Excitement & Relaxation Tinged With Sadness

Hi my lovely lovely fellow bloggers and friends . . . I'm back!  Did you miss me as much as I missed you all?  I actually got back yesterday, but of course, there is so much to do to catch up with everything . . . A mountain of post inside the front door (wedging it shut against two returning weary travellers at 04:00am), then there were over 2000 e-mails to sort the Spam from the wanted mail.

Anywho, this is my first chance, even though there is still heaps to do!  Why does it always take a week for every day you are away to catch up on life?

First, to the title, the excitement being, just before I went off  I was asked by Loll Thompson if I would like to join the Happy Little Stampers CAS DT . . . would I?  If ever there was a silly question!  I was so excited . . . and nervous - was I up to it, would I let the team down? - but Loll was lovely and held my hand in helping me to get to grips with what it meant to be part of a design team, you see, I have only been blogging for around eight months and before that I had never even seen a blog, let alone run one . . . and now, to be part of such a wonderful team as Happy Little Stampers, it's a dream come true.  You see, I have a number of design inspirations and Loll and Kylie are at the top of that list (no flannel) and so I am truly, deeply honoured to be a part of that amazing team!

The relaxation part is to do with the fact that where I was staying was in a fairly remote rural area with limited technology, so, of course, no internet and no blogging!  But this forces you to just relax and do nothing whatsoever . . . something I adapted to fairly quickly (little cough and an eyeroll)  Here are some of the pictures of the views of the surrounding area and other sights we saw - I promise, I will keep them down to a minimum, so as not to bore you all.

This was the entrance and hire car

These were the surrounding views

Me, trying to relax (a tut and an eye-roll)

These fellas were enjoying the sunshine too!

The grapes have started to form on the vines

Some views on our excursions around the area

Now, unfortunately, for the "sad" part of the title.  Whilst we were there, towards the end of our visit, one of our friend's wonderful husband passed away.  He had been suffering with cancer for nine years and had been in and out of remission and had good and bad days.  He was a very gentle man and also a real, 'old fashioned'  gentleman and although the prognosis was not good towards the end, it is still one almighty shock!  We didn't get to see our friend after  that because, it goes without saying, that she was so busy with arrangements.  Of course, we offered our condolences and said that if there was anything we could do (even if it was only small, like picking things up, or running their fifteen year old daughter anywhere)

Of course, I needed to make a condolence card, but only took some printed, 'adult colouring pages' that I downloaded from the internet to practice some colouring on (as I'm not too hot on colouring)  Here is the link to the site where I got the free pictures, there are loads of them!  Of course, me being me, forgot to take some . . . pencils . . . Duh!!  So we raced to the nearest little shop and bought some very cheap kids colouring pencils, some very thin card and some glue.  Luckily (or not luckily, depending how you look at it) I had had the foresight to also print a variety of sentiments under the colouring pictures in case I could make use of them. 

This is what I came up with . . . Not one of my best efforts, but it told my friend and her daughter that we were thinking of them.

 Well, if you are still here, thank you so much for sticking with it, I appreciate you all more than you know . . . Have a truly wonderful weekend and happy crafting!  Hazel xx