September Month in Numbers

It has been a lovely warm sunny month, just about 30 days of sunshine and 0 inches of rain!  Plenty of opportunities to wear my newly made  shorts and walk along the beach.

Rather than do Shimelle’s ‘Learn Something New Everyday’ class again, I made up 30 mini adventures to do in September.  I missed only 1 day.  More about my mini adventures in another blog post, but I did write 4 letters….

… and switched my radio over to BBC Radio 3 from my usual BBC Radio 2

I finished up with my Scavenger Hunt photos with a photo of 18 bird houses (you liked it so much I am going to show you t again!)

We made 1 trip to London to go to a concert in Hyde Park, at which 8 acts played: Chrissie Hynde, Bellowhead, Gregory Porter, Kacey Musgraves, Paloma Faith, Billy Ocean, Blondie and Jeff Lynne’s ELO:

It was a great day, Jeff Lynne played a fabulous set including all the classic ELO songs.  This was the first time he had played live for 26 years!

We made 1 trip to Birmingham to see some of my mum’s family; 2 uncles and 3 cousins plus their families.  There were 12 of us for lunch:

Nicholas got the keys to his apartment this month.  It needs lots of work, so we stripped the wallpaper in 4 rooms:

Finally, I know you have seen it before, but I finished the last of my 100 crotchet squares to make my lovely colourful, cosy blanket:

 

I am linking up with Julie for Month in Numbers.  Pop over and see what everyone else has done numerically in September.

August–Month in Numbers

Welcome to my month in numbers for August.  As usual I am linking up with Julie’s blog. 

It’s been a productive Summer in the garden.  I have harvested 6 different vegetables: beans, chard, tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, sweetcorn and beetroot.  My largest cucumber measured 13 inches long, and weighed 1lb 8oz.  My largest tomato (so far) weighed 14oz.

I picked 3 corns and we had them for lunch one Saturday.  They went straight into the pot from the garden, and boy! did they taste sweet!

I visited 2 stunning gardens this month.  Christopher Lloyd’s garden at Great Dixter in East Sussex is somewhere I had always wanted to go:

This last weekend, we visited Charleston House, country home of the Bloomsbury set in the early part of the 20th century.  It is in East Sussex too, just past Lewes.  No photos allowed inside the house, but here’s a few of the garden. 

We loved the inside of the house!  Every piece of furniture had been painted by Vanessa Bell or Duncan Grant.  Such lovely muted colours and designs!  I really want to have a go myself.

There was 1 very large wasps nest that was in our loft.  The wasps were very busy, there must have been thousands in there!  The Pest Control man from the council came to cover it in toxic powder, and now the wasps have gone.  6 wasps escaped into the house, 5 of which were killed by his spray and 1 survived to be let out of the window.

We had 2 rides out on the new bike (Triumph Bonneville). 1 to Charleston above, and 1 to Petworth, a pretty little village in West Sussex that is full of antique shops!  Within a walking distance of half a mile radius there are 24 antique and interior design shops!

 

That’s it from me this month!  Do pop over to Julies blog to have a look at what everyone else has been up to in August,numerically of course!

Month in Numbers–Holiday edition

On our trip ‘up north’ one of the things we did was to follow a tour recommended by Motorcycle News to visit some of England’s biggest things.  It makes for a great ‘Month in Numbers’!  I am linking up with Julie at Notes on Paper.

Here are some of the things we saw/visited:

Cardington Airship Hangars

The largest hangars in England, at 812 feet in length, 180 feet wide, and 157 feet high.  They were built in 1915, and were home to the ill fated R101 airship. 

Humber Bridge – The largest single span suspension bridge in the world when it was built in 1981.  It is now the 7th longest bridge of it’s type.

It has a span  of 1410m (Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco 1280m)

It contains 480,000 tonnes of concrete, with a weight of over 87,000 african bull elephants

The distance between towers at top is 36mm more at top than bottom to allow for curvature of earth. 

The centre of bridge is designed to swing 4m in high winds!

 

The Angel of the North

The tallest statue in England, at 20m (66 feet) high and a wingspan of 54m (177 feet).  It was designed by Anthony Gormley and made out of weathered steel.  It is said that it is the most viewed statue in England, as it lies in view of travellers on the busy roads, A1 and A167 and the busy East Coast train line.

 

High Force Waterfall

at 21m can’t be the highest waterfall we have to offer can it?  According to Wikipedia there are in fact 2 higher waterfalls in England.  We had fun trying out different camera settings:

Aperture f29, Speed 1/2 sec (balanced camera on ground, hence it is not very straight!)

Aperture: f4.5, Speed: 1/250sec

We seemed to be forever walking up and down steps on this holiday!  One memorable staircase was inside Durham Cathedral – 325 steps to the top, for splendid views across the town.

The North East coast is famous for it’s castles, mostly built in defence from the marauding Vikings from Scandinavia.  We visited 2 castles, Durham and Lindesfarne, but saw another 5 from the outside:

Bamburgh, Barnard Castle, Raby, Alnwick and Dunstanburgh.

We were surprised to find out that the sun rose 20 minutes earlier and set 30 minutes later in early July in Durham as compared to down south, here in Worthing! We really noticed how much lighter it was in the evenings. 

We had a fabulous trip, really packed in things to do and overall clocked up 1,070 miles on the motorbike.

Month in Numbers - June

A couple of statistics from the kitchen makeover:

20.6 sq metres of flooring.  We have chosen this lovely grey vinyl:

4 very groovy orange chairs purchased.

9.3m of curtain fabric purchased, plus 8.8m of curtain lining.  All ready for me to start making them!

As I write, there are 4 things left to do:

make curtains

order blind for window over sink

get fridge door fixed

glass splashback for behind hob

Happy to say they are all in hand.

 

In the garden, my 6 roses are flowering well.  Here are 4 of them:

This pink rose has 28 flowers and approx 300 buds!  (I counted about half of them, then guesstimated the total!)

Craft wise, I made 14 Project Life cards for a swap:

Finally, my daughter Lucy and niece Izzy ran the race for life along Worthing Seafront.

They ran 3km in just under 30 minutes.  Lucy has raised over £200 for Cancer Research UK.  It was a gorgeous day, and the whole family were out to support her!  Here’s some cute photos of my brother’s 18 month old granddaughter Tillie trying to get my brother’s hat on her head: