Top Ten Thursday - Happy Things

This weeks top ten is things that make us happy which is great as I'm part way through the 100 Happy Days Challenge - I post a photo a day on instagram for 100 days of something that makes me happy. I started the challenge on new years day as I thought it was a nice way to start the new year, so we're up to day eighteen and for this post I'll share ten of the things that have made me happy so far. Thanks to Tamara at Part-time Working Hockey Mom for the wonderful theme.

1. Day One - new years day walk with my beloved. The temptation when I decided to do the 100 days challenge was to put a photo of Ken for every day, but I've restrained myself. He will appear fairly regularly as he definitely is my happy place.

2. Day three - a very rare occasion, our two furbies eating dinner together.

3. Day six - I'm always happy when I'm exploring an old graveyard. This one was very lovely and there is a pending blog post about this.

4. Day seven - churros, one of the happiest foods there is. Whenever we go to a music festival we always share churros, as they're the perfect festival food. The sauces are chocolate for Ken, and caramel for me.

5. Day nine - my lovely warm slippers which I'm appreciating even more at the moment as we're having very cold, snowy weather.

6. Day ten - lovely sparkly belated birthday card which is so cute.

7. Day twelve - I treated myself to a new bag in the post Christmas sales, and as they all hung together I realised I may have a little bit of a spotty bag addiction.

8. Day thirteen - banana caramel loaf at the Olive Tree Cafe at Logie Steading. This is a lovely little shopping village in old farm buildings that we like to visit. There's a great craft gift shop, a vintage clothes shop, a whiskey shop, an art gallery, and a fabulous second hand bookshop. So whilst the picture for this day was the cake, the happy was really the whole experience.

9. Day sixteen - my happy thing was that I'm so glad my husband is such a good driver. The weather has been a little bit challenging this week, but I've been delivered safely to work every day by my personal chauffeur.

10. Day eighteen - Princess Cookie Cat has the cutest little paws and they definitely make me smile.

I loved this theme as I think it's always good to take time to realise what we've got in our lives that makes us happy. Before you go, make sure you hop over to Tamara's Blog to see what my fellow bloggers have come up with for their happy things.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and do something that makes you happy this week.

Pamela & Ken
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Top Ten Thursday - Fun Things in 2018

This weeks top ten is about the fun things we want to do in this new year of 2018. Thanks as always to Tamara from Part-time Working Hockey Mom for hosting this fun weekly blog challenge. This top ten sort of coincides with the theme I chose for one of my beloved's Christmas presents - I made up a diary for him with things booked throughout the year for us to do together. This is the front page of the diary that I coloured for him.

Here's my top ten:

1. Find a recipe for vegetarian marshmallows and learn how to make them (I love marshmallows and miss them - you can buy them but not as easily).

2. Go wild swimming in a Scottish loch.

3. Have more picnics.

4. Enter some baking in the Nairn Country Show - Ken has to as well, we're going to see if either of us get a prize.

5. Eat more ice cream. There are so many Italian ice cream shops in Scotland that it would be rude not to try them.

6. Visit more old graveyards - hours and hours of fun.

7. Visit more places in Scotland that we've never been before.

8. Have a campfire on the beach at night and roast marshmallows (see #1)

9. Go for more walks and hopefully find more interesting things like in the photo below.

10. Snuggle with my beloved any chance I get as that's always a fun thing to do.

What fun things have you got planned for this year? Before you go, hop over to Tamara's Blog and see what my fellow bloggers have come up with.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and make sure you have fun in the next week.

Pamela & Ken
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Autumn Colours in a Graveyard

Another weekend, another drive out to who knows where. We did actually have a destination in mind but when we reached it, it was closed due to a private event. Never mind, there's always somewhere else to explore.

Wonderfully we came across a graveyard, the Urray Burial Ground, and wandered around it for a while. The church is a lovely building, but like so many churches here in the highlands the interior is incredibly plain - we looked through the windows.

This young tree growing out of a tree stump made me think of the quote from Jurassic Park "Life will find a way".

Autumn colours make anything look beautiful, and I think this tree really adds to the atmosphere of the graveyard - it's stunning.

Found all across Scotland are beautiful celtic crosses - there are so many different designs in these crosses that they fascinate me.

It's really helpful to genealogists to find lots of information on headstones and the people commemorated on this headstone have the same surname as my Scottish ancestors, and the Katherine must have been a casualty of the Blitz on London. I love that someone has left a tankard on the grave for them.

This more recent headstone has a lovely wood carving of a puffin inlaid in it. Further down the headstone there was also a carving of a wood mallet - I love all these special little details that are subtle but obviously precious to someone.

A couple more shots of the glorious Autumn leaves.

Our next stop was of course for coffee and cake in Muir of Ord. Very scrummy carrot cake.

This was the sign outside the cafe we stopped at - the top half is one of my favourite quotes, but the bottom part just makes it even better.

We then stopped in Beauly so that Bramble Jelly could have a walk and I had a mooch around an art shop and a wonderful little deli with lots of lovely goodies.

It was a really nice start to a week off for the two of us - a week of relaxing and having lots of days of fun.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and enjoy the Autumn/Spring weather wherever your are in the world.

Pamela & Ken
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P.S: Princess Cookie Cat sleeping so cutely.

