This is the project I've been working on the last week. I usually keep a bouquet of flowers on the coffee table in the sitting room but Pete complains that you can't speak to anyone sitting opposite because the flowers are in the way :-)

So I came up with this arrangement for my lovely horn vase which my friend Ethel had given me for my birthday (or was it Christmas??!!). I used some lovely gold beads for this one and they were just the right shade to match the brass studs in the coffee table. I've just realised that if you click on each photo you get a larger copy of the image .... what am I? Stupid?? Duh!! Oh well, at least the shade of the beads shows up better if you do this!

I like it - that's a job well done and I'm very happy to see that I haven't lost my touch which is something I feared after so many months of not beading!

YAY - now I can relax whilst starting a brand new project and that's already in the making - another vase, so watch this space ..................but don't hold your breath cos this one is a time consuming project - tee hee!

Hello There,

I have finally fixed my lovely poppies which came all the way from home broken, missing bits and looking altogether straggly because a lovely parrot had her way with them and enjoyed tearing them apart!! Just like a child, she didn't break all of them apart (so that I could have thrown them away with an easy conscience!). No, she decided to tear one piece of each leaf and poppy so that most of it was standing but with missing beads; I quite remember going into the dining room only to find her sitting on the dining room table surrounded by red and green beads - she was having the time of her life too :-)

I have finally dismantled each petal and leaf, fixed them, added more to them and hey presto - one poppy arrangement is now finished....... I always sleep easier somehow when I know there's nothing pending on my desk. Now on to my current project .............. !

Oh Boy - Am I a happy camper or am I a happy camper today? My beloved Renuko is back after two months and she's like a bulldozer around the house. Already the terraces are clean, the poop is all scooped, the kitchen is tidy and it's only 09:45 and I'm still in my dressing gown - sheer blisssssss - I feel like a cat living in luxury :-)

(Where's my smily toolbar - can't find it! Actually can't find anything now I've downloaded the latest update for XP - why do they do this as if it doesn't take me long enough to get used to the one before - grrrrrrrrr!)

So yesterday Ramadan started - thought it wouldn't really effect me cos I hardly go out anyway ....... wrong! Had to go and buy some bedding, so off Pete and I go to the Mall, arriving at 15:05 only to be told that all the shops closed at 1500 - double grrrrrrrrrrr. Even worse is the fact that I couldn't smoke a cigarette in the car - bloody grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr - that's my favourite place to light up!

Not much else to say really except we went to a great party on Thursday night and we all ended up singing to Pete's and Luba's guitar playing. Great going guys - next time it's here and we can have the piano too so start practicing new songs :-)

Pete's working shorter hours this month so he comes home at 1500 hours. Not that we can do much before 1900 when the shops and restaurants open and it's like a crazy festival then. I still have to go and buy that bloody bedding so I guess we'll head that way tonight - borrrring! Fancy Marks & Spencer's not having a bedding department - what a pain. Mind you I got a super outfit from Per Una yesterday - again!! Everytime I go in there for something, I go out without the something but with a Per Una Outfit - all MICHELLE'S fault too - she introduced me to the label last Christmas in Malta. Which is great because everytime I see them, I remember her :-)

I got a lovely email from Hamish Horse this week too which really cheered me up cos I miss him so much. He tells me he's now in new stables with 41 horses and he loves being the mascot of the stables. He's so obviously happy I'd love to see him in his new surroundings so NADYA - take the hint please !!

Dazzit for today - hopefully we'll be going away for a weekend now Renuko is here to babysit beasts so I'll have more to write about. In the meantime, I'm going to shower and happily come to my desk to bead. I've started a new project for the centre of my coffee table so watch this space for photos soon.

You dudes have a good one!

PS FOR ELLE - Who are you? I'm guessing you're in AD cos you said you want to see my Xmas things - can you email me at menhennet@gmail.com? When you post a comment I don't get any details!

j x

Hello - A lot of you out there have been sending messages to see whether I am still alive or not! Well, this is a project that I worked on all of last week. As you can see, it's not exactly an easy project - it's a photo of Spencer which I converted to a bead pattern. I then ordered the beads, all 9,500 of them in 47 colours and once they got here, I dedicated 56 hours to bead this gorgeous picture - it's 6" x 5" and I presented it to Spencer's mummy, Caroline, on her arrival to Abu Dhabi from the States. She got here on her birthday and I managed to finish the portrait the day she arrived....... I think I started and finished the project in 5 days. Thanks to Pete, Karen and Renatta who fed me and kept the caffeine coming so that I could accomplish this project.

