@smfreckleloves | @ltblogged | Was @aspeckles, but now @gregoriafibers!

@kirstenrickert | @bluebirdsdiary | @pomponcraft

@viv_hensteeth | @alicja_olszewska_art | @mettosaurus

I really enjoy finding new and creative people to follow on instagram, so I thought I’d share a few of my favourite accounts with you and perhaps you might like them too.  If you don’t have instagram, you can click on their name (above) and look at their pretty photos online instead.

Enjoy.

Mel x

      When it came to our meals in Dubai, we were all so incredibly spoilt and were treated with some amazing food on the trip, plus we were able to dine at some really beautiful places.  My most favourite eating experience though, was the Urban Picnic that we enjoyed at Vida Downtown.  

Oh my goodness, the cuteness overload factor was through the roof!  Think bite sized food, tiny milkshakes that could be drunk in one slurp, salads in miniature containers, little burgers wrapped in string and drinks with sweet names like ‘peach ice tea’ that could be sipped in glass jars.  A real visual treat and then when I thought things couldn’t be even cuter, we were all given our own miniature garden gnome to bring home. 

There was also a pretty gorgeous back drop for our dining – cabanas by the pool.  Yes!  I would have really liked to move here permanently, but sadly that wasn’t to be the case.

Then onto something spectacular – an aerial tour with Seawings Dubai.  I never ever thought I’d fly in a small aircraft because I have an irrational fear of plummeting to the earth in one and incinerating into twenty million pieces.  I’m actually now a proud small plane convert and would dearly love to do another seaplane tour one day.

Dubai from the sky is breathtaking and I felt incredibly safe while on board, which really surprised me to be honest.  We flew over the Burj Khalifa, The World Islands, Palm Jumeirah, Burj Al Arab and were able to view the city from the sky.  It was one of those ‘pinch me’ moments, when after the seaplane landed back on the water, I wondered if I’d really been lucky enough to do the flight.

Well, I think this might bring me to the end of my Dubai series of posts, I really hope you’ve enjoyed reading along as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing my journey with you.  There are lots of people to thank, but I’d especially like to say a very big thank you to Dubai Tourism and the lovely Nuffnang team for making this trip possible.  

Also, a special thank you to our wonderful tour guide, Xavier De Noronha Da Costa, from 1001 Events, who worked hard to make sure all our movements and transfers during the trip ran smoothly.  It was such a mammoth task to organise 21 bloggers to all be in the same place at the same time each day and Xavier nailed it!  Plus, he was a truly lovely human being.

This trip truly was a once in a lifetime experience and I feel so lucky to have been part of it.

 

Hello everyone, I have another super guest post for you today.  This one is by the lovely Mardi, from The Love Supreme and she’s sharing her top 5 places to visit in Europe.  I’ve been following Mardi’s blog for a long time now and have been especially enjoying her recent travel posts from her European holiday, so I asked Mardi if she would like to share the top 5 picks from her trip with my readers and was so thrilled when she said yes!  Apart from her personal blog – which is full of great things like craft, sewing, scrapbooking – Mardi also has a travel blog (Globe Trekking Winens) which is dedicated to her travel endeavours.  Anyhow, I’ll hand you over to Mardi,

Mel xx

Hello lovely readers, I was so excited when Mel asked me to write this little guest post about my 5 favourite spots in Europe.

Just to set the scene for those who may not know, in October 2014 I travelled to Europe and the United Kingdom for 30 days with my husband and our dearest friends.

If my Maths is correct we visited 10 countries and 19 cities/towns, we took 8 flights, 4 train trips and stayed in 6 Motels and a cruise ship.  We spent quite some time in the lead up to our trip discussing and planning what was important to us and where we all wanted to visit.

I don’t think we were prepared in advance for just how rich in history and beauty Europe is, we loved each and every place we visited so choosing just 5 was not an easy task.  My final 5 have been chosen for different reasons.

1. Pompeii, Naples, Italy

I was totally unprepared for the sheer size of Pompeii and to think only a third has been uncovered, the rest of Pompeii is still preserved by the earth covering it.

Its an eerie feeling walking the cobblestoned streets in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, it is so intact and preserved and I couldn’t help but imagine what it would have been like before that devastating day when Mt Vesuvius erupted and covered it all in the blanket of ash.  On return home I busied myself with some research and discovered there are 16 or so recordings of Mt Vesuvius eruptions, the last being in 1944 – that sounds like frightening regularity to me …eek.

You can read more about our visit to Pompeii HERE.

2. The Colosseum, Rome, Italy

The Colosseum is spectacular in size, far grander than I imagined.  It seems impossible to believe that in 70AD they had the skill and tools to build something of this scale.  As we stood in the inner arena we could close our eyes and imagine the roar of the crowds as the gladiator battles took place.

The story of our visit to Rome and the Colosseum is HERE.

3. Lucerne, Switzerland

Oh Lucerne, how can you be so beautiful?  Switzerland was postcard material, every view in every direction was beautifully scenic, the sky was crisp blue, the water was crystal clear, the trees and paddocks were lush green and the buildings were so quirky and Swiss.  The mountains surrounding were snow capped – it just couldn’t be prettier.  Our trip to Mount Pilatus was highlight of our journey and I can’t wait to post more about that on my blog in the next week or so.

4. Tower of London, London, UK

London was wonderful, in fact it was everything I ever imagined plus more.  We spent a few days here and visited all of the major sites – Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and so on, but a chance visit to the “Tower of London” was something we will never forget.  We were lucky enough to visit during the time of the London Poppies – it’s impossible to describe the impact of seeing 888,246 ceramic poppies filling the Tower’s famous moat with each poppy representing a British military fatality during the war.

