Berries Beautiful ...

These are Crab-apples, which aren't really berries, but so pretty!

Goodbye South Africa......hello France!

The title of this post says it all.  The time has come for us to leave, I thought it was never going to arrive, but arrive it has!

I am not sure how long it will take before I get things up and running there but until then, stay well, be happy and always try and see the silver lining to any of your dark clouds.

I will leave you with this awesome Quiltable Quote.....

                                 "Love is more important than anything else.
                                       It is what ties everything completely
                                                       TOGETHER"

                                                                                      Colossians 3:14

Take care

Erica

This and that

Keeping busy while apart from my husband has not proved to be a problem.  I am so grateful that I have a a quilting passion that has helped pass the lonely hours.

I have taken this time to design a new quilt pattern (more on that later) and try my hand at some new things, some of them completely out of my comfort zone.  Its been fun and a great learning experience!!

This is one of them!  I have worked very little with felt, so the subject matter (!) and the medium were new to me!

A Day of the Dead bookmark for a skull mad colleague

Got a lot to learn about felt.........  (Not taken with my new camera as you can see!)

An Extraordinary Journey

One of my very favorite bloggers of all time is Michelle May of The Raspberry Rabbits.  I love her work and already have her first book, 'Briarside Lane', which I treasure very much.

When I heard her second book, 'Fabled Fusions', was due out last year in October, I quickly pre-ordered it to make sure I got it come hell or high water!

She was due to post them out at the beginning of October which she duly did.  When I hadn't received my copy by the end of November, I contacted her to find out if she had some kind of a tracking number so that I could try and find out what stage of it's journey it was on..... Michele was horrified to find out I hadn't received it yet as by this time it had been received all over the world by her other customers.

We decided to give until after Christmas to see if it was just the 'Seasonal Post' clog and the take it from there.

To cut a long story short, it still hadn't arrived by Christmas and Michelle, being the amazing person she is, made sure another copy was winging its way to me on the 27 December. A whole month later on 27 January 2014 my book finally arrived!  Imagine my complete astonishment to discover that it was the first book, the one that had gone astray! Four months later it had finally arrived.

Sadly to this day, the second book has still not arrived!

If you look carefully you can see the postal date!

The book is amazing and the projects are sensational.  Do yourselves a favour and visit her blog, the raspberryrabbits.blogspot.com. you won't be disappointed

Congratulations Michelle!

At last

As I sit at my computer, recovering from a bout of pneumonia, I find myself looking back on the year.  It has been a BIG year for us and the end part of 2013 has been fraught with distractions.....

We are moving to France shortly and my beloved husband, friend and confidant left on 28 November and I am adjusting to living without my rock and foundation until I can join him.  The most difficult part was being sick without him to reassure me and cuddle me when I was feeling sooo ill.

We re moving to Quimper in Brittany and I cant wait for this new chapter in our lives to begin together, he is doing all the spade work ahead of me and I can't help but long to be with him to go through all this together. But circumstances dictated differently.  Yves is French so language for him is not an issue, but I definitely needed some brushing up so my children and I went along every Saturday for 5 weeks to Alliance Francaise to do a course.  If you ever need or want to learn French, I can recommend doing it this way.  We had such fun!
Anyway, enough of feeling sorry for myself, but this is why I have been so quiet for so long.

Back to business ... more postcards.  Our year of sharing these is over now and these are the last ones.

Sent-Bubbles

Organza is the pits to work with!!!


Received - Bubbles

Thanks Faith, I love it!


Sent - Landscapes 

Received - landscapes

Arlene, it is stunning!

Some things that made me smile!

This has been a week of ups and downs, the up, my husband is back from France, for a little while. The downs, various reasons.  So I looked for things that would make me smile and feel warm and fuzzy inside.  Look what I found!

We made a trip to the French consulate in Durban and on the way home stopped by my brother's office just to say hi.  Right outside his company entrance they have this amazing, huge pond with wait for it......Egyptian Geese, of all sizes and plenty of babies.  I have always love these birds!

 

 

I would have loved to get closer and take better photos but of course... a) I forgot my camera at home b) Mommy goose hissed at me !!!

Another thing which I enjoyed was seeing this beautiful cat that my husband took a photo of and who belongs to a friend of ours in Brittany. 

 

 

I would have loved to scratch that big, soft, fluffy tummy! His name is Felix

 

Did any thing make you smile this week?

 



A New Layout for a New Year (Almost)

source

Well, my first blogiversary came and went without much fanfare.  In fact, I didn't notice it had passed until it was long gone! Although I started this blog in September last year, the official Peppa-Jo launch was on the first of November 2011!  My how time has flown!!  Anyway, to celebrate a new year of blogging and the fast approaching 2013, I have given the Peppa-Jo blog a little face-lift.  If you are following in Blogger or a reader, click through to check it out and let me know what you all think:)

And, before I go, I just wanted to thank you all for your support in my first year of blogging.  I have appreciated all the comments and feedback more than you know!

Much love,
Erica