Jen's World

{So Much To Catch Up On}

I have been missing for a while, but you can blame Facebook.  It's just a tad easier to update.

So this is brief, I don't want to bore you.  We had plenty of snow over the weekend, so I got some pics of the boys in the snow, Sophie was at work most of the weekend, so I couldn't catch her in the daylight.

The boys attempted to make a snow man, but the attraction of stamping on a large snowball was much more fun than building one, so every large snowball was smashed to pieces or thrown over the otherone's head!  Yes they may look a innocent and delightful here, but they are NOT!

The boys really played me up and were not keen for photos to be taken.  I guess they are becoming more and more reluctant for photos as they get older and wiser!

I managed to get quite a few action shots, but this is the best one, and I'll be honest I can't remember whether Elliott ducked or it hit him square in the chops!! Whatever, they didn't last long outside, and were back inside pretty quickly in the warmth and on the computer!

Last night I cleared up my scrap room which I had been dreading.  It was an absolute tip after making cards, gift wrappings etc for a very close family friend's 90th BD, a week or so ago.  Clearing up prevented me from scrapping.  However, I got it cleaned up yesterday and sorted, and eventually scrapped. I finished one LO, and have nearly finished the second.

This LO is a pic of Bella my little neice.  The story goes how everytime I brought the camera out, even if I didn't mention a word, she would hang her head down and look at the floor.  She wasn't having any of it.  She was so difficult to snap, so I will have to be content in scrapping photos without a full face at the camera.

This LO is based on another one I did last year of me but in blue, it's sort of reversed, as I was looking the other way, but as I was looking through my albums, I thought why reinvent the wheel,when I already have a LO I have designed and could get inspiration from?  The doodles and dots are from templates, I am not clever enough to do those on my own.  Black chipboard letters are Heidi Swapp, coloured letters Doodlebug.

I have another LO on my bench, it's more or less done, it just needs some sticking down.  It's a LO that's a bit different for me , but a complete copy from Jennie Bowlin's gallery, but very clever, and it really works, and is all about an old house I used to live in. 

Well I really should be tucked up in bed, it's gone 2am again!!

Night night!

{I've been scrapping tonight}

At long last I have my confidence back, and I have scrapped tonight.  I've done one layoutand am well into my second.  Yay!!!!!  I'll show you tomorrow.

J

{I Scrapped Today - Yay!!}

This afternoon I finished off the LO I had on my bench.  It was feeling a little dull, but I think it's ok now with a couple of touches of orange.  I used Jenni Bowlin's September kit, all greens and browns. I loved the Scenic Route paper I used here, but I guess my photo was a bit sunken as it had a matt finish, I always think gloss finish pops off the page a bit more. It's a little family pic of my brother, my SIL and my gorgeous neice Bella (Doesn't she look like her Daddy?  I had waited ages since I last saw them in Jan 2005 to come over to England and stay at our house with 2year old Bella.  Jenni Bowlin's kit had this fab littlechipboard houses, and this idea just sprung to mind after starting off with a LO in her gallery.  I free cut out the heart, and then went from there.  The felt flowers are thick and sumptous, and I used three of my beautiful ceramic buttons that I bought from the V&A museum a couple of weeks ago.  I loved all the embellishments that came in this kit, all the buttons, felt trimmings and the sparkly strips.

Being totally in the zone, and listening to Norwich City "lose" on the Radio, I was inspired to start another LO, and picked Pencil Lines #106 sketch.  I can't believe it is their second birthday.  I have always been a great fan of theirs, I love sketches, and they all do amazing LOs week on week.  This week they joined together with One Little Word.  The word they picked was "keep".  It didn't take me long to print off a new photo of my neice to match the colours of another old Jenni Bowlin Kit from last April, and I think these photos really do pop!  I made a silly mistake, and printed the photo out stating A4 but with  5 x 7 photo paper, so ended up with just a quarter of the photo.  Bella's little mouth showing in the corner was just too cute to chuck out, so I printed the photo properly and then used them both on the LO to emphasize the cuteness. I turned the sketch around to fit my two landscape photos, and used a doodle template to add the doodles.  I really like the brightness of this LO, and was so chuffed to have found a great way to use that bottle top.  Jenni Bowlin is keen on these type of embellishments, they are a bit too american for me, but if you are lucky you can just about find the right occasion to use one, and not only did the colour match really well, but it suited a little cutie LO.

