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About Me

Married to my soulmate with 2 beautiful girls,and our English Springer Spaniel, Suki. Living a country life in Cambridgeshire, whilst baking, gardening, and photographing our daily lifes, where they find a place on my scrapbook pages.

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My little place on the web

This blog is just that, my little place on the web.You will find my daily (or not so daily, hehe)life, my love for my new vegetable garden, baking, photography and my scrapbooking!

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My Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking is a way of life for me now.It has been for over 4 years. I love journaling, taking photos of my family and love colour and texture, these are all part of my everyday life and scrapbooking.

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Scrapping Angels, NSD and Bad Girls!!

blogged by me domestic goddess On 4/30/2009 06:08:00 PM 8 lovely comments
Its a busy post today and image heavy!!!

Weekend just gone was the 4th annual Scrapping Angels Retreat at Wyboston. This years teachers were, Shimelle Laine, Debbie Jewell, Annie Hafermann and myself. The weekend was a success and lots of happy ladies left on Sunday armed with goodies from 3 Jolly Scrappers, and loaded with inspiration and projects.






Although its a truly exhausting weekend for everyone involved, Sue and I always end up raring to go for another year! So Scrappng Angels 2010 retreat will be announced next month. Here are a few photos, there are plenty more on the Scrapping Angels blog.






Shimelle and me.



My projects were :
Home Decor by Cosmo Cricket





Happily Ever After mini book using Cosmo Cricket




and a Pink Paislee Layout, Facinating




Thank you to all the Angels who helped raise over £350 for The MS Society, I am truly thankful.

Bad Girls May kit will go live night, with the reveal party starting at 9pm PST. This kit was completely out of my comfort zone, but as always with Wendy's kits, I have a ton of layouts and projects that I will treasure! May's kit is jam packed with 7 Gypsies papers, vintage ephemera, Prima flowers and black pearls!!






This weekend is NSD, and we at Bad Girls want you to come and play with us, and join in 12 hours of free classes and challenges on the hour, every hour from 9am - 9pm PST. Isn't that just to good to refuse?!


I am of to bake lots and lots of goddies tonight, for Peter to take to work and help raise money for MS Cake Day. Cookies and brownies will be on the menu.

Hope to see you over at Bad Girls this weekend


Thanks for stopping by

Hugs

Anna xx

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Provence Part 2

blogged by me domestic goddess On 4/28/2009 01:06:00 PM 4 lovely comments


I know I promised this ages ago, but I have been so so busy, seriously busy of late i don't know where the time is going!


Anyways, back to Provence....



Wednesday we woke up to beautiful blue skies again, and headed off to Fontaine de Vaucluse. Another beautiful village set at the bottom of the mountains with rapids and waterfalls, just stunning! We had our first crepe here too!

We spent most of the day here and then headed to Cavillon and the InterMarche to stock up on a few more necessities for dinners. The girls spotted the Golden Arches, but I had my foot firmly on the ground and no MacDonalds was to be consumed here!!!!





Thursday the weather was supposed to be rain, luckily it didn't but we were prepared and decided to head out into the car and tour some of the local villages we hadn't yet visited. We drove through Menerbes, where Peter Mayle's book "A Year in Provence" is based. WE stopped at Bonnieux where there are the most beautiful views of the Mont Ventoux( the largest mountain of the are where the French go skiing in the winter!).




Bonnieux reminded me of St Micheal's Mount in Cornwall. Beautiful gardens and walk up to the church at the top of the hill. The girls loved it here also and when we reached the "Mary" Lilly decided to pray for us all.......



Back down the hill and into the car for the drive back home. driving has its benefits and especially when the sat nav takes you a different way to the one you came, as we fell across Abbey Saint Helier, a privately owned Abbey with beautiful grounds and views across the Luberon. A lovely sensory garden and the largest Aloe Vera plant I have ever seen!






After our peaceful visit to teh Abbey we headed to Goult for a game of Boules, with our supermarket special set of Boules and lots of admiring looks from the locals!




Friday was our last day in Provence and we had decided to visit Avignon, once the home of the Pope. We drove to the outskirts of the wall, and made the walk to the inside and to the Palais de Pope and Petite Palais de Pope. On our walk to the square the town was adorned with Murals. These were amazing , and also these statues! How fun....


