What a day...

...and not in a good way...

Today I woke up to the news that one of my close friends lost his mum today.  I have known him (and her) for for the last 16 or so years.  Up until the last few years when she has been unwell, she was a very welcome feature in my life often when I was around him.

She had married the love of her life, a beautiful man who my heart goes out to today on the loss of quite literally his other half.  They are truly the absolute epitome of the 'two halves of the same heart' cliche - they are probably closer and more in love (even in their dotage) than any other couple I know.

She has bought up a wonderful son, who has an amazing sense of self and as a gay man, has grown up with more love and understanding and acceptance than most people I know.

She managed to be always there for not only him, but his friends.  She had a generous heart and was a quietly glamorous and elegant woman.

In recent years she was in full time care after some bad turns with her health.  I mentioned a few times my desire to go visit her to my friend - who discouraged it, given the state her health and that she was really not herself any more.  On those days I always found it hard to accept - today I am very grateful for that.

It meant that today, while I was running through all my memories of her - they were true to the beautiful woman I knew.  Of her smiling, soft conversation, her quiet elegance, her unconditional support for her son and everyone he bought into her life as part of his.

One of my favourite memories was her standing in the kitchen (cooking for others as always) large chef knife in hand saying in her stunning greek accent 'Petter, I am in the kitchen and I have a large knife' in response to him trying to score his Christmas present early from her.

RIP beautiful Mary P, you will be sadly missed by many - not least your gorgeous boys.  Much love and hugs P (& M) and E - I'm sending you long distance hugs, and the strength to get through the next little while. xxx

Latest scrapping

Ok, so it's not much - but here's the scrapping I got up to yesterday after I'd done all of my LSNED book pages:

  

I just love the colours in this paper line (Kaisercraft - Chapter One) and especially loved how well it went with this pic!

So, a bit has happened...

Hmmm, I'm really not so good at this blogging thing...  When I last wrote, I had finally started on my 'Explore' Shimelle class...  I didn't get any further than that (yet)...  Shimelle had another class coming up which I'd been reading other people's comments about - and they were all EXCITED!  

Learn Something New Everyday (LSNED) is a Shimelle class that runs each year, in September (when the kids in the Northern hemisphere go back to school)...  It's a chance for Shimelle fans to 'go back to school' too and start learning something new every day...

Well, I was hesitant, I loved the first Shimelle class I took - participated in the 'live' running via the forum, reading other people's blogs, etc...  But since then had signed up for 2 that I hadn't managed to join into 'live' and hadn't completed (luckily the class fees are really reasonable!!).  But, at the last minute, I decided to sign up for LSNED - and in the process 'dobbed' two girlfriends and my step-mum in for it as well...  I figured it'd promote a little bit of the camaraderie and sharing that we have when we scrap together (when I live in the same country as them) even though we're so far away these days...

So far - I have managed to jot myself a note each day on my learning - into my iphone notes app, so that I can remember what the day taught me.  Last weekend I sat and read about what everyone was up to in the forum - how they'd gone about deciding on what format of book, cards, etc to use and what their front covers looked like.  And then I got into making my own...  And I got my lessons in for the first few days...  Yesterday, really my first chance to scrap again - I got back into it, and before dinner had all of my lessons for the week into my book...  I'm really liking the class - I need to get some photos developed to go onto some of the pages (not every page has a photo though - only where they belong with the lesson) - but other than that - I'm keeping up, and liking my book and it's style and the class...

Here's what it looks like so far:

So, there's what it's looking like so far - apologies for my inability to line up the photos properly in blogger (but that might keep me here all day - and there's scrapping to do!).  I have made a 6" x 12" book from chipboard covers and kraft cardstock for the days - I have a Tim Holtz kraft relief pad that every second page is from - and then the alternate pages are plain cardstock.  In hindsight, I probably would have done each page from the Tim Holtz book, but never mind!  Something else learned!

The papers are all from the Bo Bonny 'Gabrielle' line as I had the whole pack and had hardly used any, I thought it'd be nice to have everything matching.  I am also using the book to take myself somewhat out of my comfort zone - for those of you who have been reading along - I can't bring myself to do single pages in my scrapbooks, each of them (except at the beginning and end of a book - where truthfully, there's mostly nothing!) are double pages.  I just like opening up the book and what I'm looking at is all matching...  With LSNED I've done different pages for each (but am helping my anal-retentiveness cope by having the same colour scheme throughout!).

So, that's all for now - I'll try to keep updating as the book is coming together...