Rocking Your World Friday

Hello!

I am a day late for RYWF, if you want to link up go to Virginias blog to play along. She is our wonderful, inspirational host for this weekly look at all our gratefuls.

You are going to have to read this post with your head cocked to the right as blogger has put my photos on the wrong way round-all but the last three! I don't know why it does this to me, I have tried five times and it still wants to put them on sideways!

*On Saturday the kids and me put the Christmas tree up. Amazingly the tree lights worked-every year we put them away working and when we get them out the next year they no longer work! We changed our colour scheme this year as all our decs were looking a bit tatty-they were given to me by my mum 15 years ago and they were on her tree before that! We have gone with pale green and lilac for the baubles and it looks lovely.

*We took the kids up to Busy Bee, our local garden centre to get their new ornament each on Saturday. Every year the kids get a new ornament for the tree and then when they move out of home they will each have their own set of decorations.

*On Sunday we went to the Christmas Market. This is the first time anyone has attempted to hold a Christmas Market on the IOW. They have done it at the Tank Museum in Cowes. Now, lots of people have slated this event on Facebook but I found it ok, not as big or spectacular as it had been made out to be but It was free entry and free parking so that was a plus. There were stalls, but not really any handmade/crafty items which I would have liked to have seen. They were mostly stalls from people who own shops and had bought their stock over to sell there. There were maybe 4/5 stalls outside, all in little wooden sheds and there were about 6 food stalls which were quite expensive. In the museum they had created a Dickensian High st which looked lovely and obviously a lot of work had gone into it, but again, the sellers were not great-more shop stock. There was a Santa's grotto but it was £8 to see Santa and another £4.50 if you wanted a photo which I thought was very expensive, especially if you had more than one child. Outside they had built an ice rink which I thought was a lovely touch and you could go skating until 11pm at night. There was Christmas music and a fake snow machine blowing snow everywhere and they had a band playing Christmas music. I thought it was a nice atmosphere, a lot of work had gone into setting it up, the stalls were not great but for an hours free fun on a Sunday afternoon it was fine.

 Caleb, Shelby and Stu in the Dickensian High St

 The Dickensian High St- all the Victorian shop fronts had been made and the floor painted to look like cobbles/paving slabs

 Caleb and Shelby

 Stu and Shelby

 I paid for Shelby to hold a huge Eagle owl- she thought it was amazing and I got lots of photos. The money went to the bird rescue place that had brought the birds to the market so I didn't mind paying the £2.

 Caleb and Shelby enjoying Belgium waffles with hot chocolate sauce- I was good and had roasted chestnuts instead of a waffle!

 My Mum enjoying her waffle with orange honey sauce

* I have new purple suede gloves I bought at the Christmas market

* We went to Shelby's parents evening this week. All of the teachers we saw were very pleased with how well she is doing. They all said such lovely things about her-what a delight she was to teach, a lovely child, wonderful manners, hard worker, popular- it is so lovely to hear such nice things about your child!! Her grades are all spot on and she is a whole level above most of the class in French so we are really proud of her.

*Me and Caleb went to see his school's production of Jesus Christ Superstar on Thursday. It blew me away!! It was so professional-just like a London Theatre performance. The students were amazing, fantastic acting and their singing was out of this world. The set was spectacular and the Cross at the end was on a hydraulic lift so when the actor was put on it, it was then raised 16 foot into the air. The whole performance was dramatic, visually stunning, intense and I cried at the end.Even the programme was done superbly-it was written like the bible and on the last page was a photo of the boy who played JC and underneath was the funny quote from Monty Python-'He's not the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy' which had Caleb and me in stitches. We had a fab evening and now Caleb has to write a review for the school magazine. 

* I sent my secret Santa gift off this week for Carmen's Secret Santa swap and mine arrived on Tuesday-I really want to open it but am trying hard to be good!

*Also arriving in the post this week and the postman had to listen to my excited squeal, was my Gelli Arts printing plate. I was supposed to wait until after Xmas but I thought what the hell and ordered it when Stu ordered my birthday present from Art from the Heart at the weekend.( which are set of the new Montanna acrylic pens, which I have stroked but am not allowed to have until my birthday-Boo)

I had a wonderful time on Thursday playing with the gelli print plate, i had paint everywhere, every surface was covered in prints or painty stencils- it took me over half an hour to clean the mess up when I had finished, but worth it as I ended up with some lovely pages to use.

 I might join the mail art challenge over at Collabor-art now I have all these wonderful backgrounds.

* Wonderful reiki share at group on Wednesday, which I needed as my back was playing up

* Coffee- I have been drinking so much coffee as my craft room is soooo cold. My computer is in my craft room and that's where I also do all my Equals work as I do the admin side of my work from home. So I spend most of each day out there in the cold. I have taken to wearing my dressing gown over my clothes and wearing the fingerless gloves my sister made me last year! The coffee is helping to keep me warm so I am grateful for that.

* As always, grateful for my wonderful kids and hubby, great family and friends

That's it for this week, hope you all have a wonderful week,

Sami x