After posting recently about Lucy eating cheese on toast, Sweeney has come up with an interesting one – cream crackers. She’ll eat little bits, but actually eating them as such doesn’t seem to hold too much interest for her – she just loves to lick them.

She’s a bikkitlicker.

Whilst in Nottingham yesterday, we popped into Argos and spent some of the vouchers we were kindly given for our wedding. I’ve mentioned before that I’d been reading up a bit about espresso and related types of coffee. Well, we decided to buy an espresso machine. They had a couple of very cheap ones, but if they don’t mention a pump, I gather they’re not really up to the job. They had a DeLonghi one for £60, though, that seemed to have all the right features, so we went for that. It’s a plastic one rather than being all nice brushed steel, but it’s also about £100 cheaper than the ‘good’ ones, and it still seems to do a decent enough job.

So, we now have a DeLonghi Caffe Treviso espresso maker. And I actually did sleep last night.

We’d been to Starbucks at the start of the trip, and whilst Sam was in her interview, I spent an hour waiting in Caffe Nero, and I had to make espresso when we got home, so I’m kind of surprised that I managed any sleep. Now, I’m drinking espresso again. And it is good.

After spending a bit of time at the West Bridgford Caffe Nero on the day of our wedding, Starbucks was distinctly disappointing. It used to seem good, but it’s pretty poor in comparison.

I had much better coffee back in Caffe Nero whilst waiting for Sam.

UPDATE – Added Excel Drawings

You don’t often see “Microsoft Office” and “fun” in the same sentence, as it’s more commonly associated with reports, spreadsheets and presentations for tedious meetings. But, as demonstrated by the inbox-clogging PowerPoint ‘humour’ that’s landed in my email over the years, it is possible to use Office (and any similar word processing/spreadsheet/presentation software) in a fun and creative way. Let’s take a look at some examples.

Excel

Drawings

• Using Excel as a drawing tool – I bet it took ages, but it is possible – check out Danielle’s gallery. Via Make.

Quizzes

Excel is not my forte. I know just about enough to get by with it at work, but not enough to have a clue how these quizzes were put together.

• Music Photos (2.86mb) – A music picture quiz. How many bands can you recognise? Can you beat my score of 223 out of 270?
• MiniPops (135k) – The fantastic Minipops quiz. Pixelly blocks of pop culture goodness. My score was 84 out of 95.
• Retro Toys (1.2mb) – Retro Toys Quiz. Can your encyclopedic knowledge of the Argos catalogue beat my piffling 70%?

PowerPoint

This is more my thing. I’ve always enjoyed working for people who do lots of presentations because I love playing with PowerPoint.

“Pr0n”

• Men With Guitars 2005 Calendar (787k) – I made this Men With Guitars Calendar because I was fed up of receiving emails full of clean-cut Brad Pitt types. This, I thought, was a suitable antidote.

Microsoft Word

Word, for all its quirks, is actually quite versatile and can be used for all sorts of fun things.

Templates

• Microsoft’s Office Templates – Microsoft have their own collection of templates online for Office, and there’s a lot there. If you don’t have Microsoft Office, most of them should open ok with OpenOffice too. They cover all sorts of things – calendars, greetings cards, diet and exercise, job hunting, legal. For more templates, see our article here.

We have just returned from our honeymoon in Buxton, and we’ve had a wonderful time.

Anyway, now we’re back, it’s time to tell you what we did, and share some pics.

Our wedding was on Monday, but rather than leave straight after all that, and arrive late in the day, we set off late on the Tuesday morning. We have cats, so we can’t leave them for more than 48 hours. As long as they’re well stocked with food and water, they manage fine on their own for that long.

Click the pictures to see them on Flickr, often with notes and comments. Once there, there’s an ‘All Sizes’ link on the top so you can see bigger versions too.

Tuesday

The drive there was easier than we expected, and we passed through some beautiful countryside as we approached Buxton. Some really stark hillsides and impressive old industrial buildings (mining of some sort at a guess). Finding the place was easy, with the help of Shep, our GPS. We checked in as soon as we arrived, at the Roseleigh Hotel. On reaching the front of the building, we found we were being stared at from an armchair inside the lounge – Paddington Bear…

The view from the front of the hotel was quite impressive too…

Once inside, Gerard gave us a very useful introduction to Buxton, and talked us through the shopping area and places to visit on a handy map, including recommending various places to eat. They have a folder near the lounge that contains an assortment of menus from local restaurants and pubs, too, so you can not only check out exactly what they server before attempting to go there, but you can make sure you can afford their prices too. Very thoughtful.

The room contained a nice large bed, and a leather sofa. There was a TV with a disturbing colour scheme – everything at the bottom of the screen was bright red, and everything anywhere else on the screen was green. There was also a Bush radio, but a very nice one – a recreation of an old classic design.

We then took a walk into the town centre for a bit of shopping and some lunch at Pizza Express – very delicious. We found a little shop that sold Moleskines, but managed to resist buying any more (especially since Gary so kindly bought us one as a wedding gift), then had a good look around WHSmith‘s. I was pleased to discover that they sold Lamy Safari fountain pens, which I’ve been reading a lot of people’s very positive comments about in the Yahoo! group of The Drawing Club just recently. At £20, though, I decided against it, and instead picked up an own-brand fountain pen that looked and felt quite nice. I’ll be reviewing both of these in a bit more detail soon, but the WHSmith pen was good enough to convince me that the Safari might be worth getting, but not good enough that I didn’t want the Safari any more.