Hopefully more scrapping tomorrow  (Or should I say today!)

{Sunny Saturday}

It's beautiful here, and the area around is looking very autumnal, beautiful colours on the trees.  I'm really trying to encourage my children to have a photoshoot down by our local Whitlingham Broad (lake if you don't come from Norfolk!) there is an expanse of woodland with water in the background, wooden gates etc and ideal for a photo shoot, but Justin is at a friends, Sophie is at work, (and then way too busy all weekend!) and poor Elliott is suffering from something.  High temperature, tired and aching, he really isn't well, so I have nobody to take photos of and landscapes aren't quite me really. This one of the photos from my last Autumn shoot 2006.  The boys look so young here.  Flat hair!!  It'salways spiked up now.  I buy more hair gel, gum and hairspray for them than I do toiletries for me!

I've finally received a note from Canon to say my camera has been mended Yay!!!!!  And I hope to pick it up on Monday, so maybe leaving the photoshoot til midweek would be better so I can use my own camera.

I've had a very difficult and upsetting week, it's come down hard on me.  One of the children have been up to no good and have been indefinately grounded, I've had some difficulties myself which I've shed many a tear over, but I've made a decision at last and now I feel tons better.

On a positive note I had my appraisal at work which was brilliant, and my manager thinks I am a fantastic performance manager, and she wishes she could bottle what I have and share it amongst her other managers.  I was so chuffed and took the compliment very gracefully!!  What a change there has been in me at work over the last 12 months.  I actually enjoy my job now, and for those of you who don't know the CSA finally ends as a government dept at the end of this month and we become a "comission" we have mangaged to retain our civil servant status, but I guess that will be terminated at some point.  As from Nov first I will work for CMEC.  As long as my pension stands as it is now, I'm a happy bunny.  A pay increse would be good too.

I have a LO on my bench at the moment, I love it, but it's missing something at the moment, it's looking a bit flat, so I might look at that this afternoon whilst listening to the football.  Norwich are playing away at Bristol today.  I'm a bit flabberghasted by the match fixing accusations this week that even reached the national news!!  I know losing at home to Derby who only had 10 men was a shock, but I don't think we would go that far .

Sam and I celebrated our 25 years of being together last week.  That's more than half my life, that's incredible.  We lived together after the first year, so that's 24 years of being in our house, we still live in the same one.  We went out to the hotel where Sophie works for Sunday Lunch to celebrate.  She booked the table and when we got there she completely ignored us and I thought, we'd better not disturb her.  It was a much more upmarket hotel than I remembered it being.  It's £28 for Sunday Lunch, you got about 6 or 7 choices for each course, 4 courses, and there was some veggie choices for me.  The restaurant manager showed us to our table, and it was at that point I could see we were getting quite a bit of attention.  Sophise served us as did several of her waitressing friends, the service was good and fast with some complimentry drinks.  By the end of the meal, it took us a leisurely 2 hours to get through the meal, all the girls had introduced themselves, and the Restaurant manager came and chatted with us, telling us how good Sophie was, she worked hard etc.  I then in the distance saw him pull out a teatowel from her pocket while she had her hands full of plates, he obviosly didn't approve of it poking out of her apron, so he kept a very tight ship.  I think the discipline is so good for her and the experience at 16 of dealing with the public, taking money, dealing with complaints, working in a team all just from a part time job whilst studying is doing her the world of good.  We had a fab meal costing just £19 !!  I think we got a very large discount there, and we will definately go back.

