Birthday's, Rainbows, Cake and Florida Sands

It seems ages since our last meet up, and this one was an extra special one - we have three Birthday's in April - for the last few years we have had high tea - you know the kind of thing - sandwiches, cake, scones, cake, trifle, cake and then just to round the day off a little bit more cake!

This year was a little more restrained, salad, quiche with home made bread..... a little bit of a posh salad mind compared to normal.....

But of course this was rounded off with strawberries and of course cake, amazing cakes - Jenjo Cakes no less.....

Way too good to eat we all declared, however we managed to eat them all the same - of course they were birthday cakes so we had candles..... in fact we had to relight some candles several times as one QQ seem to had run out of puff. Yes, you in the middle, I'm talking about you!!!!

We had gifts a plenty -

We even spent time trying to open gifts along side our missing QQ, while using modern technology...... we could see Ellen, Ellen could hear us and not see us, and then before you could say 'sand in my knickers', everything had gone.  We tried again - this time 'walking' around the USA apartment, trying to see the Florida sand.... unluckily for us (or maybe luckily) the glare from the sun was too bright and the sand disappeared - otherwise I fear we would have abandon cakes and gifts to reach the nearer airport to head over!  We had major trouble catching all the words on Skype but it was great to see Ellen settling in and heading off to a needlework class at her local library - not as a replacement of course for us lot but just as some temporary company while away - no one could replace us lot - well maybe if you were to visit the local mental hospital you'd find some similar company!!!! :)

What you say, work..... did we do any work...... well I for one, only got a few rows done on my ripple blanket, the other seemed to be far more productive.  We had some massive ripple love going on at this meeting.... with both ripples along side each other.. with a quick calculation I have 24 rows left with a boarder to complete Helen has 29 rows - I'm placing a £5 bet now that Helen finishes way ahead!

Christine had curtains to hem, and a Dahlia to finish....

Taggy had a finished cushion for the 'show and tell pile', and the start of a new baby quilt...

Annie had her first granny square lesson, and went away with a mini granny blanket for mini-Ellen (well it may be king sized by the next meeting... watch this space!)

A great day, always a little odd when we have a QQ missing - but technology allowed us to close that gap for a little while - with a promise to do again soon to iron out the technological problems, so that next time maybe the missing QQ could sew with us for a little while.

Next year a suggestion has been made that the three birthdays are split - a little bit like the queen an official birthday and an unofficial birthday - so now instead of celebrations in April - we will have celebrations in March, April and May.  Oh my goodness how much cake!