Two Days with Astrid Riedel

This post should really have come before the birthday one but I've only just got round to taking the necessary photo's today.

Mango beads, owned by the lovely Amanda Muddimer, hosted a two day course with Astrid Riedel of Pretoria, South Africa. Astrid's style of beads are very different to mine so I was taken out of my comfort zone and forced to work in a new way which was rather refreshing. Astrid uses a variety of techniques and builds many of them into rather large focal beads that have lots of depth to them. Her use of the silver rich glasses was inspiring and I am bursting to try all sorts of things although it's not easy to get the wonderful colours that are possible. Below are the beads I made on the course and whilst I would have liked them to be more uniform in shape, overall I was pleased with my results.

Now all I need to do is take what I've learnt and come up with something original!

Birthday Bash.

I have had the most fantastic birthday this year. I turned 40 and can honestly say it feels great. Without getting morbid because that's not what this is about, there was a time when I and my family thought I would never get to be 40. In 1999 I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and after a period of treatment was given the all clear. However in 2003 it came back again and I struggled to fight it. After several failed attempts with different types of chemo, eventually it was decided in 2004 that I needed a stem cell transplant. Unfortunately it didn't go well and I ended up on life support in intensive care for 6 weeks with a very long road to recovery ahead of me. I'm pleased to say the moral of the story is never give up as I proved the medical team wrong because I'm still here and enjoying every minute of my life. So maybe you can understand why I felt it was important to celebrate this special birthday in style. If you want to know more about Lymphoma visit http://www.lymphomas.org.uk/

It started with a party on the Saturday evening. We were lucky enough to have lots of local friends offering to help out and it was a real "homemade" do that everyone seemed to enjoy.

Above is me and my husband Mark and on the right is me with my brother, sister and mum.

We had a total of 18 guests for a full English brunch the next day so Mark and I were glad not to have over indulged on the booze the night before!

Monday was my actual birthday day and Mark, myself and three of my girlfriends headed of to London. That night we went to see Dirty Dancing at the theatre and it was amazing. I love going to see a show in London and this one didn't disappoint. We headed back to the hotel for a late dinner which was delicious. The next day after a spot of shopping, well a girl has to do what she is best at, we did something that I have wanted to do for years-afternoon tea at The Ritz! The opulence at The Ritz is amazing and the cakes were to die for.

The photo just doesn't do them justice. My favourite was the macaroon (pale one towards the back) which I think was filled with cream and praline and then the blackcurrant one (deep red one in the foreground) that had flecks of gold on it and a lovely creamy centre.

I'm now back to earth with a bump and 4lbs heavier at that so back to the diet and on to beads again. Just before I went away I was lucky enough to go on a course with the lovely Astrid Reidel but I'll blog about that soon when I have a sunny enough day to photograph the beads I made!