I will be blogging more about London in weeks to come.

5. Somme Battlefields, France

Whilst staying in Paris we took a day tour out to the World War 1 battlefields in France.  I wasn’t fully aware of our involvement prior to this trip, but our tour guide was informative and to see the battlelines and trenches (some still intact) really touched our hearts.  We wandered the rows of the Australian cemeteries and memorials in the misty rain, paying our respects and feeling overwhelmingly grateful for the sacrifice these soldiers had made.  We were very proud Australians when we realised just what high regard the French have for the Australians post war.  It was a sombre day, but so memorable I will never forget.

I will be writing more about France and the battlefields in weeks to come too!

Want to follow along with Mardi?  Here are the links you’ll need:

• Blog
• Travel blog
• Instagram

  {Tube sliding with Chris from The Life Creative}   Our fourth day in Dubai was full of fun and was probably the day that I was looking forward to the most, because we were getting to play in the snow at Ski Dubai.  Yes!  This was the first activity that I found when I began searching for fun things to do on our trip.  When I saw the initial itinerary I frantically searched through to see if we were visiting this huge snow dome in the middle of Mall of The Emirates and was so thrilled to see that we were.     It didn’t disappoint at all and we had such an enjoyable morning there, so much so that I really could have stayed a few extra hours.   In the end I chose not to elect for the ski pass, because I really wanted to have a go at zorbing, the zip line and use the tube slides and since we only had a couple of hours to enjoy the snow, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t miss out on my bucket list activities. I’d never been zorbing before and it was fun!  When you’re inside the giant ball, it feels like you’re going a crazy speed down the ski slope, but if you watch somebody else tumble down, they seem to be going quite slow.  The tube slides were fun, fun, fun too, but oh my goodness, the zip line was a bit terrifying since I’m scared of heights.  When I got to the top to be strapped in I kept telling myself not to chicken out, because I knew how disappointed I’d be if the day ended and I hadn’t had the courage to do it.  You’re about 16 metres above the ground with skiers and slopes below you and once I was strapped in I started shaking, crying and telling my poor instructor that I was going to die.  Yes.  There was screaming too, but he was very patient and reassured me that I was not going to die and that the zip line was very, very safe.  Then, off we went and I screamed and cried the whole way down! Ha!     The photo of me zooming down is hideous, but makes me laugh so much at the sheer terror on my face, so I thought you might like to see it too!  That’s the lovely Deb from Learn With Play At Home  next to me and yes, she’s laughing with joy.  I am so thrilled that I did this though, it really was a highlight.     Another super highlight from the morning was being able to meet the beautiful snow penguins and being able to see their delightful personalities shine through.  Oh my goodness, I wanted to bring one home with me!  Plus, we got to have a real cuddle and a kiss – and yes, they seemed to really enjoy it.  I was fascinated with these little guys and felt really lucky to be able to interact with them at Ski Dubai.  I’d definitely recommend the penguin encounter if you’re in Dubai, but make sure you’re wearing warm clothes under your snow suit, as it is super chilly in the penguin enclosure. In the afternoon we did something a bit crazy (for me!) and headed to the Dubai Autodrome for some kart racing.  Believe it or not, when the itinerary sheet came out before our trip, we could individually select particular activities on a few slots to do and it was either kart racing, free time or a tour of the emerging Art Districts.  Both of the latter activities sounded pretty cool, but I was pumped to do the kart racing, which my family found quite amusing – let’s just say that I’m definitely not a thrill seeker.     My heart rate went through the roof while we were racing, but oh my goodness, talk about fun! I feel like I’m over using the word ‘fun’ for this post, but this was such a great day of adventures.  Sadly I didn’t win our race (I really wanted too!), but came in 3rd out of the girls.  I spent far too much time on the track doing 180 and 360 spins on the corners, but I’m pretty confident that if I had of had a few more laps out there, I could have nailed it.   Oh, that reminds me – I’ll be sure to share my Midori Traveler’s notebook with you soon and tell you what I thought of it as my travel journal in Dubai.  I’ll book mark that in to share with you next week.   Thanks for reading along,  

{Random pages from this year}

Tonight I finished off my Project Life album for 2017 and it felt great! I can’t say that it’s been all smooth sailing with it this year, as I struggled a bit to stay on track with my pages in the second half of the year.  What I did to keep myself hanging in there was just do a monthly page here and there, instead of a weekly double page spread.  This worked really well and although the album doesn’t have near as many pages as my 2016 one does, at least some of our memories are recorded to look back.

I also kept my layout super simple and rarely added embellishments to any of the pages, did all the journaling in my own hand writing (which made each page fast) and didn’t worry about colour matching for the journaling cards either – I just piled them in the page protectors and hoped for the best.

I’m looking forward to continuing for another round in 2018, but first I need to purchase some more page protectors as I’m pretty much out.  Also, I’d like to be a little bit more fancy this year and perhaps purchase a few extra alphabet stickers and a small amount of embellishments.  The majority of my journaling cards are several years old now and while I do like to use things up, they’re just not inspiring me particularly anymore.  Tomorrow I’m mailing my old cards to a family member who is about to start her own PL album and I’m going to pop into Spotlight soon and buy a couple of new mini kits for this year.

I’m looking forward to getting started!

What about you?

Are you doing a Project Life album this year too?