Beautiful Chicago

I was so impressed with how beautiful and clean Chicago is! To top it all we had wonderful weather so the sky was soooo blue, the sun was shining and the water was incredibly blue too! I took tons of sights photos, so before I continued with Saturday afternoon/evening post, I wanted to upload some of my photos! Enjoy! OK couldn't combine the slide show with the post, so the slide show is in its own post!
Here are layouts I have done so far from the Chicago trip :
I created this photo by combining one of my photos and using a couple of Ghostbones textures! I loved the result!


Here is a LO with all of us gorgeous girlies : Template 42 by Simply Sarah


Next on my LO list was this one which I loved! I used Simply Yin's Template 13 http://simplyyin.blogspot.com/ and she featured my LO in her blog! How chuffed was I!


Template is Heather's gorgeous template she created for DID - http://www.joyrevisited.blogspot.com/
Paper freebie from Sapdesbois Impression - recoloured. Ana Aspnes Magic Sparkle Overlay and 12x12 Page Overlay
And this one I did using beautiful paper and elements from http://www.chirpi.co.uk


And some of my photos:

Chicago - Saturday Morning!!

As its taking me ages to compile my blog, thought it best to break it into little chunks! So here comes Saturday morning! A bit bleary eyed and tired from a very late night on Friday! We met up for a fantastic breakfast around 9.30 at the hotel! Jana (the hostess with the mostest) had organised tickets for us to go on the boat tour on the lake. Before that we did our posing for photos and you can imagine posing x 15 cameras took a long time! Got on the boat and it was just simply spectacular! Blue blue sky, blue blue water, lovely and hot and beautiful sights! I think it took about a couple of hours but what a trip! Of course cameras clicking right left and centre! Jana, totally naughty girl that she is, paid for all of us! Wouldn't let us give her any money, in fact she kept throwing the money back so at one point I thought the cash was going to fly off into the water! But we got our own back later on and treated her to dinner and some pressies as a surprise when we got back! She is amazing! Love you GF!! It was such a relaxing time, all of us together enjoying the views and of course yakking, yakking, laughing and more yakking the whole time. Oh yes and did I mention taking photos too! This next lot of photos I put in a slide show! If it stops playing just click on refresh on your pc. I'll try to upload some of my sites photos later on before the next post!

Chicago!! The Friday!

Where to start with such a fantastic weekend I had in Chicago with the most amazing group of girlies! This weekend had been planned for so long that we had been counting the days for like 6 months lol! Jana was our hostess for the weekend and organised everything - negotiated great room rates at the Hyatt Regency and made sure we were all ok. She was AWESOME!!

Soooo, I flew in to Chicago and got there around 11am on the Friday morning and went to look for Joan who had arrived 20 mins before me! Of course we spotted each other straight away and it was just so amazing to see her in real life! We hugged and kissed and chatted away whilst waiting for Susan who was next to arrive! Same with Susan - all 3 of us hugged and kissed! Amy was the next to arrive but she was getting into a different terminal so we got into a taxi to go pick her up! She was waiting for us and it was amazing to all be together. The taxi driver must have thought we were total loonies because we chatted the whole journey lol! Got to the hotel and checked in and went to find the others who had arrived Thursday night and earlier on Friday morning. Of course we spotted them - they were all huddled in a circle yakking and laughing! Never heard us as we kept shouting for them lol so we approached them and stood right behind and said "Helloooooooo"!!! OMG - the screams and laughing and talking and hugging and kissing!! They were Jana, Jessica, Liv, Deb, Laurie, Tori, Jeanne, Lisa (Latz) and Shell! It was like we had all known each other all our lives! What an amazing reunion!

All 14 of us decide to go walking to get something to eat. You can imagine 14 women cackling and laughing and loaded with fantastic cameras taking photos of everything and walking at snail pace! And not to mention making sure we didn't lose anyone! I wish we'd had a video camera to capture the atmosphere but as we didn't here are some photos! Remember to click on each photo to enlarge it!

Soo, walking, yakking, laughing, taking photos, stopping and taking more photos we ended up in a Mall! Some went shopping, others just window shopped! Then headed back to the hotel to get showered and changed ready to go out for dinner to a beautiful restaurant called Fultons on the River. But before then we all met up for a drink in one of the bars of the hotel, courtesy of the lovely Shell who got the round! Oh yeah, Lisa and her DH Todd arrived in the evening too!

Dinner was delicious and such a beautiful place - thank you so much Jana for organising it! We then headed back to the hotel and all got together to talk and some lovely speeches with a lot of tears (nice tears). Jessica gave us each a beautiful goodie bag, Liv also had some lovely pressies and I gave out some London and Windsor key rings, and Laurie gave us each a Green Chillie Stew pack!

OK, that's it for the first installment! Next post will be Chicago Saturday's events! Ohhh yeah, some of the photos are mine but I have borrowed photos from the others for this blog - hope its ok, if not shout!

Red Bull and my Birthday

Next on my catch up list were two events in June, the Redbull Flugtag in Hyde Park and then my birthday! The Red Bull Flugtag is "Flugtag (Flying Day), is an event organized by Red Bull that has taken place in over 70 cities around the world and the second Red Bull Flugtag London day is happening on Saturday 7th June 2008 in Hyde Park.
Flugtag involves competitors constructing man powered flying machines and launching them and their pilot or pilots off a 6m high ramp and into the water below, which in London’s case will be The Serpentine in Hyde Park."

So we applied for tickets and got 8 in the second ballot and my neighbour Mike gave me 2 more. What a fun day we had, we took a picnic and watched all these so called flying machines jump from the ramp and try to fly - more plopping than flying although one did fly for 39 metres!

Here are some of the "Flying Machines" (Click on images for larger view)


And gorgeous Lolita having a fantastic time!

So that was on the Saturday and on the Sunday we had an early celebration of my birthday with my family. My dad hosted the event and he and Kate did a wonderful lunch and I was totally spoilt! It was so lovely to have everyone together and have such a lovely time. My family were amazing, they gave me some money (including my sister Franca in California) towards my Nikon 18-200 lens, a gorgeous camera bag and tons other presents. Here are some photos of my lovely family :

And a layout I did for one of the challenges

The Tuesday before my lovely friend Di took me to the theatre in Richmond to see a musical show called Shout "this show takes its inspiration from the fabulous hazy days of the swinging 60’s, capturing the amazing fashions, sexual liberation and great fun of the times. this show takes its inspiration from the fabulous hazy days of the swinging 60’s, capturing the amazing fashions, sexual liberation and great fun of the times." Everyone was singing away - great show!

Two days before my birthday I went our for dinner in Richmond with Di, Valerie and Samia which was lovely, and on my birthday Mark took me out for a yummy curry and gave me some cash, which I have splashed out on a Wacom Tablet which is winging its way over to me!

OK so that takes care of June with one major event which happened on 27th of June which was our Spraguefest in Chicago - so that will be the next post!