Dolly's Dreamings

All too normal

Well, after the excitement of the last few weeks my life is reverting to all too mind numbingly normal again.

The weekly trip to Tesco was the highlight so far! Oh my what am I coming to.

I have been scrapping too but cannot share that so instead am sharing a piece I did for Mel and Jill last month,

I had never been a fan of the Elsie stuff apart fromt his one collectiona nd so I was thrilled when I was sent some for the DT last month. Very me - all about travel. I even went and bought more.

The page is from our last big trip prior to this one, which was a tour of the old wild west. The picture is of Nigel and I at Jenny Lake in Grand Teton NP and this was one of my favourite places UNTIL I saw Moraine Lake.

Now I told you about the man we met at Moraine Lake - Rob Lean. He was such a great guy and helped us out so much. He also gave us the address to his on line photography gallery which I have been enjoying so much. He is a superb photographer - his work is amazing. We have chatted via e mail since we have been home and he has said I can share the link to his on line gallery here.

You can see his work here

I haven't found any way to leave comments on his work, but I know he reads this blog so please, if you do go and look (and I seriously urge you to do so, especially at the collections of favourite photos from each month) please please leave him a  comment about his work here as I know he will then see it. He is off to the 'Art in the Park' festival at Canmore to exhibit his work this weekend so I hope that all goes well for you Rob and that the weather is kind, bringing out crowds.

I have to say I was thrilled to see the newset gallery up there for Nigel and I too.

I love all of the galleries but I think my favourites are the mountain gallery and the favourites of May 2007. Its hard to pick - they are all wonderful. So do go and look at his work. He captures Canada so well, the pictures are inspirational and you will ALL want to go visit Alberta and British Columbia.

Spotty cat

I know I have two spotty cats, but one of my spotty cats - Kira - is even more spotty of late. I hope she has not picked up anything nasty from her holiday - but she has some sort of rash/eczema etc over both eyes now and between her eye and ear. At first I thought it was just over one eye and thought it was claw marks from a spat with Boushka or Fiki, but it's not. I have been bathing it with salt water but now I see it over the other eye too. So what did I do? I went on the internet and scared myself with all the horrible things it could be. Totally freaked out by it. She is very quiet and subdued as well.

If it is anything like mange or mites it means all three of them will be infected and have to be treated, including my poor Boushka who is already on daily allergy medication. We are so careful here. I have never had a flea in all the years we have had cats - we are REALLY careful; doubly so now we have Boushka and she is such an allergic cat.

Off to the vets tomorrow but I have plenty of hours of worry before then! I know - I'd never have coped with children! I know!

I have been scrapping but cannot share today's work I am afraid as all of it is for 'release' later.  I did do another page yesterday though of our Canadian holiday. The picture is of Mount Cephren and Waterfowl Lakes and it was just beautiful how the clouds were shrouding parts of it.

The pictures today are some sunset pictures we took when we moved to California. Nigel has three cousins who live in Southern California near Laguna and so we know the area well. It always feels a bit like home from home when we get to go back and visit. We stayed in the Hyatt Regency at Newport Beach, which was lovely and relaxing after a week of being on tour and moving all of the time. It was also in USA that I did all of my stash shopping! And boy did I shop.

One evening we went down to the beach to take some sunset pictures. The beach is huge - a long long long walk to the sea - and very quiet. It was a gorgeous evening and we were pleased with some of the pictures that we managed to get. There were still a few surfers catching the last waves.

Well - off to surf the internet to see what else the cats may have! Any advice greatfully received - although I know the best advice is 'stop worrying - it's nothing major!'

FREE Digi Cat set

This is a set I made a while ago and never got round to uploading as it is a big file. Apologies for the size of it, but there are some cute papers and they go with the cat overlays from earlier too.

Please feel free to download it if you think it may be useful.

You can download it here Cat Paper Set

Helpful Cats

Now you have to be honest - it's not often I call my cats helpful - well at least not often I call the CFH helpful. But yesterday they KNEW I needed help to not complete the holiday ironing and they came up trumps, bless them. They have a ridiculous fascination for the ironing board and both also seem very very tired after their two weeks in the cattery. I think, perhaps, they didn't sleep well. They have been exhausted kitties since their return.

