Things I loved... February

It was cold. Very cold. I've missed real winter weather this year so I was happy to get a few weeks of below zero temperatures. There was some fantastic frost to see...

... and it tried to snow, over and over again. But alas, it was not to be. But you have to give it credit for trying :-)

 But this cold snap gave us some beautifully glorious winter blue skies...

... and the chance for some cosy, real fires in the evening.

Of course, there was an exchange of Valentine hearts....

... and roses.

A whole month of LOAD meant fishing out old photos to use which made me smile each and every day...

... helped to develop a slightly different scrapping style with lots of white and an excess of twine and glitter ...

... but still lots and lots of dimension. 29 days, 33 layouts, 48 photos. A successful month.

German carnival came and went, complete with traditional "Berliner" aka donuts! This is my only participation in the craziness that comes with the 5th season round here...

And in true silly style, we celebrated 3,000 days of marriage!

Thanks once again to Deb for starting the "Things I loved..." series. I love looking through my photos each month and reliving the highlights. :-)

What delights did February bring you?

Things I Loved... January

I'm not keen on January. It's long, cold, dark, unexciting and all the fun of Christmas is long behind us - or at least this is how it feels.

We had mild, windy but horribly wet weather this year which certainly didn't help but looking back at my photos, I can see that it isn't all bad and that is one of the reasons I love doing this month in review as inspired by Deb. It shows us the good side of life even if you memory plays tricks with you!

The New Year started off quiet with just the two of us having a cosy evening together until the clock struck 12 when all around our neighbourhood, the fireworks started and went on for almost an hour. I'm terrible at taking these photos and should really prepare a bit more to get better shots.

Pigs are the symbol of good luck at New Year in Germany so there were marzipan ones and the cutest little New Year card from a neighbour to go with the lucky 4 leaf clover that I received as a surprise present. I have high hopes for the good luck that these two items will give me this year!

We kicked off the year in style, if not in a healthy way, with my all time favourite breakfast - french toast with maple syrup and bacon. Mmmmm. Starting off the year how I intend to go on. At least once a week, I try to do a proper cooked breakfast to kick-start the day (and pile on the calories!)

One of the last photos of our pink tree. I left the exposure long (I think) to get this starburst effect on the lights. I was sad but ready when we took it down and packed away all those pretties until next year.

My one little word was hanging around with a few others on stickies on my computer for a few days until "the one" jumped out at me and made its presence known. It's a good word and I have high intentions. :-) A bit of positive proactive decision making is on the cards. And a wonderful pinterest find sent to me by Pam to help that word settle into my life. I've now printed this out in small and have it in my wallet as a constant reminder.

Counterfeiting with glitter for challenges gets me out of my rut and trying new things which is all good fun.

After not managing to make Christmas Plätzchen, I finally got around to an afternoon's baking and thrilled a certain chocolate-loving someone round here with his favourite chocolate hazelnut cookies.

At the end of the month, our granny celebrated her 90th (!!) birthday in style with a party with ALL her children (3), grandchildren (11) and great-grandchildren (7)! What an achievement. This adorable cake was made for her by my very good school friend, Geraldine, who just happens to be an über-talented cake designer. We were all knocked out by how she got my gran and her sofa down to a t, right down to cute Fergus and it was wonderful to see my gran surrounded by family, celebrating this amazing milestone.

These days, no trip back to the UK is complete without a mini photo session with the Chance monsters who are getting more adorable and gorgeous every time I go back. This time was no exception. They like to tease me with the fact that I'm the ONLY one in the family (well, except for my dad) who can't roll their tongue! I have dozens of such taunting photos which seriously need to be turned into a page about this subject sooner rather than later!

Maybe not the most exciting month of the year, but a good one and a nice way to start the year.

Things I Loved... December

Ha ha! I'm determined to stay ahead of the game this year on my monthly photo reviews and I'm seriously considering making each one into a scrap page. I figure if I did that as well as my 12 on 12 (woefully behind) then I have the whole review based stuff covered and I can just dabble in whatever I like then. Still working things out in my mind but two spreads per month seems do'able. Anyway, I totally stole this idea of a monthly review from the wonderfully talented Deb *waves* and have so enjoyed looking back and seeing details to the months that might have got missed otherwise.

I participated in a 12 Days of Christmas Embellishment Exchange with the Master Forger girls over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge and it was a blast. I was teamed up with Heavenly Helen and it proved a perfect match. I loved all the little things that she sent to me. I was so excited every day to see what goodies lay in store for me. We had agreed to mix up bought, made and from-our-stash embellies and I was delighted to receive several of Helen's famous (well they are now!) layered hand-made flowers. *sigh*:

In return, I sent her these 12 parcels full of my goodies and both sides were happy and content!

I had visitors the weekend before Christmas and it was lovely to have the chance to catch up and spend a few quiet hours together. A market visit complete with Glühwein was of course, a must:

I managed to sneak in a few of these before the end of the TNL season:

I completed the last of my Jingle Belles cards and was delighted to find that I'd completed 60. It was so great to have them all ready to be written:

There were English lessons at the Christmas Market as well as lots of fun indoor lessons too:

Not as much as last year, but snow was sighted in my neck of the woods the week before Christmas!

And even though the tree stood there au naturel for several days, it finally got its face lift and I was tickled pink (pun intended) with the result:

There were fancy dinners, a perfect turkey and silly party hats:

Completed by all round prettiness:

2012 can come and do its best. I'm ready for it. ;-)

Bad blogger catch up #2

Ha ha! Bet you are surprised to see me back here again aren't you? Well, I did say that I would try to get back here with my November round up (just in time for me to do a December round up!) and then maybe tomorrow or Friday, I'm planning to share some scrapping that I've been doing over at Whimsical Musings.

November is a birthday month in our house but we were both struck down with a horrible winter cold and  our special days ended up like a damp squib. A total write off :-( But I did manage to find some photos to represent the better side of the month...

November 2011 was the best November, weather-wise, that I can ever remember. And I'm including my November spent in the South of France back in 1986 and Manila in 1997. It was glorious with blue skies most days and not a single day of rain. Mornings were filled with dew covered spider webs and low, late, colourful sunrises. I was in heaven.

 

It was warm, sunny and like the most perfect autumn of my imagination, even on my birthday. I had the most perfect weather birthday in history:

I got beautiful, bright, happy flowers for my birthday which helped compensate for the fact that I was as sick as a parrot:

The Christmas Markets opened and I enjoyed my first Poffertjes of the season:

We all stopped for a moment on 11.11.11 and I made sure I recorded the moment:

And I made sure there was a bit of time for scrapping and my current banner obsession:

Last but not least, my personal bar keeper kept the cocktails flowing to help chase away the runny nose blues:

And that was November. Now that I'm caught up, maybe I can keep this going from here on.

Thanks Deb for this great idea - perhaps I should lift the photos and journalling for monthly layouts to support my 12 on 12s. Now there's a thought... ;-)