A week-end in Strand in Cape Town

My friend Desire was invited to teach a scrapping class at a Forever Memories Scrapping Convention at the Ocean View Hotel in Strand, Cape Town over the week-end 8 & 9 May 2010. As her Durban scrapday assistant she asked me if I would be able to help her with this class and man the shop, which I happily agreed to. I left Durban from the new King Shaka airport and I must say it is really very nice - lots of space and quite modern. My flight was delayed for an hour due to the delay of an incoming flight, so poor Desire was waiting at Cape Town airport. And to top it all, I was going via Port Elizabeth, so there was a delay there too. When I finally got to Cape Town she had arranged a shuttle service to get us to our hotel, which was the Ocean View in Strand - right on the beach. This is a picture from the beach of our hotel and our room was on the left hand side, the second row from the top (with the curtains open).This was the view looking out of our room, to the left ...
and looking to the right .....
We met up with Sheila Corfe and Debbie van Coppenhagen who flew down later on the Friday. After a couple of Strawberry Daquiries and a few other refreshing drinks we headed off to bed in preparation for our scrapping on Saturday.

We got up early, had breakfast and then went to the conference venue to set up shop. Our classes started at 9:00am and while there were interesting and different things being done, it was not my type of layout and there were one or two that I did not do as I felt my photos were not appropriate. One of the classes was a painting class where we had to paint onto a canvass, incorporating photos as well and this is something that I will do at home with the right photos. Quite a lot like doing decoupage.

During the breaks, sales at the shop went very well and the delegates were quite taken with Desire's layouts as well as the templates. Once she had done her class on the Sunday morning, everyone was commenting on how much they liked her class, the way she had notes to follow and that there was a photo of the finished layout that they could see how it looked. Most of the ladies finished this layout and all were very pleased at having been able to use so many photos.

Sunday was the day we were going to go out and take photos, but it was raining. Because of it being mother's day, the restaurant was booked out so we were privileged to have our lunch in the Presidential Suite on the 6th floor. Wow, this was quite spectacular! We finished our scrapping early and after packing everything up in boxes to be couriered back to Desire in Johannesburg and in other boxes to go into our suitcases, we went downstairs to the pub to wait for Sheila and Debbie. While we were waiting we noticed that it was not raining and decided to go for a walk on the beach. It was rather cool - Desire will say freezing - but fresh. We went on the beach and because I was wearing sandals, I took them off. It is a long while since I went walking on the beach, but it was lovely. We had fun taking the pictures below ....
Notice how my feet are in the water .... yes it was cold and they were getting numb!
Almost reached the top ....

This was all we saw of the sunset, but just enough to get a picture ..
There was lots of this seaweed all over. Haven't seen much of this in Durban on the few times that I have been to the beach. Also, there were lots of lovely shells on the sand as well. I remember as a child collecting loads of shells every time we went to the beach and there was such a selection of them too.
Monday morning we got up a bit later and were collected at 9:00am to be taken back to the airport. My flight was delayed for about 30 minutes and Dereck was waiting to fetch me once I reached Durban.

A really wonderful week-end away with great friends. We had lots of laughs and fun just chilling.

Our next scrapping get-away is in July at Vermaakskraal and I cannot wait for this treat.

Grant leaves tomorrow for a 2 week holiday to visit Leanne in Wales and wanted to go out tonight and I had to take him and fetch him at 12:00am which is why I have had the chance to finally do some updates on my blog while I wait before going to fetch him.

Cape Town visitor signing off ....