Tag Tuesday Challenge and a quick au revoir

Yikes! We made a last minute decision this afternoon to go to our cottage in France tonight. The weather here in our part of the UK is so crappy at the moment, we can't work on the outside of the house like we had planned, so we might as well go to the cottage now rather than in a couple of weeks' time. This meant, however, that I have been rushing around like a loony, getting everything ready. You know, packing, last minute shopping, emails to be sent, letters to be written, people to be informed, etc etc.

I didn't want to go without completing the Tag Tuesday challenge though, so I made the tag with the "Valentines" theme this evening. I had to photograph it with a flash, and I really dislike that so much, the camera flash is so harsh. So the photos are pretty rubbish. Couldn't even decide what sort of background to use, so I am giving you 3 to look at, lol. And that is about it. I still have to get a little bit of info together for some geocaching in France, lolol. Purely because we have some trackables which need moving on. Not because we are a wee bit keen, lol.

As you know, we don't have internet access at the cottage, so I will be out of touch for a week and a bit ( back next Sunday ). I'll try and catch up with your blogs as soon as I get back to England.

Anyhoo, here is the Tag Tuesday Challenge tag, theme " Valentines " -




Au revoir, toodlepip, and have a lovely time, doing whatever you like doing best xxx

Every Inchie Monday on Tuesday, late again, lol

This week's inchie challenge on Every Inchie Monday really was quite a challenge, the word we had to interprete was "maudlin". Hmmm. Ok, I knew the meaning of the word, but I just couldn't think of how to combine that with my usual vintage/victorian style.

I knew the kind of image I wanted. I knew the words I wanted to use. I also knew that I didn't have anything remotely like the image I needed on my computer. Enter one loudly complaining son, a beer mug and a trigger happy, camera toting mum, lol. It took ages to get the kind of photo I needed, because we both burst out laughing every couple of seconds. In the end it was the very last photo I took which turned out to be THE one. Because by then he was thoroughly fed up. I messed about with it a bit in Photoshop, and there you have it, completely different to my usual style,

My Maudlin Inchie -


I ought to be doing my Tag Tuesday challenge as well, but, guess what? We have been geocaching again today. It was a beautiful morning for a change. DH always takes the dogs for a walk in the Firehills, and as there were a few caches listed in the Firehills, DS3 and I decided to accompany him on his walk.

The first cache we looked for was right in the woods. The dogs were no help at all, but were very intrigued when they saw DS3 and myself hunting around through leaf mould and digging under fallen ivy covered trees, lol.


Ahem, there were so many fallen trees close to the co-ordinates, we tried quite a few before we found the right one. This was the cache with little swaps, hidden under the fallen tree -


See that Guinness beer mat in the middle? I swapped that one out. I thought it was a nice image and could well be used in a collage...... Crafting is always on my mind, lol.

Cache found, we then caught up with DH and the doggies, and did the usual round with them -



Two nicely tired out doggies were then taken home by DH, and DS3 and I then started looking for another cache. It was a thoroughly lovely womble -


Sitting on one of the clues to lead us to the cache -


The sun was so bright, it created really interesting silhouettes -


Lovely way to spend a few hours with mother nature.

My DS3 had worked up such an appetite, we decided to have a proper English Fry Up when we got home. He demolished all this -


Don't worry, we only have this once in a blue moon, maybe once or twice a year. But we really fancied it today. Must have been due to the bracing sea winds.

And my Tag Tuesday challenge tag? Well, that will be a Wednesday one, again, lol.

Toodlepip xxx

Etsy Cottage Style Colour Party! BLUE

A brand new blogging get-together for 2011! If you would like to find out a little bit more about it, you can check it out HERE or click on the pic in my sidebar.

