Busy, busy and....."More Tea Vicar?"

Crumbs, how time flies when you're busy!  Life and family issues have taken precedence over artwork over the last few days but today has been marbles day - taking pics, cropping pics, playing with potential compositions for a drawing.  There are so many choices to make before pencils finally make contact with paper and the drawing gets under way.  Marbles have been drawn by many coloured pencil artists so it's a challenge to try and do something different.  Good fun though!  The only thing that's certain so far is that I'll be using Derwent Coloursoft pencils and this drawing will be around A3 size - big for me!

As a bit of light relief, I thought I'd post some pics of a little Birthday treat I had last week.  My sister gave me a gift of 'tea for two' at a local Manor house so I took my long-suffering friend, Maggie, with me.  Here's where we went, Flitwick Manor......

Now I'm not really into stately homes, even little ones like this.  The people who live in them generally own far too much of this country's precious land and have more money than they know what to do with ~ just my beliefs.  However, my sister knows I love my tea and I really appreciated her gift.  So, as the saying goes ~ "More tea vicar?"!.....

As you can see, we were given more cakes than any bod should reasonably expect to eat at one sitting ~ but we didn't complain!  There is a gap on the bottom platter where there had been two huge scones, these had already been eaten by the time the photo was taken, hehe.  I know this may be hard to believe, and we are both quite slim (maybe not for much longer!) but we polished off every cake you see here ...... oh and also the cucumber and smoked salmon sandwiches which preceded them!   Absolutely delicious!  Just to rub it in, here we are savouring the moment .....

What was really nice was the fact that we had English Breakfast leaf tea - not bags, proper tea in a china teapot!  I always drink leaf tea in a pot at home but you rarely get it elsewhere these days, which I think is a crime. 

And here's a pic of a magnificent cedar tree in the gardens.  Apparently, that big branch on the ground broke off under the weight of snow that fell earlier this year during the arctic winter we had.

And finally, here's a pic of a birthday card sent to me by a friend (I'll get her back!).  I hasten to add that I deplore ageism in all its forms......however, I'm afraid I had to lighten up when I got this!  Methinks if you're going to go to exercise class, best not to wear a dress........jogging pants, or slacks might be a better option?!

Copyright M.I.L.K.  Moments of Intimacy, Laughter and Kinship