90th Birthday party!

Hello everyone,

I've not blogged for a while because I've been away. One of the things I've been busy with was my mother's 90th birthday party. 

We asked mum where did she want to celebrate her birthday: in Holland (where she lives) or in England (where my sister lives) or in Spain (where I live). She answered that she didn't want to celebrate it at all. No mother, that is not an option! we said. 

My sister has a holiday home in Marbella Spain, so we all got together there for a little private celebration.

Marbella is very beautiful. The banana trees were flowering. Stunning!

This is a bench in the park made of ceramic tiles. Isn't it pretty?

Then mum (and my cousin) came back with us to our house (also in Spain but 270 km away) and we spent another week together. What a privilege to have  my mum with us.

We had another paella party in her honor.

And did fun things like going to the market and going for a horse and carriage ride through town.

Here is my mum with the handsome driver. 

We saw lots of nice cave houses, which are a bit of a tourist attraction in our area.

That's it for today. Thanks for stopping to read this and thank you for any kind comment you might want to leave. I love it when people comment.

God bless and.... keep scrapping!

Lisca

A Sparkling Good Time (Scrapbook page)

The CSI (Color, Stories and Inspiration) scrapbooking challenge site had a beautiful color palette this week for us to work with.

I loved this challenge! Such cute colors! I have used them all in this layout of my step daughter Tracey with her husband and eldest son. She normally dresses very informal, so to see her all ‘glammed up’ was a delight that had to be photographed!

It was also a good excuse to use glitter paper that I had in a drawer but never use.

Evidence: Butterfly, glitter, flowers, stars, a swirl and a tiny brad.

My testimony is adding glitter to my journaling.

The WordArt is from Bethany’s Elegant WordArt

Thank you for looking,

God bless and...... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Granada

Hello peeps,

Thank you for stopping by. 

Today a bit more about our life here in Andalucia, Spain. Last weekend Gray and I were invited by a friend in Granada (our nearest city) to spend the weekend there. Although it is only an hour’s drive from where we live, we have only been a couple of times. Granada is beautiful.

Our friend lives in the old part, called the Albaicin. This is her street. (No cars as it's very narrow)

 She has a terrace on the roof where we had breakfast every morning. There is a beautiful view of the Alhambra, the famous palace from the time of the last sultan. (We visited the Alhambra a few years ago and it is stunningly beautiful.)

 This building, in the same style as the Alhambra, we just found by walking around. I don't think it has a name. It's just a building hidden away in a little side street but it's very old and very beautiful. Granada is full of surprises...

On Sunday night our friend also had a surprise in stall for us and she took us to a club where we had lessons in salsa dancing! Great fun! 

I hope all of you have had a good weekend too. That's it for now.

God bless and..... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Cave house bedroom

Hi everybody!
A while ago I blogged about painting my bathroom door and about the old chest that I painted in the same colour. I used Annie Sloan's chalk paint (recommended by my daughter-in-law Filipa) and absolutely loved it! So easy to use and it goes a long way as I haven't even used half a tin! (The colour is called 'duck egg').
Here are some before and after photos:

The chest was dark burgundy red and the door bright green! Now it looks much nicer....

The paint looks uneven in the picture but I think that is the shimmer of the waxing. Perhaps I didn't do that as well as I should.... it's not that visible in real life so I'm happy with the result.
I apologise for the bad quality of the last two photos. They're off my phone and were sent across with very few pixels. Must remember that in future....

Thanks for looking, God bless and......

Keep scrapping!

Lisca

Visitors in Spain

Hi everybody, long time no see! I’ve had my friend Paula and her hubby from the UK staying with us and  we have been busy showing them around. I would like to show you all what we showed them.

 Such as the fiesta in a neighbouring village. It was a roman catholic festival (the Spanish are mainly roman catholic, we go to an evangelical church but we are in the minority). 

 There was a mass with flamenco type music, then they processed the statue of the virgin around the village singing and dancing in her honor. Very colourful.  After that there were free drinks and snacks. Everybody danced. My husband and I did an English folk dance to paso doble music! Great fun! Locals kept coming up to us to make sure we had drinks and food. So sweet. We all enjoyed it.

 Everything here is different to urban life in the UK so even a trip to the market is an event. This is Paula posing with the melons.

We have an excellent ice cream parlour in town that makes their own ice cream with natural ingredients. Yumm! That had to be sampled of course. (They even make ice cream cakes!)

 We visited our neighbours’ vegetable plot and came away with broad beans, fresh peas and two huge lettuces!

Thank you for stopping by and reading about our life here in Spain.

Hasta luego! God bless and.... keep scrapping!

Lisca

Scrapbook page: "No Smoking Please"

I strive to do at least one scrapbook layout per week. To get the creative juices flowing I follow the CSI challenge (Color, Stories and Inspiration). They have a new 'case file' every week and this week it was this:

Here is my solution of the case: “No Smoking Please”. I enjoyed this one immensely as the colours are beautiful.

Scheme: The Merlot of the flowers is exactly the colour of the wine in front of me. Champagne ivory is found in the lace and the book page. (No I Have no champagne in front of me...lol) Of course there is black and white in my page and the icebucket grey is found in the vellum almost at the bottom of the ‘stack’.

Evidence: flowers, book page, metal, and cord.

Testimony: Four interesting things about my topic.

 I wrote:

“4 Reasons why smoking is bad for you:

1 – It is known to cause different types of cancer (not just lung cancer)

2 – Leads to formation of wrinkles and premature aging.

3 – Makes you more at risk of suffering from a heart attack and stroke.

4 – Can make you blind (age related macular degeneration)”.

On the back I wrote:

“This is a photo of myself when I was young. Probably in 1969. Smoking was fashionable back then. We knew no better.

But when I started nurses training I stopped smoking and since then I have never touched a cigarette again!”

I've used a lot of recycled stuff here. The black 

(wrinkled) background paper is the wrapper of an 

orange. I had to place my photo strategically so the 

brand name wasn't visible....The die cuts are cut from 

packaging too. ('Waste not, want not' they say.)

That's all for tonight,

God bless

and...... keep scrapping!

Lisca

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Concertina booklets

Hi everybody,

Yesterday I did the craft workshop again in our village. We made these cute little concertina booklets. Aren’t they lovely? They are so easy to make that the girls actually made two each. Here are some of them:

I learnt how to make these years ago, but I’m sure there will be a YouTube tutorial somewhere if you want to make some too.

The girls were Patricia, Manoli, Jessica, Elizabeth and Maria. Next week we are going to make many more so we can sell them at a ‘Fun Day’ the week after and get some money for materials.

So today I have been cutting out about 100 card board squares in preparation of the next workshop....

Bye for now,

God bless and.... keep scrapping!

Lisca