Homeward Bound!

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We have booked our flights home!!!! We have an action packed few months ahead of ourselves so I thought I might share a little of what we have planned travel-wise between now and when we arrive home in September.

This month we are off to Egypt with On The Go. We are doing a 9 day tour called King Tutankhamen.

Egypt at its very best! Pyramids, Pharaohs and mighty temples, Nile felucca cruising, ancient Thebes and the tomb strewn Valley of the Kings. Sun, fun and time to explore. This very popular itinerary provides a fantastic overview of legendary Egypt in nine intoxicating days.

Day 1: Cairo
Saturday. Welcome to Cairo!
Cairo – Aswan. Visit to the famous pyramids and lion-headed Sphinx at Giza Plateau. Continuing to Saqqara, we can explore the myriad tombs and temples at this site and see Zhoser’s step pyramid. Later there is a chance to have dinner before the overnight train to Aswan, 1st class recliner seats.
Aswan. A visit out of town takes us to the mighty High Dam – a modern feat of engineering – creating the world’s largest artificial lake, Lake Nasser! This afternoon a leisurely boat trip to Agilika Island for Philae Temple. Free time to shop in the colourful souqs and markets or simply relax and watch an amazing sunset in Egypt’s southern most town straddling the River Nile.
(We added this optional excursion on) Early morning air excursion to the famed Temples of Abu Simbel.This afternoon, we board our Nile felucca for a 2 night voyage downstream on the River Nile.
Relax, go for a swim or just chill out in the sun on deck. Let your troubles melt away, as the felucca plies its route.
Kom Ombo – Edfu – Luxor. Disembarking in Kom Ombo, we enjoy a guided tour of the Temple of Kom Ombo, Sobek and the Temple of Horus at Edfu, before driving north to Luxor. Home of the legendary Valley of the Kings and Temple of Karnak, 4000 year-old Luxor is ancient Egypt at it’s best.
Luxor – Cairo. Venture to the tomb strewn Valley of the Kings .(We added on this excursion) Hot air ballooning excursion over ancient Thebes – fabulous early in the morning! This afternoon after lunch and time to relax we visit the colossal Temple of Karnak
Cairo. We visit the famous Egyptian Museum, famed for the treasures of King Tutankhamen and his famous solid gold funerary mask. This afternoon is free – perhaps spend the remainder of the day exploring Cairo your way.
Day 9: Cairo

Farewell Egypt!

                            Mum and Dad’s photo that we plan to mimic

We have booked a little weekend away in Wales the weekend after we get back which is both exciting and also just a way to tick off another country off the list. If we had more time we would probably do more than just a visit to Cardiff but this visit will have to do this time.

June is our month to buckle up and save save save. We also have to move out of our flat so will be ‘homeless’ for the few months after. Hopefully our lovely friends will let us shuttle to and fro between different houses but that is all to be planned later on. :)

July brings our much awaited Turkey tour with Intrepid. We travel around Turkey for 12 days on their Turkey Active tour.

This is the trip I won through work last Sept/Oct that we were supposed to be going on this month. Unfortunately with Dave fracturing his collarbone in March while snowboarding, his doctor has advised us to postpone-so we now depart in July.

