A Trip to Brighton

Well its that time of year again, conference time, I love conference!! This is what my life has come to, loving conference!! The bonus is that I get to see lots of great places. This time we returned to Brighton. I stayed in The Waterfront Hotel, which was called the Thistle hotel last year! Last visit I was lucky and was put in a sea view suite, it was awful but someone had to help them out and stay there!! This time when I checked in I had a sea view room on a different floor, it was a lovely room, but not a suite. The next day the loo sprung a leak so they ended up moving me back to the suite as it was the only free room!!! I consider it to be MY suite now!!

Nice view of the pier.

The view from my living room (sofa, two armchairs and a window seat, two TVs and a flash coffee maker!!)

There were a couple of lovely sunsets looking over the remains of the pier. We had a good few days. Most evenings we ate out and had an interesting experience in a Chinese restaurant. We went in a group of nine of us and they found us a lovely circular table. What we didn't know was that they had someone else booked for our table in an hours time. So we ordered and they gave is a big bowl of prawn crackers to get on with, we were still eating them when the main course arrived, so they simply took our plates away!!! we were speechless, it was quite funny particularly as we had asked for some more sauce for the crackers, which they delivered once they had forcibly removed the remaining crackers!!!

The main course was very nice and they kept coming over and taking the dishes as soon as they were just about empty. Finally we finished and they came back and made a big thing about picking up our plates, pushing and shoving us to get to them! we pushed back but the waitress was not bothered! The next guests had arrived and were milling around. We asked for the bill and they took forty minutes to get that sorted, so it took longer to settle the bill than actually eating!

Brighton is a lovely town, there always seems to be loads going on. I love all the artist touches. There were quite a few decorated walls, these were two of my favourites!

I always like to try and get a couple of photos in conference so that I can report back, I had no idea that we had been photo bombed!!! Brilliant!

Last night we were out for the evening at a party. We had a rather nice time!! I also had my first time using a kind of photo booth!!

I loved it, had a laugh posing for it!! We have Harry to thank for making the lovely frame!

A sad looking Harry pretending to be Charlie Chaplin!!!!

Last week I launched my 'Remember Me' Angels page and website. I really didn't have any idea how it would go and no real idea how to get my name out there. Well whatever I did it seems to be working! This week I have picked up two orders from clients rather than friends, so I am starting slowly and I hope to build it up. I have some ideas so I will have a play and get it right before launching it onto the world. Please feel free to take a look at my website and tell all your friends!

'Remember Me' Angels

Today was Carl's Birthday, strange for him not to be around, but this year we are missing Laura's birthday as well. :(  October is going to be a busy month in-spite of that. We are taking her out for an early celebrating this week . We are looking forward to late holiday ! 

So have a good week, don't work too hard!!!

Hello October and Hello Indian Summer!!!

Well its been a bit of a shock we have had a week of quite nice weather!! lovely autumn days, bit chilly in the mornings and evenings but beautiful during the day!

Today we went for a walk in Ayot, I love the conker trees. I don't really have any children that need to collect conkers anymore, but there is something about the beautiful colour and smoothness of the conkers that makes me smile.

Conkers also remind me of the Panshanger School fair, when my friend Marilyn made some fantastic baskets full of conkers all glued together! they were very big that particular year, she must have had all the kids collecting them for months!! (I am sure she got an award for outstanding use of  school PVA!!) Nothing says Autumn like a basket of conkers!!

There were a lot of acorns as well!!

I found that some of them had been taken by a hungry squirrel.....

On our walk we found a tree laden with what looked like tiny apples, I am not really sure if they were tiny apples!!

Its also a good time of year for fungi, but I was disappointed that there wasn't that many to see. When we were on the way home Tom said there were toadstools outside our house!! A month ago a tree was chopped down and there are hundreds of them, I hadn't noticed them!

I should have just looked outside!!

This weekend I have decided to 'go public' with my glass angels. I have been fiddling around with them for some while. I have made lots for friends and I think that the time is right to try and spread my wings a bit. So please check out my website - 'Remember Me' Angels . Its been quite an interesting weekend trying to get the website sorted!! Its been a steep learning curve and I am not totally sure I have ironed out all the glitches but I'll keep at it. I have also launched on face book as well, I think that might be even tougher than the website!! 

So have a look and let me know what you think, all support and spreading news  of my venture will be greatly appreciated!!!

Have a lovely week, I'm off to Brighton for a few days I hope the weather holds 

xxx 

Goodbye September....

September has just about left the room, its been a month of lots of  interesting happenings. I tried out my new camera on the moon in preparation for the lunar eclipse and blood moon.

I was so pleased with my practice shots which I took the night before the big event. 

I was encouraged by my shots and set my alarm to get up the following morning at 2.45am. There had been a lot of coverage on the TV explaining the timing of the eclipse and how the blood moon would happen. Its the last time that the particular circumstances come together for 30 years, so I was determined to witness it.  In some ways I was disappointed, there had been a lot of chat about a Super Moon, a moon 15% bigger than usual. As it turned out to me it didn't really look any bigger at all!

So Tom and I set our alarm and headed out to the back garden, I had my camera and tripod at the ready. Once out there we could see that the moon was already greatly obscured. The night was very clear and the stars were brilliant. Because the moon was dark in colour I found it hard to focus on it. The more obscured it became the less light there was, in the end we witnessed the red moon but wasn't able to get a decent photo.

This was the best of a bad bunch. I am pleased that I managed at least one half decent shot. It was also well worth getting up early to see all the stars that somehow seemed much brighter in the very clear dark sky.

I was lucky to be able to go on a trip to the Tower of London with the Social Club at work. Its a great trip which doesn't start until the Tower is closed to the public. We left work at 4.30 and travelled to London by coach. The traffic was awful so we didn't arrive until 7pm! We took a few photos outside before heading inside for the tour.

It was a lovely evening with a rather nice sunset. 

The sky looked lovely and all the offices were lit up.

The Tower looked fantastic at night. We had gone along to see the ceremony of the keys which takes place at 10pm every night. We had a guided tour of the Tower plus a look into the parish church within the walls where four queen are buried. After the tour we had dinner in the Yeoman Warders mess (with a nice cider!!) before heading out for the ceremony. 

I was pleased with the performance of my camera, I still have so much to learn!!

We are now preparing for the autumn, lots of gardening to get that sorted for the winter. We have been enjoying so lovely sunny days but the evening and mornings are chilly. Its hard having to change over from summer to winter clothes!

So hello October, a month of many birthdays!!

I hope you all have a lovely week, I will be sharing some pottery photos next post, I am still really enjoying my pottery in the shed!!!