Recently in Life Category

This year marks the 6th or 7th year in succession that I've made my own Christmas cards, featuring shots I've taken myself.

There was no need for any significant ponderment over the picture for this year's card.  Andrea and I spent our anniversary in the Lake District in a cottage with fantastic views over Ullswater, and one morning we awoke to a stunning mist filled vista.

So here it is!  Have a wonderful Christmas and very blessed New Year.

One of the many fun parts of moving into the vicarage in Bexley, has been setting myself up with an office/study. Part of this has been realisng a long term dream - painting a mural of Bridget Riley's work 'Late Morning'.

As you can see I have a bright wall facing me now whilst I work!


  

OK, here's the first batch for all those who've been asking.

In around a months time I'll post all of my and Andrea's favorites on a website somewhere (there were plenty of photographers there on the day), but for now, enjoy the top skills of Robert Hooper, our professional photographer...

        www.roberthooper.co.uk/proofs

        The password to enter the personal gallery is: 0111 Ward

We hope you enjoy them, we're certainly pleased with the results!

[The picture you see here was taken by the wonderful Gemma Horsell - more from her in a month's time...]

I actually got around to doing a Christmas letter again this year.  It was a bit of a challenge what with all the snow and getting married, but I got there in the end!

Rather than repeat myself, I'll just let you get on with reading the letter!

Hopefully many of you got one of these through the post during the christmas period.

If however you didn't, I hope this virtual version brightens your day.  Click on the picture to enlarge...

Have a great 2011!

Just a quick post to give a sneak preview of this years Christmas Card piccie - taken from a very snowy hill opposite the Langdales during my and Andrea's honeymoon.

We couldn't have asked for a more perfect time :-)

OK, so its been a long blogging break for me, but I couldn't remain away from the bloggosphere after the weekend Andrea and I have just had.

On Friday we went rock shopping!  We've been engaged about a month, but we only managed to get enough time together to get the ring this week.  Having been recommended that we look in Brighton, we trekked down on a lovely warm day to the south coast.

The experience couldn't have been better.  We headed straight for Exclusive Jewellery, owned and run by Sam New, brother of Charlotte, who until recently was working for me.  Sam took us through all the things we could have wished to know about, right from all the different metal options for the mount, to stone settings, and all of the factors going into the grading of diamonds.  I'll never look at a diamond again in the same light!

After a couple of hours (literally!) we stumbled upon a ring that looked really good on Andrea's finger, and were excited about the 'peach' of a diamond as Sam called it that he'd just brought up from the shop store; a very bright white 50 point 1/2 carat round diamond.

Usually time would have been required for a deliberation on whether or not this was the right purchase, but we were both so happy with the experience and the look of the diamond ring now sparling on Andrea's finger that we made the decision there and then.  15 minutes later the ring had been resized and the diamond set, and we were cracking a bottle of bubbly in celebration with Sam.  We left the shop with big grins on our faces, very happy with the new sparkler on Andrea's hand.

Just saw this on the bbc website - somewhat different to the last time I saw them!

Looks like the US is having some snowy fun!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/8407256.stm

Make sure that you have a decent backup regime in place in case you don't heed Advice #1

Thankfully I think the laptop is going to survive long enough for me to get everything off it...

Don't spill a whole mug of tea over your laptop, it can seriously mess up your day.