The Palais de Pope, did not disappoint us at all, and was vast and just jaw dropping





We ended our trip here with a drink at a bistro, although 15 euros for 4 x coco cola light was just a tad extortionate! In fact this was the downfall to the holiday, if I had to find one, was it is not cheap, and the euro/pound was dreadful didn't help the cost whilst we were here.

Overall , Provence is a beautiful area of France, one I would love to revisit in the summer, to see the vines and lavenders in full glory. We were not able to do any vineyards and tasting as we did have the girls with us at all times. This did not spoil our holiday at all, it was just as much fun doing wine tasting ourselves by the pool, LOL.
The star of the week for the girls had to be Lola, Catriona and Marcella's dog.



I hope I have given you just a little taster of my view of Provence. I have hundreds of photos as you can imagine.
Sorry it took me so long to update! I will be back tomorrow with a snapshot of The Scrapping Angels Retreat Weekend,
until then, thanks for stopping by

Anna x

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Be back soon....

blogged by me domestic goddess On 4/25/2009 01:21:00 AM 0 lovely comments
I know I promised days ago part 2 of Provence, but life has taken over this week. I am now away at Scrapping Angels Retreat, and blogging will not resume until Sunday, maybe Monday!

Hope to see you then
Hugs
Anna x

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A Week in Provence

blogged by me domestic goddess On 4/21/2009 08:28:00 PM 5 lovely comments
I would love the title of this post to be a tribute to Peter Mayle, "A Year in Provence", but that is not to be. I am sure every Man, woman and child who See's the Luberon wants to pack up home and move in permanently, I know I did!!
We landed at ridiculous o'clock Saturday/Sunday morning, and Catriona had thankfully waited up for us to give us a tour of our "Gite". We unpacked the car, ran around our new home giggling and crashed into bed at about 2am.
Sunday morning we wake up to Marcella knocking at the door, greeting us with a bag of patisseries, a baguette, butter and OJ!!! how fab is that. And then we opened the shutters to see this.......
as you can imagine the girls squealed with delight...
A visit to the InterMarche in Apt to stock up on supplies and then we headed back to the Gite for lunch. In the afternoon we headed over to Isle de le Sorgue. An amazing antiques market and historic village. We loved it here, and the ice cream was, mmmmmmmm.




Monday we woke up to bright blue sunshine and 28'c. Headed out on the roads and came across this view....




and then realised it was Gordes!! An absolute must! Beautiful village built on the mountains. Cobbled streets and winding roads. It is a tourist attraction so not the place to eat or drink, nor buy gifts! But well worth a visit. in fact we went back on Tuesday for the market!



I just adored these pretty aprons!


We then headed onto Roussillon. Well know for its ochre-red architecture, where the original pigment was mined. We headed up to the top of the village for stunning views across to Gourdes.




Painted Murals were everywhere in Provence!





WE ate here at the Bistrot des Couleurs, as recommended by Catriona and Marcella(who happens to have been a chef and owned a restaurant or two!) Peter and I had the "Plat de Jour" A mouthwatering dish of Lamb Shank and Provencal style vegetables of butter beans and potato. Absolutely scrumptious! The girls had the classic steak and chips! Of course we washed this down with local wine, hehehehe




It was then back to our Gite for a dip in the pool, and supper of bread, cheese and wine (well not for the girls of course!)




Tuesday we got up early for market day at Gordes. I had great fun using my school girl french and buying some local produce to cook dinner with. The market was a wash with colour and bustling with locals and tourist doing their shopping. I was in heaven here! The girls enjoyed the fun and colourful atmosphere.



On our way back to the Gite we stopped of at Goult, a small village only 5km form where we were staying, not a tourist spot either! We had a drink at Cafe de la Poste and I bough a chicken from the butchers and a few bits form the local village shop. We also spotted the local boules team at the Bouladrome, light bulb moment, more on that tomorrow!



Back to the Gite and another dip in the pool, and yes i actually joined the girls; the pool was freezing!!!!

I cooked us a dinner of local chicken, beans and potato, tomato salad,with french bread and local wine. I must say the tomatoes here are huge and tasty! I could have lived on tomatoes, olive oil and S&P!!!!!
Another day passes in paradise and beds were calling.....
Tomorrow my tales from Fontaine de Vauclause, Bonnieux, Menerbes and Avignon!

Thanks for stopping by
Anna x

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