Cards, Cakes and Good News. (lots of pics)

First I just have to show you some pictures of my beautiful boy who celebrated his 7th birthday on Sunday. I can hardly believe that he is seven already.

..... and pictures of the cake I made for him too.

and to end his birthday theme I will share the card I made too

Have you seen my new ticker bar at the top - I am thrilled to say that my darling hubby has decided to have an early retirement and will be finishing work on the 28th August. Also on the 6th September we will have achieved 40 years together - just think we could have murdered two or three people and served less of a sentance lol. He says when he bought the wedding licence he thought he had the option to renew each year like we do for the tv, its a good job I didnt tell him beforehand that it was a one off job. We have been talking about having a holiday to celebrate both events and on Friday night he asked me to look through a travel itenary and let him know what I thought, my eyes were popping as I read and I said oh that would be fantastic if we could do it. His reply was "Good because Ive booked it today and we fly out on our Anniversary", oh I knew I married him for some good reason. We are going to New Zealand the one place in the world I have always dreamed of going. We are going to Singapore and Australia too and also either Hong Kong or Bankgog for a stop over on our return but its NZ I am so excited about.

Oh Helen come back down to earth and get on with things lol. Right another card I made was for a friend who was getting married (for the 4th time)

I also made a very pretty one for my friend Ann but silly me forgot to take a picture of that one.

And on the stitching front just a little bit more on EMS Rose Sampler to show you.

We unfortunately had another death to deal with last week as my neighbour and friend for 40 years passed away on Thursday evening after a long fought battle with cancer. May you rest in peace Anita, your family will find life hard without you and you will be missed by many.

Well thank you all for once again bearing with my ramblings and visiting my little blog, and for the lovely comments you continue to leave.

Hugs to all

May your frogs stay in their ponds.

Hello Again

Goodness me its been almost a month since I last wrote in my blog. Firstly my computer was dying on me - the internet was cutting out every couple of minutes making it very difficult to do anything at all - the cd/dvd drive had caved in and would not play anything - and then to top it all the poor wee thing got a bug and when the internet did connect I had adverts for porn sites popping up every other second. Now with a seven year old who stays a lot and likes to play on my computer that really became the last straw. My hubby teased me something wicked about what I might have been downloading whilst he was out but I hadnt honest. We could laugh but the risk of our darling grandson seeing and asking questions was, as I said before, the last straw and not a risk we were willing to take so it had to be sorted. As you can imagine with no cd drive to download the things I wanted to save this was a long task with my dearest doing just two or three files at a time onto his USB and transferring the things on to his computer. This finally completed he cleared the whole main drive thingy and reloaded all the correct software. In doing so he decided it was time to upgrade me to Vista which was a pain from the point of view that some of my programs were old and would not load into Vista. My photo editing program being on of the things. Oh eccles cakes, I had to go searching for something else but actually found there is some pretty good free stuff out there for editing so I have downloaded one of them and seem to be getting on reasonably well with it.

Unfortunately it was not only the computer that kept me away from blogging but lifes little dramas too. Mum was ill, then my dear aunt became very ill and I was taking Mum to the hospital everyday to see her. Sadly she lost her battle for life which has left us all feeling very empty.

On a far more cheerful note, with the computer out of action what little time I did have was spent stitching. Not a lot done for a months work, but progress I can see none-the-less.

So firstly an update on Water Tiger which has had the most of my limited attention

I am now almost half was down the 4th page and I have also done some more on page 5 as I have been working across to join up with the central bit, which was where I started this project.

I also have made quite good progress on EMS Rose Sampler despite the pesky frogs who seemed to delight in visiting every time I got this out recently.
Next week I am hoping to finish the dividing line across the left side and make a start on the next alphabet - the first half of which goes between the two dividing lines. Once that is done pages 7, 8 and 9 will be complete and I will only have three more pages to do. Joining the Crafty Natter UFO night has really helped with this project.

I also have one more card to show you. This is the one I have done for my sister-in-law but as she does not read my blog it is quite safe to show it to you.

I have been trying to keep up with blogs but with little success as I have only been able to read them at odd times in the day. I will keep trying to catch up but you are all so busy and have so much I want to see and read that it is a hard task lol.

I notice during the last few posts that I have had some new readers who have been kind enough to leave comments. However a few of you do not appear to have blogs so I have been unable to come visit you and thank you in person so I want to take this opportunity to both thank you and welcome you to my little world. I just love to get your comments and I really do appreciate them but I also appreciate all those people who just want to read. I know from my tracker how many people do just come for a quick read and I appreciate all your visits too. I just love looking at all the places round the world where my visitors come from. One day when I have the time I will write you a list of the many many countries that my visitors come from. Oooh wouldnt life be perfect if I could come visit you all.

Well its almost 1.30 am and my eyes are beginning to droop. Also my darling grandson is having a stopover this weekend so we will be expected to be up and about by 8am at the very latest so I am going to say goodnight and leave you for the comfort of my bed.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Hugs

May your frogs stay in their ponds.