A Highland Sunday Drive

After not leaving the house at all yesterday (rain and a headache kept me indoors) we headed out for a Sunday drive like a couple of old pensioners. First we went to Aviemore as there was a craft market on, but because of the rain it was a bit of a washout. As we couldn't get into the nice cafe there we then headed off to Boat of Garten and the lovely 1896 Gallery and Coffee Shop.

My latte arrived with a slightly deformed heart on top so I preceded to create my own piece of art - I think it looks a little bit like Bramble.

Onward we meandered and then we came across Edinkillie Parish Church and graveyard - how wonderful.

Next door to the church was the rather grand Relugas House, and on the fence you might be able to make out a little Robin. This house was built in 1980, but the previous dwelling was begun in the 1700's.

In the graveyard is the below headstone for Kopuri "Tom" who was a servant and died at Relugas House. He was from the island of Rotumah (Fiji island of Rotuma) in the South Pacific. I thought it was lovely that they had given him a proper grave, and Ken thought it was the rich people appeasing their guilt of having a servant who died so far from home.

A view of the graveyard and the headstone on the right is for James S Ferries who was the commander of the R.M.S Zealandia - he died at sea and is buried in Honolulu. Here's a link to a description of one of the journeys he took with the ship and what the ship was like - Click Here.

This lopsided headstone is from the 1700's.

A few more headstones for you to enjoy (yes, that is the right word to use) with intricate carvings and a couple of lovely crosses.

One of the Commonwealth war graves at this site - a pilot and he was only 20.

Two more lovely crosses - the symbolism of the cross is so interesting as there are so many different versions of it in graveyards across the world.

Cute little shed in the corner of the graveyard - I love how it is built into the wall.

This headstone has seen better days - I hope it was just aging and mother nature that caused this and not someone being totally disrespectful to the dead.

One of the church windows - it's purple! It must look lovely from the inside so we'll have to find out when the church is open for viewing. Note that the window is another version of a cross.

There you have it, our lovely Sunday drive (minus the flat cap and hair rollers) exploring more of the beautiful Scottish Highlands.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and have a fabulous week.

Pamela & Ken
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A Journey to Scotland's West Coast

A few months ago we went for a weekend break in Plockton which is on the west coast of Scotland and I wrote about it in the A to Z challenge for the letter P - you can read it here. For us the journey to and from our destination is just as much fun as there is always something to explore or enjoy.

On the way to the west we had to have a hiatus by the side of the road whilst several trucks went by with the blades of a wind turbine on them - as you can see they took up the whole road and were very long. Thankfully there was somewhere for us to pull off as last time we met one of these trucks it was on a road with not much space and we ended up going into a bit of a hole which slightly damaged the front of the car.

We came across this cairn by the side of the road and it marks the spot where a very brave young man died in 1746. Roderick Mackenzie was a supporter of Bonnie Prince Charlie (from the Battle of Culloden) and had a slight resemblance to the prince and was one of his guards. When he encountered a group of Cumberland's men (the enemy) he didn't have a chance, but with his dying breath he cried out "you have killed your Prince". As a result Cumberland returned to London believing that Prince Charlie was dead, resulting in the Prince being able to escape to Skye and then eventually Paris. It's quite interesting that Flora Macdonald is known around the world for helping the Prince in his escape, but Roderick rests in relative anonymity with a simple grave on the opposite side of the road to this cairn.

We went past this field of alpacas and of course I made Ken stop so that I could get out and have a chat to them - I made sure I didn't get too close in case they took a dislike to me and decided to spit in my general direction.

 Grounded boat on the banks of the loch.

A surprising thing that we've discovered since moving to the highlands is that there are wild goats roaming around. They are descended from domestic goats but have been wild for a very long time. In fact, I discovered that the wild goats are protected by a royal decree handed down by Robert the Bruce after their presence in front of a cave he was hiding in stopped the English from searching the cave.

No shock to anyone that reads our blog but we found the ruins of a church and graveyard to have a look around. You can tell it's a few months ago as there's still a dusting of snow on the mountains. This is the ancient church and burial ground of Kintail which a stone at the gate states was dedicated to St Dubhthach circa 1050 but was probably in use three centuries earlier.

This was a burial ground for the Clan MacRae and the below memorial stone for them which was inside the church.

Here's a few pictures that I took around the graveyard which is still used and there are a few more modern gravestones.

I love how overgrown this grave is. It's so atmospheric and would look great with some mist on the ground, a bit like a horror movie set, with something emerging from the depths of the grave.

The following two memorial stones were on the wall of the graveyard and I love the sentiment about these people being back in their native land.

The below picture is just to show what sort of thing makes my beloved pull over - a sort of graveyard if you like, but instead of people this graveyard contains vehicles. I'm reliably informed (by the car fancier) that the brown thing is a Peugeot 305 van which is very rare.

Last picture was taken in the Cluanie Inn which we often stop at when we travel to the west. They're another lovely place that allows dogs and there's also plenty of open countryside to take Bramble for a walk in.

Whilst Ken was walking Bramble I got to meet this very handsome chappy whose name is Bear. He is an Akita and weighs seven stone - that's quite heavy for a dog.

He was so lovely and his fur feels incredible - so soft and cushiony. He was a very patient boy as lots of people were looking at him and asking his owner questions about what he was. I was sat next to Bear so was chatting to him and his human slave and found out that he is a pets as therapy dog.

Look at the size of his paws - massive.

There you have it, the fun and interesting things we can find in a drive on our way somewhere. Until next time, be good, stay safe, and take the time to enjoy the journey this week instead of worrying about the destination.

Pamela & Ken
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