Monday, 13 August 2012

Rocking your world Friday

 What a rocking week it has been!
I am linking this up with Virgina for rocking your world Friday.

* First up, we went to the beach Friday night for a BBQ with my sister, her partner and my nephew. We walked out on the sand banks collecting shells, the kids ran around playing and we cooked some burgers. Simple pleasures but we had a great time.
 Caleb, Shelby and Rhys
 Caleb, Rhys and Zoe
Rhys looks impressed with his new boobs!

* On Monday it was my darling girls 12th birthday. We bought her clothes as that was what she asked for, Caleb bought her some mini hair straighteners and a hairdryer and she had lots of other bits and pieces.
We took the kids out to lunch to celebrate and then had family round for tea and birthday cake in the afternoon. Shelby had a sleepover spa party on the Saturday night before her birthday. Me and my friend Dawn painted all the kids nails, they had face packs, watched movies and ate popcorn and birthday muffins that Dawn had made.
 Pleased with her prezzies

Out to lunch at the Dairymans

Birthday cookies and cakes made by my sister

 Blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, made by Paige

*On Tuesday me and Paige were up at 2.30am to get ready and catch the 4.30am boat to the mainland for our Glastonbury trip. I had been so excited about this trip, three days away in Jenni the camper van, no kids, no hubby, no dogs and pennies to spend on whatever I wanted!
We drove off the ferry at 5am and started on our way through the new forest. We had two near misses with Bambi's trying to jump in front of Jenni which was scary, but Paige managed to swerve and miss them both times.
We arrived in Glastonbury by 7.30am and waited for our fave cafe, Heaphys to open so we could have breakfast.When it finally opened at 9am it had changed hands and gone all up market-no more veggie breakfast but I could have had scrambled egg on a paneni(sp?) for six quid?!! Whats that about? We found another cafe, had breakfast then started our shopping.
So many beautiful things to look at!
The three days were spent shopping, chillin at the campsite, more shopping and relaxing at the Chalice well. We wanted to go and find Brigid's well and the two old oak trees Gog and Magog but it pored with rain for the first two days so we didn't get a chance.
We got accosted by Gypsy's in the high st and between us ended up paying £7 for some plastic flowers and a whole load of gypsy luck!
We left Glasto on the Thursday afternoon and headed to Avebury ring. We wandered around the stones, leaving little blessings in the nooks and crannies of the stones. We went back to Jenni at six to move her to another car park as the one we were in shut at 6.30 and we were meeting our friend Sarah at 7pm. And Jenni would not start! Paige kept turning the key and there was nothing, not even a protesting whine-so much for £7 worth of Gypsy luck! Paige rang her hubby and he didn't know what could be wrong with her so we had to ring the AA who said they would be with us by 7.15. We made a coffee and waited. We spoke to the woman who came to lock the gates of the car park and she said she would leave them open for us so if the AA got us going we would be able to get out.We had to cancel our meet up with Sarah as we didn't know what would happen with the AA, we both expected to be towed home. Sorry again Sarah! By 7.15 there was no sign of the AA and Paige said she was going to try and start her again-and she started first time. We rang the AA back and they said if she was running then get moving and they would cancel the garage they had coming out to us.
We took it really slow on the way home and when we reached the ferry we were really worried about turning the engine off in case she wouldn't start again. We were an hour early for our ferry though and couldn't risk her overheating so had to turn her off. Luckily she started for us when the ferry came in! We got home around 11.30pm, tired but full of the spiritual energy from our travels.

 Goddess display at Starchild
 The Chalice well
 The Vesica Piscis pool at the Chalice well

 The stones and clay pieces I made to leave as little blessings around Glastonbury

One of the little Goddess figures left at the Chalice well

We filled our new offering bowls with all our new crystals and water from the well and then sat and charged them up. The energy at the Chalice well is incredible.

 Me at the chalice well


Inside of Jenni, enjoying a glass of wine and some cakes

Paige at Avebury
Paige looking all witchy with a crow flying in front of her at Avebury
My feets at Avebury

I will leave it there for this week.
Thanks for stopping by
Sami x

Friday, 3 August 2012

Rocking Friday

 Hello Friday Rockers!
Well it's been a few weeks again since I posted but I have found some time this morning to Catch up!
I am linking this up with Virginia for our Rocking your world Friday posts, a weekly look at all our gratefuls.

* First up, on Saturday my Mum and Dad got handfasted (Celtic wedding) as a way of renewing their vows after 40 married years together. My sister and I performed the ceremony assisted by our other pagan friends. We held the ceremony in my sisters garden which looked wonderful after we had decorated everywhere with bunting, streamers, willow hearts and flowers and lots of lanterns. Mum and Dad had invited a few close friends and family so it was a very intimate affair. I felt very honoured to perform this with my sister, for our parents. Their vows to each other brought tears to the eyes, both to me and my sister and the guests! We had a BBQ afterwards and everyone said how wonderful and different the ceremony was.

