2009 year in review

* Katie turned 12, and Molly turned 6.  They are both growing up at a very rapid rate!
* Both girls are still skating,  Molly entered her first competition and Katie competed a few times over the year.  They are both enjoying it,  so we would appear to be spending more time at the rink over the coming year.
* As well as skating,  they both enjoy ballet. At the beginning of the year Katie was a little unsure if she wanted to continue to dance,  but she has moved to a new studio and takes a combined ballet, tap and stage lesson and is really enjoying her dancing again.
* We returned to Florida this summer,  and experienced our first cruise,  just a short 3 day cruise to Bermuda.  It was wonderful and we hope to try a longer cruise next time.
* The girls also enjoyed a weeks holiday with Granny and Poppa,  and we travelled down to Essex to visit my brother as well.
* Unfortunately,  we didn’t make it to Holland or Germany this year,  but both of Phil’s sisters visited us in England,  and everybody was here at once to celebrate his mum’s 80th birthday.  It was a great party and it was a very rare experience to have everyone together at once.
* Katie’s school choir had the opportunity to perform in front of the Countess of Wessex,  and they performed a number with Craig Chalmers from Joseph.
* Phil continues to work in the same job,  but he has been transferred to Kier,  and then seconded back to work for the Council.  Confused?  He certainly was!
* I am enjoying my second year at Middle School,  and even went to Paris on a school trip.

I hope you have had a good 2009,   and would like to wish you a Happy and Healthy 2010.

Both my girls skating today

Frosty the Snowman and A Christmas Canon

It was the skating christmas show this afternoon. Molly skated to
Frosty the Snowman, and Katie to a Christmas Canon. I have been
looking for a Snowman costume for weeks, but in the end had to create
something myself as I just couldn’t find one that I wanted.

Katie skated to some lovely music,  and had a really beautiful skate.

We videoed both performances on 3 cameras, in an attempt to see which
would give the best results, so when I have checked all 3 versions I
will post one of them for all to share.

She did it!!!

 

Katie has been trying to land her Double Salchow for months.   She did land one a few weeks back,  but then we have never seen it again since,  and she had convinced herself that she couldn’t do it.

She wasn’t feeling particulary confident tonight,  but something must have clicked because she did it!  and not just once,  but over and over again. In fact,  once she’d done it,  she couldn’t miss.

The video is pretty grainy because I only had my mobile on me,  but it was  a moment that definitely needed videoing.

Back in the saddle again.

There was a time when I was an obsessed scrapbooker. Thinking about
scrapbooking most of the time, and taking every opportunity to create
layouts in the evenings. I spent many hours sitting with my meagre
supplies creating pages which look very dated now. However,
somewhere along the way, I started reading about scrapbooking more,
and actually doing much less. Lately, I’ve barely created anything.
I’ve been wanting to, but there is something that stops me from moving
past want to actually create.

I think part of the problem is now I have too much stuff, and too
many optoins. When I had a small carrier bag of papers, then I just
got on with it. Now I have a roomfull and I just stand there
overwhelmed.

I haven’t conquered my scraproom yet, that is a challenge for another
day, but I have created something. Captured a memory and recorded a
day out, and I am very pleased about that.

I have dabbled in Digital before, but I am fairly sure I will be
moving more and more to digital, keeping paper scrapbooking for crops
and digital for home. I won’t be giving up paper altogether. There is
something very satisfying about playing with paper and glue, but this
is definitely more feasible when time is short.

This layout is from a trip to visit my brother this summer. The
journalling reads
"Ruth said, Let’s walk to the pub for Lunch. Sounded like a great
idea to me, so off we all set. We walked and walked but there was
no sign of the pub. Mark started to look a little worried after about
an hour, but we kept assuring ourselves that it was just around the
next bend. Eventually, we did arrive at the pub, about 2 hours
later than we had expected. I was quite worried that they would no
longer be serving lunch, but fortunately they were still serving and
we had a lovely lunch. One most well earned. After lunch, we
briefly contemplated walking back, but then we came to our senses and
called a taxi. We really couldn’t believe how quickly we were home
in the taxi! The pub was very very close to home, however, the path
we had walked along followed a very windy river and had caused us to
walk much further than we had anticipated. It was a long walk, but
a very memorable afternoon!"

She’s grown up on the ice

 

 

 

Places I’d like to visit one day

We have been talking about holidays lately,  actually given the choice I’d talk about holidays everyday.  I love to dream about traveling and places to visit.  Generally we return to the same few places over and over,   but one day I want to visit some more exotic places.

 

Australia

I was born in Melbourne,  but we left Australia before I was 2.   I went to some amazing places before I was two,  but sadly I don’t remember any of it.   I have never been back to Australia and I really must go one day.   I’d love to travel around the country for a couple of months and really have time to soak it all up and see how Australian I really am!

 

Italy

I’ve never been to any part of Italy, and there are some many things there that I’d love to see.  Rome,  Venice,  Lake Garda, Sorrento, Pompeii.  There are so many famous places, places I’ve read about in books or seen in the Movies.  There is so much history there,  and I want to see it all.  I think I’d need 3 or 4 visits to really see everything.  It all sounds and looks fabulous,  but a little daunting.  I’ve travelled to quite a few places but for some reason Italy makes me nervous,  I think the traffic worries me and I don’t speak any Italian at all.  I am sure like most other European places you can get by with English.  I shall get there one day.

