Rocking Your World 2017: Week 37

I am starting this week with some photos of our youngest son Ben. As you must know by now, he loves to play the piano and sing, join in with a karaoke session, and perform in a pantomime as he has for a few years now. Well this year he joined in with a group of friends mostly made through the panto company, and together they put together a show. They decided to use songs from films and shows. They did everything themselves from hiring a theatre, designing the posters, promoting ticket sales, and most importantly arranging their own music and dance routines. 

There were only eight of them, so they sang and danced their way through solos, duets and groups numbers, and managed to perform a whole programme of entertainment.

It was a charity event, and altogether they raised £1,313.31 for the children's ward at New Cross hospital in Wolverhampton.

Here is Ben doing what he enjoys best, and looking pretty pleased with the result. They gave up every Sunday for the past few months to rehearse together, and I am very proud of him, and all his friends.

I am also quite proud of myself this week too, but for a much lesser reason. Firstly I almost finished the chopping up of the bougainvillea branches. There is just one small pile that the wind has sent down to the bottom corner of the yard and wedged against the little fence there. It has dried to a crisp in the sun and wind, but I will deal with that this week. Otherwise it is all clear and tidy out there.

Then I also finished the cataloging of my stamps. In this picture you can see a big box at the right end of the shelf. It is the one that was full and overflowing with loose stamps, not to mention all the odd ones wedged around it.

Now they are all filed away, I have taken over the box to put my finished Christmas cards in as they had become too many for the A4 box they were in at the start of the year.

Then on the shelves below them are all my files that I sorted the stamps into. I have changed some of the categories, or split them into two folders when one became too full to manage, so they all need new labels now, but a least they are all sorted and should be much easier to find.

I don't think I should buy any more rubber stamps. There just isn't space for them. This is one of the reasons I now tend to choose the digistamp option if there is one, but I do like getting inky sometimes too.

I was scrolling back through my blog posts, to try and identify the make of a few stamps that had lost their wrapping, and I discovered that I last had a sort out of stamps in 2012!! No wonder I had so many to do. I am determined not to let it happen like that again.

Needless to say that has taken up a good bit of my week, but I have a done a little bit of actual crafting as well. Here is the next 'random' scrapbook page I made. The technique I was stuck on was how to use a photo template page, but spread one photo behind more than one frame. If you are not familiar with using templates you may not see what the problem is, but it is an effect I have often seen on other folk's pages, but have not made a good job of doing myself. I follow a facebook page for one of the template designers, so I asked for some help and guidance on there, and was immediately given several ideas. One of them made perfect sense to me so I tried it out and here is my finished page. As you can see the top right hand corner is one photo behind two frames. It is free of added embellishments this time as I didn't want to detract from the photos. I may add a few bits later but I don't think it needs much.

It is a good thing the gardening got me working outside as the other things have kept me indoors most of the week. But we do get up to walk the dogs in the mornings and one thing I noticed on the slip road at the front of the village is this lovely jacaranda tree. There is a row of them along there, and usually they have lovely bunches of lilac flowers on their bare branches in the spring, and lush green fern-like leaves in the autumn, usually interspersed with big brown seedpods. But as you can see, this year they are in full bloom again, and the flowers look so pretty with all the leaves behind them, and a deep blue sky for a backdrop of course.

And now it is just on to some sky photos. This week it is all about the faces! As you know, I do see faces all around me, and this week there have been so many of them in the sky. They are really obvious to me, but my husband sometimes gives me funny looks when I show him. I wonder if you can see them too. This one is probably the least obvious but I can see it quite clearly.

This one would be hard to miss. It was a really clear night, but this face just popped up on the horizon.

It is not a very happy face I know, but just look at the definition in the eyes.

Then last night I took this one.

If you look in the top right hand section you will see a much happier face this time. I cropped it in to make it clearer.

Then as it faded away, a second , lighter one appeared below it.

Again cropped in for clarity.

You are probably like my husband and think I am going dippy, and you are more than likely right, but these things fascinate me! 

And on that cheerful note I will bid you Good-bye until next week, and go and link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles, and then go and get 'himself' some tea.