Family Friday - July in Montreal and a bright red car!

This is a small post for my extended family and friends, especially the ones who aren't familiar with facebook where I tend to write things on a more regular basis.  
Each Friday I am going to keep you updated on what we have been up to starting from the month of July after Jem left for Korea and there were just the three of us; Craig, Amber and myself for the summer holidays.
With Craig's new job we soon realised that we really needed another set of wheels as sharing one car was not going to work with his new job being over an hours drive away.  After looking tirelessly in the local classifieds etc. Craig came to the conclusion that a trip a little further afield was required and before I could say 'are you sure?'  we were boarding an overnight train to Montreal!!  
Armed with some felt, thread, stuffing and a few selected patterns I was prepared to make a few tiny animals en-route to list in my Blossom Hill shop when I returned in a few days time. I began sewing them together unaware that I was being closely watched by the gentleman in the seat behind me.  After I had finished a couple of them curiosity got the better of him and he asked me what I was doing.  I told him about my online business and he wanted the two little bears I had made.  When I had finished the fourth and final one he bought those too, so my train journey turned out to be quite a productive one!
Montreal is a lovely City and we managed to find a little car to get us back home again via Quebec City. The drive home took about 15 hours, which worked out well with the three of us taking turns at the wheel.  

Above the City of Montreal

Amber in Old Quebec City

                                         The shiny red Honda Fit from Montreal
Our friend Dave came to visit us in July from New Zealand, in fact he gave the car a wonderful clean and polish, which was very kind of him!!
Next Friday I will tell you about Amber's involvement in the Gala Days celebration when she represented our village Morristown as their Princess.

Window Inspiration

A few weeks have gone by since I wrote this Blog Post introducing Silk Secret.  Whilst my new venture hasn't broken any records it has been ticking along steadily and with the Blossom Hill shop of little hand sewn animals in tandem it keeps me busy creating, sourcing new materials and vintage finds, photographing, listing and getting things wrapped up and in the mail to various destinations around the world.  
I admire other regular bloggers such as my friend Katherine who's blog Secret's of a Butterfly never ceases to amaze me with her endless stream of diverse and beautiful images and words, so skillfully put together in such a creative way.  My biggest downfall with blogging is that I tend to go off on a tangent aka 'surfing'.  Trying to concentrate on the reason I came on the computer in the first place seems to be something I rarely achieve and then I end up feeling terribly guilty and non-productive.  
I will be putting more interior decorating inspiration in my posts.  This week I have decided to focus on Windows.  I love unusual and beautiful windows, they can really change a room and are such a focal point, the ones below appealed to me the most in my search among so many images on flickr today.  All quite different but equally impressive.









Just wanted to share these with you.

Interior Decorating Diploma

It finally arrived!!  My Diploma for the Interior Decorating course I completed this year through the International Career School (ICS)  
It may not be a job, but it will give me the confidence to keep tackling those paint renovating projects I love to do and with the knowledge gained on the course I can put it to good use in our next home.  Of course this is all a bit premature as we still have to sell our current house and seeing as I have decorated every room here already I shall have to be patient.  
I am going to post some photos that appeal to my sense of style over the coming few weeks.  I was originally going to start a Tumblr blog as both my daughters have those, but instead decided it would make more sense to carry on with this blog and just make sure I include the links to my photograph sources.

Hazel x