{A Shorter Post for a Change!}

I finished the class page from Wyverstone Charity Crop from September. Lisa very kindly did a wonderful class and we had a lovely kit to make it with,and I have enough to make another two LOs.  Lisa did cut a window to display her photo behind the LO, but I wasn't brave enough to cut with a knife, but I did raise some of the embellishments on foam tabs.  Once I had neared the end of the page, I started to add some doodling to make it look a bit different to Lisa's and added some orange bling and buttons.and a title.  I'm really pleased with it, so thanks Lisa, great class.

I'm well on my way to finishing another LO using Jenni Bowlin Kit for September.  It involves a big heart and a pic of my Brother and his family.  I'll get that done tomorrow.  I have decided I am ready to get back into designing for the Scrapagogo DT again.  I've had a good rest, feel under much less pressure, and can't wait to get the kits again.  November's one is looking so gorgeous, and I might get it in just over a week.

{A Full Day of Culture}

Family History is one of my loves and I have discovered many 4th, 5th 6th cousins all around the world.One of the very first I met online was Jane.  We are 5th cousins and have been sharing lots of photos and certificates, parish register findings etc for about 8 or so years.  Jane lives with her husband Richard in New England in the US and their children have flown the nest. She has a tremendous love of textiles, costumes, furniture, architecture and a great love of history.  She and her husband were asked to lecture at Oxford University, so they planned their business trip a year ago and we always hoped to meet irl in their really tight schedule.

So on Sunday I travelled up to London (by train, then double decker bus, by train and then tube!!) and met them at The Victoria and Albert Museum.  We had no idea what each other looked like, so we hovered in the lobby, trying to pick out someone that fits your imagined online friend.  It didn't take long.  We caught each other's eye, and then looked away again, around the busy lobby and then back at each other. "Jennie?" she said I said "Jane?" and we burst out laughing, and I felt an instant warming to a complete stranger, shaking hands madly.  Her husband then appeared at her side, and we dashed straight off to the cafe for a very long chat and a coffee.Wow I loved the V&A museum, it was an incredible and beautiful building.  I felt a bit stupid, because I knew nothing and Jane and Richard were both Museum Curators back home and already knew everything that was in the museum. So I decided to learn as much as I could and decide to pick 4 or 5 things that really did it for me.  One of their passions is William Morris and his patterns for wallpaper, curtains and upholstery.  When I discovered how the prints were made, I immediately identified with the printing process as some thing very similar to stamping on a scrapbook LO with clear stamps and a an acrylic block, but William Morris was printing with wooden blocks.  A design for example would be painted by himself and then 30 or so different blocks cut to represent certain lines of the pattern, and each one would be stamped over the top of the other one, using pins to line the blocks up until the pattern was finished. This is one of the original paintings he did.  I loved this, it had notes written in pencil at the top, you can see where he tested his brush for different colours around the top and if you enlarge the photo you might be able to see that he continued to draw the pattern outside the painted area.  I began to feel a bit inspired regarding my scrapbooking, about stamping, colours, vines and  doodling.  His pattern that inspired me the most and I shall use to create something at some point was the Acanthus wallpaper pattern. I could use this as patterned paper for an Autumn LO!!! I just love it to bits!!

I saw a beautiful gilded mirror that really attracted me, it was so massive it took up a whole wall with two large boxed candelabras each side.  I commented on the fact that they had hung it a bit too high as you had to stand on tiptoe to see in the mirror, and I was advised that mirrors in those days were used in large houses to reflect light rather for vanity!! Well I knew that really!

  Lunch called and we had another hour or so sitting eating and chatting, putting bits of the family tree together and trying to solve some of the brickwalls we have hit in our research. After lunch I saw another couple of things that really caught my eye, one was a sunflower that was made out of metal and had once been part of a railing!  I want that railing,in fact,I want the sunflower to sit just outside my front door,it looked so cute, just imagine a whole fence of them!  The most interesting thing was that it was actually made by Barnards here in Norwich and they donated it to the museum.

I guess metal sunflower railings beat white picket fencing anyday!