After doing a bit more shopping, we got loaded down with too much weight in shopping, mainly books from The Works. We popped into Argos, and picked up a catalogue so we could ponder what to spend all our vouchers on back at the hotel, and decided that we didn’t really want another meal. There was a Somerfield there, so we thought we’d pop in and get a few bits of snack foods, and just go back to the hotel for a relaxing evening in. The supermarket was closing down to be turned into a branch of Waitrose and so half the stock was gone, the other half was reduced. I can’t resist anything that’s reduced.

So, that’s how come, on our honeymoon, we ended up in a supermarket, buying cat food and fly spray.

And sweets, crisps and chocolate.

In all of this, I’d kind of forgotten that we still had a fairly long walk back to the hotel, and we now had very heavy bags. The Argos catalogue alone weighed slightly more than our car. We made it, but we ached a little and had sore hands afterwards. An evening of sitting in front of the TV eating snack foods followed. Probably a fairly normal evening for many people, but we rarely watch TV, so it made a pleasant change for us.

Wednesday

We were up for the hotel breakfast at 08:00, which was very good. Plenty of coffee, tea, and toast, along with a full cooked English breakfast. Sam had read about a craft shop, R U Crafty 2, so we headed out to that after breakfast, only to find that it didn’t open until 10:00, so we had a bit of a wait. A little while before they were due to open, a lady noticed us waiting outside, and opened up early for us, apologising for not spotting us sooner. We picked up a few bits for Sam to get started with scrapbooking, and quite a bit of useful advice too.

We then had a walk around The Slopes, and got a few pics, including some litter that amused me – a label from a Buxton mineral water bottle…

The view of The Crescent from The Slopes…

After that, we headed back to WHSmith’s, were I bought the Lamy Safari, and had a nice surprise. Although it was marked on the shelf at £19.99, it came up at the till as £12.99 – much closer to the price I’d found it for online. The only down side of that is that if it had been marked at that, I’d have bought it on the first day, and not bought the own brand one. Still, it was interesting to compare.

We then went for coffee at Hargreaves, which was meh. The coffee shop wasn’t really to our tastes, and the coffee didn’t have much taste, but the cookshop was very good, and Sam couldn’t resist buying a painting. It’s all four of The Beatles, from the cover of Let It Be. We not quite sure yet if it’s actually a painting, or just a print with some brush strokes added over the top. It looks like it’s a painting, but it was way too cheap, and there were several of them there, all identical. Still, it looks good, so we’re not too worried.

We headed back to the hotel to unload at this point, as we had a couple of bags and a large box canvas.

After dropping off, and having a bit of a break, we set off to walk around the Pavillion Gardens, home to the ugly birds…

…where we followed squirrels, and filmed each other on a strange hexagonal plynth thing…

There’s a conservatory there too, which we had a walk around, snapping quite a few pictures of plants – I’ve not got around to ‘processing’ any of those yet, so just imagine lots of pretty colourful flowers. I’m sure you can do that. You’re very imaginative.

Anyway, then we went to No 6 The Square for a bit of lunch. Sam ordered afternoon tea, and I went for a beef sandwich. Wow. Wow…

Horseradish. Oh, yes. Horseradish. Nope, not quite there yet. HORSERADISH! Yep, that’s more like it. Powerful horseradish sauce, like bleached wasabi. Nice.

If you like horseradish, that is.

I do.

We then visited an art and craft exhibition inside the Pump Room, with some really good stuff on show, then wandered back to the hotel again.

Later on, we popped out for food at The Old Sun Inn. It was a surprising little place. Didn’t seem too promising when we first went in, and the further round we explored, the worse it seemed to get. Not bad, but certainly seemed more of a drinker’s pub than a place to eat. And we don’t drink. After a while, though, we popped out from another little section of bar, and found ourselves in a nicely done-out little dining room. And the food was excellent. I had a burger, as I tend to, and it was good and meaty, with fresh and tasty salad. Sam had a steak and guinness pie, which was well packed with tender flaky meat. Good prices too. The trick is just to turn left when you step through the front door – that’s the dining room.

After that, we headed back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of the evening.

Thursday

Not a lot to tell – we had another good breakfast, then headed off home to get back to our puddies. We stopped off to visit Sam’s mum, and she’d kindly gone out and bought us a pie to take away with us, so that’s tomorrow’s dinner sorted out, and filled with more meaty chunks.

The puddies seemed pleased to see us, and the Sheba cat food went down well.

Now the wedding and the honeymoon’s out of the way, it’s time to record all the memories in my first attempt at a scrapbook.

This page celebrates how I spent my hen night, in the internet, chatting with friends on a message board. It might sound sad, but it was the only way to get the stripper I wanted . Instead of neat cuts or fancy patterns for all the pieces, I went for a more rough and ready approach, tearing each piece I used.

Click on the picture to be taken to the page on flickr where I’ve added notes and more details.