Cheeky.

Shanna

Dragon are scared of sheep!!

So today when my niece and nephew were visiting we built a castle of our blocks.

Complete with tower, princess  and block dragon.

But unfortunately the castle got attached by a big red dragon.

But it was ok because we managed to scare him off with a ….

Sheep. My nephew informed me that that is the only thing they are scared of as he ran away.

And just because it’s cute.

 

Shanna xx

Kung Fu Panda

So we took my niece and nephew to the cinema this morning to see Kung Fu Panda 2.

It was good, but since I haven’t seen the first one before I left I asked my two year niece what happened in the first one and she informed me that he ‘kicked people’.

Anyway while we were waiting for the film to start I took a dodgy photo with my camera

The fact that it is a dodgy picture isn’t why i shared it with you.  It’s the android app I used to take it.

It’s called Snapbucket, it’s a free app available here.

The app allows you to take pictures, it also allows you to share pictures on twitter or facebook but what is really cool is that it is provided by Photobucket and if you have a Photobucket account you allow it access and it will instantly upload the photos to your Photobucket account. What does that mean? Isn’t back up and no longer having to figure out how to get that picture off your phone and onto your computer as you can download it from Photobucket.

 

Here are a few other pictures I took with Snapbucket.

 

Shanna

Tennis

So we’re reaching the end of the first week of Wimbledon.  When I was a kid I used to sit and watch what I could when I wasn’t at school. Now I’m older I don’t have a lot of time to watch Wimbledon, (I will sit and watch the Grand Prix every weekend it’s on) but there is always something I remember (no not Cliff Richard entertaining while it was raining) but it was another event that was shown when it was rained out for the day. 

It was the seniors playing – namely Mansour Bahrami playing. He has a great way of making tennis fun and enjoying the game and team him up with Henri Leconte.

 

 

So here is a video I found on YouTube of some of his best moments enjoy

 

Shanna.

Which do you think is better?

 

So I’ve been catching up US version of So You Think You Can Dance. I’ve watched season 1-5. I was watching an episode where Melissa and Ade danced to This Woman’s Work and it reminded me that they had done that on the British version too. Which version do you like best?

 

Or this version by Robbie and Charlie

 

I personally prefer the Robbie and Charlie’s version. I don’t know if it is because I prefer the way it was shot or just the way it was danced. Isn’t there something so haunting about that song?

 

Shanna.

My Weekend.

So what did I get up to at the weekend? I mostly stayed in. The fire is still burning they have it under control but it’s 5000 tones of old tyres. They say it will take weeks to put out as they have to knock a whole in the wall and pull out piles of tyres and put them out one group at a time. So big black clouds are still billowing and you can still smell the rubber burning miles away.

 

So while I was in I was watching videos on YouTube and some people were discussing the books they had just bought. Some of them sounded interesting so I got them on my Kindle (don’t you just love e-book readers you can get practically any book you want with a couple of minutes no driving to the store or waiting for the mailman.)

 

So this weekend I read…

Good book, although the ending was a little weird and since I’ve never really read any Edgar Allen Poe (honestly the only work of his I’ve heard of is The Raven and that’s because they had an episode with lots of Poe’s on Gilmore Girls) i missed some of the references.

 

I also read …

Jessica finds out she is really a Romania Vampire Princess who has been engaged since childhood to Lucius. Who doesn’t love a hot vampire who comes and wants to marry you. (He was even a little less annoying than Edward Cullen in places – why do vampire guys always think they know what’s best for you?) 

So that’s what I spent my weekend doing.

 

Another book that recommended was Entwined which is a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses (never hear of it) but I think I’ll save that for next weekend. I’ll go back to reading my Harlequin/Mills and Boon Romance novels which I can usually read in less than an hour when I’ve got time around work.

 

So what have you been reading lately?

 

Shanna.

Fire Fire

(photos by my friend Gareth Jeffs)

 

So about 1pm yesterday a large warehouse which stores recycled tyres near where I work caught on fire. Thick black clouds of smoke have billowing ever since. They evacuated most of the estate, but they stopped at our road so we had to stay at work. They closed all the roads and the estate down so most of us had to find ways to walk home or walk far enough away that we could get a lift.

They still have 11 fire appliances and 50 fire-fighters there and expect it to still be on fire until at least sunday because as it is burning rubber it counts as chemical fire and they can’t put water on it (despite the fact that they closed the road so they can run giant hoses up it). 

