and beer

on the decking. We then took our time tootling home

taking in the stunning views.

 

 We stopped at another

pub for our evening meal and finally we all got home about

10pm. We desanded ourselves in the porch.

 

Ahhh what a lovely Sunday :-)

 



bits and bobs

Hello just a random bits and bobs blog, all kinds of things been happening.

Had a bit of a health scare and spent a night in hospital not a nice experience :-(

I have been doing some housey stuff recently and will share soon

I started sea kayaking about 3 ish years ago and love it, when I first started I was hiring or borrowing sea kayaks and used my partners old one for a while, I always aspired to have one of these
now I have one on demo how lucky am I :-)
I must however confess that I had a very scary incident in November rough seas force 5-6 winds and a scary rescue that has left me battle scarred, but next week I am on a mission to get back out on the water,my partner has this line he uses in life "feel the fear and do it anyway" so going to give it a go and get back into a sport I love, living a stones throw from the shore its ideal.

On a complete tangent my son who is at university came for a visit today, so its so nice to have him around for a couple of days, with his arrival also came a dusting of snow on the mountains, so evenings curled up in front of the wood burning stove, some good chats and the odd game of scrabble will be refreshing.

Sparky is on the whole a good pup who is keen and eager to train, but sometimes the cheekiness just breaks through and he followed me to the outside bin the other evening saw a fellow canine in the distance and bolted ! leaving me running in his wake shouting him to come back.

His cheekiness on that occasion pales into insignificance compared to Fenton just had to share this with those of you that haven't seen it, boy did I empathise with the owner.

living in limbo ain't so bad

Hello, saturday morning here Andy got up at the crack of dawn to get high in the hills, perfect conditions snow on the tops, clear skies so off he has headed to do a peak,boots,crampons and ice axes
.......that leaves me with a saturday just me and the dog, so wee blog then chores then a long crisp winters day walk for me :-)
was just having a flick through pics and reflecting.We are renting at the moment and both feel in limbo, so was just reminding myself how nice limbo was, we put lots of bird feeders up and get all kinds of birds this blue tit is just one of many shots






















Oviously there are lots of highland cattle and this picture just seemed a stereotypical scottish shot.




















The house we rent comes with a very large garden, I was in my element love gardening,growing my own veg etc, so after a lot of work double digging and clearing an area, planting seeds galore, watching them grow.......along came a now very regular visitor and her young and ate the lot!



















And last but no means least ......the wee fella, Andy and I used to large dogs in our past labs,german shepards, then we aquired "Sparky" who has won our hearts over.
He is a great dog intelligent very bright and a very amusing character......he loves living in "limbo" great place for a dog a huge garden with lots of amazing sniffs...deer,mole,cattle we get them all wander through, he has the sea at the bottom of the garden and loves his daily walks along it( invariably finding something nasty and putrid to roll in )and miles and miles of hills and mountains to explore with us over the years to come.