Food glorious food

As I said on this layout, there was a bit of a food theme going on with several outings. So much on offer - bagels for breakfast, morning tea in a cafe in Little Italy, lunch in China Town and dinner at the Heartland Brewery before going up the Empire State Building.

It seems that Little Italy is getting smaller and Chinatown is getting larger - NYC is now home to the largest enclave of Chinese outside Asia. 

More layouts

One of the things I really enjoyed doing in NYC was just wandering around, taking in the sights, neighbourhoods and buildings. We also took a couple of bus tours which were a useful way to get our bearing. Here's a selection of what we saw. The white die cut  skyline is actually a card that I cut apart.

Let the holiday begin

I was pretty careful not to do too much before the race. Very difficult when you're in such an exciting city with so much to see, but it's important not to tire the legs.  But afterwards, we could go out to celebrate properly and then try to cram in as much as possible.

Our celebration dinner was at a restaurant called Eatery on 9th Ave. Great place to eat if you're in the theatre district:

NY marathon

As I mentioned, I went to NY to run the marathon. Got a place through a local travel agent (only downside, having to pay for vastly over-priced accommodation). Why NY? Well it's the world's largest marathon plus a great city to visit.

Here I am with friends at the convention centre picking up our race numbers and packs and attending the expo:

And here is the race in progress. Over 50,000 runners in 2013 - the largest number on record. Although some people did actually carry cameras, I was very pleased that the official photographers did a great job of capturing the action:

And here are some photos of me in action. I felt pretty good for most of the race. Certainly a fantastic atmosphere with millions of people lining the route and bands every few blocks:

NY NY

The reason I was away in November was to take part in the New York marathon and then to spend time enjoying  a holiday there and in Texas.

I've been putting together a scrapbook of my trip. These are about the only types of photos I bother to scrapbook nowadays, but I've had such fun with this album and the Project Life album I'm working on for my niece (more about that another day) that I've decided to make more of an effort to capture images of daily life and put together an Instagram album for 2014. Not quite a daily photo type album, but something similar which I hope will let me look back on the year and enjoy re-living those everyday ordinary moments. So hopefully this year you'll see more layouts and photo work (as one of my aims is to really come to grips with Photoshop Elements as well.)

So here are a couple of layouts from my NY album. Had such a fantastic experience in the marathon (running a personal best) and a wonderful holiday afterwards. NY is definitely the city that never sleeps!

Apologies for some slightly blurry looking images. I have a hard time taking photos with the page protectors which seem to reflect so much. If anyone has some tips for minimising reflections I'd be happy to hear them!

New blog design

Those of you with sharp eyes may have noticed my new blog design.

I'd missed the announcement from Leelou Blogs that all the free templates were to be discontinued and that they would be charging for basic templates. Can't really justify the cost so I went on the hunt for a new free template and came across The Cutest Blog on the Block. They have some great free backgrounds, templates and banners and some really helpful tutorials as well (like how to centre a banner). You can check out the tutorials here.

I used Fotoflexer.com to add text to my banner before uploading it. That was another great discovery. I do have Photoshop Elements but I run the windows version on Boot Camp on my Mac and it's a pain to keep shutting down and restarting if I only have a few edits to make.

Matinee jacket

I've been doing some more knitting for my niece who was born in October. Loved the idea of a bright red jacket for the winter, so here is something to keep her warm over the next couple of months. Super quick and easy garter stitch:

I'm back

Oops sorry for the absence. No excuse really. I was away and then busy with work but I think I just needed a bit of a break.

I've been busy with scrapbooking (including a new Project Life album) but what I want to show you today is some jewellery I've been making. One of my Christmas presents was a kit for making tray pendants and I've been having a great time choosing images, preparing them and turning them into cute pendants I can give as gifts.

I didn't like the images that came with the kit, but there are loads of collage templates on Etsy, or to download for free. I got my images from Piddix and Digitalya on Etsy.

I also found a really helpful tutorial on how to prep printed images for use in glass tile pendants. One of the best tips was the need to seal trays made of certain kinds of metals because they react with the diamond glaze. You can check out the details here.

And here are a couple of examples.  This one was made using some scrapbooking paper:

And this one uses an image from one of the collage sheets I bought:

I'm really pleased with the results!