Bonjour

I always think a holiday feels a little more real as you step onto a plane or in this case a ferry. I thought I'd try and be at least a little bit healthy and do my own mini fruit club. We do fruit club at work every day!

We've had a great drive through France today and lady (my sat nav) even took us on a couple of mini adventures. You can tell it's still early in my holiday as my healthy eating is still prevailing! Salad and slimming world tuna & sweetcorn quiche for lunch and the only snacks in the car have been homemade jelly sweets and mandarins. Ginger polishes her halo just before it slips so much that she can hula hoop with it!

We've made the decision to go via Bordeaux on the way, well it wold be rude not to really. Ok scratch that we made a detour to La Rochelle instead. It's just as beautiful as I remember from my last visit over 20 years ago. We had dinner over looking the old port and my salad of red mullet, scallops and grapefruit was tremendous. Ah, holidays make me happy.

I've even found somewhere i want to eat next time i visit. This little boat smelt devine and served grilled sardines and mussels cooked in a foil bag, just too cute.

Especially for my suster Joanna, I've checked and Michael Monkey is definitely dead!

As there was no room at the inn, or any inn in La Rochelle we had dinner there but then drove to Cognac. Not a bad start to my French adventure.

Love ya

Ginger

xxx

 

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And we're off!

My blog is going to be a paper craft free zone for a week or two as I'm off to balboa week at Studio Hop Summer Camp, in South West France. In fact all my posts may come through at once when I get home as I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have. But as I'm off on a big Ginger adventure I wanted a place to capture all the fun - well hopefully that I'm going to have.

Today I spent the morning in work, even fitting in a meeting before heading to Durham to pick up my travelling buddy Les. Oh yes, I forgot to mention we're driving, so it's time for a ROAD TRIP!!! Well part one of the trip, to Dover has gone brilliantly. We even managed to deliver some statistical data to Marissa, one of Les' students. Her lovely Mum & Dad were very hospitable and we were treated to a 3 course dinner at their home. So it was a late end to the day but all ready to catch the ferry first thing tomorrow morning.

So the French adventure begins tomorrow.

Love ya

Ginger

xxx

 

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Make It Monday

Yes, I know it's Tuesday but I wanted to share the card I made for Make It Monday this week. The challenge this week was to watercolour ith ink pads. Having trawled through my PTI stamps I realised I don't have many of their stamps that are designed for colouring in. I could have used Delightful Dahlias the same as Dawn, but I knew mine would come out nowhere near as beautiful as hers, so I reached for Stitches & Swirls and made my own background. I loved the technique so much I ended up with enough background paper to make 2 identical cards:

I love the fact that from a blank piece of paper you go to this

Then to this

Then into a card, such fun!

Now something to make you smile. Last night before card making I decided I'd spent far too much of the day sitting on my derrière, so Olympic fever took hold and I jogged along whilst watching the womens 3000m steeplechase on TV. Don't worry I didn't take it too far and start leaping over the furniture or designing a water jump! Anyone else joining in with the Olympics?

Right I'm off to work. Have a great day.

Love ya

Ginger

xxx

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Pretties for the kitchen

This month's Basic Grey kit was the cutest set of magnets, I've only made 3 so far and of course had to make some changes to ones in the kit to fit more with my kitchen. But they are looking rather fabulous on the fridge.

As there's still plenty of the patterned paper left, I also decided to make a menu planner to match (thank you Clare Brown for the inspiration). This will help keep on track with my healthy eating and planning my meals. So with a cheap pine frame, some Luminarte colour concentrate (hot cinnamon), some card, patterned paper and alphabet stickers my menu planner is complete.

Apologies for the weird angle of the photo but the reflection from the glass was causing havoc!

As you can tell from my blog post, I survived my step class, more than that I quite enjoyed it. I'm not sure my muscles would agree yet but they just need a bit of training!

Have a good week. Thanks for popping by.

Love ya

Ginger

xxx

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Stamping on a Sunday

It's been a lovely weekend so far, with a 4 mile walk yesterday before a little shopping trip to the metro centre - Michelle Smith you're a bad influence! Then an amazing evening watching team GB in the Olympics, swiping gold medals from all angles. It makes me very proud to be British.

Today has been a little more sedate with some crafting. I so wanted to try the Make it Monday technique from Papertrey Ink, so it was out with the bleach. I love the effects and had a play with giga guides teamed with turning a new leaf:

Now I'm off to do a step class, I may be back soon, if I survive!

Have a lovely Sunday.

Love ya

Ginger

xxx

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Red, white and blue

It's definitely a red, white and blue day with team GB winning 2 golds in the Olympics today, 1 in rowing and 1 in cycling. So to celebrate I've made a red,white and blue card for the Merly Impressions card challenge. As I didn't have any Kaiser paper in those colours I decided to make my own with some Kaiser stamps instead. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, I think it's got a bit of a Laura Ashley feel to the background.

A big thank you to Archi for the main image stamp.

Right that's me off to bed. Goodnight.

Love ya

Ginger

xxx

 

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Crafter's Companion Monthly Challenge

Well that's July gone and welcome to August.  I don't think a year has ever gone so fast!  So with it being the 1st it is time for the monthly challenge over at the Crafter's Companion Monthly Challenge Blog.  This month the theme is Best Friends and what could be better than sharing a cup of tea with a special friend.  With that in mind it was time for Edna-May my eCraft machine to work her magic with the Tea for You and Me files from SVGcuts.com.  I love this teacup, it just needs filling with some teatime treats.  How fabulous is it that's it's all constructed from Core'dinations and then decorated with some patterned paper.

There's even a file to make the spoon with!

The card just needs a little teabag popping into the vellum pocket (yes the eCraft will cut vellum).  I need a posh one in a little bag with a matching little tag on a string

How cute is the 3D lettering in that message panel

There's also a teapot in the set, so I might challenge that next.  Gwyneth will you help me!!

So back to the challenge.  There's a super prize up for grabs - a £30 Gift Voucher, to spend on the Crafter's Companion web site! All of the important information on how to enter is over at The Crafter's Companion Monthly Blog Challenge.  I can't wait to see your entries.


I'm also entering my card into the following challenges:
Secret Crafter - Bright & Cheerful
One Stop Craft - Just Good Friends

Things I've learned in July:

You can make pizza from instant mash potato

Anna is such a wonderful house guest she could stay forever

Making marbled paper using shaving cream is too much fun

Thanks for popping by.

Love ya

Ginger

xxx