Other than all this, Cikka and Charles came to pick up Tina to take her home and I cried for a couple of days when she left - I adore puppies and I love having them around. The house is now too quiet without her after six weeks of lots of fun with them all playing around me.

Pete and I went to Dubai on Friday to meet our friends Nancy & Jim from Scotland. They went to Mauritius and then stopped over in Dubai for a quick visit. We had a super, if tiring day and it was really lovely to see them especially since I had not seen them for some 6 years.

I finally removed those bloody hair extensions and I hope to always remember the pain and discomfort they caused me for a couple of months, apart from the totally wasted Lm 550 of poor Pete's money! What a high maintenance, total waste of time they were - give me short hair anytime - thank you very much!

And now I'm dedicating these next few weeks to beading - Christmas is soon with us and I need to start beading seriously. Over and out :-) j x

Hello - Today I had a lovely, relaxing day (apart from the 300 Kms I drove) with my good friend Karen. We decided to drive to Al-Ain for the first coffee morning the ex-pat ladies there have started to host at the Hilton Hotel. We had already met Liesel and Taryn when they had come down for our coffee morning at Khalifa City, so we decided to take a day off and go visit them for a change. I love Al-Ain ! It is super to drive into the city - there are real-life sand-dunes along the way and in the distance, of course, there is a super mountain (which I told you about somewhere below in this blog!) It is lovely and green too and all in all a really lovely community. Now that I met some 23 ladies who live there, I think it's an even nicer community than I had first thought when I knew nobody there, if you know what I mean.

So we arrived at 10 a.m. (which meant I had to get up at 6 - aaaaaaaaaaaargh)!! I picked up Karen at 8.30, filled the car up with petrol, started on our way and discovered I had forgotten the map behind. Turn around, pick up map and off to Al-Ain - we were only late by about 20 minutes which wasn't too bad, really!! Chat, chat, chat, chat and so we came to lunchtime when the ladies asked us whether we'd like to join them for lunch - of course, sez 2 little piggies after gorging on sandwiches and cake and gallons of coffee all morning !! So lunch it was then our new friend, Birgit - the proud owner of Saluki dogs invited us to her house to introduce us to her dogs - yippee ........... off we went to meet 3 beautiful dogs and a cat. I tell you, animal lovers tend to migrate to each other automatically :-)

Set off at 4:15, refill car whose tank was half empty (never, ever set off on a long journey without a FULL car) to arrive home an hour (or so) later. All in all a great day. Karen is a super navigator - I would have got hopelessly lost since I don't know north from east - as I always say, North is in front of my nose - wherever I might be looking - tee hee!

We promised we'll be back to their next one - next time with a visit to the zoo to see the giants they have there. Today that had been the original plan but the zoo is being refurbished :-(

Now it's 18:52 ............... dinner is not even thought of let alone cooked; Pete is out for his nightly walk and I really, really need to go feed, 4-footed friends and sort out something for the 2-footed one too :-) I'm not hungry after the huge tortellini plate I was eating at 2 o'clock - chuckle !!

Thanks again girls - a most enjoyable day! Tomorrow and the next 8 days - I BEAD my new project which is on a very, very tight deadline....... More about this one later.

Have a good one
x

This is a BY SPECIAL REQUEST PHOTO for the ladies of Al-Ain.

Here he is - one of the special loves of my life. Hamish, the mini shetland pony who came into our lives when he was 5 months old and thought he was a dog all through the 2 years he lived with us.

As you can see, he realised I was his mummy and he would do anything to show me how much he loved me (or in this case, the polo mints I am hiding in my hand!!) Hamish is now with my good friends Nadia and Larry in their stables. His best friend is Bubbles (another shetland) and they have the run of the place so they can visit their friends the BIG horses all day long. Isn't he soppy?!