Sunday 30 December 2012

To 2012...

2012 has been quite a busy year, looking back I didn't put enough time into the things I enjoy but I am determined to change that. Looking back I can't really remember much from January, work was tough trying to get back to normal after the chaos of a record breaking Christmas. We had a week off in February which didn't get off to the best start with the worst sickness I've experienced in years but we carried on to Manchester for a few days. I had never visited before and really enjoyed our little explore of the North West including our first trip to Blackpool and marvelling at the Comedy Carpet. If you haven't been to Blackpool I recommend going just to see it as the quotes from so many much loved comics, films and TV shows is fabulous.


 
 
In the spring I got my first DSLR, a lovely Nikon D3100 :D very different from my old compact and film SLRs, I had it just in time to capture the blossoms in the park.


May saw us adventure up to Scotland for the third time in recent years. We stayed in Edinburgh again and visited St. Andrews, Glasgow and Blair Castle where my lovely boy proposed to me :D The weather was absolutely boiling for Scotland in May, I can't recall the last time we experienced heat like it but it was so good to have a holiday without any rain, even if we lugged our raincoats up with us on the train. In Glasgow we visited the new Riverside Museum, in February 2010 we went to the old Transport Museum just before it closed down so we were pleased to get to see the new museum and look at all the collections they had out on display.  







June was quite something as we got flooded out in work for the first time, a small team of us battled to keep the water out when staff in other shops on the retail park ran away and let the water take over.




We had exciting news at the end of June that our store was to have a re-fit to a new store type, called "Store of the Future" which in turn meant we got to go away to Newcastle-Under-Lyme for a week long training course to let us know what to expect. After that we were lucky enough to have a long weekend off since that week we were meant to be holiday. We visited the beautiful Biddulph Grange Gardens near Stoke, we went last year and got soaked, the same could be said of our visit this time too. Oh well, hopefully next year I will get to go when it's sunny. David did enjoy feeding the ornamental carp, I like to imagine he was thinking how he would fillet them hehe. After Biddulph we drove across to Wrexham for a couple of nights and visited Erddig, Chirk Castle and on the Sunday had a trip on the Llangollen steam railway before heading up to Bodnant Gardens. It was a bit of a trek but well worth it, especially to see all the beautiful water lilies in Bodnant.











August was spent watching the London Olympics and I attended my second course, this time in Chippenham where I spent a week discovering lots of new cheeses and salamis and my least favourite thing, olives. I met a lovely guy called Ed who does the same job as me in Ross-on-Wye, it was just us and our trainer Tom sat nibbling lots of nice things all week!

I spent most of the summer searching online for my perfect wedding dress as we decided to get married in October as we didn't want a big expensive day. I eventually found the dress I wanted from Monsoon on ebay for a fraction of what it would have cost new, £225 at full price, I got it for £24! I couldn't believe my luck! The big day, 17th October, soon came around and we became Mr and Mrs in the Mansion House in Newport. I had a hard time deciding on flowers as I liked so many different things but when I spotted the brassica cabbages in Tesco I fell in love and had to have them. The registrars hadn't seen them before and really liked the idea. We had all our family there and just had a lovely day, it did go incredibly quickly but I wouldn't have changed anything about it, well maybe I wouldn't have felt so ill but apart from that.






Our honeymoon was a little adventure in itself. First we visited the beautiful Kingston Lacy in Dorset and spent a night in Taunton before going to Dunster Castle and the village. Our second night was in Exeter and afterwards we started the trip down to Cornwall, taking in Cotehele and Lanhydrock (both fantastic National Trust properties) before we finally made it to Porthleven where we had a little cottage for the week. We had a full on week, visiting Penzance and St. Michaels Mount, St. Ives, Falmouth, Newquay and Mevagissey. The weather wasn't that great overall but we did have some lovely sun on our last morning and we stopped off at Nightshayes Court on the way home.


















 
Since honeymoon we haven't really done anything that exciting, we had our re-fit in work which was quite stressful but we got through it and since then all we've been doing is getting prepared for Christmas. This year was the first one we spent together in our six years together, we only got three days off but had a nice rest without needing to travel.
 

So that was 2012, a generally good year and now I look forward to 2013 :D
 
 



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