This is a series of pictures I took yesterday whilst trying to do the ironing before I finally gave up.

Bless them!

I have scrapped one of the pictures of Moraine lake (there are a lot of them to scrap as we did love that place so much. It was one of those times when you stood there snapping away knowing they were all going to be very similar but totally not caring and just wanting to try and capture it all. You can't capture if in a photograph, of course. You capture moments like that with your heart, cherishing them for ever. But a picture serves as a pretty reminder which sparks all of those wonderful memories off and activates the other senses too. Even as we were there we both knew it was a special place we would remember for ever and visit in our hearts a great many times.

I have a few final pictures of Canada to share with you and - in the coming days - will share a few from California too (totally different experience in every way!)

This first is a picture of the boats ready to be taken out on Lake Louise. The colour made such a wonderful contrast to the blue of the lake and the ice of Victoria glacier in the background.

This picture was taken from the top of Sulphur Mountain after riding the Banff gondola. Not one of my best experiences I have to say. I rode up backwards and didn't realise that would traumatise me so much. It was a very very very long ride in a  very wobbly cable car and by the time we were nearing the top I was freaking out and trying hard to hold onto the hysteria that was fast taking hold. Apparently my first words when I got out were 'How am I going to get down?' The view from the top was awesome though, as we saw Banff spread out before us, surrounded by peaks. We saw the Bow Falls we had been to half an hour earlier, the town of Banff, Lake Minnewanka in the distance. And actually, the ride down, facing forwards, was fine.

This is a picture of the Athabasca Glacier along the Icefields parkway - the glacier we walked on. It was bleak and freezing cold up there - and actually very depressing as they had signs all along the way showing where the glacier had been 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago etc. It is shrinking back at quite an alarming rate and it was a sobering concept.

Finally this is a picture of me sat journalling (we kept a very detailed holiday journal, usually completed last thing at night and Nigel wrote every day too) looking over Moraine Lake. I know it says Lake Louise at the top of the page, but the pages were headed up according to where we were staying. As the journal happened to be in the rucksack I really felt moved to stop and record my thoughts whilst we were there. It was as if I needed something tangible created there to keep for ever. It was that sort of place. The sort of place you wanted to make a part of you; to drink in and retain for ever. Those of you who have visited will know what I mean. It really was a special magical place. It was gorgeous bathed in sunlight with clear blue skies and lit up with the sun's radiance, but I would also love to see it in the snow. Nigel snapped the picture thinking it would be a good moment to record for later scrapping. Bless him - I fear he has been married to a scrapper for way too long.

Almost too tired to scrap

It wasn't a great night last night. Having been sooooo tired all day (and succumbing to sneaking off and grabbing a half hour nap in the afternoon until Nigel caught me, woke me up and told me that was no way to beat jet lag) I couldn't sleep. Part of the reason was Boushka crying all night. I mean, for goodness sake, she had the run of the house and could be in the bedroom with us all the time if she wanted to be, but no.

She would sit on the landing and howl until Nigel called her and then she would come in, cry a bit, walk up and down, cry a bit, sleep for maybe two minutes and then it would start all over again! The CFH on the other hand were as good as gold int heir room. I almost went and slept in there with them.

I am almost too tired to scrap. ALMOST!  I have done my title page for my album -something I often leave until the end, but I was inspired by the pencil lines sketch this week and so cracked on with it. It looks very simple but believe me, there were more tiny cut out letters and maple leaves to stick on than I fancy counting in a long time.

I have also been out and picked up the parcel - and I mean parcel - from Photobox. We uploaded and ordered the pictures whilst we were away, thinking they would be waiting for us when we got home. mmmmm. Nice idea. except the parcel was too big for the letter box so I had to go collect them. The photos look superb. I have ordered two of the ones we chose to upload (some 140) and will scrap one set and ..... be prepared to be horrified .... but one set in an old fashioned, ruin your photos album. We want to be able to share the pictures with family and friends in an album quickly and if the environment they are in spoils them over the years then we have lost nothing. They are all copy prints anyway.

