The Beaumanor Hall experience

Although I never think it's blog worthy, it's what I do most of the time: work. Somedays I love it, others I hate it, but am I always very very grateful to have my job here at Connect Midlands. So today I thought I would share a work first - my first ever event - organised by ME!

The slightly blah blah bit of the story is that I was asked to set up an event that would introduce female business owners in the region to a new investment fund which they could potentially apply to. Ladies event, I thought. April afternoon. Hmmmm.

Most business events, for those who don't know are pretty predictable. Hired rooms in conference centres or hotels where attendees get a good dose of power point before networking over a buffet. But this was going to be a ladies event, organised by a lady. I thought it might be time to try somthing new.

The result was that we booked Beaumanor Hall, in Woodhouse Eaves, a lovely stately home in rural Leicestershire. It was an afternoon tea and cakes networking event, and as you can see the venue even broke out their best china. Everyone commented on how "Lovely" it was.

I also got over my nerves and presented for the company for the first time. Not that I was nervous before, I was just never asked to speak before. So there I am.

Work, perhaps not the most interesting topic to some. But it was inevitable seeing as I'm there 5 out of 7.

Toodles.

Has it really been 5 months?

Hello friends and family. I had a timely reminder to come and enter some news into our blog once in a while! I thought "Surely it's not been that long since we wrote something?" and was shocked to see it's been more or less 5 months since I last made an entry! That's no good!

Well, timing couldn't be better because we have a few pictures to share from a couple of recent trips away. The first was to the strange town of Blackpool. I had to go up there for a work conference and Mike came with me to use his camera. The town is up in the same county as the Preston Temple, Lancashire. It's one of Ballroom Dancing's world capitols. If I had to describe what it's like, I would call it tacky Vegas. We visited off-season, which was good because during the summer it is heaving with crazy partiers. We were put up in one of the nicer hotels and whilst I learned a lot about the issues facing female entrepreneurs, Mike wondered around trying to discover something cool to shoot. I think the pictures he came back with kind of say it all. There's not much cool there. We appreciated the trip though.

There was another reason to celebrate in March . . . OUR FIRST ANNIVERSARY!!! Can you believe we've been married a whole year?! It's astonishing how time flies. To celebrate the best year of our lives we hired a "caravan" down in North Devon in a little coastal town called Woolacoombe. We weren't really sure what to expect because we'd tried to be a bit frugal and collected tokens to get a discount. Our place looked a little bit like some of the places we'd tracted on our mission!
Yes, we know. This is nothing new in beach holidays for Michelle, but probably the first time Mike had relaxed in a premium holiday trailor! There was a beautiful sandy beach about a 10 minute walk down the hill from our camp site, so we played the first day.

Second day we took a coastal drive down to Cornwall to see the Eden Project, a resurrected clay pit that had been reclaimed and turned into an incredible growing project that combines horticulture, art, science, engineering and anthropology.


Michelle was pretty excited to walk into the first Biome and see tulips - my favourite flower, and our wedding flower!


The Biomes have different climates, one is meditaranian and the other is a tropical rain forest. As you wonder through there are all sorts of species of plant, insect, bird and lizard wondering around! The tropical Biome was the biggest and best. So humid though! But it made us both want to go trecking.


Those were probably the biggest lemons I'd ever seen.



Sorry, I don't know how to flip these around on the blog, I'll figure it out and flip it later, but for now, could you tilt your head please? The tropical Biome:



Michael was the one behind the camera, and believe me there are plenty of pictures of me doing goofy stuff.


This statue was massive. It was called "WEEE Man" and was a sculpture made of the average amount of electrical waste thrown away by one person in the West over a life time. We have about 50 pictures of this guy. Spooky isn't he?



There were sandy beaches and stoney beaches. I'm sure I didn't need to prove it but I couldn't think of anything else to do in the picture!



The Sunday was a beautiful sunny day, but the sea was still freezing. When I say freezing, it hurt to put my feet in it. I've swam in cold water, and in the North sea in autumn, but this was unbearable. Perhaps it's my age. Michael was determined that I would go in the water!



But I didn't stay long.


That's just a few of our pictures. We had an amazing holiday. Thanks for the anniversary cards and kind thoughts that were sent. We are so grateful to be married every single day. It has been the very best year, bar none.

Of course the next day was Mike's birthday. He is now a 28 year old! There were some pictures taken that I don't have yet but they will be posted soon hopefully. He loves getting older as much as the rest of us, so we tried to cheer him up with a chinese, a chocolate M&M cake (made by Alice and Emily) and a Killer Bunnies/Guitar hero tournament. I don't know what else anyone could want really. He sends his love and thanks for all the cards and gifts.

Sorry for the slightly long post, but there has been much to catch up on. I will try and get to the computer more often from now on!

