Friday's Romantic Fill Ins

It's the end of another week and time for some fill ins that are set by Annie at McGuffy's Reader and Joyce at 15andmeowing.com - why don't you come and join us. The words in purple are the prompts that are provided and then the rest is me.

1. The Winter Olympics is underway and lets hope that the sport is what dominates the news and not the politics.                     .

2. I think the most romantic movie (or book) is Sleepless in Seattle. I love this film so much and every time I watch it I laugh and cry as much as the first time.

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 3. (Recently, I had an odd experience when) Actually I haven't had any odd experiences recently that I can think of. I had a very funny experience yesterday when two of us were trying to pose for a photo for our work facebook page (Click Here to visit) and over 25 photos were taken to get the one that we finally used. This is one of the bloopers when we couldn't stop laughing. I kept getting told off for doing a too fake smile and Seonaid kept talking when they were trying to take the photo. We're also very critical of our own pictures so there were several that we weren't happy with so they were dismissed as well.

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4. I believe that love is a precious gift that once given, by human or animal, should be cherished forever. We are very blessed with the love of these two brats, Princess Cookie Cat and Bramble Jelly Sassy Pants.

What's your favourite romantic film? Before you go, make sure you hop over to Annie's Blog to see what my fellow bloggers have come up with.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and I hope wherever you are in the world you have special moments over the next week.

Pamela & Ken

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Farewell 2017, and Welcome 2018

It's only a few hours until we wave goodbye to the old year and welcome in the new, so time to be a little reflective on how the year has been. In January I wrote this post, My wishes for 2017, and I think all of these still apply for the coming year.

We've had lots of great Days of Fun and found some really unique things to see and do. There is so much incredible history to explore where we live and in January we visited a remote church which sheltered Highlanders during the clearances in 1847 and has words scratched into the glass by these long ago people - A Scottish Tragedy Preserved in Glass.

We attended a world championship in which the Swedish reigned supreme, ironic really as it was the World Porridge Championship and it's one of the dishes that Scotland is known for.

April saw me taking on the A to Z Blogging Challenge for the second year, this time I had a theme and it was all about the Scottish Highlands which made it much easier than 2016. Read my thoughts on the experience and some of the great blogs I found in Reflections on the A to Z.

I ticked two things off my bucket list this year. The first was Glamping in Glenshee - basically camping in a glamorous style. It was a beautiful tent with a low bed, a small wood burner for heat, and a fantastic view of the countryside. It was so lovely that we're going back in April to stay in an old train goods carriage.

The other bucket list item was eating a Deep Fried Mars Bar. I know this sounds like a really strange thing to have on my list, but it's one of those weird food items that I'd heard about for years and had really wanted to try. The verdict - yummy but I wouldn't want to have them very often.

We had a wonderful holiday home in Australia, three weeks of catching up with family and friends whilst still managing to find interesting things to visit and explore. In Tasmania we had a great day out visiting the Murals and Mailboxes of Northern Tasmania and during our brief stay in Melbourne we explored the laneways and Street Art of this fabulous city.

I continued to take part in Top Ten blogging which is hosted by Tamara at Part-time Working Hockey Mom and this year we've done a very diverse range of topics from movie quotes, favourite summer foods, rudeness, random photos, and this one, Favourite Place on Earth. It's a small town in Tasmania called Stanley which I absolutely adore. I love lists so this prompt based challenge is perfect for me.

During the year I found two more prompt based challenges which have been great fun to do. On Wednesdays there is the Hodgepodge which is hosted by Joyce From This Side of the Pond and one of my posts included Problematic Confetti.

The other prompt based challenge is hosted by Annie at McGuffy's Reader and is called Friday's Friendly Fill-Ins - here's one of my posts from October, Friday's Friendly Contemplations. Annie also hosts Sparks on a Monday which is a place for us all to share positive thoughts to spread out into the world - it's a really lovely idea and my first contribution in October was Sparks of Hope.