I am sharing more pictures today from the trip. They are of Emerald Lake (pictures 1 and 4), Mount Cephren and Waterfowl Lake witht he lovely clouds and mist and Bow River Falls (with us spoiling the view but hey - what can you do!)  and also my  title page for the first of my Canada albums.  (Thanks again Rob for identifying our pictures)

Now - off to tackle a pile of ironing so big I can't see over it. I may be gone some time!

So good to be home

It was wonderful to sleep in our own bed last night. Travel broadens the mind but damages the back I fear - I NEED my own mattress. Mind you, I had appreciated the fact that whilst away we had either huge king sized beds or - even better - separate beds. Last night I remembered what it was like to sleep in a  regular bed with squirmy old Nigel who wriggles and makes the duvet into a kind of nest. On holiday in places where we had the luxury of two beds, mine looked like it had not been used ... pristine, smooth, hardly needing making. Nigel's looked like a hurricane had sped through the room reducing the bed to utter turmoil. I swear one morning his sheets were almost knotted! Still - I wouldn't swap him for the world. Well, maybe for a less wriggly version!

The great news is that Nigel picked up our fur family first thing this morning. we were unable to collect them yesterday as the cattery closes at lunchtime on a Sunday and so it was hell having to wait for them. They are also closed on a Bank Holiday Monday but we had pleaded and they had agreed if we were there at 8 am we could collect them during the morning feeding routine. You betcha!

  It is heaven to have them home. They have done nothing but scream and shout and demand food, fuss, toys, fuss, attention, fuss and a little bit of fuss as well. They are as glad to be home as we are to have them. The worst thing about being on holiday is missing them so badly. I confess that, whilst I miss them all, I missed Fiki especially badly. Remind me of that in a week's time when he is creating havoc, destroying the house and being Fiki!

I have been asked by a lot of you to share more pictures. Well you asked for it. If you click on them you should see bigger versions of them too. The first pictures were of an elk and a golden mantle squirrel. We saw so much wildlife. We were especially lucky to see a moose, as they are quite shy, we saw several red squirrels, including one on our patio at Lake Louise and were thrilled to see several coyotes too. The lake picture above is Peyto Lake.

The picture of the river here is Vermillion River and was the scene of Nigel's accident. He tripped off a small stone whilst taking a picture and in trying to save both cameras he was holding he fell badly and grazed his leg terribly. It was one of the worst grazes I have seen as as we were hiking we had nothing with us to clean it until we got back to the car. TIP of the DAY - when someone has a very nasty graze full of dirt and gravel it is best once you have washed it NOT to put antiseptic hand sanitiser gel on it because apparently it hurts enough to make a grown man almost cry and use an interesting selection of vocabulary, some words of which I was not familiar with!!!!

The picture here of the two of us at Moraine Lake (which was by far our favourite place) was e mailed today by Rob Lean. It is the one he took with his camera for us and we love it, so thank you very much for that Rob.

The colours at Moraine lake were amazing. That picture hasn't been enhanced - honest. It was just like that and the reflections were so wonderful.

We always design tour t shirts when we go on a tour - you know the sort of thing ... like you have with a band. The front has the logo and the back has the tour dates etc. I know it is childish, but hey, that's us. Nigel's design featured a Chrysler 300 (the car he has at home) altered to look like the Back to the Future Car (one of his favourite films) and flying over Peyto Lake and the caption said Chrysler Chiefs ' 

The pun on Kaiser Chiefs was totally wasted in America and Canada of course, but it made him smile. Just as well that this was our hire car then! Same car, same colour, everything as his own car, just had the steering wheel on the other side. This was our Canadian version sat overlooking Lake Minnewanker on our first day in the Rockies.

The scenery was so awesome wherever you looked and it really as a photographers dream. however, what the pictures cannot capture is how clean and fresh the air felt. It was warm and sunny every day (we were in shorts most of the time) but was very cold in the early morning and the evenings.