 

Greece

I know for Brits,  Greece is a very common destination and one that many people have visited,  but it’s not somewhere I have made it to yet.  I have an image of a beautiful tranquil place,  with candlelit restaurants and walks on the beach.  It’s this side of Greece I want to visit,  I don’t want to stumble into an 18-30’s party by mistake!

 

West Coast / San Francisco

I’ve never been to California,  or indeed the West Coast of the USA,  and there are so many places there that I’d like to see.  I would quite like to drive right up the West Coast from California to Vancouver.     That seems to be a bit of a recurring theme!

 

I am looking at my list and thinking that they are all very safe places.  I like to believe that I’d enjoy traveling around the world like Michael Palin and around the world in 80 days. seeing the real world and not the tourist’s view,  but truth be told,   I don’t know if I am brave enough.  Maybe when I am retired I will take bus tours through Asia and Africa,  seeing the world from the safety of a bus and then going to stay in nice luxury hotels.  It feels a bit like cheating though.

What to share and what to not.

Shimelle has asked us to think today about how much of our life we want to share online.   It’s an interesting topic,   I am a fairly open book online,  I don’t like to live in fear and tend to believe that as long as you are reasonably sensible it’s no more dangerous posting on a blog or forum than it is to have your photo in the newspaper.    Then again,  I’m not a ‘celebrity blogger’ with 1000s of people following my every word.   I read a couple of celebrity blogs (by which I mean the bloggers have become online celebrities,  not that they are celebrities who blog),   some of these blogs get 1000s of comments and there are 10s of 1000s of people reading there every word.   I would probably feel differently if I was in that situation,   and as unlikely as it is,  I suppose they all started out as small bloggers and once you have put the information out there you can never take it back.

However,  I digress…..

The one thing I am aware of,  is I tend to blog/share the positive and keep the negative to myself.  I just never really thought it would make an interesting post to say ‘Had a crap day today and shouted at my kids’  so I don’t post that sort of stuff.   Which does mean that there are a lot of days when I don’t have much to say,  because unfortunately I have those kinds of days rather too often at the moment.   I am finding it hard to be the parent of a nearly teen, and I don’t seem to be handling it as well as I’d like.

On a more positive note,   in the past I have organized a number of Scrapbooking Retreats at a local venue.  When I spoke to them last year they told me they could no longer accommodate us,  so I haven’t held one this year.  I have been really wanting to get away for a retreat shortly,  so I decided to call them again and see if they would be willing to change their policy,  and the person I spoke to said it was not a problem and we could again hire the venue.   I am so pleased,  we have always had a lovely time there, and I really couldn’t think of an alternative venue that would work as well.  So now I have a bit of organising to do, and then a lovely weekend to look forward too

This photograph is off the first retreat which was very very cold!  We are all sitting scrapping in our coats and gloves.  Fortunatly,  since then the heating has been upgraded in the centre  so it is much warmer,  but it does make me  smile to think of us all sitting there shivering!

Blogging for Scrapbookers

I am taking an online class run by Shimelle, I am hoping it will inspire me to blog more often and do a little bit of scrapbooking too. I love the idea of blogging and scrapbooking, but I don’t do either as often as I’d like, so I intend to change that in the next few weeks.

One unexpected side effect is all the class members are sharing their blogs and I am finding all sorts of interesting and fascinating posts and ideas.  I’ve added a new sidebar where I will link anything interesting I find.  Straight away I’ve seen this amazing wreath on http://doublehdesign.blogspot.com/2009/11/tis-season.html I have a roomful of papers so i quite fancy having a go at this.

Now, onto the photograph, last weekend we went down to the lighthouse for a walk. Unfortunatly, the clocks had gone back and by the time we got down there it was starting to get dark. We had a quick walk across the causeway, and then as we walked back we saw the coloured lights on the lighthouse. It looked amazing.

I only had my pocket point and shoot and it doesn’t do well in low light situations, but with the aid of a handy bin and the timer, I managed to get one non-blurry shot which I am really pleased with.

Well, I did it!!!

Once upon a time I was a programmer and spent all day engrossed in lines of code.  But those days are long gone and it’s quite a few years since I’ve spent days lost in the code.

However,  i was determined to find a way to jazz up this blog, and discovered that it is possible if you use the Sandbox theme and CSS code.   I don’t know CSS code but I hate to be stumped,   so I found a skin that sort of worked and then hacked it apart to make it work the way I want too.  I will credit the designer, but she might not be too happy with the hack job I’ve done too it!!

Nevertheless,  I am chuffed to have achieved something I wanted too,  and I’ve quite enjoyed delving into the code – I know I am a geek at heart.

I started with the idea that I wanted to use a House of 3 Blog Background,  and found the Hourglass  theme which worked for me with a little tweeking.

OK,  enough geek talk.   The reason for wanting to jazz up the blog is I am taking an online class ‘Blogging for Scrapbookers’ so hopefully there will be lots of posts in the next few weeks.