Some more eye candy

1. Jenny, 2. Zoe, 3. Ginger Lily, 4. Hi there!, 5. Cattle Wash, 6. evening walk, 7. fish out of water, 8. sunset over st. thomas, barbados, 9. Oistins at night, 10. purple, 11. curly, 12. mama's tea set, 13. This must be why they call it the Gold Coast, 14. on duty, 15. oh, orange!, 16. smile!, 17. join me for dinner?, 18. day is done, gone the sun, 19. my view, 20. relax, 21. desert rose, 22. me, 23. lunch is served!, 24. strange but cool

Things I forgot about life in Barbados

1. How freaking hot it is. Ok, obviously I expected it to be hot and I was looking forward to that, but it is SO hot! Not that I am complaining of course......

2. Being greeted everywhere you go. I love that about small islands, the acknowledgement that you are in the company of another human being, even if you may never see them again in your life.

3. The unwritten rules of the road: flashing your lights to call people out from side streets, and the short double toot of thanks in acknowledgement. Also drivers stopping to let pedestrians cross the road.

4. Being served at the gas stations, I keep wanting to get out and pump my gas!

5. Having your groceries packed at the cashier and then carried out to your car for you. I totally felt like a queen today after doing groceries! The down side of this though is all those plastic grocery bags! yikes!

6. How much in a rush everyone seems to be on the road. I don't know why the hurry, it's a small island, it doesn't take long to get anywhere!

7. The fact that it doesn't take long to get anywhere (unless there is traffic, which is more and more the case)

8. Guys on the street and just about everywhere making catcalls. Of course having just turned forty I have a new appreciation for this!

9. The words "above" and "below" when used to explain the location of a building. It doesn't mean "up" and "down", but rather "left" and "right". Or is that "right" and "left"?

10. How quickly the sun sets. I keep getting caught by surprise!

The story so far

Hiking, hanging out, eating A LOT, laughing, the doggies, the beach, tropical flowers and more!



1. burnt, 2. Royalty, 3. Heliconia 1, 4. Caribbean Style, 5. sweet sugar cane!, 6. water, 7. the grotto, 8. heading into the gully, 9. local thistle, 10. farming, 11. Heliconia 2, 12. 19/365 - the neighbourhood, 13. 17/365 early morning, 14. through a mirror, 15. Brown's Beach 2, 16. lizann, 17. criss-crossing the sky, 18. boatyard, 19. Swash!, 20. Brown's beach 1, 21. ahhhhhhhh, 22. mellow yellow, 23. Sable, 24. 16/365 - This Old House, 25. 18/365 - gotta have it!, 26. pick me, love me, choose me!, 27. yachts, 28. Brown's beach again, 29. East Coast, 30. Cherry Tree Hill, 31. twinned, 32. the edge of succulence, 33. Starburst, 34. bright blooms, 35. pink!, 36. red bells

Easy like Sunday Morning?

Every Sunday morning for as long as I can remember, the Barbados National Trust has led a hike around different areas of the island, as a way to educate people about the heritage of the island. The hike starts at 6:00 a.m., and when we were much younger my sister and I went every week with my Mum. Thanks to jetlag I was actually up to going yesterday, since I am waking up ridiculously early these days. The hike was held in St. Peter, one of the northern parishes, and started out at Farley Hill National Park.

The hikers are divided into four groups: Stop & Stare (i.e. slow pokes), Medium, Fast-Medium and Fast (a.k.a Grin & Bear it). My Mum and I, and our friend Lyndonna joined Stop & Stare. Of course. Although I have since renamed it Stop, Stare and Click because of course I had my camera along.











You can see some more photos here

But said camera got us into a bit of trouble at the end of the hike! I eventually ended up falling to the back of the group with all my stops to attend to the click part of the tour. Another hiker then came to me to ask about my camera since she was planning to buy one soon. As we chatted she and my Mum discovered they were both teachers so started to chat about that. As they were "licking their mouths" as we say (gossiping), we came to the top of the track through the cane fields and there was not a soul to be seen! We just assumed that we should go straight ahead, but to cut a long story short, after tramping around the fields for over an hour with no human in sight, we gave up, and retraced our steps back to the last main road we passed on. We weren't worried or scared, it's practically impossible to get lost in those fields, and we could see roads and civilised life off in the distance. Mostly we were just dang tired and hot and thirsty!

