eek July

Well we all know that I am not a great blogger. Somehow the days go by and nothing gets written. But perhaps occasionally will suffice. I don't think I am ever going to have a blog to rival the Pioneer Woman, but perhaps my occasional little waffles will do.
Currently it is miserable Winter here in Melbourne. Yesterday was not so miserable and we sat out in the sun and enjoyed the break in the weather, but today back to dreary. We took lots of photos yesterday, because the sun made everything so much better looking. And of course my brother is staying and he bought his brand new Nikon the day before so we were busy playing with his new toy.
I have tried to fit in a bit of scrapbooking here and there, although I seem to be having a lot of problems with Finishing things. Starting is ok, but getting it done is a challenge. I have had a few photoshop issues where it has closed suddenly and then i forget to go back and reopen the layout... another UFO. I suspect that photoshop is responding to the fact that I have been experimenting with editing RAW images and of course you get 2 or 3 of those open and it is having to work hard. I bought a bundle of actions from Paint the Moon designs the other day and have been having a ball playing with them. I think it might be the first time i have actually paid for actions and I am totally rapt. There is something so satisfying about pushing play and watching your photo edit itself.
So today I finally finshed a new layout, using a whole bunch of kits from Shabby Princess. I love Shabby Princess stuff and have been buying her kits ever since I discovered how wonderful her freebies are. (does that makes sense?) When people tell me they are taking up digiscapping or want to try it, I always send them there, because she has so much great free stuff that you can certainly get a real taste for digital scrapbooking. The newest kit Hopscotch is a beautiful bright, fun kit with lots of great elements. It is included in the credits for my layout called Four.



I used the Piece of cake template available on the Shabby Princess blog, to enter the template challenge for July. I love what I managed here and I love that I finshed it!
Shabby Princess Blog Template Challenge.

A backwards blogger

I decided at the beginning of the year to blog more. And here I am in May with no blogs to my credit. And yet for the last 2 weeks I have faithfully kept a travel journal which when I think about it would be so much more interesting online. Perhaps it might give other people ideas of places to visit, adventures to try, even hotels we could recommend.

It all started way back around February I think when I decided that I was going to drag my gorgeous and hard working husband on holiday. Something Eastern seemed appealing and flights were advertised for quite reasonable amounts. Kuala Lumpur seemed a pretty good option, and we also fancied Singapore, Hong Kong... man what didn't we fancy? Finally we decided on Thailand becuase it seemed to have so many options. And then Jetstar had a flight special that was about half price and we booked it. 3 weeks in Thailand, including 10 days in Krabi province by the sea just relaxing.

We took 6 weeks leave and worked hard for Belmore nursing agency making the money to pay for the holiday. Luckily there was a lot of work and we were able to do some serious saving. Mike decided that if we were going to Bangkok we should check out the dental options as it is about 1/3 of the price of Australia, particularly for fancy stuff like crowns, bridges and implants.

I can't even begin to tell you how many hours it took me to book all our accommodation. Bangkok has a plethora of hotels providing everything you could posibbly want. Lacking any knowledge of the geography of Bangkok it was hard to figure out where we wanted to be and what it was we needed out of a hotel.

Finally we settled on the President Park which we totally impressed with. The price was very reasonable. They met us at the airport with the cute little sign board, whisked us off in the limousine and gave us such spectacular servide for the whoe 4 days. The hotel is built in multiple buildings and the doorman would open the door for you and then rush out to ensure the road was clear for you to cross safely. They doormen were delightful, so charming and so helpful. It was a wonderful experience.

So what I have decided is to copy out my travel journal day by day... it does mean you will be getting the details a week or so out, but if i am really organised u might get some pics.

What I really wanted to achieve with this blog is to include some reviews of some of the great services and accomodation we used because I found other peoples reviews invaluable in planning my vaccation.
So you can consider this the preface and stand by for more info.