San Antoni ( The blessing of the animals)



This is Biri with his horse getting ready to get the Saint in position on his cart for the parade.



This is the start of the parade. You can't quite see the two small children trying to push two rabbits in a cage, in a wheel barrow. (wheel barrows seem to play a big part in the proceedings today.

Here's Biri with the Patron Saint of the animals. Sorry it's not all gold and blingy. But it's all we could afford in these days of austerity.



This is breakfast being prepared in a wheel barrow (another one) You can see the wine and beer in the fore ground. This is very important to breakfast in Spain???????? My husband is taking the picture but as you can see not to far from the food.

Well today is San Antoni here in sunny Spain. The day when off you trot down to the village with any animal you wish to have blessed. Hence dogs, cats, rabbits birds were all being dragged down there this morning. My husband was up at the crack of dawn getting one of his friends horses ready. He didn't know he was about to be blessed as well. Bless him!!!!!! He ended up in the cart being paraded round the village. He only    went for the breakfast. This you can see being cooked in the make-shift barbeque, the wheel barrow. Pretty good at improvising the Spanish. I hasten to add John got home around three o clock after doing a bar crawl on the horse & trap. Not bad for a Sunday.........

The New Year 2012



Where did last year go to?????? Is it a sign of getting old. Yes, I hear you say. OH NO!!!!!! Our New Year ended with a fizzle rather than a bang. Meaning both myself and my husband fell asleep in our chairs next to a roaring fire (well it was when we went to sleep).Then all of a sudden I was awakened by lots of noise from the television and bells chiming in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. Oh No! we should be downing 12 lucky grapes this we haven't missed since we have lived here which is over 20 years. So then it was a race to try and gobble them down before the clock stopped chiming. No, we didn't make it. So no good luck for us this year!!!!!! and the Cava is still chilling in the fridge. Didn't feel like it after stuffing down 12 grapes very quickly.........

The lessons from Strathmore are up and running. I honestly couldn't be more out of my comfort zone if I tried. Still they say things like this are character building. Not if you hear the swearing coming from my house it's not!!!!!!!

                                                       

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These are from the first lesson with Traci Bautista. I am finding it so hard to just let go. But, hopefully it will free up my art work. Fingers crossed

This from the first piece of work that I did on a very large sheet of watercolour paper of which got chopped up into smaller pieces to work with. Not only that I wasn't pleased with it!!!!!!!

Well, I will leave you with a little quote that is quite apt as I am on a diet!!!!!!!!  DIETING IS JUST WISHFUL SHRINKING.