A well travelled stash!

Have had this page in mind ever since we took this great pic of our Lilly one Saturday afternoon in town!

The pinks and browns gave the photo a real coffee and cream feel and Linda would be proud of all the features I have used :

• chalks,
• buttons, (well, one!)
• recycled packaging (pink bag with flower cut-out was a pressie from my pal Naomi), and labels (from Costa of course),
• ribbons (the brown is my first stash gift from Pat on my first day at Just Scrapbooking...it came all the way from a wedding in Australia)
• ... and my favourite sparkley glitter paper behind,which I have managed to use most months since Christmas !

April in Paris...

You know how men always buy you something brilliant for Christmas when all you have bought them is a(nother) new navy jumper and a book or two?

Well last Christmas I was determined to surprise Col for once, to buy him something unexpected and to say thanks for all his love and care over the past year... so I booked us flights to Paris for this weekend..the weekend of our 17th Wedding Anniversary... yes, I know it's not a special year but I decided that the best way to get a break these days is to 'book it!.. and half the enjoyment is the looking forward to it.

(I just looked it up and Modern folklore offers 'Furniture' as the 17th anniversary gift theme...well the French do have a lot of it... and bed is a piece of furniture and what better place to be in Paris on votre anniversaire!)

So after a little debate last week about whether or not we would actually be able to go, (Col's mum was not so well) off we set, early from Exeter on Thursday morning, three lovely days together.... eating, drinking, taking in the sights, boat trips and sooo much walking,...then home this morning Sunday... wow, the time went fast!

We stayed at a lovely hotel, the Garden Elysee off Rue Kleber, a stone's throw from the Champs Elysee and the Eiffel Tower. The breakfast was just great and the staff really friendly. I am soo rubbish at speaking French, I understand lot of what I read and remember quite a bit from my failed 'O' level but I am so typically English and bail out as soon as I know the person I am speaking to will understand my Franglais! And as for Col, he practiced what he preached to Kate and interspaced most smiles with a 'Bonjour' or a 'Pour Favor' to wind me up when only I was in cringing earshot!

(Loyal to the last though, he's telling everyone how great I was!)

Took some great little pics, always scrapping in mind, and thought I should add a few here in case the pages are a while in coming...

Just a quickie!

The rice pudding was legend....'just like Mummy used to make!'

I even used extra rice and it worked out just fine, had some for breakfast yesterday just to be sure! And I got the dish to eat the last of the chewy stuff last night, but it's only a matter of time before the secret is out and a fight ensues for the dish next time... little Lilly is almost 9 months now and she's a fan, so perhaps Nanny has started something!

And my other bit of news, dear Linda at Just Scrapbooking has added my blog to her website, I am so proud... have a look at her site at http://www.justscrapbooking.co.uk/

I am so glad I met Linda last year, just as she was starting her group in Newlyn. The timing was perfect, it was such a difficult year and this year is having it's moments too, so having something of my own to do, the scrapbooking, has been really important for giving me time to relax as well as the opportunity to preserve some seemingly unimportant but otherwise forever lost thoughts and memories.......

Speedblogging!

Just had to post a couple of things...had a busy evening and wanted to make a note of some moments which will go un-noticed if I don't write about them here...Quote of the day...Sooooo good.. for sooo many of us..take a minute and see if it's you, and if so, get out of the box you are in, be you, and relax a little!

'Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.'

So I made sure I relaxed a little this evening and finished my Sandbar Sunset pages from the weekend. We used Coredination papers and I had it in my head to use them to replicate the sunset in this great pic of Col and Kate.

Not so sure they are my best pages ever, probably because they are more subtle (than me) than usual! It was good though as I was able to use my new heat gun.... sad but true, my chosen gift for Mothering Sunday!

Oh, and the other bit of news.. I am turning into my Mum.. I made rice pudding this evening, it looks fab, will report on taste tomorrow.. hopefully it will set nicely and be almost slice-able!

Dad and I used to fight over who got to eat the chewy sweet and milky bit from the edge, so I wonder which one of the kids will be me? (I did make it in a pyrex dish, maybe it should have been metal??.. watch this space!)

Flower-licious!

Went to our monthly scrap session at Newlyn at the weekend, it was soooo good, after a scrapping famine for me....it's just really nice to be with other people doing the same thing, and seeing how we all end up with different end results.

The idea this week was to use all those flowers we seem to have accumulated... flowers, ah, that's good I thought cos I took some great flower pics on holiday. Then I started to wonder if it was okay to bling up with flowers even if the pic was of a flower (are you following this?)



Anyway, this is the result, I chose a distressed looking but bright yellow sunny page, chalked some hibiscus and butterfly stencils on and then added a felt border (hibiscus again) and the flowers. Linda had lots of glittery bits which I was desperate to incorporate (just because they were there.. as you do with chocolate... eat it, just because it is there!)... and I used them as a quiet base beneath the flowers, which looked just great once I'd added the Glossy Accents.

Loved it, great day, so satisfying! .. the other pages are still in progress.. but hopeful they will be complete this week.