Don't Blink

My goodness, that was a bit of a longer break than I technically meant to take, but hopefully things are getting back on course now and I firmly believe that sooner or later, my life and house will be back in order and I will stop having that struggling to stay afloat feeling.

Tess has been checked out by the vet again today and while she’s still not right, she’s much better and appetite stimulators are being prescribed to encourage her to eat her dinner and get stronger.  In the meantime, we'll contiue to feed her with a syringe which is not entirely fun.

The good news is I have signed up for my first scrapbooking retreat and this time next year I'll be super excited about heading off on the Go Go Getaway.  I was a little nervous about going alone even though I'm sure everyone will be lovely.  However, luckily for me Sarah stepped up an selflessly agreed to accompany me and so I just can't wait.  In truth, I wish it was this October but I'll suppose I just have to practice being patient *sigh*.

I have more exciting news to come over the next couple of days, but until then here are a few pictures of my first few pages of travel journal. 

Actually, in all honesty these are the only pages of my travel journal which do not consist entirely of scribbled notes and and folded bit of paper hanging out the sides. Oh well, one more for the 'will finish very soon pile' next to my LSNED and the Back to Future Project. At this rate, I may be giving Journal your Christmas a miss this year, but I imagine it would only have been moaning about Doctor Who regenerating so perhaps it's better that way anyway.

Keep On Keeping On

Well I'm back and I have hundreds of lovely pictures and lots of exciting things to share, details from my Travel Journal and the rest of my LSNED. 

However, this isn't a proper post as at the moment as I have a very poorly cat (she spent 12 days in the vet while we were away), I've just started back at University today (Did I mention I was studying for an MSc?), I've still a huge amount of unpacking to do, my parents are coming to stay this weekend and I can't seem to put down the Twilight books (did I mention that I was in love with a vampire?).  So please bear with me, normal service will resume shortly.

As no post (even an un-proper one) is complete without a picture, here is Tess my poorly little friend.  Isn't she a poppet?  I really hope she pulls though.

Wish you Were Here?

As we've finally found a hotel with WiFi which has justified me lugging my netbook around 1/2 of Greece (information addiction is a terrible thing), I thought a quick mid-holiday update was in order.  Mostly I've done lots of lying in the sun, cocktail drinking,  tacky souvenier buying and  far too much deep fried cheese eating but I have also managed to keep reasonably up to date with my LSNED and the travel journaling has contined (realtively) a pace. 

We're starting the UK leg of our tour in a couple of days so will maybe be able to catch up more comprehensively then, in the meantime I have a few(straight of out the camera) pictures just to set the scene.  I have around 700 photographs in the bag (not all fisheye) already so there'll be lots of scrapping to do when I get home which makes the idea of coming home that little more bearable.

I'll get back to 'getting away from it all' then...

Preparations and a Welcome Return to Form

I think this will be the last time I manage to post anything before fleeing the country, and I’m actually strangely relaxed about the whole thing. This morning I even spent a few minutes scoffing coconut cake (balanced breakfast - coconut is a fruit, right?) and reading a few chapters of the adorably un-PC ‘Five Have Plenty of Fun’ – George has just been kidnapped by some wayward gypsies and Anne has to wash up and make beds while Julian and Dick look for clues.

Tonight I need tidy up for the house-sitters, sort out the clothes I want to take with me, probably get those clothes clean and dry and burn a load of CDs of old Russell Brand podcasts for in-car entertainment, so come to think of it, I may not be quite so relaxed later. My holiday crating kit for my travel journal is all packed and ready to go though, so you can’t accuse me of having my priorities in the wrong order!

Last night was spent largely attempting to apprehend a mouse which one of the cats kindly brought into the sitting room. It was scurrying about all over the place and despite successfully trapping it on about 5 occasions, it escaped and so continues to elude us and our (humane) traps. Hopefully he’ll be locked up nice and safely in a little box tonight waiting for a ceremonial release in the garden, otherwise I’m not sure how we explain it to the people taking care of the house.

However, inspired by the beautiful ScrapaGoGo kit and the Martha Stewart punches that landed on my desk yesterday I managed to take a step away from the real-life game of Mousetrap, get over myself and do some scrapbooking. September’s kit is probably my favourite ever – the combination of wood grain, butterflies and rusty brown/minty green tones is a perfect reflection of what I’m all about at the moment. I didn’t really even mean to put this layout together, it just sort of happened as I was sorting through the yellow box and seeing what looked nice together and then I thought I might as well see it through to its logical conclusion.

Everything on here is from the box, except a few tiny bits and bobs which are included because I can never quite work exclusively from a kit and I rarely make anything that doesn’t have at least a dash of Cosmo Cricket on it. If, you can spot where I’ve used each of my new punches on this layout I’ll award ten points to Gryffindor.

That's all for now, I'll catch you on the flip side dudes, or alternativly insert other faux-cool sign off of your choice.

Learn Something New Everyday #15, #16 and #17

Ooh, I think I almost fell behind there but I may just have caught it in time.  Not that it matters really I suppose, because while I will still be learning things over the next couple of weeks, I don't think I'll be able to post them until I get back.

On the 15th, I leant that a happy dog is the very best welcome home you can have (thanks Karen).

Yesterday, I learnt there is an awful lot to learn about digital photography - a 3 volume book of instructions  on how to take better pictures arrived and it's going to take a while to get through them all.

And today, I've realised that packing light is defintely easier said than done. Travel hairdryer? Eeek.

Hope the rest of everyone's LSNED goes well and lots of useful lessons are learnt.  Can't wait to catch up with everything in October.

Scrapper's Block

I tried to scrapbook tonight - I've been thinking about it all day and couldn't wait to get home to start but somewhere between home and work, something went wrong and suddenly I felt all anxious that whatever I did wouldn't be right and I couldn't bring myself to actually cut any paper.

Hopefully it's just a passing phase and while I can't scrapbook, I can work on photography instead. I've been really enjoying my new 'semi fisheye' lens that I got for my birthday and have got some great pictures, particularly of the animals so far...

And of course, some of us at the beach too...

In LSNED terms, yesterday I learnt that carrots you've grown yourself taste better than anything you could ever buy at Tesco. We had our first roast dinner of the autumn last night and believe it or not, the carrots were the highlight! Today I learnt that you won't get what you want if you don't ask - I saved myself £200 of additional Easy Jet fare to make changes to our booking just because I asked them nicely. Hurray for good manners.

Learn Something New Every Day #11 and #12 {and another catch up}

This has been a really lovely weekend. We've been relaxing after last weekend, spending time with the dog and cats, watching the X-Files and getting into the holiday frame of mind ready for next week. The weather has been beautiful throughout and although, I would have preferred it to been lovely last weekend, the sunshine on my skin was certainly a very welcome end to the summer.

We has a great time at Michael McIntyre on Friday night and I realised that watching stand-up comedy, particularly live is one of my very favoutite things.

On Saturday, I went shopping for holiday clothes and found that it was much harder than I thought to find nice summery things to wear in September. Although there were lots of lovely jumpers, boots, cardigans and bags, sunglasses, straw hats and cropped trousers were rather thin on the ground. I did manage to find a few things though so we're almost good to go on the packing front.

I've also got up to date on my LSNED pages, including the missing page for 7th. I think the page for the 10th (at the bottom) is my favourite so far. It's fairly simple but the photograph speaks volumes.