Central Park Pages

We fell in love with Central Park. An amazing place right in the city with so many different areas. Ponds and lakes, wonderful secluded areas, football and baseball pitches, running tracks, playgrounds and a zoo............it just goes on and on.
Strawberry fields was not what we expected, I think the plants in the surrounding gardens are probably in bloom spring and early summer but there was nothing very special to see other than the mosaic and not a lot of 'peace' as there was a constant stream of people of all nationalities taking pictures.
I think I got a bit more creative with these pages and hope they give you a flavour of the park.

New York Scrapbook

After our holiday my daughter asked me to make her a scrapbook. Taking quite a time but here are the first few pages.









All my spare time has been used on sorting and editing photos and getting the layouts ready. As we had nearly 200 photos choosing just a few for each of the memory pages has been really difficult.

How safe can it be????

When we were going on holiday I put my credit/bank cards, cheque book and store cards - like Boots and Tesco point savers, in a safe place. Well, several really. When we returned I knew where my credit and bank cards were, got my priorities right, but could not for the life of me remember where I had put my cheque book or my other cards.

Last week after rooting round the house on a more or less daily basis with no result I had to ring the bank and order a new cheque book. No problem......... well, only that the person dealing with me must have decided that I couldn't get into my online banking and changed all my details. Eventually received new details in the post - but get this - the letter had my new customer number, my pin number, my bank sort number and my account number in the same letter - everything anyone needed to access my online account!! What is even more stunning, when I contacted the bank and pointed this out - they didn't think it was a problem!?!?!

Well, hurrah - this morning I found my cheque book, in the front of my ribbon drawer in the art room. Pretty obvious really.

I have £30+ on my Boots card and two receipts that have to be put on in the next week or two. Anyone got any idea where my point saver cards might be?

Well....that was a long coffee break.

So much has happened in the last few months - I've retired - great but the run up was very hard work and tiring. I had to not only get all my work up to date, some of it a year ahead as exam work had to be prepared ready to go to the examiners next May/June, but I also had to train my replacement. Not easy as both he and I still had our teaching timetables so eventually had to spend a lot of time leaving copious notes and instructions on the computer.
Had a wonderful retirement party, lots of gifts and some lovely things said. Followed this by taking my teaching assistants out for a meal which was a nice finish to the term.
So forty years after I first stepped into a classroom as a teacher I said goodbye to my pupils and school. Quite emotional as you might imagine.

Next thing of note - had a brilliant week in New York with my daughter - my big retirement treat. Flew business class - what a treat- and stayed at The London NYC, very swish, had a suite and on our last night had a meal in Gordon Ramsay's Restaurant which is in the hotel. Excellent dining experience, staff were wonderful and I could spend the next three pages describing the food - enough to say that I could happily return as often as possible- but only if I wasn't picking up the bill. Did all the tourist things including a dinner cruise up and down the Hudson river which was great as we had wonderful night-time views of the city.

Finally - today was my induction day at Teesside University. I am starting an Honours degree in History next week, part-time, so that I still have time for me and hopefully my mojo will return. Have loads of crafty goodies I have gathered in the last few months which haven't seen light of day - including stamps and Copic Sketch markers which I bought while in New York.

So I hope I now manage to call in and add to my blog on a regular basis, preferably with some cards and scrapbook pages to show you and have time to call in on the forum and on member's blogs.

Hard Work Raising the Kids

This afternoon I was doing some blog hopping when I became aware of a constant little visitor to my bird table - a little blue tit. Watched it picking up seed and flying off for a while and then found myself hooked. I tried to follow it's flight as I thought it might be nesting in my neighbour's garden, he has had them in a clematis at times but it seemed to be going further afield than that. Then I realised that there were two of them obviously taking turns at gathering food for their babies. One alternated between the bird table and a peanut feeder- safe because the mesh is small and they can't get a whole peanut out.
In ten minutes I counted fifteen flights.......... and this went on for the best part of two hours.
Now I always thought that raising the kids was hard work but given the size of these tiny things and the number of forays they must make in a day, I think I got off fairly lightly.
They do have one advantage though, their offspring don't hang around for years, nor do they keep coming back for Sunday lunch.

Sympathy Card

My neighbour's Dad died yesterday so I needed to make a card for her. Rather busy day so had about half an hour to put this together. I matched the colours to the flowers I bought her. Never quite sure about what to put outside and in so kept the words simple - inside read ' With Our Sympathy at this Sad Time'. Would be interested to know what other people put, I'm not really into verses and I feel that I can only put something with a religious leaning if I know that the recipient will appreciate that.

Son's Birthday Coming Up.

I seem to be basing my cards on papers and colours at the moment and love chocolate and tuquoise. The sentiment if from another Papertrey set.



This is for Louise to give to her brother - keep telling her she should be making her own. Another where the paper led me into the design.