Day 1 Istanbul
Discover hidden charms on a walk through Istanbul’s bustling backstreets and watch a sunset over the impressive Sultanahmet skyline.
Days 2-3 Gallipoli Peninsula
Travel past fields of sunflowers and take in breathtaking views of the Sea of Marmara en route to the Gallipoli Peninsula. snorkel the waters of the Dardanelles.
Day 4 Selcuk
Step back in time on a visit to the historic Roman ruins of Ephesus. Then, stretch the legs on a walk back to the town of Selcuk.
Day 5 Fethiye
Visit the deserted Greek village of Kayakoy.
Day 6 Faralya
Hike the ancient trails of the Lycian Way through olive groves and carob gardens, and past incredible relics of ancient civilisations. Visit remote villages and take in stunning vistas of the Mediterranean.
Days 7-9 Kas
Trek along mountain tracks and arrive in Turkey’s chilled out Kabak. Exchange hiking boots for paddles on a kayaking adventure over a sunken Byzantine city. Swap to bikes for a cycle through the Kas countryside and ride past rustic villages with top-notch views of the Turquoise Coast.
Days 10-11 Pamukkale
Take in the surreal Pamukkale terraces, which resemble frozen waterfalls cascading down the mountain. Then, check out the ancient city of Hierapolis and maybe bathe in its steaming springs.
Day 12 Istanbul
After an overnight journey, the tour of Turkey wraps up back in Istanbul.
August is possibly the most exciting month of all with a tour to Greece for me with Topdeck. I chose the 10 day Greek Island Hopper and will be going along with a friend from home.
Day 1 Athens
Welcome to Athens!
Day 2 Athens
Explore Athens with a walking tour. Free time this afternoon before we join the locals for traditional Greek dancing and local cuisine.
Day 3 Athens to Mykonos
Transfer to the port of Piraeus to catch the ferry to the first of the beautiful islands. We arrive at Mykonos. The afternoon is free to discover the island at our leisure. In the evening we watch the famous sunset over the windmills in the area of Mykonos town known as ‘little Venice.’
Day 4 Mykonos
A free day on the island.
Day 5 Mykonos to Paros
A short ferry ride to Paros. A walking tour around the harbour and through the narrow streets of the town gets us orientated. The afternoon is free to explore the island on our own.
Day 6 Paros
One of the lesser known islands of the Cyclades, Paros exudes a laid-back charm that is hard to beat. Relax on the beach and top up the tan, visit the church of Ekatontapiliani, or visit Naousa, Kolimbithres and the important sights on the island – choices, choices! Or a short bus ride to the village of Lefkes for the views and the photos.
Day 7 Paros to Santorini
Today we catch the ferry past many small islands and arrive at the island of Santorini. In the afternoon we have a tour visiting some of the interesting and important sights of the island. The sunset at Oia makes for some memorable photos with the sun reflecting off the white houses like snow against the dark volcanic stone cliffs.
Day 8 Santorini
A free day on the island.
Day 9 Santorini to Athens
In the afternoon we depart Santorini for Athens, arriving late evening.
Day 10 Athens
Our journey ends after breakfast.

After Greece we have a couple of weeks where we plan to nip down to Devon to visit my Gran’s home town.

And then we come to the journey homewards – We leave London on the 26th August. We are visiting Thailand first where we have booked to stay at The Old Phuket for 7 nights. The lovely manager there has upgraded our room the the Deluxe Pool Access room which is just stunning…check it out:

Then we have a few nights in Bangkok at the Century Park Hotel:
After Bangkok we get to visit my brother and his girlfriend in Perth (who I haven’t seen in two years – my brother that is, I haven’t even ever met his girlfriend in person!!!) and then on to Brisbane to see Dave’s brother. We have shouted Dave’s Mum a trip over to Brisbane too to coincide with our visit for her birthday present which we are all uber excited about.

The final leg of our journey is then a short flight to Auckland where we will finally be HOME!!!!

I am so excited for all the travels we have planned in the next few months and am really really really looking forward to getting home. Did I say really a few too many times then?! I can’t believe both how long it feels we have been away while also feeling like we just got here yesterday. We have grown so much since our move over here and share more with each other. We have learnt to really thrive instead of just surviving and we have really enjoyed travelling so much. We still hope to squeeze in a little trip or two as we haven’t been to Ireland (my wish), Spain or Portugal (Dave’s wish). Hopefully we can find the money to make that work. I really am blessed to be a travel agent and be able to reap the benefits of my job both in favours but also just making use of the knowledge base I have learnt the last 18 months.

If any of you lovelies are keen to travel like we have please do get in touch! I would love to help a fellow bloggers travel dreams a reality. It truly does bring me great joy to be doing such an amazing job.

An outing to The Globe

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Last week my friend Jessie and I went to see Troilus and Cressida performed by the Ngakau Toa from NZ. The play was performed all in Maori which was both interesting and near impossible to understand! I could remember a few words from my 10 weeks in high school maori class like: Aroha: Love, Kia Kaha: Stay strong, Kapai: Good, Tena Kotu: Hello/Welcome and that’s probably about it!