Pretty much everyone found a way to walk into work today but by the time we left they started saying  the fumes are starting to get toxic. They can cause itty eyes, and coughs and are especially bad for anyone with lung or heart problems. I know the coughing is true as I only had to walk a quarter of the mile and I can’t stop coughing.  So I’ve told my grandparents they can’t leave the house until it’s out (even though we live two and a half miles away you can still smell it.  It doesn’t help that it keeps raining and there is a 30 mile an hour wind which the fire brigade are saying is making it worse.

Nothing where I work has been despatched for two days as the couriers we used are trapped in as all the roads leading to them are shut.

So here ends an eventful week where also on Wednesday the phone systems at work blew when the electrician tried to do a power test which meant we had to get everyone on mobile phones.

 

Next week can only get better right?

 

Shanna.

Lion

Shanna

Plodding along.

So I’m plodding along with my Finding Photo Freedom course, purging and rating my images. This weekend I decided I’d work on my photos from my vacation to Edinburgh last year (we’re going again in four weeks and I have already created a scrapbook photobook which my mum stole but never mind).  Anyway on this trip we ended up with three cameras (and by ending up with I mean my mum complained about her camera so much that I offered to pay for half of a new one for her as an early Christmas present (very early since it was July!!!))

 

Anyway when we got back I uploaded the photos from everyone’s cameras onto my computer after deleting the shots that were obviously the floor or some ones finger or were so blurry you couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to be I ended up with over 2500 pictures from a weeks vacation.   There were tons of duplicates as we all took pictures of the same thing.

So I set myself the task of going through them and purging. So after a busy weekend, (I did a lot of it while the Canadian Grand Prix was rained out for two hours) I now have them down to 1464. That’s over a thousand pictures deleted and to be honest I don’t feel a single bit guilty about it.  The pictures I’ve kept are the best ones or the ones that mean something. Give it another year and I’ll probably delete some more especially since we’re going back and i’ll have another 2000 pictures to work through.  Or that ten days after we get back I’m going to Disneyland Paris for three days with my sister and her family so you know there will be thousands of pictures there too.

I think this is a step in the right direction. Or maybe it’s just easier to delete pictures of zoo animals and buildings than it is to delete pictures of my niece and nephew (who both have more photos of them in four and two years of life than me, my sister and brother combined (that includes my sisters wedding)). 

But there are another eight weeks of class so hopefully I’ll get over the hump and get a much better system going.

However while going through I did find some pictures of the lions I wanted to scrapbook so I’m work on that page right now. Hopefully it will be finished to share tomorrow.

 

Shanna.xx

Random photos.

Just some random photos from Edinburgh Zoo.

Haircut

So I went to the hairdressers this morning. I had 16 inches cut!!

Test

Just trying to post from my new phone

Ten on the Tenth

Shimelle  Laine has prompted her Beyond Blogging for Scrapbookers to make a list of ten thing on tenth.

 

So here is my ten… Ten reasons I had to get a new phone.

 

10. My phone randomly dials people while it was in my bag.

9.  When it random dials people it doesn’t hang up when they do.

8. It takes forever to switch on.

7. I’ve played all the games and they are really boring.

6. It has a lousy camera on it.

5. It takes forever to do anything.

4. My mum has exact same phone which suddenly one day lost all sound – apparently a common fault after googling to find a way to fix it.

3. I barely use it (i’m on pay as you go I had £70 credit when I went on holiday last july and today I have £49.81 not having topped up in that period.)

2. I really want an iPhone and can’t afford one – so any smart phone will do.

1. Did I mention i HATE my phone.

 

So today I finished work and went and bought  a new shiny smart phone.

 

 

Now I just have to figure out how to use it….

 

Shanna.

you make me smile

Cow-A-Saurus…

On our trip to Dinosaur Park Tenby Aidan spotted some cows in a nearby field and insisted that they had to be fake as everything was fake. The cow was real so Nick told him they were cow-a-saurus.  

Not my favourite layout but it’s another story told.

 

Shanna.

Enough Quotient

So as previously mentioned I’m taking Stacy Julian’s Finding Photo Freedom class.  She talks about what is Enough for you to achieve to keep you happy which is calls her Enough Quotient.  So here is mine.

 

Weekly

• Upload pictures taken that week, keyword and star rate them.
• Create at least one layout.
• Blog at least four times a week.

Monthly

• Review starred photos and make any changes to rating.
• Create at least five layouts.
• Print some photos out to share

Year

• Create a vacation album.
• Create a Year In Review album.
• Take family photo

Home

• Display family photographs.

Online

• Write blog posts that share actual stories  rather than just layouts.
• Create layout using Allison Davies sketches.

So is my Enough Quotient.

 

Shanna.

loving this song