Monster at the bottom of our garden

Daisy and Iris were allowed to play with mud at the bottom of our garden.
Iris remained clean, and Daisy did not.





For your information Dad, that huge pile of twigs & branches & brambles & suitable bonfire material that you can see below on the right is no more.
We have had a lovely big bonfire and we thought of you.

Playing with a bit of polystyrene

These photographs were taken a little while ago when we had some sunny weather.
I can confirm the weather in Somerset is yuk at the moment, it's cold, dull, and rain is imminent.

I think this bit of polystyrene must have come with the play house, it looks like it had something to do with the windows.
Talking of which we took out one of the panes of glass (plastic) whilst it was very hot, and now we can't find that last pane of glass. bum.

The girls found this in the shop somewhere and enjoyed playing and posing with the polystyrene window. The polystyrene window has now been broken up and chucked away.

Here is Iris with a mucky face.
This is the girls interpretation of something yuk.
This is the girls interpretation of something happy.
This is the girls interpretation of something very sad.
This is the girls interpretation of something very shocking.
And this is just Daisy.

Wow where has the time gone?

Such a lot has been happening and i had temporarily forgotten all about this little blog, but i have now returned.

What have we done these last three weeks you ask?
* We visited London and saw some lovely friends.
* We visited Kent and saw more lovely friends.
* We traveled back to Somerset to allow Daisy to start her new year as a 1st Year and Iris to start at nursery for the first time. Big girls now
* We dumped the big/small girls off at Auntie Emma's and traveled back up to London to stay one night at Gordon & Lucy's on route to Nick & Helen's wedding in Suffolk.
* We went to a marvelous wedding in Suffolk.
* We drove all the way from Suffolk to Somerset, and it wasn't too bad, i guess it was about 4 and a half hours, maybe a smidge more.
* Nana and Grandad came to stay and blitzed the back of our garden. (i really should have done a before and after shot, and i forgot, i damn well forgot.)

That seems quite a lot to have done in three weeks.

Here are a couple of photographs of the girls on their first day back at school/nursery.

We're back

photos to come soon, i promise.

We're going to London to visit the queen

tomorrow...
for about a week, then we're over for a quick trip to Kent to visit Run & Lisa.

I will miss our little home whilst we are away, though i won't miss our cooker, which is very slowly packing up.
Mum, the top oven doesn't really work anymore, and the grill only works on one side, so on our return i will have to investigate a new, second hand one, before you come to stay otherwise you can only fry or boil.

I'm not totally sure London will let us back in, by the way.

Pirate Thursdays in Brixham

Every Thursday in the summer is Pirate Thursday in Brixham, thanks to the Brixham Buccaneers, i think i blogged about it last summer, hang on i'll go and have a look...

... yes here is a link to last year with a Captain Jack Sparrow.

But look-e-like-e-Depp wasn't there this time, though i'm told he does still come down sometimes, he's probably all famous like now and doesn't get out of bed for less than £2.95 and a packet of mints.
But a lady with a parrot on her shoulder was there, however when we finally managed to make our way through the crowds, she answered her mobile phone, and then stayed on her phone chatting away for ages, i mean it was probably about 8 mins.
There were loads of people waiting to pet the parrot.
Somehow i don't think she was in character.


But we did manage to pet the parrot, even if Daisy was quite unsure about the whole thing.
We did however meet a real live mermaid, who read us a story, she said she was a friend of Ariel's which was all very exciting.

Love is like a butterfly

Does anyone else, apart from my mum and dad and my sister Vicky remember the UK series Butterflies?
I used to love it for some reason especially her inability to cook, and the strange concoctions she brought out of the oven.
Here are two links to it if you have no idea what i am on about.
Wikipedia/Butterflies and www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/butterflies/

Here are also some little girl butterflies from our recent trip to Brixham/Devon last week. Daisy went first, cos she's had it done lots of times before, Iris at first said she didn't want it done.


Then she changed her mind and sat extremely still with her eyes closed, clutching her bottle of water, whilst her face was made up.

And then afterwards she kept asking us if the picture was still on her face.

They were both very happy little butterflies.

Daisy's lovely big snail

Daisy made a lovely big snail in PlayDoh, a couple of days ago.
I meant to take a photograph of it immediately, but i got distracted and instead took it about 20 mins later, in this short amount of time it had been squished quite a bit.
ie: it looked 10 times better 20 minutes earlier.





The photograph on her t-shirt is of : an adult lion doing a poo in a cat litter tray.
Daddy bought it for her and she likes to wear it cos it makes her laugh.

A new project - Our Visitors

I have started a new photography project, it is called "Our Visitors".
It is linked from my main Charlotte Photography website, but if your too darn lazy to find that link which is somewhere down the left hand side of this blog, then this link just here will take you straight to the new sparkly "Our Visitors" project website.

Any willing victims who walk through my door will be photographed.

This project started on August 1st and will continue until i run out of people to photograph.

If you want to be photographed then come and visit us.
If you don't want to be photographed then stay away, or ask me very nicely not to.

Cindy & Anaya & a large flower

Today we had visitors, (yesterday we had quite a few visitors too, but that is another story)
Today we had visitors in the form of Cindy and her daughter Anaya, here they are:


Anaya brought a lovely flower for Daisy, which Daisy loves, she even wanted to take it to bed with her.

Anaya brought some "In the night garden" mini books for Iris, but Iris isn't that bothered about I.T.N.G. anymore, she is over her love of Iggle Piggle, but i think she appreciated the gift anyway.

Dogs from the weekend

Here are Nana and Grandad's dogs.

This is Barney.

This is Tilly

This is Barney & Tilly.

This is Iris looking very pink, with Tilly.

Iris has developed a fake smile that she keeps doing every time the camera is pointed at her, which is strange because i don't very often ask them to smile.

Nana and Grandad came to stay

This weekend just gone, Marc was away at a stag do, somewhere near Taunton, and my mum and dad 'Nana and Grandad' came up to stay, this was my dad's first visit.

Grandad likes our house, though he did say he'd rather there weren't so many stairs, maybe we could install a lift out the back, i suspect a winch would be cheaper.

Grandad and Nana did some excellent work in the garden, i did help and join in of course but it is hard to do these jobs with two children unless you can get them to join in, which is possible.

Nana and Grandad bought us a water butt from Focus (which i've now found cheaper at Bradfords up the road) and Daisy is now official waterer of my tomatoes, this is very good.
Of course she can only fill the watering can about half way cos she can't carry it when it gets too heavy but she has found her method and she's sticking to it.


Here are a few photographs of Nana and Grandad with the girls.

Practicing with my flash

I decided i needed to practice with my flash.
My flash is a Nikon and my camera is Fuji, therefore the two are not dedicated together and i have had problems pairing the two.
These problems tend to make me shy away from using my flash and instead i stick with either natural light or getting the big guns out, which isn't always convenient, so i am now practicing with my flash.
Here are some examples of young Iris today.

Happy Birthday Grandma Bonjour

This video message is for Grandma Bonjour cos it's her birthday today.
We are all very sorry that we didn't send you a card through the post on your birthday, please accept our apologies and have this little video message instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dG3gg_DAXpE

Happy Birthday Grandma