Florida......

I've been a busy bee since I last posted on the blog, last Thursday saw me heading straight for my old crafty haunt to meet up with all my pals. They are now into making jewellery, so there is a lot less paper about than there used to be in my day! It was really great to catch up with them again....

and of course there have been a few visits to places like this....

where I have bought many objects that I never knew I needed. See the little blue round moulds? They are by Martha Stewart and I will use them with air dry clay to make some more embellishments. I rather liked the background stamps by Recollections (Michaels own brand), the two layer stencil is by Heidi Swapp, and the cute blue flowers were in the dollar bin, and cried out my name as I passed by. Be warned, this is just the first of a zillion photos of stuff that jumped into my basket......

Then on Friday, I headed to Orlando, more about the 'heading to' part later, to have lunch with a crowd of online crafting friends - we all go way way back, to the days when the Cricut forum was the hottest place in town to hang out, and we all keep in touch to this day on Facebook. I was especially delighted to finally meet Shirley aka Okieladybug, we have emailed, chatted on Facebook and telephone for years and never actually met in person, but when we did, it was just like saying hello to an old friend...... 

and here is the gang. We had a great afternoon, and please note at this stage that in the photos, I look cool, calm and collected.........I am on the left of the photo in the brown top for those of you who wouldn't know me from a bale of hay.......

So I set off bright and early on Friday morning, ready to make a two hour journey to Orlando, and armed with a friends Sat Nav (GPS). For some reason it took me along an isolated country road, where I came across a truck that had shed it's load of boxes all over the road, the driver and a cop trying to sort out the mess.

'You can't come through here' said the cop 'you have to take a right, then a left, then carry on through the woods until you get to the garage on the corner.....

'The woods!' I squeaked 'You are sending me through the woods? I can barely work out how to drive on the right side of the road, and you are sending me into the woods.......'

On and on I went, rabbiting on about how there may be a international incident involving Presidents, Prime Ministers and even, possibly a Queen, when it became known that a loyal British citizen had been sent into the woods and was never seen again.....

"I'm asking you to drive through, I'm not sending you on a hike' said the bemused cop

In the end, his buddy turned up in another car, and he kindly led the way through the woods, flashing his lights to send me on my merry way. So I had a police escort for that bit of the journey.....

Then I hit a nasty traffic jam and sat for an hour and moving about ten feet closer to Orlando in that time. Then it cleared a bit and I bowled happily along, still about 50 miles from my goal, but confident that I was on the right road and dreaming of coconut shrimp for lunch. Then another jam, this time it was a super humungous jam, people were practically setting up camps on the side of the road and having a party. Almost weeping by this time, I crawled off at the next exit and had a fabulous lunch of a burger with no pickle and a small fries (I thought I'd put in the tiny details just to check if you are still awake...)

So, after five tedious hours of this, I finally made it to Orlando. "Your destination is on the right' announced the GPS, so I swung into a Marriott hotel complex. No sign of Bahama Breeze where we were meeting for lunch. I spotted a passing hotel worker 'Are you checking in?' he asked
'Possibly' I replied in an exhausted voice 'I may be here for a while.........'

You'll be astonished to read that the journey back was a doddle, no problems at all!