VISITING FAMILY

Luxembourg City Saturday market with cathedral spires behind

The day after returning from my weekend sketching with Anita, Clive and I went off to Luxembourg for a few days to visit our son and family. No sketching I am afraid to show you though, so here are some photos I took. I plan to use this market photo plus a couple of others to create a painting for their Luxembourg house. Two visits to the city, one to have an Italian lunch with our daughter in law in her lunch break and on Saturday a visit to the market.

This is the lovely riverside walk in Remich with all the beautiful Autumn colours.

Clive and I walked down into Remich riverside town for lunch or a drink most days, while our son worked on their house extending the kitchen.

Our eldest grandson pushing his quad after it had broken down.

Richard took me out on Sunday morning before a glorious roast lunch to see the boys on their bikes.

A pair of Disney characters I painted for our eldest grandson when he was born, using fabric from his nursery curtains to frame the figure.

They are now in our youngest grandson's bedroom matching the original curtains.

Then two days after returning went off to my daughters home the other side of Norfolk to look after the girls in their half-term from school, so that she could have a few days break with a friend. The last day was Halloween, so lots of dressing up and trickle treating.

friends came round to dress up with the girls before going off round the village with their eldest sister and boyfriend.

This was one of the mum's dressed as a witch.

They came back with a large bag of sweets each!! Got too hyper could not get to sleep until midnight!!!

When they were getting ready, Lili was attacked by her younger sister dressed as a vampire!!!

Finally here is a shot of the wonderful designed stockings for Halloween.

Today's children are so lucky having such fun things to buy for these occasions.

EASTER BUNNY HUNT

Half an hour before Laura and the girls came for an Easter visit, I remembered I had not put together their clues for finding their chocolate bunnies hidden in the garden ( an annual event).. .. so excuse the poor verse and rhymn.

For Elisha I said
'Lots of Statues you 'll see around
search each one so I'll be found
some are standing, some just sit
pick us up to find your rabbit!!
Here she is looking behind the two stone teddy bears, after trying behind a statue of a cat, eagle, frog, lady and the lovers.

This is Leyonie elated at long last she had found her chocolate rabbit .... and her verse clue was
'OK Lili here we go!
look in the garden high and low
I'm your bunny waiting here
up the steps you'll see my rear!!'

There are steps up to the front garden gate, steps down to the gate into the back garden, steps down to the pond and steps up to the little 'summer house' - so she had a lot to search.

Channais, the eldest, would not appreciate a photo of her searching the garden for a chocolate rabbit!!! but this was her verse and she joined in the hunt with her younger sisters
'Your's is different - full of eggs
you might need to stretch those lovely long legs
to find a birdless box or nest
before those chocs fall and all go west!'

What a daft nanna they have!! but they sure enjoyed the result of their search. While they munched, we discussed why we have eggs and chocolate and bunnies at Easter and the little ones knew more than we did!!

MY FAVOURITE THINGS

When I received the blog award one of my commitments was to tell you of my 7 most favourite things in life. I have found this hard - because I can't pin it down to only seven!!! My life is so wonderful, I could mention family, friends, home, memories, painting, reading, exploring, blogging, teaching, music, philosophy/spiritual discussions - I could go on forever. I decided to choose the ones where I could add some images to break up all the text - so here goes......

1 Friends and Family - Spending quality time with friends and family - here's a photo of my daughter and her lovely girls. (Hope they don't mind me putting them into my blog)

2 Our Home - Looking around our lovely home, with each displayed object a memory of a friend, family or overseas trip comes spinning back to me - here's a photo of some figures I have on display on glass shelves by the fireplace dividing the sitting room from the dining room. From the top shelf - a figure from the Dominion Republic and a pig from a NOVA exhibition, middle shelf figures from South Africa and small brass elephant from India, lower shelf couple hugging each other in Willow and a lady and child both from my sister in law at different visits.

3 My life long partner - Sharing my evenings with my husband of 50 years after a lovely meal, sitting in our comfy room surrounded by my paintings, often reading, doing the crossword or Soduko, watching sport or a film. Photo of a corner of the sitting room - Oh yes I see Petal managed to creep in!

4 Painting - Planning a new painting and seeing it grow as if by another hand and mind. I will be posting images of stages of the latest oil I am doing for the riverside pub exhibition - probably tomorrow.

5 Reading good literature or biography - often sitting up in bed in what my girls call 'the princess room' all peaches and cream. I recently read the story part historical and part fiction of how the Mona Lisa was painted - it was brilliant bringing Leonardo and Medici Florence to life.

Photo of my art book collection in a corner of my downstairs art space.

6 Exploring new places. You will probably have seen the recent post of my trip to see the Priory at Walsingham. Off to see Venice in June when staying at Lake Garda.

7 Blogging - Reading your amazing comments and seeing how my work is received. So surprising how often a piece one isnt sure of turns out to get the most comments!! Your friendships mean so much to me.

May I say a big thankyou to Rhonda and Vicki for sending me this award, otherwise I would never have set time aside to realise what a very very lucky lady I am. Hope this long post hasn't bored you to death - Its probably the most personal one I have ever compiled.