We did a hike along Johnston Canyon one morning and wore shorts and t shirts with sweat pants and sweatshirts over the top and despite hiking quite briskly we were freezing!

The two pictures here show a little of Johnston Canyon (we hiked to the waterfalls which were stunning and yes, I have pictures of them too) but the other picture shows how perfectly clear the water was. In so many places the water was incredibly clear whereas in others it was so full of glacial silt it looked almost milky. The silt the waterfalls and rivers carry is apparently what gives them their colours. We saw lakes ranging from duck egg blue and emerald green to deep dark blue and very clear.

We tended to be up and on the road very early int he morning as it was best to make an early start to see more things.  This was taken as the sun rose at Herbert Lake one morning - beautifully idyllic and another time when we were totally alone. (Thanks for the pointer on the name Rob ... I may need help again!)

Anyway, enough for one day. I don't want to get to the stage that the blog is so boring people stop visiting. Besides which the washer is finished again and load 5 is ready to go on the line. thankfully it is a beautiful day here - perfect for drying clothes. Hopefully it will be cooler tomorrow as I then have 5 loads of ironing to do!

More pictures tomorrow; meanwhile, it is good to be home.

The travellers return

Well, what an incredible two weeks we have had. You may have wondered why my blog has been very general - not my usual self indulgent day to day diary LOL. It is because I posted most of the pages in advance before I set off on my two week jaunt for another trip of  lifetime.

I never like to post about holidays until I am safely back home again so, now I am, I can.

We have had a wonderful two weeks exploring the Canadian Rockies and relaxing in Southern California.

It was a holiday we kept thinking about doing and kept putting off.

We decided to go for it on our 25^th wedding anniversary, but who can ever tell what is round the corner. Seize the day, I say. Go for it. So we did. And boy was it ever worth it.

Our original plan was to drive through the Rockies and then into the US and end up in Vegas, but car hire between Canada and US is not easy so plan B had to be adopted with more flights than I care to have really.

We flew with Virgin – our favourite airline - into JFK and had one night in New York, leaving our hotel at 4.30 am and flying with Air Canada to Calgary.

At Calgarywe picked up our hire car and we were off on another of our infamous road trips. First stop was a supermarket for road trip supplies like water, cookies, diet cokes and other wicked items and then it was into the National Parks.

We had a couple of nights in Banff, a couple in Lake Louise and then Jasper before finally ending up in Vancouver.

The National Parks were wonderful.

We have toured the American Rockies and loved them. They seem much much higher than their Canadian cousins (we rarely reached really high elevations) but the Canadian Rockies seemed a lot more accessible and so very pretty.

We saw so many wonderful mountain lakes, each stunning in their own way, ranging from the brightest turquoise blue to emerald green, milky duck egg and deep deep blue. The colours were unbelievable – I haven’t enhanced the pictures, truly. The lakes, largely fed by glaciers, were icy cold and fringed with lush pine forests.The roads were so quiet and despite guide book warnings that it would be very busy, apart from lake Louise it was very quiet.

Our favourite view by far was Moraine lake near Lake Louise. Its beauty is realy indescribable. We climbed the moraine and had the view almost to ourselves. We met a guy called Rob Lean, who had spotted us on a hike the day before, who was local and knew the area well. He took us to the perfect spot  - his special rock - and now I have a new happy place to visit whenever I am low.

I am now editing this having gone looked at the gallery Rob gave us the link to. His photography is awesome - I have never seen a site quite like it. His work is absolutely stunning. We were so grateful to him for sharing both his time and his special place with us. And I for one will be enjoying his wonderful work for a long time to come.

One of the things I wanted to see was a bear and I convinced myself it would be easy. Until you get there! You realise that bears, both brown and grizzly, are in small numbers and that they have actively worked to make sure they are conditioned to stay away from people now. The parks are huge so why would they be anywhere near people when they had so much undisturbed habitat to enjoy. Several hotel staff told us that they had never seen a bear and had lived there for years, so we gave up all hope.

One day, whilst on a main highway, we saw a bear down an embankment walking along a railway track. There was no time for a picture but we had seen our bear and were happy.