We looked at lots of costumes, all very gorgeous, but very hard to photograph as they are all behind glass casing and the lighting is not far off.. well dark to be honest.  But something I was really fascinated with James ll 's wedding outfit.   It has been so well preserved and perhaps ought to be kept with the crown jewels because it was made from silver thread, and on the day would have been extremely shiny.  Of course now it is tarnished, but none the less beautiful, and I would imagine very hot and heavy.  I tried to take a close up, it's blurred because I had to take it without a flash.  I love that lace cravat.

It was a rainy day, but the inner court yard of the museum caught our eye and we went outside for a breath of fresh air, and discovered all the trees were full of lemons!  There was a lovely cafe outside and an area with fountains I guess the kids during the summer sunshine would be running through.  Definitely a place to go and visit again.  The entry is free, the food is god and reasonably priced for central London if you are careful.  The last thing I have to show you, I hope you are not bored yet!  This I loved because it reminded me of one of the Hotels in Las Vegas (The Bellagio??) were an enormous decoration of blown glass hangs from the ceiling.  This one was so beautiful.  Very difficult to take a photo as it's in such a massive and dark dome.  In fact I thought my photo was as good as the one they were selling for 50p in the gift shop on a postcard.

Oh yes, one more thing, (sorry)  there was a circular balcony looking down on to the floor below and suspended from the ceiling above was a flattened brass band!!  I leaned over the balcony for ages trying to work how complicated it must have been to display.  Each flattened and sprayed brass instrument had about 3-5 wires hanging it absolutely completely flat almost like they were all sitting on a glass shelf, but they very slightly moved with the climate control air flow that was present.  Such a fantastic artistic display.

I left my new found friends/fifth cousins and tubed it back to Liverpool street and the journey home.  I'd had such a wonderful day, and on the train I reflected back on how I initially felt being with two total experts and feeling a bit stupid because I knew nothing at all about the artifacts displayed, but I soon found my level, found what I liked and why, and I have brought home so much inspiration for my scrapbooking, and one thing that I did buy in the gift shop were some ceramic buttons with William Morris designs on for more LOs!!

{My Birthday Week}

Having been encouraged by my brother and SIL to not just have a birthday, I have been celebrating my birthday week. My birthday was actually on Tuesday, but to start my week I went to Wyverstone Crop.  I haven't been for ages and ages, and I was very warmly welcomed.  It was the annual charity crop that we have Macmillan Cancer.  Janice and Lorraine organised so many activities for us to raise funds.  There were random sketches to choose from and every LO you did for a sketch earned you a ticket, there was a Crop Noodle box full of random embellishments which if you used three of then again you earned a ticket and so on, in fact if you wore the colour green you won a ticket!  I won so many prizes, wine, mini albums, adhesive, some really fab winter clear stamps and more and I even came home with two loaves of bread!! (Thanks Sue!)

I caught up with everyone again, that was great and also managed to do three and a half LOs.  The first one is a scrap lift from a LO done by Renee in the Autumn Leaves 2007 Calendar. I managed to get 6 embellishments on the LO from the Crop Noodle box.  The journalling is about Sophie's last year in school, and how hard she worked and how it was all worth it, and how proud I am of her.

My next LO was using Anna Griffen paper and the rest of the Jenni Bowlin kit from last April.  It is a gorgeous kit, and I love the velvety flowers.  This is a photo of me and the boys on the first day they started High School in Sept 2007.  They both started the same day, as they had a double intake of year 7s and 8s here in Norwich.  I was delighted they were both going to start at the same time.  It'sreally made the boys so much closer and they argue much less and socialise with the same group of boys, many of them having siblings in each of their years.  The title is a clear acylic stamp, possibly Autum Leaves or Heidi Swapp, sorry, I can't remember!!   

My next LO is from one of the sketches from the crop.  I love sketches with multi photos in. I had to chop some of these photos up a bit to fit in, but I think it worked well.  Again I used Jenni Bowlin kit from last April, with all the sumptous flowers.  The green chipboard title is Heidi Swapp letters.

