Saturday 23rd was the date chosen for August's photo an hour, the bank holiday weekend! With only a few weeks left until Lily's first carnival of the autumn, it was a day filled with costume-making and sewing.
Here's what the day looked like...
Saturday 23rd was the date chosen for August's photo an hour, the bank holiday weekend! With only a few weeks left until Lily's first carnival of the autumn, it was a day filled with costume-making and sewing.
Saturday 16th was November's photo an hour date - the last big carnival of the season here in Somerset! We had breakfast and then Andrew collected my brother from his care home whilst I sorted out all the carnival costume bits from the previous night's procession in Wells. Then we all headed down to Glastonbury for the final parade!
October's photo an hour day was Saturday 19th - another carnival day down here in Somerset! This time it was Trowbridge Carnival (just over the border into Wiltshire) and Lily was taking part in their evening procession.
Saturday 21st was the date chosen for September's photo an hour. It's carnival season down here in Somerset and Lily was taking part in Frome Carnival that day. They had an afternoon procession and an evening procession and she competed in both of them, picking up 5 trophies along the way!
August's photo an hour day took place on Saturday 17th. We did some jobs at home, visited my Dad in his nursing home and then took a drive to deliver last year's carnival trophies back to their hometowns.
Saturday 16th December was the final photo an hour date of 2023!
We were away for the weekend at a local holiday park, at a cottage with a hot tub (my birthday present!). It was also Honiton Christmas Carnival in the evening so we headed down to Devon to watch that, picking up some chips and watching some Christmas lights on the way back.
Every month I find myself wondering, "how on earth has photo an hour come round again so quickly!?" I have no idea where the year has gone. So last Saturday, the 18th November ended up being the penultimate photo an hour day of 2023 (again, how?)
As is standard for November in Somerset, it was a carnival day - Glastonbury this time, the final big carnival of the year!
Saturday 21st was the date chosen for October's photo an hour. Another carnival day down here in the south west; we headed to Trowbridge in the evening for the Small Person to show off her Mary Anning performance.
Saturday 23rd was the date chosen for September's photo an hour. It was a carnival day here in Somerset (as it is here every Saturday in autumn!) and that date was Frome Carnival. This year the Small Person is taking part on her own at some of the carnivals, entering as a "juvenile masquerader". Her chosen theme (of course) had to be dinosaur-related and so she's depicting Mary Anning, the fossil lady from Lyme Regis. In the daytime, before the carnival we did some jobs and visited my Dad in his nursing home.
Not entirely sure how we're in February already but here we are. I've seen some daffodils and snowdrops and I'm writing this in the sunshine so fingers crossed spring is on its way :-)
A lot seems to have happened in the last few months!
Saturday 19th was the date chosen for November's photo an hour challenge. Here in Somerset, it was the last of the large carnivals for this year, taking place at Glastonbury. The carnival club I'm a member of were doing a walking entry this year, using costumes and a theme from a previous year, back when we did Alice in Wonderland in 2018. So my day was spent having a hearty breakfast, a bit of a rest and then getting ready to take part in the procession!
Saturday 22nd was the date chosen for October's photo an hour. We spent the first half of it at home, doing some bits of housework and a bit of sewing. The second half was spent heading to my Mum's house, visiting the local recycling centre, taking her to see my Dad at his nursing home and in the evening, watching a local carnival (partly in the rain!).
So, how is it October already!? Where has this year gone?
We had quite a nice summer, pretty good weather and we managed to get out and about a fair few times plus do our annual road trip to Scotland and back.
Here's a selection of what's been happening over the last three months:
What have you been up to?
A two month round-up this time, as I didn't get round to actually writing a post at the end of May!
What have you all been up to?
Well this was a weird year wasn't it? I'm guessing it didn't really go as planned for anyone. But there were still things to take pictures of, even if the majority of them were at home.
18th January 2020 - Lily had asked for a birthday day trip to see some dinosaurs so we went out to the Dinosaur Museum in Dorchester. We started off with breakfast at a garden centre on the way, had tea and cake for lunch and finished with a stroll on the beach and fish & chips at the seaside.
15th February 2020 - A day of sorting and tidying (a lot of that went on in 2020!).
21st March 2020 - A weird day from what I remember, although the lockdown restrictions hadn't started officially it felt like should be staying at home already. Lily watched some online lessons and did lots of playing.
18th April 2020 - The first photo an hour day officially in lockdown. I made a sling for Lily's toy baby, scanned some old family photos and finished off the last of my Easter chocolate.
16th May 2020 - I jumped on the 'baking bread' bandwagon and had a go at doing our own (which we still do now when needed). We also repotted some of our plants and seedlings before having dinner in the garden as it was such a lovely sunny day.
13th June 2020 - More tidying up and playing and in the evening we watched a streaming of some carnival footage from years ago that I'd transferred and sent to a local website.
18th July 2020 - The most exciting thing that happened that day was the arrival of some dinosaur fabric to make a dress for Lily! A lot of my photos seem to feature rather boring things like washing up or tidying, sorry.
22nd August 2020 - The start of being able to harvest our vegetables from the veg patch. I scanned some old school photos and put them onto a Facebook group (I'd promised to do that after going to a reunion in 2019) and in the evening we had some home-grown potatoes with our dinner.
19th September 2020 - This day was mostly spent tidying up the garden and harvesting lots of things from the veggie patch.
31st October 2020 - Photo an hour fell on Halloween last year and we dressed up and took cake round to my parents house for a mini Halloween party. Lily had great fun doing a spooky chocolate hunt and we had fish & chips for dinner whilst watching the "next slide please" COVID briefing that evening.
21st November 2020 - Back in lockdown and we started the day with Lily doing an online science lesson. I did a bit of sewing in the afternoon, finishing off a tshirt and dress that I'd started earlier in the week. In the evening we watched the Glastonbury Carnival virtual procession (all the carnivals having been cancelled back in March).
12th December 2020 - And I didn't realise it at the time, but we ended the year with a photo an hour in the same place as where we started back in January! With a day trip to the south coast, ending up in Weymouth, this time to celebrate my birthday (which was the next day). We had ice cream, fancy hot chocolate and fish & chips by the seaside before venturing into one of the few shops we'd been in all year (armed with a long list of bits for Christmas).
I'll round up the first few months of 2021 in a few days and then I'll be up to date!