Visitors

Living up in the sticks miles away from most of my friends and family means visitors up our way are a bit few and far between these days but, this weekend, we have had quite a turn out! My little brother came all the way up from Brighton on friday and Beca and her man popped up today from their holiday cottage in the Lake District.

We took my brother for a walk up to Hadrians Wall on saturday morning and got caught in a torrential downpour on the way home to the point that even our undies got soaked through. Phil ended up with one muddy sock after losing a shoe in the mud!





Today we took Beca and Tom for a big ol' roast dinner in this brilliant old lady canteen-style pub near us. Hard to explain but it just makes you think of wedding receptions as you're eating your lamb and yorkshire puddings on a table positioned on the wooden 'dance floor' area. Lovely food though and such a bargain. You don't get places like that in London.

On the Storeyshop front, I had my fastest ever monkey sale on friday morning. My Yellow and Grey Retro Monkey sold in under a hour and to a fellow Northumberlander. He was only sat on our sofa for a few hours but the time we had with him was special! As well as packing Monkey up and sending him on his way tomorrow, I have a couple more New Baby card orders to make and I'm also going to start on a new product range. Look out for more little bags and animal purses (hopefully) very soon!

Ta ra

Living The Country Dream

I'm back to the Storeyshop making! I have finshed my latest stint on the magazine in Newcastle (it was so nice having a lie-in this morning!) and I have spent most of today making cards and taking better photos of my remaining sock monkeys still for sale.

I have just got a treasury on Etsy. Da daa!



One day one of them has to make the front page!

Going to call it a day soon and get dinner and relax. Maybe head down The Black Bull for a swift one. Hopefully it will be sunny tomorrow so we can get out for a walk or a bike ride. Oh yeah, I took my camera the other day when Dave and I went for a walk around our new homeland. Here are a few (I got a bit snap happy!) of the photos..









Look how lovely it is. I have my days when I do wonder why I ever moved out to the countryside. When I am waiting for the 6.50am bus to start a job at 9am for example! Being able to walk into gorgeous scenery from your front door makes it all worthwhile. The thing I most hated about living in London was that you couldn't just walk to anywhere rural. It always had to be a big all day mission in the car or on the train.

Next time I'm waiting at a freezing cold bus stop in the dark I have to remember that!!

Ta ra

Monkey photoshoot

The newly returned monkeys had their photoshoot today so there'll be appearing on Etsy in the next few days. I hope lots of people decide to buy them as christmas present for people!
My trouble is I have been using flash to take the pics and it makes the white stuffing show through the monkeys and makes them look a bit thin and threadbare especially the ends of their arms and legs. They don't look like this in real life. I need a new camera that doesn't have to be plugged in to work so I can venture outside and take photos of them on Hadrian's wall or somewhere.




I took some photos a couple of weeks ago of monkeys on Hexham weir so I'll have to finsh the film (my good ol' 35mm point and shoot special!) and see how they've come out. This is the scenic weir.. there were loads of salmon jumping out of the water trying to get upstream when we were there. Very cool!




New digital camera with a nice new battery that lasts longer than 2 minutes is definitely top of my Christmas list!