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Today is nice sunny warm day, ideal to catch a cold, lol.

We went out all together again and Dennis was making fun of me because I was full of wow's every 5 seconds regarding the trees. He hardly believes me, but they do change everyday now and yes they are different from what they were yesterday morning.

Today will be quiet day as tomorrow morning, the alarm will ring at 3am again.



Project 365+1 - Day 316 : Memories

I tried to tie my memories to November 11th, but honestly I don't have any. I know I lost my "real " grandfather on my mother side ( as my grandmother married again ) because he had been captured as a soldier during 1st world war and send to camps for  a couple of years. He managed to go out of them but died from tuberculosis he had caught in the camp. My mum was not yet 3 at the time, so even she doesn't have memories of him. As of the 2nd world war, my grandfather on my dad side was anti-militarist, my dad was 16 when the war started and he was sent to kind of " cadets war ' so he didn't really fought. Therefore November 11th does really mean much to me, excepted for other people, of course.

So I had to turn towards unrelated memories. This morning I prepared soft boiled eggs with soldiers, what my mum used to do for us when we were sick. It would have been a perfect memory, but at breakfast I hadn't look for today's word yet, so I didn't take a picture of our eggs.

A lot of nice memories are stuck on my craft room wall, so I just took a picture of one of them.

In 2005, I started making cards and wax painting and selling them. There was an exhibition each August called Hampshire Artists where you display your art in your own house and open it to visitors. 2 years in a row, I had given some of what I did to one of my friends who was exhibiting and it had worked well.

So in 2007, I decided to give it a go myself. It was panic on board for weeks, I had to have enough things to show and we had to prepare the house too.

Dennis brought some big standing panels from the office and added pieces of wood so I could display everything. We sealed off most of our living room, so we were living in literally 4 sq meters for 2 1/2 weeks, with 2 adults, 2 dogs and 2 kids when it was their week-end. Everybody had a lot of fun preparing though and Sophie was taking that very seriously. She was only 10 1/2 but she entered into a long explanation about how I was going to set my prices was very important : too low and people wouldn't take me seriously, too high and people wouldn't buy, bless her.

Sophie helped Dennis to decorate the outside of the house. In fact, she was telling him how to display the flags so it would look professional. She really enjoyed taking charge.

1 week before the official start, I was all ready to go but I was getting more and more scared that after all this work, nobody would pass by.  I was new and although part of the official catalog, I thought I had to do something.

I contacted the Hampshire Chronicle Newspaper Art section and asked them if they would write an article on me. I was convinced they would have the laugh of their life, but to my big surprise, they didn't and they said yes. The interview was done over the phone but they sent a photographer to take several shots of me inside the house. Honestly it was like a dream . . .

Then when this half page was printed in the newspaper, I was kind of in real shock, LOL

The exhibition was great and I sold a lot of stuff. I changed direction again a couple of years later ( so don't bother to go to the web site, it doesn't exist anymore ) but I always look back on this experience as one of my best ones and a very sweet memory.

Take care everybody, xxx