Rocking your world Friday

Hello Friday Rockers. I have fallen behind again, both with my blogging and with catching up on other peoples blogs and have not joined in with Rockers for a couple of weeks...sorry!

Pop over to Virginia's blog, our wonderful host, to join in with us.

So digging very deep this week for my silver linings, my list of gratefuls and things that have made me happy, but I have managed it.

* My son, Caleb being chosen for vice house captain for his senior prefect role. I am so proud of him, he is the perfect role model. He applied to be a prefect and was then asked to attend an interview and give a presentation as he had been nominated for a senior role. I think he did extremely well to be chosen for one of the positions as there were lots of people who applied and didn't even get a prefect role. Also at 7pm on the day he found out, the head teacher of the school phoned me to tell me how wonderful my son was, how proud the school was of him and how he is going to achieve amazing things this year! I was gob smacked that the head had taken the time to ring all the parents and say such lovely things, obviously in his own time too.

 Caleb with his vice captain badge, he's still waiting for his prefect badge to arrive.

*The Equals Friendship Group that I run held a very successful curry night on the 29th Sept. We did this to raise the rent money for the scout hut we use for our weekly meetings. We offered two different types of chicken curry, one Thai and one Indian, a vegetable curry, Aloo Boona (dry potato curry), onion bhaji, prawn crackers and four different types of rice. People could eat in or just come and get a takeaway and we served nearly 100 people on the night, raising £469 and £39 on a raffle. Everyone commented on how wonderful the food was and asked when the next one would be! It took two full days of food prep, we peeled 20kg of potato's and 10kg of onions between us, so I think we will leave it a few months before our next one!

*Also, our first Equals Friendship group baby was born on Thurs 4th Oct. Both mummy and baby are doing well and we can't wait to meet the new edition to our group!

*The generosity of the women from the friendship group. We have not been able to meet at our hall for the last 6 weeks as a new roof is being put on. We could not afford to hire anywhere else so the women have taken it in turns to hold the meetings at their houses. Not only have they opened up their homes to all us, they have also each prepared lunch for the whole group each week. Hmm, not sure if I want to go back to the hall now for our meetings!

*The wonderful reiki share ladies for an excellent session this week which left me feeling a lot more positive than I have in a while. Everyone has such a lovely energy and I always get so much out of our meetings.

*Watching my husband Stu teaching our daughter his dance moves this week. Shelby does hiphop lessons and has done for the last four years. She is currently working at her level five certificate and had to put some moves together and choose some music for them. Stu is much more 'hip' than me when it comes to music so they started going through all the cd's and then Stu put some music on and started showing Bea his moves. Now, Stu is a really good dancer, that is how I met him. I saw him dancing in a nightclub and his dancing really impressed me so I was stood watching him and when the song finished he came over and asked me to dance. Watching him dancing with our daughter really brought all those memories back and made me think how lucky I am to be sat here watching these two dancing round the front room together 15 years later.

* My friend Paige for giving me a huge pile of clothes this week that she no longer wanted. I hate clothes shopping, it depresses me no end, so now I have some lovely new clothes and I didn't have to put myself through any tears or tantrums! Thanks P.

*The wonderful Wednesday Whine group. You ladies are all fantastic and I wish I knew you in real life so we could all get together and have a few glasses of wine! Thank you x

* Re watching Supernatural right from season one. I love this show and was ill with a really bad cold/flu bug last weekend and I thought what better to cheer me up than a bit of Dean and Sam.

*My kids, who do or say something to make me smile everyday.

* My hubby, who always does everything in his power to make my life easier. I am so blessed to have him in my life.

* Seeing that the little Robin family is back in may garden for the winter. They have been here since we moved in 8 years ago but I was worried that they wouldn't come back this year and we had the hedges cut right down really low this summer.

Well, I managed to list 12 things so that's not so bad is it? I must try harder to do this post every week because there is ALWAYS something that has been a positive, even if I have to look harder some weeks than others!

Just wanted to also share some art work I have managed to get done this week. They are all acrylic, spray inks, stamps, stencils and pen on watercolour paper.

Thanks for looking,

Sami x

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!

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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

Five for Friday and a new canvas

It is week 6 of Five for Friday, run by Laurie over at her blog.

This week it was to record five times in your past that were worthy of the word AMAZING.

 I sat and did this page in front of the TV the other night. It is just coloured pen as I can't paint from my sofa!

It was suppossed to be our crop on saturday but people had to work or had other plans so I just stayed at home, told the kids to ignore me as I wasn't here and got on and did a mixed media painting on canvas. I used texture paste through a couple of crafters workshop stencils and then used Dylusions inks and sprays over the top. I also used stickles and glimmer mist and silver acrylic paint. I did the chakras just in silver instead of the colours they are supposed to be as I didn't want them to clash! The painting represents the earth energies drawn up through the body reaching up to the cosmic energies.

TFL

Sami x

Thoughts

Yesterday at our monthly crop, instead of scrapbooking, I worked on a new canvas.

This is the doodle that inspired the canvas

'Thoughts'

Mixed media on canvas

I used water colour crayons, acrylic paint, Dylusion sprays, stamps, ink. The circles were cut out of white, text and music paper coloured with watercolour and then stenciled on using spray inks and then doodled on with black pen. I stuck them on with gel medium.

I have had a lot going on the last few weeks and this painting represents all the thoughts that are swimming around in my head all the time. When I can't sleep because I am worried about things I try to imagine each thought as a bubble and set it free out into the ether so I can get some rest....sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't!!

TFL

Sami x

A mothers wish

Here is the painting I did for my daughter at the weekend. She has been asking me forever to do her a painting for her bedroom. She wanted a fairy painting (probably more flower fairy than this!) so here is the result.

'a mothers wish' (subtitled 'Mummy and Shelby')

Mixed media on canvas

I used water colour crayons, acrylic paints, twinkling H2O's, stamps, Tim Holtz tissue tape and a mix of music and text sheets.

TFL

Sami x