Five Years Young

Today is a very special Five on Friday as tomorrow there will be another five, tomorrow is Logan's fifth birthday!

It is hard to believe that this marks five years of me being a father. They always say kids grow up so fast and it's certainly true. It seems like only yesterday that I could hold him in one hand and now he's half as tall as me!

Logan has been in the UK with Carly for the last week because for his birthday he asked if he could visit the natural history museum to see the dinosaur exhibits, since it was such an awesome and educational request we couldn't say no. I stayed at home with the Father-in-law, Aurora and the dogs while Logan, Carly and Diane (MIL) went on their UK adventure for a week. They got back yesterday evening so I really didn't get a chance to put together much of a post I'm afraid, but here's 5 photos of our soon to be 5 yr old that I took recently and absolutely love

Toasting marshmallows on the campfire

Climbing trees with his sister

Chilling in the hammock with Dadda

Dressing up as Pirates

Adventures in the mountains

Tomorrow we are having a party in the village for his birthday, because its so close to Halloween we always do spooky fancy dress and he begs us every year to do a halloween theme party again so its pretty much a family tradition now, now doubt i'll be sharing photos of the festivities with everyone next week.

Thanks or joining us once again for Five on Friday, Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

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Five on Friday Weekly Linkup

Welcome to Five on Friday, a weekly opportunity for the community to link up and share 5 things with us or take 5 minutes to talk about one topic. We’d love for you to join us and add a link to your own Five on Friday blog post! It’s a great way to make new friends from around the world and gain some motivation to keep your blog updated. Every Friday we'll be sharing a Fast Five and look forward to seeing yours.

How To Join In

Your 5 things can be all on a related topic or 5 totally separate things of your choosing, it's totally flexible and up to you. You might choose 5 photos, 5 quotes or use it to recap 5 things you've done this week, you have the freedom to exercise your creativity!

All that we ask is that you link back to Five on Friday using the button below (just copy and paste the HTML code in to your blog) and try to share the love by visiting & commenting on the other participants blogs. Each week the post will go live at 6.00am GMT on Friday and will close for new link entries at 10.00PM on Sunday

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First Camping Trip

Friday Blessings Happy Campers! Welcome back once again for Five on Friday

As you know the other week I did an overnight camp in the mountains with my motorcycle club brothers. After seeing the photos Logan wouldn't stop asking me if he could come camping with me. He's only 4 years old so I wasn't sure if he was totally ready to spend a night outdoors but I will never hold my children back from their aspirations so we set a date and made it happen.

We went down to our land the day before we were due to camp and took some tools to level off a pitch for the tent, I wanted to make sure Logan was involved in all of this to get him used to the site and the idea of camping.

Logan working hard

After a while we had cleared a perfect spot for our tent and a little pathway to the firepit so that he wouldn't be tripping up all night. Then we went home to pack up ready for our adventure!

Logan beside the firepit 

The next day we came back about an hour before the sun was due to set, got the tent up and made ourselves at home. Always make sure your tent is upwind of your fire folks :)

Tent Life

Of course no camping trip would be complete without the age old tradition of toasting marshmallows on the fire, Logan took to it like a pro and we had the best time sitting around the fire chatting and making memories.

toasting marshmallows on the camp fire

I think there is definitely something very primal about sitting around the camp fire, enjoying food and drink and sharing stories with your tribe, I feel a deep connection with our ancestors whenever I get the chance to partake in this sort of activity outdoors.

Our humble little campfire

Then as is started to get dark we watched the fire go down to embers and retreated to the tent. Now was the time to allow modern technology to make the experience even better. Since it was Logan's first ever time camping out I wanted to make sure he didn't feel uncomfortable or scared, so I took the laptop along in our pack and when night fell we cuddled up in the tent, watching Minions and eating tasty snacks.

Camping, Crisps and Minions, the perfect combination!

When the movie finished we snuggled down and went to sleep. At around 1am I was woken by dogs barking in the nearby village and then the sound of animals charging towards the tent as what sounded like 3 wild boar thundered up to the tent, squealed a bit and ran away. Logan remained asleep and blissfully unaware that he came very close to seeing his Dadda have a knife fight with the three little pigs! All I wanted to do was wave a torch and shout to scare them off but didn't want to scare Logan on his first night camping so I stayed silent and let them move on in their own time, albeit gripping the handle of a 14" Bowie knife just in case!