I don't care for the transparancies much, but these burgandy coloured ones went really well with the bright flowers and just tucked under a photo adds a little something.  These photos were taken of me June 2007.  I was slim for me, and so wish I still was.  I have put all the weight back on!!  All three stone of it. I would love to lose it again, but I can't quite get in the same mind set just at the moment, so for the time being I'll just keep looking at the photos to remind me that I can do it if I want.

I started another LO from another Jenni Bowlin kit using some paint (Thank you Nicki) and smeared that all over one of the petal shaped Bazzil cardstocks over some templates of some houses. It has much work to be done on it, so hopefully I'll get that finished off soon.

So Sunday, the second day of my birthday week, was a complete chill out day!  I spent time on the 'puter and watching TV.  I'm loving Tess of The D'Urbervilles.  I've read it several times as a student (I loved Thomas Hardy Books) and seen the last film that was made.  I'm dreading the sad ending next week!

Monday was the third day of my birthday week. (I told you I was going to milk it).  I had a day off work, so Pa decided to take me out for the day and we went off on a family history hunt in Cambridgeshire.  I love wandering around graveyards and looking at old churches where my ancestors have baptised, married and buried.  We headed off to Whittlesford, where an ancestor of ours was once the lord of the manor.  Ebenezer Hollick.  He had a tomb erected for the family burials, but when we got there it was smothered in nettles and brambles!!  I had cropped jeans on with a gap between my trousers and shoes, so there was no way I was going to forage around for the inscription, but Pa managed to take one.  We'll have to go again and take a sythe with us I think!

We found tons of stuff inside the church dedicated to the family and the church looked really cute. It was harvest festival for the local school kids when we were there, and it was decorated with lots of gorgeous produce and these sunflowers just sat in the porch.

We visited the old workhouse in Linton, which is now a private home for the elderly, it has been lovingly restored, and as one of our ancestors was the governor there for 30 years in the mid 19 C, we were welcomed in and shown around.  I took some photos of the frontage and the lovely middle courtyard.  In the dark victorian days I believe the front arch would have been an entrance to the courtyard where the coach and horses would have been driven through. The entrance hall is very narrow and goes straight into the court yard.

Then you can see the kitchen straight ahead.  I wasn't allowed to take pictures that showed any bedrooms because of resident's privacy, so I couldn't take one of the whole courtyard, but it was very pretty and un workhouse like. To continue with my birthday celebrations my Pa took me out for lunch in Whittlesford.  Pa has an old flame that lives in the next village, they were engaged in their twenties, but Felicity's parents wouldn't allow her to marry my father.  He was still an articled pupil and didn't earn enough!  They have stayed in touch over the last say 10 years after rediscovering each other.  So we invited Felicity to lunch.  We'd never met, but strangely knew so much about each other, but she was a lovely gentle lady.  I couldn't resist taking a pic of them together, and guess what, Pa wants a large copy for his mantlepiece!!

The next day was my actual birthday, so I was woken at a very early hour and jumped on by eager teenagers to hand me their presents.  My goodness, things certainly change when your children have a job and an income.  Sophie had really thought about everything she bought.  Just piles of little useful things, probably the things she always uses of mine.  I got some money and Next vouchers and spent a morning out shopping for clothes and bought some jeans and tops.  My best friend bought me a scarf that was covered in buttons and bling, and I love it. OMG, spot the mistake, I've only just seen it.  See who spots it first!! (Leave me a comment)

Sam took me out for a meal in the evening to our local pub.  Sam had swordfish, I had a potato and mozzerella cake on tagliatelle with a tomato sauce.  Beautiful!

You may wonder why I am going into so much detail about my birthday week?  Well I have decided to following Ali Edward's challenge to "document a week in your life" It so happens that it was the week of my birthday.  I've taken tons of photos of "ordinary" things, so that I can collect info on life's boring activities like sitting in the car waiting for the kids to come out of school.  I usually use this time (if I am early) to text people or read a magazine, sort out my homework or go through my MP3 player.  And this is my view!  So exciting!!  I've taken lots of really normal stuff, but am desperate to take some at work, one of my building, a view from my window, which is beautiful, as I am high up over a green and wooded valley, right in a city, and today I had a team meeting and I so wanted to take photos of them all stuffing themselves with the cream cakes I bought them for my BD treat, but I had one member missing, so it just wouldn't have been right for to have not been there.  My lovely team bought me a large bottle of Rose wine and a box of the new shaped After 8 MInts.  I didn't quite get to the mints before my family, but I did polish off the wine!!