Once on the road we "poped' a ride with a passing Defense Force landrover, and they kindly drove us back to the starting point. We arrived back a good two hours late! We had a good laugh (in fact we're still laughing about it) and went off to Lyndonna's for brunch.

Quite the Mother's Day gift!!

I'm home

It's 31 degrees, I can hear birds chirping, and everybody speaks English. Yup I am home at last. The last couple days have been harrowing, but that's all behind me now. Well not exactly. Remember my theory of being able to quickly recognise my orange suitcase? Well I wasn't able to test it because my luggage didn't make it! Yeah, right? I am crossing my fingers that it will come today, because I really need to go to the beach (it's 31 degrees Centigrade, woot!). Other than that I am just enjoying being here, hanging with my Mum. And stuffing my face (fried breadfruit for breakfast, if you must know).

I will try to blog when I can, but I will be posting short updates from Twitter more often. So you can join up there to follow me, or just check the updates over to the right in the side bar ------->


I'll also be posting my daily photos, but that might be sporadic, as I have yet to test how well this computer does with uploading photos.

Generally, I am totally stoked to be here, in spite of the luggage fiasco!

The Heat is On!!

I'm counting down the days, practically the hours until I leave. Basically, I'm running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to make sure all my ducks are in a row (enough metaphors for ya?)

I just, like an hour ago, bought a new suitcase because there's no piece of luggage in this house that can handle another transatlantic trip. It's a lovely bright orange, so I won't have any trouble finding it on the baggage carousels. It was either that or leopard skin. I drew the line at the fake hide of animals.

Basically I'm pretty stressed right now, but I am keeping the vision of me lying on the beach on Friday in my head to stop me from going postal!

Happy May Day!!!!

I am really happy that it is May. Not only because it started out right with a beautiful warm sunny day, but because I leave in a few days and head home to Barbados and Grenada for about two and a half weeks!! I'll be spending my birthday there, and I am really looking forward to hitting the beach every day. I am already dreaming of all the photos I will take. I think my interest in photography will give me a very different perspective when I look at all the familiar sights.

I will have Internet access so I will keep this blog updated with my adventures and my daily photos. It's been two years since I've been back so there are a million things I want to see and do. And eat! Oh my goodness, the diet will be out the window!

The only down side is that Lucas won't be with me. Sometimes things just don't work out the way you'd like I guess. But I'll be bringing him lots of good rum back, so he'll be happy. And maybe a miracle will happen and he will fly down to surprise me on my birthday. A girl can dream right?

Postcards from Provence

I'm "sending" these after the trip is over, which is typical of me really. We spent a few days in Provence soaking up the sun, visiting with family and hanging out with friends. I've said this before, but I love this region of France and would really love to move there.

Back in Town

We are back in Lyon after a wonderful ten days in Haute Loire. The festival was amazing, five days of music, theatre, dance and art, and I even slept in a tent on Saturday night! If you know anything about me, you know that camping is not my thing, so this is a momentous occasion people! I have well over 1000 photos of the performances as well as the "everyday" moments and can't wait to scrap them! Over the next few days I will post some of them here to share.

For now I am trying to get back into my regular routine, such as it is. My mum is still here but we are just taking it easy until she leaves on Tuesday. Lucy and Loic are coming over for dinner tonight and Lucas has an amazing menu planned. I'm about to go make the cheesecake that will be the dessert.

If you want to see what I've been up to scrappy wise in the last six weeks I just posted some recent projects here

Rest Days

We've been back in Lyon since Tuesday night, resting up from our hectic tour of Paris. Initially we planned to leave on Thursday to head to Aix-en-Provence in the South of France for two days, but I have been busy finishing up and sending off this and Lucas has been working on last minute details for the Festival du Riou.

It hasn't been all work however. Yesterday we had a picnic lunch, visited the Basilique de Fourviere, and had dinner with my in-laws.





On Saturday we head to Haute Loire to relax and also enjoy the Festival. We will be incommunicado until August 1st!

Taste of Provence

We spent four days in Provence this past week. We left Friday night and drove to Avignon, where we stayed with our friends Rachel and Olivier. On Sunday night we then went to Marseille, and left on Tuesday morning making our way back by driving through several towns and villages before finally hitting the highway. During those four days we visited Avignon, Fontaine de Vaucluse, the Camargue region, Arles, Gordes, Roussillon, Sault and drove through Aix-en-Provence, Carpentras and orange among others.



We both love this region of France, and would like to move there. The sights, the sounds, the tastes, it's all good.