Jar of Hearts- Friday 19th September 2014

Good morning Friends!

Today is important for three reasons...it's our wedding anniversary..the first day of our two week holiday...and the kitchen is being delivered today, ready to start with the installation on Monday...goodness all this excitement!

Did any of you get lightening where you live last night? It started here at about 7.30pm and was still going way into the night...and did it ever rain!!!

I thought I'd share my anniversary gift to Tom this year...we don't give gifts as such, but this was long overdue! I didn't make a card either, I made this little 'Jar of Hearts' instead. It's made from a cute little jar die by Eileen Hull for Sissix and it comes with the sweet spoon.

I made the jar using kraft card and covered the back with heart paper from stash..then I covered the front with acetate (nice stiff spellbinder packaging) and also made a 'cover' from acetate so that all the hearts I spent ages punching,  wouldn't spill out!

The spoon is part of the die and I embossed the handles with an embossability folder to give them some definition.

The little 'gift' I made was to buy a plain wooden frame and  alter it with gilding flakes. I wanted to frame this photo...this time last year we were in California. We had left my aunt and cousins in San Francisco and were travelling down the coast to my next cousin in Ventura, before  finishing our family visits in San Diego.

This time we took our time in Central California, we have done the Napa Valley a few times and wanted to linger in the central California wine country inside..just like the cult movie 'Sideways' if you've ever seen it. Whilst we had travelled through here many times, we'd never really stopped and taken it in and I have to say that I'm sorry we left it so long, because we fell in love with it, especially a little town called Los Alamos..but I digress...

One hotel in a town called San Luis Obispo, where we had stayed before is called The Madonna Inn. It is a flamboyant hotel, lots of 'pink' and every room is themed. Although we have stopped over night there a few times (one night is all we can usually afford!),  about twenty years ago we stayed there the first time and it was our wedding anniversary. At the time we had a waitress take the photo shown at the bottom of this post and this time we wanted to replicate this moment in time, so at our anniversary meal we got the waiter to take another. 

I notice the first time they put a candle in the cake (lol) and we should have thought to take the first photo with us and asked for the same table (yes I took photos and even the picture is still there).

If you are ever in the area between Big sur and Santa Barbara and want a bit of luxury, combined with fun, I do urge you to check it out...even if you just stop to look around as we always do if we are in the area when we are there...here you can swim, ride horses, go on hikes, play golf, have a spa and relax in the gardens...if you have the money for some of it...we relaxed by the pool and went for walks and that was plenty.

So, for the past year I have been meaning to frame this photo, but the frame needed to be something gilded to match the first one...

Now off to await the arrival of the kitchen!

Have a good day everyone,

Love and Hugs
Carole X

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