Love - Blogmaster Shell x

Our new home

Although it's old news now, we think it's still worth reporting that we have moved and Michelle has a new job! hahaha! Finally after all that waiting, she got a Marketing Executive position with Connect Midlands and has been there a couple of weeks now. She is really enjoying it so far - but the most exciting news is still to come -

WE HAVE A PLACE!!! Yes people - for the first time in our married lives we have a place to live and call our own. Michelle's sister has family who own a resteraunt which had an apartment up above it, which wasn't being used. They offered us the chance to stay there for free if we would put the work in to doing it up, and then a greatly reduced rental price when it's done which would include bills! Amazing. So we thought we'd post some pictures so you can follow the progress as it happens. Mike is working so hard on it and Michelle feels so grateful that he is just so darn handy. Is there anything he can't do. So far, nothing.






The grand entrance - imagine Kate Winslet, decending the stair case in a ball gown . . . it is seriously going to be that grand!











The view onto the landing at the top of the stairs







Wait a minute - before we could even blink, Mike had built a stud wall - you go Mikey!










The living room - it looks much nicer when all our junk isn't piled up in there!





The spare bedroom - I tried to add a little feminine touch even amongst the debre!













In our bedroom - Mike just HAD to see what was behind the wall - he has dreams of a fireplace in our room - wait - did he say in EVERY room? Ambitious.








Still in our room - I really didn't think he was taking this one, but revenge will be sweet!






The soon to be kitchen.









How can you glamorise this shot - it is what it is! (Yes we do spell that with an s!)


So there you have it - a work in progress, but it is progressing so quickly now, and we will soon be posting finished shots of our new palace! Yippeeee!



Revenge :-)

Thinking of nicer things

Today is Monday the 13th of October and Mike and I have collected together some of the sweet photos we have taken of our lovely nieces over the past few weeks. Pretty soon there will be 4 crazy nieces and nephews around here (not counting the kids US side) so we are running behind and thought we'd better keep up. Mike is the better photographer so the really good ones are his. He seems to be able to capture the action while I just wave and go "smile - look over here" a lot. We are so glad to have all of our little nieces and nephews in our lives. They make us think of nicer things and remember that we can do really silly things. They've even had us climbing up and wedging ourselves down slides recently! So Aubrey, Jocelyn, Sophie, Jenna, Emma, Savannah, Tyler, Alyssa and Owen and the three bumps - here's to you! PS. Happy 9th Birthday Aubrey! We love you!

The mini tent expedition

Michelle's birthday was looming and with little cash and no idea, the Richey's wandered what they could do to somehow mark the occasion. The answer seemed to present itself like a beam from the sky as the Argos shopping catalogue flipped open to the camping page and proudly displayed a 2 man tent for the bargain price of £11.

"£11 honey, I think we can stretch to that!" announced the man of the house, and set about making arrangements and picking out a campsite.

Although the summer had been pretty gruesome, the forecast was for sunshine, and with picnic and duvet in tow, the Richeys set off with a smile on their faces to the beautiful Peak district of Derbyshire (that is Pride and Prejudice country for those of you that care! Think Chatsworth house - you with me?)

On arrival at the camp site, and with no one else around, Mike and Michelle broke open the picnic and started to roll out their new tent. It was the first time they had rolled it out and they brimmed with anticipation at what it would look like.

Small and perfectly formed might be the right description, as it stood about hip height off the floor. We looked, we laughed, we wondered how on earth we would fit inside! Looking at the mega gazeebos stationed around the rest of the campsite we felt maybe just the tiniest beginnings of an inferiority complex, but boldly brushing that aside, we set up our high tech camping duvet inside, and decided to get walking.

The weather delivered all it had promised. It was a golden day, and we walked along the top of the valley that led from the farm to the near by village of Moneyash. The biggest creamiest home made strawberry ice cream ever was our reward for the (not so) strenuous walk. We had seen a few people along the way, but the evening was closing in and as we walked back we were totally alone in the valley to watch the sun go down.

We got back to the campsite to find that the family we had camped near had returned, and returned in force. There were screaming kids and thier gobby parents everywhere, and we were a bit worried that if they stood on our tent by accident they might crush it flat. We decided to get out of the way for a while, and that maybe when we got back they would have gone to sleep.

We swang on the tire swing, we went down to a pub in Bakewell for our tea and a game of boggle, and when we came back we wrapped up in a blanket and sat underneath the stars telling ghost stories. Infact it was Michelle that told all the ghost stories, and her that got the most scared in the end.

Still, when we got back to the tent, the chavs were still at large, and we lay down to try and go to sleep (you could only lie down in our tent) listening to the sound of them trying to light a fire with petrol and their lively beer fueled debates.

We woke up bright and early the next morning to the glorious misty sunshine, and sang and talked loudly to see the day in. Some would say it was a type of revenge, but we were really just feeling jolly:-)

We planned to walk again, and had picked a route we thought would take us all day, with the plan we would end at the Young family residence for a birthday cake and a curry. However, today our map reading skills were not so sharp. Having sent one old couple off in the wrong direction, we proceeded to make the same mistake, taking a detour that lead us down past some quick sand and spat us out where we started by 12 noon! Ah well, we had the best time. Mike had become obsessed with finding walking sticks in the woods and wanted to bring one home, but accidentally obliterated it before we got back to the car. We snooped a little longer around peoples houses, and decided to leave and get a curry - which WAS TREMENDOUSLY GOOD!
All in all, a lovely birthday - thanks Mike and Family Young for making me feel better about being 29!