Me (left) and Jessie (right)

We met at Jessie’s work and walked a block to have some Thai food for dinner then got the bus to Blackfriars and walked along Southbank to The Globe. With excitement and just a little starstruck with the settings and finding out we were going to see Rawiri Paratene in real life.

We sat just off the side of the stage which was lucky since it did rain in the middle of the show. It was amazing, we had plenty of laughs and a lot of gorgeous boys on show. :) The story of Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy written by Shakespeare. They believe it was written around 1602. The play is based around the love between Troilus and Cressida and ends in the tragic death of Troilus’ brother, Hector. The play rapidly changes from comedy to gloom which keeps you on the edge of your seat and Rawiri played a hilarious Uncle Pandarus. My other favourite character of the night was Thersites who is a servant to Ajax. The actors really made the most of the theatre and mingled in with the crowd which was awesome to see. It was the only time I wished we had bought standing tickets.

At the end of the play Jessie and I walked back over the Millenium Bridge in awe of the lighting of St Pauls at night and parted ways. I had a great night out and I am really pleased to have enjoyed another unique London experience.

 

Shimelle’s Weekend Crop – Challenge #7

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I used an envelope and created a first page using some of the bits and pieces I had kept from our journey over here in 2010. In the envelope I have a couple of collage photo prints, our hotel booking details, our boarding cards, a little sewing kit from the hotel and a few pages from our Lonely Planet book we bought. I really enjoyed making this page and it all came together really quickly. Please excuse the poor lighting in the photo. I used Instagram for the photo to try and ‘photoshop’ it. :)

Shimelle’s Weekend Crop – Challenge #6

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“And so, my challenge to you is to find a layout you love that isn’t in a style or colour scheme you’d usually use and scraplift it with a twist that makes it yours.
To enter this challenge create a new project by changing something dramatic.”

I used one of the page links that Shimelle had on her post which you can find here.

I took inspiration from the page in the form of the strip down the middle and browsed throught the etsy store to borrow some of the wordings of a print – you can find my source on etsy. When we have a place of our own I love to think we will find something similar to this for a feature wall!

Here is the print I created:

And here is my page:

Shimelle’s Weekend Crop – Challenge #5

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Here is the sketch I drew up. Inspiration I drew from Wilna was the white card stock, border stripes, stitching, punching the bottom of the photo (s) and a camera embelishment.

Here is my page I ended up with:

The photo cuts off a bit of the side of the page but both sides have a washi tape border.
I really enjoyed making this page and tried to keep it a minimalist style too. Hope you like it!

 

Shimelle’s Weekend Crop – Challenge #4

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Challenge 4:

I needed some inspiration for this layout and I wanted to try to get as many of the sheets I had pulled on to it!!

I went onto Two Peas and searched in the Gallery for a 12×12 layout with the colour grey and found this page by Madeline:

Using this as inspiration – I followed fairly closely the same layout – this is my grey, yellow and navy page!

Products I used:

Blue Awning Blue Polka Dots Flat Paper – K & Co
Grey and yellow Distress Card stock -Tim Holtz and Ranger
Random yellow and grey patterned papers – Various
Lace – Prime (?)
Butterfly – Random supplier from Ally Pally Sept. 2010
Border sticker – Jenni Bowlin Studio
Yellow Baker’s Twine – Ally Pally stall
Marquise Chipboard letters – Thickers Am. Crafts
Yellow Brads – Random
Black Precision Pen – Am. Crafts
Tag – Ally Pally stall
Lace Washi Tape – Hambly

Shimelle’s Weekend Crop – Challenge #3

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“Choose a style or a scrapper you admire but with a different look to your own pages. Mix something from that with your own style to create something new”

Shimelle chose Dina Wakley and produced this page.

I trawled through a few galleries on Two Peas but couldn’t get a spark of inspiration like I did when I looked through Dina’s work. Her scrapbook pages that incorporate her signature art journalling style always look so amazing and I have always wondered what my page might look like if I took some inspiration from them…so here it is!

