New to Me in July 2013

It's the 25th of the month already, so time to link up what you have tried out this month that is New to You.

This month I have been all at sea :)

At the beginning of the month we went on our first-ever Cruise.

This was our ship at Bergen, Norway the last port of call before we sailed back to the UK. We really loved Bergen and will definitely go back there someday, hopefully not on a Sunday when the quilt shop in town is closed though!

So we spent a lot of time occupying these

 and even more time admiring views like this.

On days at sea the ship held a craft class in the afternoon, so when I managed to tear myself away from the loungers and the view I got to try my hand at something else New to Me too.

My very first attempt at painting with watercolour pencils with a bit of decoupage thrown in :) The card front is a stamped image, which was painted by either dampening the watercolour pencils on a palette and applying as paint, or, as I did, lightly colouring the image with the pencils and then softening the applied colour with a damp paintbrush. I really enjoyed having a go at this, and as I have a set of watercolour pencils that I bought to mark quilts with, I will definitely have another go at it. In fact, I may just have bought some stamps that were 70% off in the garden centre yesterday for exactly that!

So that is what I have been up to that is New to Me this month, now it is your turn to link up your New to Me activities.

Link them up below and share your triumphs and/or disasters.

As ever please help to spread the word by linking back to this post in your post and/or adding the blog button to your sidebar.

Check out the other links and leave a comment along the way. The emphasis of this link party is to celebrate the trying of something new, whether it works out exactly as planned or not, so a little encouragement here and there would not go amiss! 

The link will remain open until July 31st so if you haven't already tried something new you still have time :)

Crabs, Cranes and Consumption

There has been a lull here in the randomness for the last couple of weeks and here are some of the reasons why :)

Did you know that the puck in Deck Shuffleboard is called a biscuit? I didn't either but I suppose when you look at it it is not that difficult to imagine why they decided that. Apparently the game was played by Henry VIII, who is recorded as having lost £9 to a courtier over a game, which sounds like a lot of money for the time.

I don't know how many biscuits my 800 fellow passengers and I got through ( I am guessing a lot!) but I do know that between us we managed to consume:

25.75 Litres of Cream,
510 Litres of Ice-Cream,
240.96Kg of Cheese,
825 Kg of Potatoes
and
1,417.93 Kg of Fish!

All in the space of 9 days, so we didn't go hungry :)

This magnificent creature didn't feature on our menu, although he presumably has on another menu by now. He was for sale along with his fellow King Crabs and other wonderful seafood  in the Fish Market in Bergen, Norway and this photo was taken especially for our youngest son, who as you know doesn't like food that moves!  Apparently these King Crabs can grow to have a leg span of 6 feet, now that really would freak him out :) Showing him a photo of one that size would have been cruel!

Not as cruel as the local dockers who, whilst doing this on our return home,

managed to do this to my case!

Incredibly the glass cosmetic bottles inside survived intact. I have had this case for several years but until now, had never had an opportunity to use it so this holiday was the one and only outing :(

Linking up as ever to