Great Christmas

I hope you've all had a great Christmas, I certainly did. Our Christmases tend to be slightly unconventional, as many years ago I decided I just didn't want to be one of those women that had to spend all day chained to the kitchen lol. I'm so lucky that my daughter isn't into those kind of Christmases either.

Our day started when my daughter got up and I gave her the presents I'd bought her, and within the hour we were off up into the mountains for 4 hrs. As always it was stunning up there, unfortunately it was pretty slippy in most of the places we went to, so I stayed in the car, while my daughter jumped out taking loads of photo's. It didn't take away from my pleasure of being there though. In a forest park we went to there was thick ice, which made some very loud creaking and cracking noises as we drove over it, I loved it but my daughter was glad when we managed to get away from there lol.

As we've only had one day of snow here on Anglesey, it was lovely to see snow covered mountains and frozen ponds and lakes. There is however another cold spell due to come in next week, so maybe we'll be luckier then.

A couple of busy days

The last two days have been a bit busy. Last nite I decided to start doing a new style mirror with the much hunted for cellophane !!! One thing I found out was that it's very difficult to stick down and even harder to get the glue to dry, 24 hrs later and some of it still hasn't dried. Good job I'm in no rush for this particular mirror. First thing this morning, I started to get things organised ( don't laugh those that know me ) to do a new blog, this one is going to be just for photo's taken with my new camera.

Today saw us going off to the wonderful world of manic buying at our local Tesco store. Almost every parking spot was taken, apart from an odd one of two 1/2 mile away in the far corner.There was no way we were going to park there as it was very icy, and me falling over is not the way we intended to go !! So round and round we went until at last we spotted someone pulling out, at last we got into the supermarket. What a sight .... throngs of people everywhere you looked, trolleys piled almost up to the ceiling, kids crying, parents looking frazzled and each and every ailse was full of trolleys, it was like trying to navigate a slalem course lol. As we went round getting our usual store cupboard items, I noticied pretty quickly that almost everything has had a price hike, especially in the fresh veg department, up to 50p on some items, shame on you Tesco's don't you make enough profit out of us as it is !!!

Once the shopping was done, it was time to let the dog have his walk before we went to unload all the shopping. It was sods law that as we sat there a gorgeous fat robin, straight off a Christmas card by the look of it, sat down on a post right by us. Of course I hadn't got my brand new camera as I didn't want to risk leaving it in the car while we went shopping, so as Mr Robin posed first sideways and then a full frontal, we cursed the fact my camera was safely at home !!

Once home it was the battle to get all the veg in the fridge, mainly because of our christmas dinner a nice smoked gammon joint. No matter which way or what I tried to get everything in, the door just wouldn't shut. So out it all came, and seeing as our outhouse is probably colder than the fridge, a lot of veggies were relegated to sitting on one of my art cupboards.

After a quick egg mayo roll, it was time to start my last Christmas present, what it is will stay under wraps, just on the off chance the person it's intended for happens to pop along to my blog :o)

If I don't happen to have time to write again before Christmas, I'll take this opportunity to say Merry Christmas to my regular readers and I hope you all have a fantastic New Year.

What an amazing surprise

Last Wednesday saw us driving off down to the Midlands, to met up with some of our family for a pre Xmas meal. When most of us met up our friend Mandys house before our meal, my son Ben presented me with a rather large present in the shape of a teapot for Xmas. Imagine my surprise when I peeled off layer after layer of packing on this odd shaped present, to find my dream camera !!! For years I've wanted a DSLR camera, but knew that I'd never be able to afford one. I was so overwhelmed I just burst into tears. Never in my wildest dreams, did I ever think I'd be lucky enough to own a camera like this. The surprises still hadn't finished, when we got back to my oldest daughters house, we exchanged presents and I found my daughter Jenny had bought me a telephoto lens for the camera, my oldest daughter Emma and her husband had got me a large sized memory card, and my two grand daughters Raggz and Lacey gave me some macro lens. How lucky am I ...everything I could possibily wish for all in one day !!! Thank you all soooooooooo much.

When we arrived back home, I turned my pc on looking forward to reading up on how to use this amazing camera, when after half an hour the internet went down !! How was that for bad timing lol, I rang up the technical support line in the morning when it still wasn't back on, only to be told there was a fault and it would be repaired in 24hrs. That time came and went and we still weren't reconnected, so I rang again and was told exactly the same flipping thing .....grrrrrr. Then on Monday nite my youngest son and his girlfriend came to visit, and after a while my son asked me if I wanted him to have a look, I said yes .... of course. Amazingly he managed to reconnect us, I'm still not sure how he did it, but he has and we're back !!!!

I'm going to set up a new blog very soon, which I'm going to put the best of my photo's on, as this blog will get swamped with mine and my daughters attempts at photography lol. This will also allow this blog to concentrate more on my arty crafty stuff. Below is a couple of mirrors that I made for Xmas presents this year, this is a new style for me and also a picture of one of Raggz one of my lovely grandkids, that I took with my new camera !!

Whatever happened to cellophane !!

For the last few days I've been trying to find some coloured cellophane to use on a project. I've checked florist shops, craft shops, cheap shops, stationery shops and yet none of them seem to sell it any more. I can get clear cellophane with flowers, stars, father christmases, easter eggs but NO coloured plain stuff, how strange and pretty annoying too. I got so desperate I even considered buying one of those Christmas tins of chocolates that are wrapped individually in cellophane, but that seems a bit extreme, especially as me nor my daughter are particularly fond of Quality Street lol.

On the upside, some really pretty glass tiles arrived from America yesterday....my little treat to myself. Why buy glass from USA I hear you asking, well basically because it's considerably cheaper to buy them from there, than here in the UK even with the extra postage costs. Also America seems to have a huge choice of products for doing mosaics compared to the UK too, which is quite a shame really, I would far prefer to buy British but not at the inflated prices they charge.

Coming back down the island yesterday, the mountinas looked amazing, even more snow has fallen since we went up there the other day. Just our luck we went too soon lol.

Brrrrr it's turning colder

Brrrrr after all the rain, it's started to turn colder now and we've got a sprinkling of snow on the mountains now. It looks gorgeous and makes it seem more christmassy. My daughter took me for a drive up there yesterday, and I loved it. I just wish it wasn't so expensive to turn the heating on *sigh*

Sadly the firing of the kiln never happened on Monday, because Mike at the gallery had a couple of commissions to do. So it's been rescheduled for Saturday now, but I've just remembered my daughters got a friend visiting ..so I'm not sure how we'll fit it in.

I'm on a mission today to get some bits and bobs I need for my new style mosaics. That's the one good thing about tempered glass mosaics, they are much more versatile than the stained glass ones I usually make. Also not having to cut the glass gives my hands a rest, so no pain for a few days I hope.

Here's a few photo's I took yesterday in the mountains.