Where does the time go

Another couple of weeks has gone by and with it the school holidays.  I swear as I get older the days pass quicker!  I have done very little of any excitement - a new bathroom (the ensuite), the garden coming into bloom and a visit from Australia by my lovely sister-in-law, Karen.  How lovely to see her as I haven't seen her fo a couple of years - very tumultuous ones at that!  But we slip back into our usual banter and fun.  She is here with us for another week so we have a few more fun things planned.

The big news for me is that I have booked a trip to New York at the end of the year!  I have always wanted to go and my friend, Jane, invited me to join her and her daughters for 4 days shopping and sight seeing in December.  I am very excited as I have never been and it is one of those places I have always fancied visiting.  Anyway, I have time to save my pennies so I can get some fun Christmas pressies. 

Off to meet a friend for coffee and a bit of shopping.  Have a good weekend.

Creativity at last!

Although Scrapfever was last weekend, I have only just got myself organised with photos and things to be able to blog about it all.

In short, itwas fab.  Great teachers, great friends and lovely location.  The food was good too and even allowed me to stick to the diet without feeling deprived - major achievement!

It was lovely meeting up with old friends, they have been so kind to me this year and I really have appreciated that.  Here are a couple of shots of some of the people we shared our weekend with:

Karen and Sue looking very industrious - it is all smoke and mirrors! 

 And Sarah looking quiet and reflective - not her usual style!

The classes were taught by Venessa Matthews from South Africa and Donna Downey from USA and what wonderful teachers they were!  So often great scrapbookers can't teach and great teachers aren't great scrapbookers but they were both very inspiring, teaching new techniques and encouraging us to push ourselves just a little more than we might otherwise have done.

This little book was the result of our class with Venessa.  Let's not dwell too much on what it entailed except to say that I suspect that we broke nearly every Healthy and Safety rule in the book and there was a strong smell of burning at the end of it!!!

I have also had fun making something I have wanted to make for ages.  It is a Thread Catcher!  Nifty little thing it is.  YOu place it by your sewing machine and have a place to put all those loose-ends and fabric scraps while you work and also it has a pin cushion and scissor keeper incorporated into it.

I think that is really cool!  But perhaps the coolest thing is that I have enjoyed being creative over the last few days and hope the mojo is back!

Scrap - fever. The temperature is rising.

I'm off this weekend to Scrapfever.  It's a scrapbooking retreat which I have never attended before but which I am really looking forward to.  It should be fun.  Lots of old friends to meet up with and lots of lovely classes.  It will be a big step forward for me to actually commit to scrapping again over a sustained period and I am really excited about it.  I have printed my photos and got everything out.  (Thank goodness I tidied up the room - finding it all was so easy!)

    These are some photos of my garden project at the moment.  It is a biggie!  I have had a huge front garden which is very open but which gets all the afternoon sun so I can't sit in the sun in the back garden.  I have created an area with a patio and we are currently working on getting the flower bed dug around the front of the fence before doing the planting - more photos later when the project is completed.  Here are a couple of other to show you what is on the other side of the fence!       Room for sitting out, having a meal and generally chilling, all out of sight of the world passing by!

My camera has been replaced - not repaired, replaced by a more current version.  (Mind you mine was only 7 months old!) but I now have a Nikon S225 which has 10 megapixels so I am pleased to be able to include photos once more in my blog.