T is for Time to Play

T day again already, I'm surprised how fast the days are passing but we are trying to do some small jobs around the villa, Steve found some white paint so Saturday morning found us painting the wall along the drive, the rain had made the sand run down, it looked a mess so now it's very clean, fingers crossed we don't get any more rain.

The stairway goes up to my craft room, our roof is flat so we had a room built up there for my craft room but when it's raining heavily I can't get up there as those marble steps are lethal!

Friday I picked some Pink grapefruits to make Marmalade, Pink Grapefruit and Orange, it's so delicious on toast or on yoghurt shame I have run out of empty jars, our neighbour around the corner brings me jars and I supply them with Marmalade but obviously in Lockdown it's a no go!

Sunday with only one large Kilner jar left I picked the last of the Kumquats, there wasn't many left so I cut up one orange and made one jar!

It really is very tasty, Steve uses it when baking hams instead of honey, our son tried the recipe with the remaining jar from the batch I had taken across to his house and we had thumbs up from them, including our 3 year old Grandson, mind you that boy eats anything, we take him gherkins from Spain as a treat and he absolutely loves Chorizo, he sits at the side when his Mum is using it for cooking and it's a case of one for the pot one for JJ.

My link to the T party today is my page of Art Journal, I made the BG with my Paperartsy chalk paints, Sage and Vanilla, I've had these vintage maps for ages, I bought them online for my travel journal but besides being only a few different ones I think the country names are in Dutch, maybe Lisca came enlighten me! One says Wereldkaart

Well an idea came to me to use them to show how we all meet for our weekly " T" party from all parts of the world, I'm sorry if any of you can't see your country but they were the only ones in the pack! I also had a some DP with Teacups, I fussy cut them, I love that expression and had never heard it until I started to scrap! A bit of gold stenciling, glass beads, it doesn't show up much as I left it white, a few accessories and I had a piece I can also use for the Art Journal challenge to use Geometric shapes.

A couple of ladies asked me to show the mosaic without rain, now we actually have the sun, here it is. The pool is clean too, the sand was so fine as Steve was trying to suck it up it was floating up again, just need to sun the warm it up, only 20c at the moment, too cold for me to put my body in yet but it will be good to get some exercise when we can. I took the photo from the roof so I could get the whole mosaic in the photo.

I saw a small flower mosaic on Ground Force with Alan Titchmarsh years ago, I'm sure many will remember the programme. I thought it was a good idea, when I saw that huge blank wall and told Steve that what I was thinking he thought I was crazy but he did help by mixing cement and laying out the hundreds of pieces, smashing tiles etc, it goes further to the left, we actually made a plaque from a tile and I painted on the dates.

I hope you are all well and keeping safe, I had a shopping trip yesterday, we had to wear plastic bags on our hands as they have run out of gloves, next time I'm taking my marigolds! The weigh station stickers kept sticking to them and I couldn't open the bags to put fruit and veg in so I put the label on and passed the veg separately, the girl on the check out laughed and then one of the stickers was stuck to her glove, she was holding it up to show me, laughing her head off; They have been amazing but everyone is in line and being careful.

We also have the news that the death toll has reduced for I think three days over here which is good and they set up road blocks to stop holidaymakers coming to the coast, apparently all stopped were from this town but some were fined for going where they shouldn't and having two in the car!, the first fine is I think 130 Euros and the second goes up to about 600, must be some rich people out there!

Until next time, keep safe! Jan x