Camping tradition

In the morning Logan was really excited to have bean sandwiches for breakfast so we brewed up some choco-mint tea and cooked the beans in an oldschool set of mess tins that I have had since I was a teenager, still my favourite cook set after all these years!

As a kid I never got to go camping with my Dad (my parents separated when I was Logan's age) so it filled me with joy to be able to share my love of the outdoors with my son and give him the memories that I never had, I'm sure he will treasure these moments for a lifetime. What memories of camping do you have?

Thanks for stopping by for this weeks Five on Friday, We wish you a wonderful weekend!

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Five on Friday Weekly Linkup

Welcome to Five on Friday, a weekly opportunity for the community to link up and share 5 things with us or take 5 minutes to talk about one topic. We’d love for you to join us and add a link to your own Five on Friday blog post! It’s a great way to make new friends from around the world and gain some motivation to keep your blog updated. Every Friday we'll be sharing a Fast Five and look forward to seeing yours.

How To Join In

Your 5 things can be all on a related topic or 5 totally separate things of your choosing, it's totally flexible and up to you. You might choose 5 photos, 5 quotes or use it to recap 5 things you've done this week, you have the freedom to exercise your creativity!

All that we ask is that you link back to Five on Friday using the button below (just copy and paste the HTML code in to your blog) and try to share the love by visiting & commenting on the other participants blogs. Each week the post will go live at 6.00am GMT on Friday and will close for new link entries at 10.00PM on Sunday

Fast Blog

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Pallet Photo Board

Props and backdrops / backgrounds for photography don't have to cost a fortune and there are some really creative things you can do on a budget if you're willing to womble!

DIY Pallet Photoboard - Photo Background Prop

Last week we showed you the pallet bath that we made, and the Pallet Gate before that, this week I thought it might be fun to show you the photoboard we made up. We now use this board as the backdrop for all of our product photos for Thor's Threads and Lucky Sew & Sew and it really comes in handy to have a beautiful dedicated surface for taking photos on.

As with most of our recent creations the photoboard started out life on the pallet pile

The goldmine that is the pallet pile

We selected a pallet that had fairly close boards to begin with, and to achieve the look we were going for we filled in the gaps with strips of timber cut down from another pallet.

Gaps all filled in 

You can just see in the photo above that we cut small grooves into the wood on the original pallet to give it more of a floorboard look after it was stained

Applying the stain

After sanding the whole thing down we treated the pallet photoboard to a couple of coats of stain to get it looking less like a pallet and more like a photography backdrop.

Finished Pallet Photoboard

And there you have it, the finished photoboard! 

DIY Pallet Photography Backdrop

Here are some of the photo's we've taken on the board recently, they certainly look a lot smarter than just taking them on the dining room table!

Addams Family Patch - Glow in the Dark

Winter Mjolnir Thor's Hammer Patch

Addams Family Patch and Pin Badge

Viking Badges and Golden Mjolnir Patch

Hopefully this will be helpful to some of you, we'd love to hear what sort of props and backdrops you use for your photography!

Have an wonderful weekend, thanks for joining in once again with Five on Friday :)

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Five on Friday Weekly Linkup

Welcome to Five on Friday, a weekly opportunity for the community to link up and share 5 things with us or take 5 minutes to talk about one topic. We’d love for you to join us and add a link to your own Five on Friday blog post! It’s a great way to make new friends from around the world and gain some motivation to keep your blog updated. Every Friday we'll be sharing a Fast Five and look forward to seeing yours.

How To Join In

Your 5 things can be all on a related topic or 5 totally separate things of your choosing, it's totally flexible and up to you. You might choose 5 photos, 5 quotes or use it to recap 5 things you've done this week, you have the freedom to exercise your creativity!

