Back from scrappy heaven- and goals and aims

I have had the most lovely weekend at the retreat,and not only that,today's prompt from Shimelle is SO apt after a letter I received from a very special place  in the post this morning.
Some of you may know that my Dad has a vintage car and he has  for the last 30 years taken Father Christmas around the village where he lives in it  at Christmas who gives out sweeties to the children.

Without boring you all to tears and not dwelling on sad things,when my mum passed two years ago,he did the usual drive around but it was tinged with sadness and emotion on both our sides..anyway - he was told that he had been put forward for a Queen's award for this and was obviuosly very touched.

A short while ago he received a letter inviting him to 'The Palace' for tea. When he told me I was very excited for him but sad that mum wasn't here to see it- anyway the official date has now been set and the letter of confirmation has arrived for him and me to accompany him..it looks like this is the year for me and  posh teas !!

So.... my goal now is to try  (emphasis on try) to lose  some weight so I can get a nice outfit and hat. I don't do posh outings very often so it should be a day to remember. Sadly no cameras are allowed - what a shame.

Now on to retreaty things.. I haven't managed to photograph many of the class layouts yet,but I did enter the scraplift challenge and whoop whoop I won it !

 this is my lift..I decided to go a bit grungey...

with a couple of close ups..

and  this is the original layout

Here is another one I managed to finish and photograph.

It was designed by Ann Freeman and used the gorgeous new Prima papers..

This was right up my street as there was lots of cutting out of flowers. We used some really unusual rub ons that were 'flocked'- very nice they were too.