Portugal Memories...

So I promised an update, and here it is! Apologies to my blog readers for leaving you for a few weeks, but what with packing for the holiday and then actually enjoying it, I had very little time to myself to scrap and blog and all the other stuff I'm usually so much better at doing. I promise to make up for it over the next few weeks...





Our holiday this year was spent in Lagos in Portugal, a really cute town with a gorgeous Marina and beautiful beaches. We went with my mum, dad, brother and sister - the first time we have all been away as a family since I was about 15! We all got along surprisingly well considering we are all a bit argumentative and loud - I blame it on us all being fire signs! :D The apartment was really comfortable, and we had a really nice shared pool which was often more like a private pool there were so few other people using it. We all managed to burn on the first day, and my shoulders are still peeling now! We had hired a couple of cars which meant we could travel around a bit and visit places like the spa at Monchique in the mountains, the little beach at Burgau and the bustling Albufeira, where we saw the awesome sand sculptures. All these places were really pretty and of course sunny.

I didn't get as many pictures as I would have liked, mainly because in the first few days of the holiday I thought I had done the ridiculously stupid thing of leaving my camera behind (there is always something!) but several days in I discovered it in the bag and managed to get some shots (I will rely on my sister's photo taking for the rest of them).

It was all very relaxing and I've got a nice golden glow, but I've also managed to put on some pounds after eating at some really lovely restaurants, so unfortunately the diet is back on in earnest now!

In other news, the latest issue of SI arrived while I was away and I have a page in it - this one was for the Make and Take and I had to create a layout using a ribbon kit from Angel Crafts and a piece of pink cardstock - shock! horror! no patterned paper! Still, I did the best I could with it and the layout turned out to be quite cathartic in the making - at the time I had been going through quite a bit of soul-searching about what I wanted and where I was headed and the layout was a way of letting some of that go in a creative way.