This month's colour is blue. Hmmm. I don't have a lot of blue in our Victorian house here in England, but in our cottage in France, I have a few things! In the little blue bedroom, for example -

A lovely old dark blue trunk, with a little display of blue glass, the sweetest little blue and white teddy, and a matching photo album, and two framed prints -


A gorgeous antique Durham quilt on the bed -


A blue Lloyd Loom chair, which I love -


and a vintage granny square blanket, which goes ever so well with the Lloyd loom chair. Bought years and countries apart, lol, but they are a happy marriage -


A very vintage French game -


Vintage French tin -


A fabulous old wash basin, which I fill with pink or red geraniums in the summer -


A blue and grey felted bead necklage -


Vintage French house numbers, such a gorgeous rich blue and soooo collectable, I had a hard time haggling for these at a vide greniers -


And last but not least, another gorgeous blue glass vase, I adore that colour -


Bit of an eclectic mix, lol. I didn't have time to search through our house here in England for the few blue things I might have, so I chose to show pictures of blues in the cottage in France.

Toodlepip xxx

So much fresh air!

I mentioned a few days ago that my DS3 got me into geocaching. I am so glad he did, all that fresh sea air is doing me a world of good. We have been doing this for a week now, not every day, and not many caches ( we are up to 37 ), and it has been quite invigorating and at times rather bracing. Icy cold sea winds, drizzle, occasionally some very welcome sunshine......... we didn't really care what the weather was like. I did say that I would show you some pics of our outings, but when I looked at the pics I took, I realised that I didn't take anywhere near as many as I thought I had. LOL, guess the excitement of the hunt was just too much for me, I forgot all about photos.

I do have a few though, and I promise, one of these days I will take a womble through the beautiful Old Town of Hastings and take some proper pics without any distractions.

The great think about geocaching is seeing things in and about your town which you have never seen before or haven't really taken any notice of. For example, there is a whole series of church caches. We have only done 1 so far, but as I love church architecture, I am sure there will be more. This was it -


On one search for a cache in the Old Town, we came across these little mosaics on old walls, which I had never seen before -



These steps in the Old Town are steep!!! Seen from near the top -


and looking up from the bottom -


I don't have a very good head for heights, I freak out on a stepladder, so these steps were a challenge. I hung on to the rails for dear life, lol.

These fabulous sea creatures also live in the Old Town -

Octopus -

Seahorse -

Conger eel -

I loved this faded and peeling advertisement on a house wall, in a different part of the Old Town. This is the area where the television series "Foyle's War" was filmed. I must go back there and take some more photos, that area is so pretty.


This was one of our failures, we spent ages searching for a cache here right on the sea front, under the cliffs, but it looks like this cache has been lost, possibly under rock falls -


The seagulls are happy though, lol -


Away from the Old Town, along Hastings seafront, another cache location. And, you can see our favourite Oriental Buffet Restaurant, " Cosmo" in the distance. You probably remember that I have mentioned once or twice that I had to bribe Nick with lunch at Cosmo for helping me out with something or other.


We got quite carried away one day and it got dark much quicker than we thought it would. We were high above Hastings and the sky above the sea looked too interesting to be ignored -


A few photos taken in Alexandra Park ( seems quite a few caches are located here ). The Park really is quite lovely and stretches for miles right through the town -


All the animals in it are so tame -





This is a small cache we found in another leisure area, White Rock Gardens, silly little things, but so much fun -


Nick, about to sign the log book -


Today we had a couple of multi caches on our to-do list. That means you have to find a number of small caches with clues and part co-ordinates, in order to find the Bonus Cache at the end. We didn't have a very good start, it was a horrendously muddy location -


Interesting mushrooms along the way though -


But FIVE caches later, we had a very good end, we found the big Bonus Cache, woohooooooo! We spent a very happy few minutes looking through a whole bunch of little treasures before deciding which ones we should swap. Just look at the size of that cache -


Ok, and now prepare yourself for a rare pic of me, yikes. NO make up, wet, very windswept, muddy, frozen, but with the biggest grin on my face, holding that huge Bonus Cache in the Firehills, Hastings cliff top country park -


Aaahhh, happy end to the day.

Oh, see how big that cache is? And you saw the somewhat smaller earlier with the goodies in it? Right, compare those to this one, a nano pod, and then try and imagine how difficult it is to find one of those -


We found a few of them, with either clues for a bonus cache or the tinest little logs. Sweet.

Thats it, all that fresh air has wiped me out, I can feel an early night coming on. Back to crafting tomorrow, we are having a geocaching free day.

Toodlepip xxx