Laugh!

Anne set the challenge 'laugh' just before we set off on holiday to France.  I wasn't sure if I would have time to respond and I am coming to this particular challenge in reverse!  However, one of the joys of our holiday was meeting some great people and having a really good laugh.

This is a shockingly bad photograph, but sums up our last night on the river cruise, with some really fun people and probably too many alcoholic drinks!

This one is a bit more in focus and shows some more of our new found friends.

How busy?

“ Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”   Lynne has provided a really great quotation to work with this week and I'm pleased to say that it will be easy for me to create a post around this quotation.  We have just returned from a Viking River Cruise, our tour was 'Portraits of Southern France' which started in Chalone sur Saone and ended in Avignon.  Here are a few photographs to illustrate just how much we packed into our week, lots of looking around and trying not to miss too much!

Hotel de Dieu - Beune

 'Hotel' is used as a term for many public bulidings, in this case a hospital run by nuns for the poor of the town of Beaune. Fantastic glazed tiles on the roof.

Wine tastin - Beaune

 We moved on to Lyon, this is the Cathedral, known as the upside-down elephant!

                                           French Street scene with flags.

                                  Vienne and the Roman Temple dedicated to Augustus and Livia

                                                        View from Vienne - Belvedere de Pipet

                                     The bridge at Tain L'Hermitage our only rainy day.

                                                               The Amphitheatre at Arles

                                             The bedroom of Vincent Van Gogh at St Remy

                                                    Here I am in front of the 'Pont de Avignon'

                                And here we are at Pont du Garde a fabulous Roman Aquaduct

We had a fantastic holiday and saw so much, looking back at the photographs it's amazing just how much we did and how many incredible sights we took in.  There are many  more photographs which will, no doubt, be featuring in future posts!

A birthday card for my Mum

I thought I'd show you the card I made for my Mum's 80th birthday.  I used to post a lot of cards on this blog, but it's been some time!  I made the card using papers which came with Simply Homemade magazine and made a pocket card to hold two tags.

The first tag featured photographs of my Mum from her teens, through the 1960s...

on the reverse a photo from the early 1990s and at my son's wedding 3 years ago.

The second tag, shown here in it's pocket, shows the 'gift' I am giving Mum for her birthday.

We are heading to London at the end of April to see a couple of shows and have Afternoon Tea at the Dorchester.

Here is the card, shown with the cake I made, more about the cake at Farmersgirl Kitchen

And here is my lovely Mum (not looking 80 at all) blowing out the candles on her cake at our family lunch today.

From my kitchen window March 2013

It seems that every time we feel that spring is on it's way, it seems that winter comes back with a vengeance!  We had some lovely warm and spring like days earlier this week, but by Friday cold winds brought the temperature right back down and today we had flurries of snow as you can see in this photograph.  I long for some warm sunny days.

The View - March

Here is the view in March for Lucky Snapping in 2013.  I took the photo on Monday morning and there was quite a hard frost as you can see from the car, the fields and the misty background.  So what has changed since February?  Not a great deal, but I did clear out the pots that had the remains of last year's bedding plants in them and put the pots of bulbs on the patio.

You cna see that some of the little flag irises have already started to bloom!