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!

Catch up!

So many things have happened since I last blogged that I think I am going to do short posts, otherwise it will take about 5 pages! So this one is to update my May Photo a Day photos!

I had never used textures on my photos before, so when I played around with them with an extremely boring photo, WOW!! I am so pleased with this one
Because this is what the original photo looked like :

What a difference! I used a couple of Textures from Ghostbones, played around with the blending modes and out came a work of Art! (click on images for larger view)

Another one I loved, but didn't use any textures, was this one :

I didn't quite get to take 31 days worth of photos - managed about 23 I think. But it was a great experience and was lovely to find new things to take photos of! So here they all are in the slide show.