Talented Friends....

There is a huge bonus to moving in a circle that contains lots of friends who love to craft, I am never short of a beautiful handmade card or two!!
The pretty pink one above is from Shirley, my friend in the South, Southampton that is!!!


This card is from another friend who turned 50 this year, the lovely SooJay, Great year for babies 1960!!

This one is from a little closer to home, made by my beautiful daughter Laura!!

I am really liking the cupcake card, from the one and only Ginger Claire!!

This one is a stunner, I only hinted about 5 million times to the incredibly talented 'Brodders' So thank you very much Jane for picking up on my subtle hints!!

Lastly I do have a 'real' friend (as opposed to an Internet one) who likes to craft and she made me this lovely card, it has all the elements needed by a good crafter, another lovely card.

Thank you girls!!

Beautiful Polution.

Every time we head to Newcastle we watch out for landmarks on our journey, one of the major landmarks are the chimneys at Pontefract and Goole. On the way back last week these chimney which are part of the national grid were in full production.

Because the sky was so blue and the air so crisp the white smoke was stunning against the sky. Over the last few years the A1M has been slightly rerouted so we don't pass quite as close to the chimneys as we did, but this gave me a better chance of getting a better photo.

All the photos were taken from a car moving at around 70 mph (I was in the passenger seat I hasten to add!!!) The smoke was churning out, Beth said they looked like cloud making machines.

Once we some distance away I looked back and I tend to agree with her, the only cloud in the sky does seem to be coming from the chimneys!!

Thank Goodness its Friday again, I don't know where the week has gone, but I am glad we have a couple of days off. I have been exceptionally busy at work and I have had some good results. I am gearing myself up for a fresh onslaught of 'stuff' to deal with over the coming months.

I seem to have had the longest Birthday celebration in the history of birthday celebrations, its not over yet, I am going out on Sunday for lunch with some friends and that should be it. My friends have been incredibly generous and to be quite honest I can't believe just how lucky I have been. As well as my new camera that my family have bought me, I have had new troll beads, a Tiffany lamp, £50 in John Lewis vouchers (wow!) £20 of Hobby craft vouchers, A fantastic bag of 'age inappropriate' things from my 'friends' - Sandra and Sue. My boss gave me flowers and wine, my other work colleagues clubbed together and bought me something I would never have thought they would, a hobby kiln!! I can't believe it, I am busy looking at precious metal clay and bead and glass making so that I can take full advantage of my new toy.

Newcastle at Night.

The night before the conference started we decided to take a trip into town to work out where we could park and where it would be good to collect me from in the afternoon. Of course I took my new camera and gave it a go. The shot above is looking out over the town, its just right of the Tyne bridge. The camera seems to cope very well with the dark conditions!

This is an 'arty' shot of part of the entrance and the Tyne. I am particularly pleased with this one!

This is looking back towards the entrance, I love all the vivid colours inside.

This is the opposite end of the building, I was impressed as there was an outside auditorium a place where they could put on shows, beautifully lit from below, with grassy tiered seating, which had snow on it !! Useful for the summer though.

Finally Beth by the back door, she was thrilled to find a huge pile of snow right near here, so I suspect it may have been a snowman in a previous life!!

I have some more shots that I will be uploading this week. Hope you all have a good week.

Happy Birthday to ME!!!!!

Today its my BIRTHDAY!! I have had a very nice day ! I am on conference in Newcastle at the fabulous Sage Centre.Its a beautiful building looks like a shiny slug on the side of the tyne!!

Tom and Beth took lot of time and decorated the hotel room with balloons, flowers and banners. The girls from work contacted the hotel and had a bottle of champers sent up!! Tonight we went for a Chinese banquet, it was fabulous!!

Tonight its started to snow hard, a long time since I have had snow this deep on my birth day, hope we can get home tomorrow!!!

I will be having a couple of birthdays this year as most of my cards and presents are still at home

Thank you to all my friends for their comments via text and face book!!

Happy Valentines Day!!!

While I realise that like most things these days Valentines celebrations are there to make money for card manufacturers, flower sellers and Chocolate makers, its nice to actually get a bunch of flowers occasionally!! Today I received a dozen red roses and a nice 'home made' card from my beloved and my family!! Thank You!

Beth was also the lucky recipient of a Valentines gift and a Valentines card (the origin of which she has no idea!!) In her Little bag of goodies she received a cuddly teddy bear and a grow your own prince which might one day come in useful!!!

We are off to the shops now to see if we can find some lights to finish off Beth's bedroom.

Thank Goodness for the Weekend.

This has been a long week, I seem to have been away at work and busy all week. Today I clocked up 73 miles, traveling to meetings. I am going to chill this weekend and do some crafting.
Last night I went out for dinner with my dear neighbour, I love to chat to her but despite living so close we do most of our chatting online! Last night we hit the local Chinese and had a lovely meal. It was great to chat about all sorts including planing a trip to Las Vegas next year to see Donny performing ! (actually Donny would like to see us but he can't take the time off to come to England so we are doing him a big favour!!)

There are so many of my friends celebrating 'big' birthdays this year, so many in fact that I have been making 30, 40 and 50 cards for some time now. I think when you hit one of those years you look at your life and think about what you need to change and what you can do to make those changes, we had quite a discussion about that last night and have decided that having a date to aim for would be a good thing, so watch out Las vegas!!!!

Please spare a thought for another of my friends, Jenn Rigg. Jenn turns 50 tomorrow but yesterday collapsed at home with a bleed in her brain, she has today had a major operation to try and sort the matter out, so for those of you who pray, please think of her and send her good get well wishes.

Surprise!!!!

Last night we went to the annual award ceremony for Welwyn Garden City Swimming Club. Beth is a member of their Life Saving Branch. She has been learning lifesaving for the past year or so and is really enjoying it. (Taking after her big brother!!)

Last week I received a call from the club to say that she had won an award for her age group and to check on the spelling of her name. We kept it a secret from her. The next problem was getting her to go to the award ceremony without her becoming suspicious. Luckily they held the presentation at Birchwood Leisure centre, after the awards they had an hour to play in the Fun Zone. (Beth is far too big to take part in one of their public sessions so this was a one time only chance!!)

The award for Lifesaving was right at the end of the main awards and Beth was getting restless, anxious to get into the Fun Zone, the look on her face when they read her name out was one of pure shock!! She couldn't believe it. (Even though they had mentioned that the same trophy had previously been won by her brother!) We are very proud of her.

So she now has a trophy for the next year to add to her trophy shelf!!

A 'technical' WOW!!!!

This month I have a 'special' birthday, one that will make me feel extremely old and over the hill. Luckily (I think) I will be away for the big day. I have to go to a UNISON conference in Gateshead. I am quite looking forward to it as I will be able to pop in and see a few relatives and I hope to be able to give my new camera a good work out.

Anyway back to the point of this post. I have been incredibly lucky to have been given a very very generous gift from my friend Karen who I work with. She insisted that I open it straight away as she is going away on holiday tomorrow and she wanted to make sure she could show me how to use it and download a few books for me. So I am now the proud owner of a Sony pocket Reader. I must admit that its something that I have always thought about but could never justify buying. Its been a bit of a learning curve as it operates differently to anything else I have used, but I have now sorted it out.

While looking for some free downloads to get me started, I stumbled across the local County Council run online Library, using my existing library card I was able to download three books for up to three weeks, no returning the books, they simply expire!

Now I just have to get used to the 'new' way of reading and I must be very careful not to nod off in bed and drop it!!!

Thank you Karen and Sony!!