July 10th...

 This is being posted on Friday July 19th - our 22nd Wedding Anniversary!

Craft at Jeannette's today - I drove and picked up Crafty Jane and Vix and Mads.  Mads is a lovely dog, and that comes from someone who is not normally a dog lover, she is delicate and gentle and was as good as gold being slung around in the back of the car - bless her.

It was going to be a hot one today so we were glad of the shade afforded by the carport and I think we kind of knew that once we had eaten lunch we would all be suffering from a power down - me in particular having had such a late and exciting night before.

Jeannette had information on a new exhibition centre that is being opened in Polis and which will be available for people to hire a table on a weekly basis to exhibit their work.  She and Graham are going to be heavily involved and it provides them with a fantastic local venue to showcase their talent and hopefully other people's talent.  I really hope that it proves to be successful because Polis really needs something like this.  They have a Facebook page Exhibit Polis Centre for anyone that is interested.  I have a sneaky feeling that Kate Fessa's involvement will mean it will be a very tasteful and organised enterprise!

I didn't do very much today - I think I need a big project to get my teeth into and what with the late night escapade searching for Charlie I was a bit tired and disorganised today so grabbed what I could and had little idea what I was going to do with it!

Furthermore, Vicki and I were taken in hand by Alison's grand children Romay and Maren who had brought with them their Rainbox Loom kits which enables them to create jewelry from mini elastic bands.  They use a long flat grid which is not dissimilar to the old cotton reel french knitting kits we had as kids and something like a crochet hook for flipping the bands over the spokes.  

We were brilliantly tutored by two small girls who didn't know us from Adam and were just such fun.  Unfortunately their elder sister Sawyer had recently shut her finger in a door and was feeling really poorly.  Vix's gentle coaxing to let her have a look convinced Mum that she should take her to get the nail perforated to relieve the pressure (trepanning I think Vix called it) and we sweetened the pill by saying that the 'poorly finger fairy' would probably then visit with a gift for the good patient.  I hope they managed to get Sawyer to go because she would have felt so much better having got it done.  She really looked quite grey and poorly as they left.  Sadly this meant that our Rainbow Loom lesson was cut short - probably just as well or I could see another craft craze starting.

On my return from craft I had to go out with the camera to take some photographs of the Green Area which is currently being cleared by Angela's 'man' and which John is overseeing.  He decided that we ought to take some photographs and send to Angela so she could see exactly what the progress was so far and so when it was 'finished' she would be happy with the final result.  She had wanted it fully cleared but we have asked to retain some of the nicer fir trees so that there is some character on that bit of land and if nothing else Minnie will still have somewhere to hide from the sun.

We had been invited to a barbeque at Marian and David's this evening - kindly Mark and Jane picked us up so again I wasn't 'chief drives'.  

I had been asked to take an appetiser and decided to use the excess of cherry tomatoes gleaned from John and Susan's - I stuffed these with a mix feta, bacon, onion, chili, black pepper and lemon juice.  To go with the tomatoes I cooked some shell-on warm water prawns and John made a hot and spicy dip to go with them.

The location of David and Marian's house is stunning and it was an exceptionally warm evening.  I had decided to wear a long dress and was beginning to regret the decision as it was lined and was like wearing a sweat suit!!!  We were joined by Helen and a crutch bearing Al, Chris and Suzanne and their daughter, Carole and Tony and Marian's son Spencer, his partner Anna and his two daughters.

With the evening due to start at 6.00pm (although in the end Marian pushed it back to 6.30pm) we had not envisaged a late night but guess what?  We were some of the last to leave - but that was the measure of a good night - thanks Marian and David.