All that we ask is that you link back to Five on Friday using the button below (just copy and paste the HTML code in to your blog) and try to share the love by visiting & commenting on the other participants blogs. Each week the post will go live at 6.00am GMT on Friday and will close for new link entries at 10.00PM on Sunday

Fast Blog

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The Biker's Life

Friday Again!

Last Week I mentioned I was stripping down the bike to give it a new lease of life so I thoguth this week I'd update you on the progress of the transformation.

The Blank Canvas - matt black

Although the bike was red when I bought it I had already resprayed it matt black a few years ago but after several British winters it was starting to look very tired and needed a little TLC.

I wasn't ENTIRELY sure that I wanted to do the bike blue so started off by testing out the colour on the mudguard.

Front Fender Painted

After putting the insignia of my motorcycle club on it and then lacquering over it it was ready to go back on the bike.I was really happy with it so decided to go ahead and strip the rest of the bike down to be sorted out.

A very tired looking steed!

Looking back at the photo of her stripped down it's hard to believe that it is the same bike when I finished! The whole bike was cleaned up, sanded down and treated to a fresh lick of paint, including the exhausts and header pipes.

Full Blue Paintjob

Now all I need to do is get the seat re-upholstered as there are a few small rips in the leather, sand down the engine and re-enamel it and do a few small bits here and there to make it one of a kind. Once the new leather seat is on Carly has volunteered to paint White Wolf Brotherhood down the sides of it and anyone that has seen her handiwork will be as excited as I am to see how it turns out!

Painting the bike and restoring her to her former glory has been a welcome distraction and a great bit of mental therapy. Of course now that she is beautiful again I couldn't just let her sit on her own in the garage, luckily I had a party to attend with the club to get out and show her off to the world:

Out on the road where she belongs

It's never a bad thing to let your hair down and party, which is exactly what I did out with my club brothers and our friends in the other clubs that came from far and wide for the Scavengers MC End of Summer Party. The man on the left of this photo, "The Butcher" is actually my father! It's the first time he had been out to a biker party with me, he's been interested for ages so really enjoyed himself.

The Butcher, Knuckles and Me

We drank far too much to be able to drive home, but as the forward thinking citizens of the world that we are I had already arranged for us to camp over and once the party had finished and everyone else had gone to sleep we had a few more beers beside the campfire having a laugh and making memories

Wolves around the camp fire

Waking up the next morning, slightly worse for wear, I was treated to an amazing sunrise in the mountains as I set up the stoves for a hot drink and some breakfast.

Camping in the mountains

So as you can see I'm doing so much better than I was a while ago and I can't wait to show you all the progress as I customise the bike a bit more in the future.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend, Thanks for stopping by for Five on Friday!


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Five on Friday Weekly Linkup

Welcome to Five on Friday, a weekly opportunity for the community to link up and share 5 things with us or take 5 minutes to talk about one topic. We’d love for you to join us and add a link to your own Five on Friday blog post! It’s a great way to make new friends from around the world and gain some motivation to keep your blog updated. Every Friday we'll be sharing a Fast Five and look forward to seeing yours.

How To Join In

Your 5 things can be all on a related topic or 5 totally separate things of your choosing, it's totally flexible and up to you. You might choose 5 photos, 5 quotes or use it to recap 5 things you've done this week, you have the freedom to exercise your creativity!

All that we ask is that you link back to Five on Friday using the button below (just copy and paste the HTML code in to your blog) and try to share the love by visiting & commenting on the other participants blogs. Each week the post will go live at 6.00am GMT on Friday and will close for new link entries at 10.00PM on Sunday

Fast Blog

<div style="width:100%;text-align:center;"> <span style="margin:5px;padding:5px;border-radius: 5px;border:1px solid lightgrey;display:inline-block;"><a rel=_nofollow href="http://www.fastblog.es/search/label/Fast%20Five"> <img style="border: 1px solid gray;width:300px;height:150px;" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CaIlIyvifPs/WK6wohGZ1ZI/AAAAAAAACY4/9gXBwkY2yMMuxY8YQ5ptFSKe5t9Xk1FCwCLcB/s320/Five%2Bon%2BFriday.png"> <p style="allign: center;"> Fast Blog</p> </a></span></div>
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