Monday 30 July 2012

Norfolk adventures - day one






 











Remember that heat wave that occurred last week?  Knowing exactly how sporadic British weather is, I was keen to escape to the coast to take in some sea air, eat some chips on the sea front and consume an atrocious amount of ice cream.  I scoured the internet last Wednesday to try and find a B&B for me and Steve to stay at for a couple of days and that evening we booked a place in North Norfolk - Walsingham to be precise.  This time around, we did not really fancy a camping trip - Latitude was only a few weeks ago and this break was intended to be a time to relax - not get all grumpy while trying to construct a tent in probable extreme weather conditions!

These photos are from our first day in Norfolk.  I have been desperate to take photographs again, so borrowed a digital SLR from Steve for the entire duration of our stay.  I think I took over 600 photographs while we were there, so I have had to whittle them down!

Walsingham is a village that I find quite difficult to describe... it's a very religious place with numerous churches and shops selling a range of religious paraphernalia.  Personally, I found it all a little bit odd however very intriguing.  We ventured into Cley in the afternoon (that's where the photographs of the beach and wonderful sculptures were taken!).  After and incredible cream tea with warm, homemade scones literally as big as my hand, we walked to the beach.  It was a superb surprise to encounter a range of sculptures on the beach!  There are snaps of all three of them above.  The beach hut had been converted into a giant camera obscura, we stayed in there for ages!  I also adored the wall made of wool.  I also found some time to attempt some painting - it was quite difficult in some pretty extreme wind conditions though, please note the fly away hair in some of the pictures above!

We then drove to Holt, a village more inland.  We had a little wander around some of the quirky, independent shops before finding an Italian restaurant called Byfords to eat some dinner.  I had a beetroot, walnut and blue cheese risotto which was crazy delicious.  They also had a deli where everything looked completely and utterly yum!



The day ended with a quick drink in the pub local to our B&B and a stroll around the village - perfect!  

I will be adding some more photographs of my adventures around Norfolk very soon, along with some brand new car boot finds!  So far I am managing to keep up with this blogging malarkey, let's hope this doesn't change once September arrives!

Where is your favourite coastal town?

Wednesday 25 July 2012

hello there!

Why hello there! :)
 
So it has been seven whole months since I have blogged, wow.
I have now finished my teacher training course, which may I add, I passed with flying colours!  I'm not one to 'blow my own trumpet' too often, but I have worked so, so hard this past year.  I found training to be a teacher in one year much more stressful than my three year degree!  It's absolutely mad how it just takes over your life.  I'm very thankful for a six week break now, but I am finding it quite difficult to remember who I am when I am not a teacher!

I have a totally real and grown up teaching job to start in September, teaching Art to year 9, GCSE and As Level and also year 9 DT.  I am really excited, especially about getting my classroom organised just how I want it - including some amazing displays!  I bagged a whole bunch of old maps for £1 at a car boot sale at the weekend and these are destined to be incorporated into my Joseph Cornell display.

Myself and Steve are now on the lookout for a new abode in my home county of Bedfordshire.  I can't wait to have somewhere new to live so I can get settled before the new academic year begins.  We will soon be living a more rural life which I am excited about after living in cities for many years.  I am most definitely going to be buying a bike along with the cliché of a wicker basket (already have one of those!). 
 I am also hoping to resurrect my What Katie Found Etsy shop and line up some craft/vintage fairs to attend in the run up to Christmas - crafts people out there - please update me on any exciting events, I am completely out the loop!  It has just been so long that I have done anything along these lines that it feels like starting again - I don't know where to begin!  It would be really good to re brand a little bit and start a fresh I think :)

Anyway, for this first blog post in such a long time, I thought I would share with you some photographs that I took on Monday.  After a swim at a local pool, myself and Steve went for a walk to the Botanical Gardens in Leicester to see the annual sculpture exhibition, it was such a beautiful and hot summers day - we don't get many of those in England so we wanted to make the most of it!  

Here are some snaps of some of my favourite pieces from the show.


Ellis O'Connell
Carapace (1999)
Sean Henry
Man with potential selves (|||) (2001)


Brigitte Jurack
Glizzit (2012)

I really love the gold birds... oh, how much I want them for my own garden!

I really want to get out and see as much Art as I can this summer, in preparation for the scary reality of standing in front of students and being 'the Art expert!'.  If you know of anything inspiring happening in the next few weeks, please do share!  I'm currently reading a big old book called 'The Story of Art' which is really interesting, it's very easy to read (I'm not a great reader - BIG tendency to drift off into my own world instead of processing the words on the page!) and it discusses the relevance of ancient art up to more contemporary practice.  Fantastic!

Anyway, it is another beaut of a day, so I'm off for a walk with one of my oldest and dearest friends!
Hope that you're all enjoying the sunshine!

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