Happy New Year

The first day of a brand new year where all sorts of adventures may await us. Goodbye to 2018, you were interesting and at times challenging, but we have lots of things to be grateful for as we move forward into 2019. I realise I haven't written a blog post for several months - lots of reasons why, but it feels good to be back at my laptop.

A brief summary of the last part of our year. In October we went to Sunny Dundee on the east coast of Scotland for a few days. It's a lovely city and has lots of really interesting statues around along with great art galleries and museums. We stayed in a fabulous bed and breakfast where Bramble was made very welcome as the owners had several dogs of their own.

 Ken with Desperate Dan

 Me with the penguins outside the cathedral.

We continue to explore this beautiful part of the world whenever we get the chance, and we find some very interesting things in our travels. One of my favourite things this year was when we went to Ballater in Aberdeenshire and we watched a game of musical chairs for dogs!! The chairs were replaced by boxes and when the music stopped the owners had to get their dogs into the box - needless to say it was incredibly funny.

I continue to annoy any cats we come across, stopping to have a chat with them and a cuddle if they'll let me. This gorgeous fluffball was in the churchyard in Braemar.

Our three furbies are the real bosses in this family, as they have us wrapped around their little paws. Princess Cookie Cat turns 15 at the end of this month, and loves curling up in front of the fire. She barely tolerates the two youngsters and her favourite time is when they're sleeping.

Bramble Jelly Sassy Pants will be three in March, and keeps Ken very fit with all her walks. She's such a cuddly dog, and slightly crazy as well, and loves playing with her brother.

Lord Rocky Horror has totally wormed his way into every part of our life and we're so lucky that he chose us when we went to the rescue centre. We think he was about one when we adopted him, so his birthday is probably sometime in the next few months, but we're going to use his adoption day as his birthday. He's a total little monkey at times, chasing Cookie until she retaliates, trying to open our bedroom door at night, chasing Bramble, and once he managed to chew through the side of the dog food bag.

We continually check out nice cafes and coffee is of course my drink of choice. Sometimes it's important to just stop and focus on each other, enjoying each others company and sitting in a cafe is a really good way to do that.

For Guy Fawkes in November we went to a bonfire and fireworks in Burghead - a little town east of us on the coast. It was a lovely evening with food, live music, and a pumpkin carving competition.

In November a fabulous new cafe opened in Elgin, further east than us, it's called Cafe Kombucha and is a vegan cafe. No, we haven't become vegans, at the moment we're still pescatarians (fish eating vegetarians) for now, but I'm always keen to explore new healthy eateries.

The food was amazing, the picture shows the sharing plate we had - in the middle is a bowl of soup and we also had flat breads with it. If you're ever in the area I would definitely recommend it.

In December we celebrated our 19th anniversary with afternoon tea at the beautiful Coul House with a glass of prosecco for me and tea for my beloved, all in front of an open fire. It was a perfect afternoon. We love this hotel as they are dog friendly and they have a fairy trail in the woods.

Just before Christmas we went to Grantown on Spey to see Santa before he headed off on his round the world trip. His reindeers were with him and I got very excited - a bit like a little kid.

I hope that this year you discover new things about yourself, get to meet some lovely animals and people, and remember to acknowledge the things you have to be grateful for, even on the most difficult of days.

Until next time,

Pamela & Ken
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