(That blue and white stripe is the table cloth!)

I used some waterbased acrylic paints I have had for some time and mixed the blue and pink together in the middle to get a purple blend. I used Folk Art paints that you can buy in Hobbycraft I think? The colours were 441 Sterling Blue and 754 Rose Garden. I then painted on circles in Kaisercraft eggshell which is a paint I bought back in NZ when I also did more ‘off the page” projects. After I had finished painting and set it aside to dry I started getting fiddgity (sp?!) and got my Cosmic Shimmer Mist (Plum Twist) out and tried to use some butterfly negatives from yesterday as a mask, That didn’t go so well so I dried them into more of a splodge look and then…then I decided I wanted to use my UTEE in white on some of the spots. This was the drying phase when I couldn’t leave it alone:

So there you have it! My Shimelle/Dina inspired page! I will leave you with some details shots and I am sure there will be more pages coming later.

I stapled some cream silk ribbon to the back of the butterfly negative for a handmade embellie!

Ultra thick embossing enamel spot

Sparkly pink thickers (I never use pink!!!)

I used the left over paint smudged over this tag then stamped some background images and a bird to use as another handmade embellie

Enjoy!

Shimelle’s Weekend Crop – Challenge #2

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For the second challenge the task was to use three or more collections on a page. We could scraplift Shimelle’s page or make our own. As long as we used three or more collections.

I used a sketch from my print outs of The Hitchhikers Guide to Scrapbooking as below

For me, using multiple collections is quite a normal thing to do. I don’t tend to buy whole collections, instead I prefer to pick papers and embellishments I like. For my page ‘Parisian Love Affair” I used and old Graphic 45 scrap, some pieces of a paper I got in my one and only Studio Calico kit and a piece of leftover paper from what I believe is a Kaisercraft range (that is no longer for sale). I used all left over scrap pieces and then cut a few smaller butterflies out of a DCWV mattstack that I was sent as a birthday present in 2010. So all in all I have no current collections on this page but I am happy with the overall look. I also found some really old letters that I bought way back when I first got interested in scrapping but knew nothing of suppliers etc in a closing down sale. When I left NZ in 2010 there were just two scrapbooking/stamping specialist stores in existance after most had to close down – mostly due to the economy I assume.

Anyway, enough of the chatter! Here is my page I made:

The journalling reads: I love Paris! It all started @ 13 years old in French class in high school. I learnt the basics but got lost somewhere along the way with the verbs: past, present, future, female, male…so I gave up. But I never stopped wanting to visit France. We toured through Paris and Nice in 2010 and visited Paris again with my sister April and her boyfriend Rowan in 2011. There is just something magical about the place. I love the food, the people, the chic little clothing stores, the bakeries and of course the Eiffel Tower. Pure bliss…

Enjoy!

Shimelle’s Weekend Crop – Challenge #1

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Hello lovelies!

I hope you are all enjoying the creative time and if you aren’t already participating do join in! All the fun is started here at: Shimelle.com

Challenge 1 is a scraplift from Jamie Warren. Check out her page here.

I started with these supplies:

And this is the page completed:

Loving playing around with Instagram that android users can finally have!!!
Lots more fun and games coming to you over the weekend.

Scrapping Update

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I wrote in one of my ‘Make a List’ posts a while back about all the different craft projects I have on the go and gave my self a timeframe to get them all completed…see the post here.

I haven’t done so well…I have been busy and tired and when I have had free time have felt like I haven’t got the ‘mojo’ to scrap so I have only really sat down a few times to get the projects under way. In saying that…I have done something (which is better than nothing!) so here is the first project that was already parly done to start with…

So you can see that some progress has been made, albiet slow! I have all the photos in a file ready to send off to the printers and each week has a fixed ‘recipe’ in terms of products/colours/themes that I use as a starting point for the card.

Hopefully with the start I have made now and with everything all on the go this will help keep my momentum going so I can complete these this month (only two months off my target…)