* I am grateful that when I woke up last Wednesday morning to find my right eye was filled with blood, it was nothing serious, just the pressure from a migraine! It was pretty scary looking in the mirror and having a demon eye stare back at me! I went to the doctors and she had a trainee sitting in with her so they proceeded to discuss amongst themselves what it could be...high blood pressure, glaucoma, a brain aneurysm..OMG, I was getting seriously worried! But they cleared me of everything and said it was due to my headache. it's gradually healing up, the bloods going down and my eye is turning yellow!

*On Monday Shelby and me went to Compton bay with Paige in Jenni the big gay camper van! (Jenni is Paige's pride and joy! Her hubby has spent hours fixing her up mechanically and Paige and I made the curtains and re covered all the seats and she has made it so pretty inside.)
We drove all the way to Compton with the music blaring, parked up and Paige put the kettle on and we had lunch. We went for a walk along the beach after lunch, and I have to say, Compton is one of my fave beaches on the Island, it is visually stunning with the towering white cliffs surrounding it. Here's some photos.

 'Jenni'

 The view from the car park

 Shelby, Paige and the dogs Gracie and Suki


 Shelby wave jumping




I took loads of photos which I have not done in ages, now I don't really scrapbook I never remember to take my camera anywhere!

* Planning our trip to Glastonbury next week- what to take, what places to visit, oh I am so excited! I love Glastonbury so much, it always feels like coming home when I go there. I am going with Paige in Jenni for three days. No kids, no hubby's, no dogs...sheer spiritual bliss awaits us!!

*My Nephew is down on the Island so its been lovely to see him again.

*It was Stewart and Mine's anniversary on Wednesday. Married for 14 years, I don't know where the time has gone. I am so grateful for him and thank my lucky stars everyday that I met him.
The kids made us a beautiful card with poems in that they had written themselves, which nearly brought me to tears. We are going to celebrate our anniversary on Monday along with our daughters 12th birthday by going out to lunch somewhere nice.

* Watched Mirror Mirror with the kids last night, so funny, I really enjoyed it. I love curling up with the kids and watching something together.

* And finally, seeing Virginia's crystal collection photos rocked my world this week! So beautiful, thank you for sharing  Virginia!

*************************

I have had some fun with painting this week, inspired by this Lady's work, Erin Faith Allen. I stumbled across her blog the other day and the first painting I saw was called 'the returning' and it really called to me like nothing has in a long time. I in no way hoped to capture the spiritual feeling I got from her paintings but I loved her free style.I am still quite reserved with my painting, unable to really let go (I am getting there in my art journal but give me a canvas and I freak that I am going to mess it up!)
I decided to just go for it and see what happened and this was the result.
(For some reason Blogger will not put them up the right way so you will have to lean your head to the right and imagine them upright!)




Finished piece-Cerridwen


Another one I did-Hekate

I loved the process of creating these but not entirely sure I love the end result!

Thanks for popping by,
Sami x

Friday, 6 July 2012

Rocking your world friday

Wow, I hear you exclaim, two rocking posts in one week! That's to make up for all the weeks I have missed!
If you don't know what RYWF is all about (why not?) then pop over to our hosts blog and check it out.


* What has rocked my world the most this week was taking part in Ryde Arts Parade with the fabulous Equals Friendship Group. (photos and video should be on the Equals website next week, worth a look if only to giggle at me dancing!)
Although a hell of a lot of hard work and stress to make the costumes and organise everything it was well worth it on the day. This years theme was cultural celebrations throughout the calendar year and we were given Guy Fawkes as our celebration.
We had a special mix of music put together for us by my volunteers son and it was a mix of Fire by Arthur Brown, fire starter by the prodigy and fireworks by Katy Perry. Unfortunately the carnival centre gave us a dead battery on our sound system so we didn't have our music on the way round, but we made up for it when we performed in the Gala afterwards on stage!

 My Daughter Shelby

 My Husband, Stewart on the left, Arums Husband and my brother in law, being our stewards for the day, carrying all our water bottles and first aid kit and pushing the dead sound system all the way round the streets of Ryde!

 Before we set off

 Lining up ready to set off

 Performing our dance moves, without the music at the top of Union Street in Ryde

 The back of our costumes as we head along the seafront.
(All photos taken by the fab Travis Lumpkin!)

We all had so much fun and we won a trophy for third place for costume design.

* Fresh potato's and peas from my sons allotment

*Making baby shower banners at work yesterday for our first Equals baby!

* Finishing the shades of grey trilogy..oh my!

