Victorian Dolls

This is a recent little project I did for a friend at church: she had a fire in her house some years ago and these lovely Victorian dolls' dresses got soiled by the soot. So a while ago she asked me if there was any chance that I could redress them - she herself is incapable of such work nowadays because she's suffering from Parkinson's Disease (it makes you shake violently). It took me quite a while but I think they came out nicely, and Pat was so happy when I brought them back to her...

Such dolls are actually collectors' items over here: they have porcelain heads and limbs which are often made by one of the famous porcelain manufacturies like Royal Doulton or Wedgewood. These are attached to stuffed fabric bodies, onto which clothing can be sewn. The Victorian dolls in this picture have complete outfits including shifts, petticoats and stockings under their dresses. Most of them are the originals which I could rescue by washing and pressing, but some bits had to be replaced.

Credits: everything from Club Scrap "Ivory Elegance" and "Design" digi kits

PT Notification

Just a quick hello to say that I've been working on my picturetrail, updating some of the albums and adding two albums with scrapbook pages: the complete albums of Sophie's summer holiday and of Dorothee's wedding. Do have a look there if you are interested...

Christmas Tree Add-on

Another little page I made of the 23rd of December - an unexpected surprise upon our return from shopping... - speaks for itself...

Credits: based on quickpage by Mrs Miles + Valinda J

Christmas Revisited

As promised, I'm going to show you a bit about our Christmas this year (well, last year but this winter). It was quite unusual in that normally Sean and I don't do anything Christmassy at home except maybe put up some of the cards we receive. But no other decorations, no special dinners, no celebrations in our house...
So, with Sophie's visit this year things were a bit different: we decided to have a Christmas tree for the first time since I came to England, and some other decorations, too, but I left them all to be done together with Sophie which I thought she might enjoy - and she did! We spent the better part of her first day, the 23rd of December rearranging things, dressing the tree and "decking the halls"...

Credits: based on quickpage by Valinda J; star frame by Xyreena

Credits: based on quickpage by Christina Oliveira; ornament alphas by Amy Watson

A London Peasouper

Yes, we are talking weather again! I thought I had to keep it up since this year has been quite so unusual. The latest oddity coincided with the beginning of the story of Sophie's Christmas visit and it was what we call a "peasouper" over here. I actually thought those were a thing of the past and that modern technology and emission control had got the better of this feature, which means a very dense thick fog hanging heavily over the London area for days. Well, it had a comeback this year (the first time I've experienced it) just in the week before Christmas and it was really something to behold (that's NOT saying that it was pleasant): you could not see as far as across the road, and I mean really nothing, not even the shadow of a shape for the first two days. By the time Sophie was due to arrive, it had thinned a little but Heathrow Airport was still running at half capacity. Apparently, the problem was not the in liftoff or landing, nor even the air traffic, but the taxying around the runaways, where pilots could not even see their planes' wing tips!

So we spent a very sad/excited Friday the 22nd when we first found out early in the morning that Sophie's flight had been cancelled. I phoned her and it didn't look at that time as if she would be able to come before Christmas at all - so everybody involved was rather disappointed and sad. But some hours later her Mum called to say that she had managed to get a seat on a later plane and that they'd just taken her to the airport. So we started watching the Internet flight announcements again, half excited and half despondend as we read about more and more flights being cancelled again. There was still more delay but finally Sophie's plane was announced departed and we made our way to the airport. There was surprisingly little traffic apart from loads of coaches bringing people in to catch their overseas flights as all national air traffic was at a standstill... It was odd driving through the thick fog, hardly able to see anything or read signs, and I was mighty glad that Sean had stayed home to do the pickup with me. There was still more waiting at the airport as it took Sophie a long time to get her luggage (apparently there were lots of problems with missing and wrongly delivered baggage but luckily hers had arrived in the same plane!) but finally we were reunited at the gate and ... so they all lived happily ever after... (or at least we had a very nice Christmas and New Year together about which you'll hear soon...).

Credits: template and "A Brand New Day" kit by Ruby Q Hammer; wordart by Tina Williams; Burlap alphas by Lauren Bavin

Introducing Sophie

Now you are probably curious to hear who this Sophie is whom I've been talking about in my previous post - so I thought I tell you a bit about how we came to know her. Sophie visited us for the first time during the summer holidays last year, in order to improve her English with a view of upcoming Abitur/A-Level examinations. She was the friend of a friend, who asked us whether we'd be happy to have her along for a couple of weeks - and in fact we got on so well that we were really sad to see her go, and invited her to come again in winter to sample the English Christmas traditions...
Sophie comes from a town near Madgeburg in Germany and she's 16 years old - nearly 17 now, actually. The layout below gives a few ideas of the things she does and likes and how she came across to us in summer (the photos were taken in August and the page is part of a virtual scrapbook I made as a Christmas present for her).

Credits: all parts from the Club Scrap Digi Kit "Retro"

Belated New Year Greetings

It looks like being late is the story of my life these days - I do apologise for the lack of posts on my blog since before Christmas. Things got rather a bit on top of me suddenly with the preparations for Sophie's visit, alongside other things I had to do. Come Christmas I caught my annual winter bug - actually was too sick to cook the Christmas meal on Christmas Day (but you'll hear more about this once I get round to scrapbooking the photos!) - and then tried to spend as much time as possible with Sophie for the two weeks of her stay. We had a wonderful time again (I hope she would tell you the same!) and made a good start into the new year, too. Unfortunately, once Sophie had gone home I discovered a problem with my computer and was unable to do much with it until the end of this week - certainly handling photos and layouts was quite out of the question, and my emails and Internet connection were infrequent at best... So, well - that's my excuse! But I hope I'll do better for the rest of the year and am looking forward to telling you all about the things we've been doing through Christmas and New Year...

Credits: based on quickpage from Maddy Fernandez