Once Upon a Sketch Sept 15th Challenge

Another great sketch from this fabulous sketch challenge site.  The layout for this sketch came together quite quickly.  I used Sept's The Good Life kit from Scrapbook Circle - Amy Tangerine Papers and emblishments.  I love how the colour combos used make the blue sky stand out and in Hong Kong having blue sky is really cause for celebration !!



Miss Six !

There is a six year old in our family now !!!  She was very excited about turning 6 and has been talking about this day for a looooong time.  The downside was that she had to go to school on it.  She'd only been back a week for the start of the new school year so best that she didn't have a day off !!!  There was much excitement with present opening in the morning - was an extra early start as we had to make sure we left the apartment on time (at 7.30am) so we wouldn't miss the bus.

After school there was cake - complete with candles.  And then we headed out to dinner.  Hannah got to choose where we would go and Pizza Express it was.  I have to say they do do the BEST pizzas!!!  It was a fun night out and we all enjoyed ourselves.  It was just abit tough finding a taxi to get home afterwards - it was 7pm but in HK that's rush hour - combined with high temps, lots and lots of people and 2 tired children - it was abit of a nightmare but once taxi was found (complete with air con on) all was good!!!!

Paul had been in Manilla over the weekend previous so he went out and found some party dresses for them.  I have to admit I was abit dubious when he told me what he had got but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw them and the best part is that the girls LOVE them !!!

Present opening before school.....love that Victoria got into puzzle book first !! 

Hannah LOVES her beados....this is the jewellery one

After school with cake

Dressed up in party dresses all ready to head out to dinner...

Checking out the twirliness of the dress....

Love the Instagram App on my phone as I can turn a photo from the above into this....

At dinner

Hong Kong DOES have blue sky.......sometimes !

Blue sky and clear days do happen in HK - just not as often as we would like !!

View of Causeway Bay from the back of a tram

Victoria Harbour - view from Shangri-La Hotel

Looking back at Wanchai.  You can see our apartment building on the right in the distance - if you know where to look........!!!!

Mid Autunm Festival (Lantern Festival)

The Mid Autumn Festival is celebrated in Hong Kong on Sept 13th.  It's commonly known as the Lantern Festival as many places are awash with lanterns.  It's a public holiday here on that day and it's normally a day spent with family - eating mooncakes.  We don't eat these mooncakes as to put it simply - they are an acquired taste !!!

To celebrate this year a friend and I decided to take our girls to Repulse Bay for a picnic and some glo stick fun!  It was such a beautiful evening (30 degrees at 5pm) but with the sea breeze made for a lovely time.  The girls went swimming and had such a fun time playing in the water and waited for it to become dark before the glo sticks came out.  Such excitement when they were given the A-ok for them - it wasn't quite dark mind you but when you see others playing with them you of course have to join in !!!!

One of the favourite creations was to make a snake with them and run up and down the beach.  Unfortunately I didn't a photo as you'll see by the ones below they didn't turn out the best but will give you an idea of what they got up to...

Repulse Bay

Girls with the glo sticks - posing and waiting for it to get dark.....

Victoria with her glo sticks.....

Still Victoria..... 

Hannah with her glo stick ball.....

Once Upon a Sketch Sept 1st Challenge

This is my very first every layout I've done for this new sketch site I've discovered - Once upon a sketch.   The first challenge for Sept was to scrap a layout about a memorable year and include the year in the title.  There have been lots of memorable years so it was rather difficult as to what to decided to do.  I've been sorting through all our travel photos that we did while living in London.  The one that really stood out was our trip to Egypt.  It's a country that I've wanted to visit for a LONG time - don't know what it is about that place - the magic, the mystery, the sites, the history.....there is just something.  I used the Studio Calico kit - Buster Brown - which was full of Basic Grey Curio papers and used a portion of one of the papers from Cosmo Cricket Circa range.  The title I used the new Mistables as wanted to bring out the red.

This was a fun sketch to follow and I'm sure it'll be the first of many more to use.  It might just help in getting those travel photos done !!