*Two broke girls on E4...this does make me laugh.

* Reiki share group this week. We had our auras photographed this week by a lovely lady called Charlotte. She took before photos that showed our auras and chakras and then we gave each other Reiki and had our photos taken again. Amazing results and her analysis of our personalities based on our aura colours was fantastic and spot on!

* The Wednesday Whine group. I know I don't get on their as often as I'd like, but all you ladies are fab! You can have a whine about anything and there's always a listening ear and a laugh to be had. Thank you ladies x

* And as always, I am grateful for my wonderful kids and hubby, who can always put a smile on my face.

Not a long list this week, and I am sure there were more moments, but these were my highlights!

I have managed to finish some pages in Sue's pair journal, as part of the swap on Collabor-art. The theme of Sue's journal is 'alphabetika'. We add to each others pages and start new ones for each other to play with.

 I just added the stamped trees to this page

 This page was book pages and gesso, paint and ink, a printed image which I drew over and then added the poem

 Paint, ink, tissue paper and handcarved stamps and a bit of deciphering that Sue needs to do!

 I added the parrot with the skull on this page and did the title with washi tape

 I used a magazine image as a mask on this page and then covered the page with gesso.

 This was Sue's braille page which I loved. I added chalk ink to highlight the Braille, some stamps and a cut up postcard.

 I used newspaper headlines as the background then gessoed over it, added red paint, a text stamp and an image from a magazine.

 I loved this page of Sue's so I only added the handcarved 'confidential' and raven stamp and the little dancing skeletons around the outside.

Sue had made this mini journal to go in the pocket on the left. I added some Morse code for her to decipher.
I am really enjoying working on this pair journal, although am still struggling a bit with adding stuff to Sue's pages in case she doesn't like them!

Thanks for looking
Sami x

Tuesday, 3 July 2012

Catch up!

Well hello there!It's been way to long since I posted, over a month now. Work has been so hectic with three culture kitchen events, Ryde Arts Parade and funding applications to contend with, which has not left me with a minute to catch up on here or on other peoples blogs. Add in the Jubilee celebrations, 3 weekends working on my friends camper van with her and a whole host of other 'life' things and lets just say I fallen way behind with everything. Apologies to those I regularly visit, I am trying to catch up with all your posts!

Anyway, I have about 5 weeks worth of catching up to do with my Rockin posts...which ain't gonna happen as I haven't written anything down...but here's what I do remember!


* Getting the bullying sorted out with the school for my daughter. It took a few attempts before anyone took me seriously, but it seems to be all settled now and Shelby is back to being her usual delightful self.

* My son being awarded an IW festival ticket in recognition of all his hard work throughout the year. Now the recognition is fab, but he had to decline the ticket as a) he didn't want to go, b) He knew I would not let him go on his own and c) the school had actually sent home a letter to parents asking them not to let their kids attend the festival if they had exams on the Monday!! Why then was this his prize!!!

* My sister coming safely out of her operation and making a good recovery

* A new meditation group that I joined. Wonderful people, very spiritually enlightening and a great Me time treat.

* Celebrating the summer solstice with wonderful friends and family at the beautiful piece of land me use, and the fact that although the day started off wet the sun did make an appearance by lunchtime allowing us to carry out our celebration and have a BBQ.


* Fairy club. I am still so thankful that I was allowed to join and that I am making my own OOAK fairy under direction from one of the most talented women I have ever met! She is coming along nicely, I really struggled with the eyes (which I am still not happy with) but managed to do perfect boobs straight away...what does this say?!

 * Managing to find a couple of hours to start my third painting of my Maiden, Mother, Crone set. It's been about 10 months since I finished the first two and my mojo for them has waned slightly! Also for remembering to get my 'pass the painting' canvas done in time and sent off to the next person (part of the pass the painting swap on Collabor-art)

 * Making this bag about 6 weeks ago...the intention was to make a whole load to sell but I have not had time so I am now using this one myself. I used one of my prints and added some lovely wave fabric to the bottom.

 * The Jubilee celebrations. Well, the extra time off work anyway! Shelby and I did go down to the seafront with my sister, mum, dad and brother in law to watch the torch being lit and to see the fireworks though. We had a lovely time and laughed our socks off at the family next to us.... a group of older women, one of them celebrating their 91st birthday, drinking Jack Daniels and getting more and more drunk and outrageous as the evening wore on...I hope I am still enjoying life that much at that age!



* Being able to call on friends for help. How nice it is to pick up the phone and ask for help and have people who are happy to oblige. What wonderful friends I have that when I need them the most they are always there. I hope I always return the favour.

Well, I am sure there were many more rockin moments over the last few weeks, but my work addles brain is having trouble remembering them!
Thanks for stopping by after my long absence, normal service should resume shortly!
Sami x