Life at work this week has been much calmer, our new computer system has bedded in, and we are reporting the errors, but it's making everone's lives a bit easier.  When I got home tonight I had a lovely BD card from Australia with a page of "drawing" and "writing" from my little niece and two gorgeous photos. Well my week will be quite well documented and I shall use this blog as a reminder.

Justin has joined a breakdancing club at school, and performed in assembly in front of several different years and today received a postcard from his head of year with a "Thankyou From Bla...... School, we are very proud of you"  and said what a great dancer he was. What a lovely way to give praise to a child.  Kids love getting things through the post, and this made Justin's day.  I don't think he'll be telling anyone at school, but at least the family could celebrate it with him, and of course it will be scrap booked into my week's scrapbook. This photo is of Justin watching TV after school.  He couldn't even raise his head for a smile!  And in his own words "That's me looking wierd!"

I guess this is probably one of my longest blog posts, but I am also celebrating the beginning of my 4th year blogging.  I started my blog in August 2005, and just got billed for my 4th year (I think I was given two free months somewhere down the road due to Typepad problems) I would love to print it all off and make it into a book, how interesting would that be to read back to August 2005?  Maybe in another few years it really will be "history" !!

To finish off I took a couple of pics of Soph 'cos she dyed her hair black!!  Everyone at school said to her, oh your hair looks so much better being your real colour!!!!!!!!  Well actually light brown was her real colour, but even her hairdresser said she would really suit black hair.  I hated it to begin with, but I have got used to it now, and I gues with her dark skin colouring, it really does suit her.

OK, that's it for now.  My BD week continues until tomorrow and it'sGenes for Jeans Day, so I will be wearing my jeans to work for a change and hoping to actually empty my bags from last weekend's crop and actually scrap again!

{Proud Momma Moment}

I got a phone call from Sophie at work this morning to say she had won a prize of £25 at school for being the winner of the Year 11 award for the girl who most improved on her expected target grades and her actual GCSE results out of 350 pupils in her year.  Wow what an award, she was so proud of herself, and although Sophie is no scientific or mathmatical student, she is a very hard worker and she overachieved on every single target set for her including her Maths and French, her worst subjects.  She always undermines her ability, and lacks confidence in her knowledge and understanding.  I guess I played a part and nagged the pants off her about having a revision timetable, spending dedicated time to certain subjects, even if that meant learning 5 new French words a week, which she hated.  But it paid off today, and she walked up in front of all the Sixth form and tutors to rapturous applause to receive her grand prize and was very shocked but proud.  The lad who won the boys award, wasn't there as he has since joined the forces, which was such a shame.

I leave you with a very fuzzy pic of Sophie taken on a phone camera, but I love it none the less, and she's all mine!! (For the time being anyway!)

{I'm On A Roll}

I'm so excited.  I've been scrapping all evening!  I've done two LOs and one well under way.  I was supposed to be designing a website for someone, which I have done over the last couple of days ready to show her today, only to discover she's gone on holiday until mid Oct, so all my rushing around wasn't really necessary.  At least it's part way done now.

Back to my scrapping.  I did Sunday's Pencil Line's Sketch #103 designed by Ayako Katayama.  She did a beautiful and delicate LO of Summer with beautiful colours in it.  It looks way too artistic for my abilities.  The sketch had four little sections at the bottom, but I sorted of ignored thiese because I didn't have any small photos printed and just used three big ones to cover the same space.  I more or less kept to the rest of the sketch.  I used Jenni Bowlin's very pastel and delicate August kit.  Not totally to my taste, it was a bit wishywashy, but I love a challenge!  I used lots of bling, and I enjoyed the sticker pack in the kit and tried to use as many as possible.  The pics are of Sophie, my daughter and her cousin William, my sister's daughter at the Commenwealth Cemetery in Arras.  Will is just a year younger than Sophie, so they get on well, and we spent a week in France Spring 2007 with my Pa to go and check out my Great Uncle's war memorial.  I ran out of space to write what I wanted to write, so it didn't quite make sense, but I tried to link the two growing young teenagers with a man not much older than them who died for his country during the Somme. Since these photos were taken, Will has grown another foot, and his voice has broken!  He's over 6 foot now, scary!

