A new Grandson and a new journal

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas, maybe not quite as unusual as ours. We were spending Christmas day with my sister and her husband as well as around twenty other family members for lunch and dinner. When we arrived my sister was very unwell and ended up spending the day in bed, we all rallied around and managed to sort out lunch. My dear eighty five year old mother was allowed out of hospital, where she is receiving treatment for depression, what they failed to inform us was that she was also suffering from incontinence, bladder and bowl, whilst on her medication. That created a few dramas, but all in all everything went off reasonably well. I finally fell into bed around midnight when my daughter rang, 'Mum I'm going into labor' was the cry down the end of the phone. The best laid plans of mice and men go right out the window when a baby arrives fifteen days early. Needles to say I wasn't at the birth of this grandson as all of the babysitters who were lined up to look after my grand daughter were away. My dear little grandson arrived on Boxing day weighing in at seven and a half pound. Mother and baby doing well, RoRo recovering, I'd forgotten how much work is involved in looking after a gorgeous three and a half year old.



















The photos above are a few of the pages in my new journal that's available on my Etsy site. I've been working on this one for weeks now, they are so involved but I love every minute of their development.



Above, a very proud RoRo and Xavier James.




These are part of two packages that arrived over the Christmas break, I'm looking forward to working with both. The bezels are from Judy's Red velvet etsy, I'm looking forward to adding the Ice resin to these. I love the designs around the ones standing up.
The other package was from Christina, who kindly sent me these 'stencil papers' to try. I usually give them a coat of acrylic paint on both sides then use them as stencils with my decorated papers. There are some wonderful designs in this group.


I hope everyone has a lovely new year, we are celebrating with friends in Daylesford with temperatures expected around 35 degC so it will be a warm one. Catch up in 2010.

Happy Holidays

I hope everyone has a very Happy and safe, holiday break. I'm on holiday for three weeks now which is wonderful.
Thank you all again for your kind comments and thoughts over the past twelve months, it has certainly been another fulfilling year in our household.
We've had our share of dramas but on the whole the positives win out by far. I have another beautiful grandson and am awaiting the arrival of another grand child in the next two weeks.
I have lots of jewellery and journals to make, stamps to carve, a princess wall to paint and a garden that needs finding, so I'm not sure if three weeks is really enough. But it will be bliss.

I've been watching the news and seeing all the snow and freezing cold weather in the UK, US and Europe. We are at the other extreme, today was 37deg C, it's still very balmy at 10.00 this evening. We have all of the windows open trying to catch a waft of a breeze.
They promise us low 20's for Christmas day so we're hoping they will be right. South Australia has been suffering badly today with extreme temperatures and fires.

I've taken a few photos of our living area this evening showing some of our decorations. It looks so cosy and wintery belying the real heat of the day.

Enjoy your Christmas or whatever it is you might celebrate and I'll post again shortly. I've almost finished another journal so will have photos soon.

Back in action again

Thank you all so much for your concerns re my recent health issues, I haven't been able to respond to everyone individually, but your comments and emails are very much appreciated. Thank you all.
I had to have a stress test today to make sure my arteries were OK. I received the results on the spot and everything is fine. All of my other tests came back this week too and apart from being deficient in vitamin D all is well. I'm amazed how much better I feel after only one week of very high doses of vitamin D, I didn't realize all the things it affects.

I've been trying to get some things on my etsy site and have added decorated papers below and a brooch that I made for my exhibition above.

I have a necklace almost completed and hope to have that available over the weekend.

Out of action

I have to apologize to the students who attended my necklace workshop last week. It's taken until now for me to show their wonderful work on my blog.
I had a bit of a health scare last Tuesday and ended up in hospital. All seems to be well now, just waiting for some test results. I can't believe in such a sunny country as ours that I could end up deficient in vitamin D. I suppose that's what I get from working in an office all day.

Here's the fabulous work.

I hope to have another post in the next few days, now I have some free time.