Doors to be opened

Hi everyone, it's already proved to be a busy week so I haven't had any trouble filling in my new pages in my calendar journal for December.

I did remember to take a photo when I made it (and last month filled in)

I spritzed the page with Dina Wakley gloss sprays to create a dark wintery sky(happily today is sunny)and stamped some Stampendous houses using different coloured inks and added some Wintery trees in between them.

Of course I used the houses with the little doors because I wanted it to be an entry At Art Journal Journey for Valeries's 'When One Door Closes, Another Opens' theme.

I sat one evening and coloured the houses with sparkly pens

Here is last month's all filled in.

So, why so busy? 

Having finally got all the family to check their diaries and agree to having lunch together on my Birthday(coming up this weekend) I booked somewhere that we had visited together a few years ago - we took picnics, but then discovered that there was excellent restaurant attached.

We have never returned and I had plans of treating them all as this will probably be the only complete family occasion we can have.

The next day we found that our DIL has caught the Covid bug and won't be out of isolation until the day after and of course my son will have had close contact with her(fingers crossed he will be OK) She hasn't been too bad, thanks to her having had all her jabs.

This meant rearranging the booking, so further checking of diaries that took a time to come back. When I rang to cancel and rearrange I found that the restaurant is closed on the day we can all make...ho-hum!!!

Meanwhile we had arranged to meet my Brother and SIL at a shopping centre half way(ish) between us. It used to be an annual event until last year as well as visits in the Summer.

We set out yesterday in the rain, the day after Storm Barra, the start and end of our journey is via Motorway and as we got on we went straight into a queue - there were floods over half of the carriageway so only one lane open - it slowed us down a bit.

The next part of the journey is on a road over the Pennines - a high area of mainly moors and twisty roads and of course very wet and eventually snowy, meaning careful driving.

We enjoyed meeting up but it's not the best place to chat. We noticed that although most folk are wearing masks (as instructed) probably 1 in 10 weren't. We cut our visit short as none of us were comfortable with this.

The journey home was all on the motorway but again with lots of rain and flooded carriageways. 

As you might expect last night we just sat and watched a film - actually a very good one, starring Timothy Spall called 'The Last Bus'. It was  heartwarming, uplifting and sad in parts, for me it was a two hankie film!

Something good though, while writing this post my grandson rang to suggest meeting up for lunch next week - I'm looking forward to that!

Thanks for looking, Chris