My next LO I did tonight was one of Sam and I.  I don't often get good photos of us together, but this was taken last Mother's day by one of the kids. The message here is that we have stayed together for 24 years, and this October will be our 25th anniversary of meeting each other.  Life's not been so easy over the last year or two, what with my illness, being off work, losing lots of weight, being a bit obsessive etc, we've had to work hard together to keep the children in tow, get Sophie through her GCSEs, support my Pa during his health scares last year, and Sam and I took a bit of a back seat as you do.  So this LO is a celebration of what we have and what we have achieved so far and that we have faith and it will continue.

Again I used Jenni Bowlin's August kit, and added the MM foam letter satmps.  I haven't used them for ages, and have come out very effectively.  I loved the little Bingo card that had a 24 right in the middle of it. and Istuck an acrylic haeart over it.  The flowers are just cut out from a plastic flower template I have, and then I drew around their edges with a black pen several times. I sewed lots of butons on to add colour, and can you see the little house button  right next to the stamped title?  I've had him for years and am pleased I finally used it. All the large brads are  arty-licious and delicious they are too!

I really must go to bed, I'm nodding off as I type.

{My Camera}

My lovely and compact Canon S60 died a few months ago.  I love it, because firstly it cost me a lot of money and it has all the features an LSR would have but it'ssmall and fits in my bag. But unfortunately I must of got a piece of grit caught in the lens mechanism and it would no longer zoom in and out, so I couldn't close or open the lens. 

All Summer I have used my Pa's camera, a tiny little Samsung Digimax.  The screen is cr*p, but it takes a reasonable photo, I'm pleased I have it, but I so long for my old Canon back and all its settings.  I've put up some photos here that I managed to take with my Pa's camera when we were in France a fortnight ago.

Eventually I took my Canon to a shop to be looked at and got a quote back for £125 and thought OMG!!  And just ignored it!  I ranted on about it all summer and how I could be taking better pics if I had my camera back, and now some lovely person, who shall remain nameless has offered to pay for it for my BD present (Next Week) so I am ecstatic.  I can't wait to get it back and take some decent photos. But here is a fairly average one of Bella concentrating over the watering can and what she might be able to do  with it, and no she didn't tip all the water over her head, she blew in to it like a French Horn!!

I spent a fantastic day with my best friend Tina, her daughter Amber, Sophie and myself in the city on Saturday.  It was so girly.  Tina and I ran off leaving the girls to their teen shopping and shared our woes over a cup of coffee, and caught up.  Then we went shopping, I felt very spritely considering I had a very nasty fall on Thursday afternoon. We then all met up and had a fab lunch at Tootsies, sitting outside in the glorious September sun, with a glass of Rose wine. I had a fab Hommous sandwich with loads of salad on top (I'm being very good) and the others had burgers, but Sophie had this Cheese fondue served on an oblong plate that was the width of the table, it was really massive, about 2ft long.  It had all the bread, veg and crisps lined up to dip in the fondue!  It looked very extravagant.

Norwich played at home and we won 1-0 and my brother phoned from Melbourne at half time before we scored.  It was a cold day in Melbourne, but by then Tina and I were sunbathing in glorious sun in my garden on the swing seat putting the world to rights.  Amber and Sophie decided to dye her hair black, so Sophie now has jet black hair!!  Actually it suits her, but you can see the deep brown colour through it, so it looks very natural, especially before she straightend it!  I haven't got a photo of it, because she's been working all day and has flaked out in bed.  But here is a photo of her in her waitressing uniform pre black hair!!