A Family Easter

I thought I'd bring you all up to date on what I've been up to over the last couple of weeks.

Firstly I went to my first W.I. meeting where we had a talk from the Pearly King of Streatham,

who actually lives in Suffolk.

I have seen pearly kings and queens at all sorts of events when I lived and worked in London but knew very little about them. 

Apparently they are all about making money for charity which is why I saw them at all the big events I worked at.

This one says he sews on all his own buttons, 20,000 on this suit alone and all of them shell.

 He passed around a jacket which weighed a ton so heavens knows what the whole suit must be like.

Every meeting also has a competition where your told

to bring something ( this time 3 or 5 buttons) 

and they are judged by the other members.

These are what I took in honour of our speaker

and won 2nd place.

I also won a prize on the raffle so all in all it was a good first meeting .

I've also had a house full of visitors.

 My nephew and his 3 children came last week and had a 

few days holiday with Auntie Gill which was tiring but fun.

We went to Wroxham Barns which is just down the road from us

 It has a small fun fair for the children where  the 2 older ones had great fun.

The youngest is only 7 months old.

Before moving on to feed the farm animals although this  fellow

pinched the paper bag as well.

When they went home my eldest girl came home for a few days.

So today we have been on a family day out to the 

Sainsburys Centre for Visual Arts  

which is on the campus of the University of East Anglia.

The accommodation blocks here won awards when they were built

and look out over a big lake, it is lovely, although not in the rain.

If you have seen the BBC 2 series about Art Nouveau "Sex and Sensibility" then you would have seen 

the building below and the presenter talking about the Anderson Collection of Art Nouveau that is housed there.

And that is what we went to see today before having

lunch in their restaurant.

I would have loved to have taken some photos but of course your not allowed.

the one above is from the guidebook.

My girls decided to design their own brooch in the resource part of the exhibition.

It is lovely to hear them giggling like teenagers again, they haven't seen each other for 7 months.

This is their design and I love it. 

It would look great in enamel.

I also treated myself to a source book of fabric patterns

which has a great  cover.

I thought I'd leave you with a couple of designs you might like.

Happy Easter

Gillxx