Then on the road to Jasper, it happened. We were forced to stop as a bear crossed the road right in front of us. I had time to get the camera as he lumbered along. I had to laugh at the picture when I saw it as the cyclists are riding along oblivious to the fact a pretty huge bear is right behind them.

We walked on the Athabascar glacier, did several hikes (some quite long for us) and just enjoyed being on tour and seeing beautiful sights all around us. It was a holiday of bed at 8.30 and on the road by 6.30. Due to our early starts we had Peyto Lake (a busy area) completely to ourselves for half an hour. Bliss.

Beware, there are likely to be a lot of layouts coming.

We then flew from Vancouverto LA and drove down to Newport Beach– OrangeCounty, where we stayed for 5 nights.

We packed in a  LOT of shopping (I don’t think I need to buy stash again EVER) and also Nigel had another dream come true.

Having been an ardent Angels fan (LA’s American league baseball team) for 27 years he saw his first live game. We booked tickets to the game well in advance, delighted they were going to be playing the Yankees. It was a sell out event so we were very lucky. Nigel bought loads of angels gear in the track shop and then we watched the game. It was an incredible game with the Angels trouncing the Yankees an incredible 18 to 9 runs. The atmosphere was electric and very friendly with Yankee fans sat in amongst the sea of red worn by the Angels fans (yup – Nij was one of the red crowd) and chants of ‘Yankee suck’ taken very well by our blue clothed friends. It was an evening to remember and I couldn’t take my eyes off Nigel, who was like a little boy whose Christmases have all come at once.

We managed to see Nigel’s three Californian cousins for a couple of great family evenings before leaving for home.

It was an incredible trip but Oh my is it good to be home. I loved the sights, I love the culture, I love the shopping, I love the food, the maid service, the no cooking, but I love my home way more.

I don’t leave home – or my fantastic fur babies – easily and I am happy I am back with my fur family and my home. 

SPOILT!

I love doing the pages for the A True Friend blog. Our pets all mean so much to us and I scrap the fur family a lot anyway.

The prompt for this page was spoilt. Mmmmm - could I think of anything to do with any of my three fur babies that was to show they were spoilt. Just about every aspect of their lives really. All three of them are terribly spoilt (and we love spoiling them) but the only one whose full name included the fact she is spoilt is Boushka. She is so spoilt we call her Spoilt Boushka.

So the page had to be about her. I made a digital page this time (I love my paper but it is nice to do digi stuff as well)

I used papers and elements from A Shabby Princess eclectic kit, my own digital doodles (that are still here for free download if you want them) and a shabby princess and an atomic cupcake alphabet

The heart is also my own (still available for download as well)

The felix jar is full of cat treats and we caught Boushka helping herself. Seems we might not spoil her enough? Well who do you think put the jar on the floor for her!!!

Little Box of Friendship

I was always more of a photographer than Jakki. Of course that all changed when she got her Fuji too, but in the past it was me that had the camera and so I have more pictures of us than she has. Seems mean really, hence making her this little box.

The project was made for Jillybeans  design team and was using a little card box I picked up for 49p.

I decorated the box with the black and white doodlebug papers and some ribbons and stamping and then made a very simple accordion booklet to go into it. It is very small. The box is only 2 1/2 " square. But I think the size adds to the cuteness really.

Trouble is - now she has her camera all the time there tend to be pictures of me floating around in places where I have no control!!!

FREE doodled frame

This quick freebie is a cute frame which can be used either as a frame over a picture or as an overlay over an entire page to give a doodled border.

I hope it is fun for some of you to use.

If you wouldlike to snag it then you can find it HERE

I also realised I haven't uploaded this page and Fiki is giving me a hard time about it!

It was a page I made for A True Friend blog a little while ago and was meant to be about the face we love. I love all of my fur babies so much but I have to say this little boy of mine does have a cute little face, especially when he has totally lost himself in pleasure as in this picture. He was in the bath having a wash. Our bath! Well where else would you go for a wash. That's what baths are for!

There is a tag underneath the picture that pulls out to reveal the journalling that explains the picture