Throughout all this blogging my beloved is there being his wonderful supportive self, exploring our part of the world with me and making me coffee when I'm sitting at my laptop. I'm truly blessed to share my life with this gorgeous, thoughtful, adorably funny man.

As for our furbies, Princess Cookie Cat is nearly 14 and has started to show her age in small ways - the biggest being that I can catch her quite easily now which makes going to the vet much less stressful. She's sitting beside me as I type this, but of course she's got her back to me so I'll share a photo I took earlier.

Bramble Jelly Sassy Pants (our Cocker Spaniel) is as energetic as ever and still hasn't learnt that if she annoys Cookie too much she will get a whack on the nose. I love this picture as Bramble looks so innocent and Cookie has her paw in the air ready to strike.

With one hour to go until midnight, I wish 2017 a very fond farewell - we had ups and downs like anyone does, but along the way we shared lots of love and laughter.

In 2018 I'm sure I'll find lots of other challenges to take on and hopefully we'll tick a few more things off our bucket list. Starting tomorrow, on the first day of the year I'm going to start the 100 Happy Days Challenge which I was inspired to do by Tamara who did it earlier in the year. This involves taking a photo everyday for 100 days of something that makes you happy and sharing via your preferred social media - mine is going to be on my instagram account.

We wish all of you a year filled with peace, health, love, and lots of laughter.

Happy 2018

Pamela & Ken
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Top Ten Thursday - Unfinished Business

This week's top ten has Tamara at Part-time Working Hockey Mom  asking us "to list all the things that need to be said or done before we turn a new page. Missed opportunities, highlights, unfinished business, tell us about your top ten!"

Interesting theme and this has made me really exercise my brain cells, and after much rumination I believe I've come up with ten - I've gone with unfinished business, things that aren't going to get done before the end of the year but hopefully will next year.

1. Blog Views - considering that when I started our blog I had no idea that more than close friends and family would read it, and yet we're about to reach 100,000 views. I think this will be after new year now, but whenever it is it's amazing.

2. Blog posts - this is our 409th published post, so in 2018 I hope to publish our 500th.

3. Baking - I really need to learn to love our Aga so that I feel more confident doing baking. I love making cakes for people, but I keep putting it off due to the Aga in our rented accomodation - it's not very reliable. Need to bake more.

4. Walking - at the beginning of June I had a really bad fall and damaged the ligaments in my left leg which put a huge dampener on any walking plans we had this year. I'm now back to normal (or as normal as I can be) so we need to get out there and do some exploratory rambles.

5. Poetry - this year I did one poetry day at a local writing centre and it really encouraged me to write more, but I still didn't do as much as I'd like. In 2018 I've booked two days at the centre with experienced poets to keep my motivation going.

6. Competitions - one of the things that is really scary for me is letting other people read my poetry so I need to enter more of the poetry competitions that happen around the UK and send some in to writing magazines. Must do!!

7. Sugar - over the last few years I've been ever so slowly reducing the amount of sugar I have in my coffee and I'm down to one level teaspoon. I'm dreading reducing it more but I know I need to so maybe in 2018 I'll finally complete this task.

8. Steps - sort of links to #4 in that my average step count tends to be around 5,000 due to my job being in a very small building and I have to sit for everything I do. The only time I hit my 10,000 is when Ken and I go out at weekends. In 2018 I need to get nearer to 10,000 even on days that I'm at work.

9. Puffins - I know this sounds like a weird unfinished business, but when we moved to Scotland I thought I would tick this bucket list item off fairly easily, but no, we still haven't seen puffins in the wild. In 2018 we're going to make this happen.

10. Love - I have to have one really soppy item, and that's love because it never finishes and especially not for me and my beloved. 

Do you have any unfinished business lurking around from this year? Before you go, make sure you visit Tamara's Blog and see what my fellow bloggers have come up with for their top ten.

Until next time, be good, stay safe, and I hope you're safe and warm wherever you are in the world.

Pamela & Ken
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