England Trip Part II

Sunday there was a festival in London. Found out it was to celebrate the local Brazilian culture. So because of that, our tour coach was not able to pick us up at the hotel so we got a taxi and went to the building in Victoria.
Our first stop was Stonehenge and we were both blown away! So much history and such a monumental feat. I think there's still speculation on how it actually came to be.

See the stone 2nd to the right? Paul thinks that's a man made strength support built near the bottom to keep it from toppling over.

On the same tour our next stop out of three was Salisbury Cathedral. Over 750 years old, it's said to be Britains finest 13th century Gothic Cathedral...

We saw the world's best preserved original (out of 4) of the Magna Carta from 1215 which is housed in the Cathedral. 

And last on our tour that day were the Roman Baths...

As always...

England Trip Part I

Wow! What a trip! Combined, Paul and I probably took 300-400 photos. Of course I'm not going to post all of them here at once, but since I do want to share as much of our trip as possible, I'm going to break up the posts into 3, 4 or maybe even 5 parts.
So on with part one of our wonderful trip.

We had a 6:00 am flight the morning of Friday August 28th, leaving Cleveland so we got up at 3:30, caught a connecting flight out of Chicago and flew for about 9 hours to get there.

Our first day was a bit rocky. We had all our hotels and travel arrangements booked by our travel agent and when we got to the hotel, our driver had no clue that our cab was prepaid for. Strange since when he picked us up at the airport he had a little sign with our names on it. Anyway, we gave him the voucher and he'd deal with it.
Then we go to check in at the hotel and they had no record of our reservation! Needless to say, we were a bit nervous since we were both totally out of our comfort zone and in a different country for the first time! They did get that straightened out the next afternoon...whew!

We literally cooked in our hotel room the first night. Come to find out there were some issues with the air in that room. So, they moved us to a similar room the next day. Saturday morning we were getting on a tour bus to take us to Stonehenge, Bath and Salisbury Cathedral.  The tour company informed the front desk that they can't pick us up. We'll have to get to the tour company before the bus leaves. Our hotel got us a taxi and we got there by 8:30 am.
With all that initial crap going on, things smoothed out nicely and we had a marvelous vacation.

Saturday...
1st stop...

Big Ben (not sure why I'm so crooked..might be the selfie stick)

About 20 years ago, Paul bought me a replica of John William Waterhouse's "The Lady Of Shalott" painting which hangs in our bedroom above the bed. One thing on our bucket list was to actually go to the Tate Museum in London and see the original. So...

She's so beautiful! 1st time of many I got teary eyed on this trip.

So, right now it's 10:20 pm and in England it's 3:20 am and even though we've been home for 4 nights, I'm still tired. I will post Part II tomorrow.

As always....

Cultivate a good life and record it...

That's Becky Higgins' motto. I love it! Here's a little video from her blog and believe it or not, the pianist is an 18 year old who wrote and is playing the music. Enjoy...

Married for 40 years and Project Life!

Yep, I've been married to Paul for 40 years today. I could not imagine my life without him, I seriously could not. I'm not sure if we're going to do anything other than dinner out. He's downstairs relaxing and watching tv and I'm working on my Project Life album. LIFE IS GOOD!

So, I've been struggling a bit with my Project Life. One reason is without Logan and Emmy living close by anymore, I thought to myself..why? Why put pics in an album and spend all this time documenting...what? Me? Really? I didn't think my life was important enough to document. I mean I've always taken photos of "everyday" stuff. Even when L & E were living close by, I took pics of what we did together, but I also still took pics of food (meals I've cooked or baked), flowers, critters in the yard, where we live, and everywhere else. My pets, even my coffee cup! Then a tragedy recently happened to a person who's famous in the scrapbooking world. She creates pretty stuff to use in scrapbooks and pretty decor for your home. She's partnered with the inventor of Project Life Becky Higgins and her world was perfect in every sense of the outside world's view..perfect just like mine, until that day just a few weeks ago.

Let me back up a bit first. So, I started a new journal. It was created from a small planner that I bought from this "famous" person. I took out the monthly calendar pages and bought some photo sleeves to fit into the pretty little 6x8 binder. I even bought the hole punch so I could cut down to size, journaling pages and punch holes in them to fit. All the while, my 12x12 Project Life album was sitting in my craft room, not being touched. So, I'm printing 1x1 and 2x2 pictures to fit into my new little journal. Not sure if I'm going to be happy carrying around a ring binder...here's a picture of it...

Pretty right? I'm thinking that without L & E here, I can just put my everyday photos in this and journal at the same time and be done. Well, to be honest, I missed my Project Life. I have hundreds of pics on my phone that are just sitting there and this little album that holds a few small pics a month, didn't seem to do it for me.

Back to now. I'm on Facebook and see a terribly sad post about the death of Heidi Swapp's 16 year old son Cory. He committed suicide and it has really changed my whole outlook on scrapbooking, Project Life and memory keeping in general. She shared a very heartfelt post about why it's important to print our pictures and tell the who, where and when. I've been shown, after watching her go through this horrific tragedy, just how important it is to keep printing my pictures and putting them in page sleeves for safe keeping for future generations. You can read what she wrote here: Memories Matter.

A couple of things she wrote that touched me at the core:

• I am a storyteller, and I love to inspire others to capture their stories and document their beautiful lives!
• Find the good and notice the beauty in the everyday! I believe that when we focus on the good parts, we live more fully with gratitude and happiness. Our stories are then filled with what we HAVE, and not what we lack. 
• YOU MATTER. YOUR FAMILY MATTERS. Your story… MATTERS!

 So, I've decided that since I too find the good and notice the beauty in the "everyday", that I am going to continue telling "my" story. That's what scrapbooking is all about, telling your story so one day not only your children will get to look back and cherish all those memories you're living today, you will too. Because by the time your grandchildren are our age, Facebook and iphones won't be around any more, but your PRINTED photos will be.

Here's my Project Life pages for May:

I have since fixed the wording here about the duck. She is sitting on her "nest"

Well, I'm going to see if the Mr. wants to go on a bike ride. As always...

Friday Funday!

Yes it is! My awesome boss Lee Hisey said "take the day off and enjoy yourself" yesterday when I mentioned I'd like Friday off. Is he the coolest or what? So that's exactly what I've been doing-enjoying myself.
I hadn't realized that I never took pics of April's Project Life so here they are.  Today I'm working on printing all of May and June's pics. I just might get ambitious and print July's too since it is the last day of the month.

So, here's April's layouts. Lots of pics and 3 pages!

I hope you enjoy your weekend!! As always...