A BREAK BEFORE THE MADNESS OF CHRISTMAS CRAFTING EVENTS

Hello everyone

I am so sorry to mention the word 'Christmas', but as we know the shops start promoting it once August Bank Holiday has bitten the dust and in the craft world, we start making for it just after the last one.

Plans are going well for the Christmas Pie Crafts & Gifts shop in The Village Guildford.  Despite looking forward to it, I feel nervous as there is so much to arrange: my stock, promotion, a sign for the shop, staff rota, tables, chairs, display material and everything else we will need.  I hope it will be very successful for all of us and it will certainly be a challenge.

However, we took a few days out of the crazy world of Christmas Pie Crafts and went to Alderney.  We love the Channel Islands and although we had been to Alderney many years ago, we couldn't really remember much about it.  The weather wasn't too bad, but we did experience the very strange low dust cloud and bright orange sun on Monday that everyone in the UK seemed to share.  It is a very quiet island and we assume the tourist season finishes quite early as many restaurants were closed, our hotel had very few guests and some of the trips we had been hoping to do had finished in September.  The beaches are beautiful and so clean and here are some photographs of the island:

Braye Beach - we stayed in the Braye Beach Hotel

How clean and well looked after the beaches are

You can see from the sky and waves in this one that the weather was a little grim

The view from our hotel room

We had spent some time recently listening the the local radio, Quay FM, and it was nice to put 'faces 'to names and places.  We arrived home to thick fog and the news of more bad weather to come, but it was a lovely break and we will certainly go back again, but plan to do so in the summer when sea trips to the smaller islands are available.

It's now back to making, organising, making and more organising.  Four events and the Christmas shop to plan for mean some pretty intensive weeks in the run-up to Christmas.

Have a great weekend everyone and I will 'see' you soon.

Jill