Far, far away in a little town in Germany....

Today I drove with 2 friends to Linz, a little town on the Rhine about 10 kilometers south of Bad Honnef. Linz is a little jewel of a town, with ancient, half-timbered and stone houses dating back several hundred years, and 2 towers dating back to the middle ages. We almost ran from house to house, it was just unbelievable to see soooo many beautiful houses together. Many of the houses have hand painted sayings along the front, others were adorned with carvings, ornate lead plates, windows with hand made lace and artistically carved doors. One house - and its door - had been adorned with dozens of ancients tools, hammers, pliers etc. One old stone house had a wonderful double door with carved, 8-pointed stars set into it. I could ramble on for ages talking about it, because it was just one of those magical days where everything seems to fit - a parking lot directly opposite the old gate-tower, wonderful things to see, sunshine and blue skies, good company and last but not least a wonderful café with superb coffee and cake, and friendly, smiling waiters.
To cut a long story short - if ever you're somewhere near Linz, go and see it!

Arrival in Bad Honnef

So, yesterday I finally made it to Bad (*Spa*) Honnef, a pretty little town on the romantic part of the Rhine, near the *Dragon Mountain* and with lots of other small townships, mountains and ruined castles along this stretch of the river. It's not far from the *Loreley*, a famous cliff described by Heinrich Heine, the great German poet in his wonderful poem, *Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten, dass ich so traurig bin* - *I don't know what it means, why I am so sad....*
Today was not a day to be sad; the weather has turned really spring like, the sun was shining, and it was a pleasure to walk around here. At the weekend I will drive past the dragon mountain (so called because it looks like a lying dragon) and along the Rhine to the Loreley, and I will play my Heine CD in the car and listen to his unforgettable words while driving along. It's good to have a few weeks to take it easy, do something different, see different views and re-charge my batteries.

Unicorns and flowers

Well, I should have been busy clearing up and sorting out yesterday. But somehow I got magically drawn to try the stamps and colours I was trying to put away, and ended up with 3 tags and a card. I love unicorns and fairies, even though I (should) know that they don't really exist. But who knows? Anyway, I had fun making these. Now I'm off to do some clearing up, my stamps and inks are still all over the place....

Stampin' about....

Spent yesterday stampin' about the kitchen, playing with my new stash. Tried out some of the new stamps etc; alone, or combined with others I already had, and here are the results. I like them all, but the owl has to be my favourite! If I hadn't been sooooo tired I could have gone on all night! The tags have been distressed with TH inks, stamped, and then decorated, as always, with everything-within-reach. Two of the tags have been covered with some ads from an old Lady's magazine from 1901.It is slowly disintegrating, and the paper has become very brittle and yellow, and I am busy scanning some pages to preserve them at least as a memory, and others, which are in a really bad condition, are being scrapped before they turn to dust. Was great fun making them - as always!

The CREATIVA Craft Fair in Dortmund

Phew, what a day! Big queues for parking, even longer ones to go to the loo, masses of scrappers and crafters, and....and.....STASH, STASH and more STASH as far as the eye could see! The outing to Dortmund was something B and I had planned a long time back, and were both very much looking forward to. Once we had passed all the hurdles - getting there, finding a parking space, walking back to the *Westfalen Halle* where the fair took place and getting in, we were almost knocked out by the sight of soooooooooo many lovely things. We both love stamping and nice papers and cardstock etc, so there was really something to look at there. We only managed to look at a few of the exhibition halls, as after a time you are just not able to take in anything more. We did manage to spend a lot of money in a short time, and came away with lots of new stash and even more inspiration and ideas for new projects. We were both rather knocked out afterwards, my feet felt as if they were smoking by the time we got back, but it was worth it. Nothing can keep scrappers away from stash. Must go, need to start playing with my new things!

Distressed again....by Addicted

Addicted. Caught. Hooked. Call it what you like. I just can't stop playing with my distress inks. This time I used some pages out of a very tattered old school music book that once belonged to my sister. I stuck some printed paper onto the tags before distressing them, and then carried on as usual. I am not going to start ripping up my lovely old books, so all you book lovers out there can relax, this one was really just a heap of rather *distressed* pages, just the right thing! If anyone knows a cure for being a scrap, distress and ink addict, DON'T let me know. There are worse addictions!

2 ATCs, a card and a goody bag....

Our postie is an ambitious man. One of his ambitions was to get everything into the mail-box. If it didn't fit, he made it fitting. This did nothing to improve my mood or the contents of some little parcels and large envelopes....Now, I am proud to say, that he does a good job. With a mixture of complaints and little rewards I have persuaded him to ring the bell when he's got things that don't fit into the box, and not to reduce their size by folding and /or squashing. Well, yesterday he rang, and brought me a large manila envelope and a pile of post. The big envelope contained a *goody bag* from Alma and a lovely ATC from SusieJ. The goody bag was full of die-cuts, card toppers, stickers, ribbons, lace, charms etc, and in addition a beautiful card with a yummy cup-cake on it, and an ATC with a rose on it, one of my favourite flowers. Sue's ATC has a wonderful coffee-cup button on it; it's probably good that I dodn't have too many buttons like that or I would be sewing them onto all of my clothes....Thanks Alma and Sue for thinking of me, and brightening an otherwise cold and grey weekend. It's good to have friends.