Mandy: 26 June
Before i begin………Here are five good reasons why we have been preoccupied in the days following the girls and guys returning home and therefore not updating the blog for a while, until the last few days…….
We had to say goodbye, over a glass or two of bubbly, Tequila and Vodka! to four of our neighbours (new and old friends) who have now gone back to the UK. We were made very welcome in Maria and Stephen’s apartment to start the evening and then we all made our way down to …you’ve guessed it…Meshmesha! (Wink) …..well what happened then was……. Hang on… No! sorry what happens in Meshmesha stays in Meshmesha (wink!) great fun! Thanks guys.
A friend in England recently emailed to say that she wouldn’t be surprised if we found a way to work and support ourselves over here in Egypt after our travels to Asia, seeing as we seem so happy living out here. Well to be honest the Egyptians find it difficult enough to scrape a living even though a lot of them seem to speak 3 or 4 languages so I doubt someone who struggles with her native tongue would stand a chance of supporting herself out here!! It is a lovely thought though. However, It has been suggested that if I were to paint more canvases (like the one i did for our apartment) they would sell. Tempting! (If it were possible) but I seem to be more into saving money than making it. The canvas was painted using old bits of cardboard instead of brushes by the way. (smile)
Apologies (to those of you who have emailed asking to see it) for the long delay in showing this painting, It doesn’t photograph very well but here it is.
I’ve just got a canvas and paints from Sharon as she wants me to create one for her bedroom…feeling nervous!!
I am recycling and in the ‘mend and make do’ mind set. Since arriving here, in mid April, I have been fashioning kitchenware out of the many empty water bottles we have here………
So far i have made such things as a fruit bowl, a herb container …..(thanks for bringing ours over Lauren), a peg tub etc etc out of the large water bottles. We marinaded some olives to take to a friends the other day and put them in an empty Asda (bing!) sweetener container and stuck a flower on top (taken from a cheap and badly decorated hat I bought out here) in an effort to make it look….. Well just flowery and silly as it turned out, but you get the drift.
I have also spent hours making curtain ties (like I have said before it can be very windy out here!) I have also made head scarves out of linings and bottoms off old skirts and dresses. (Now i have brown legs i can wear shorter skirts) (smile) It is very satisfying and cheap…well free! I have also collected quite a lot of different coloured shisha health tubes (misleading name!!!) that I have yet to use but hope I will be inspired to make something from one day. The only thing i have thought of so far is to make a bouquet of plastic flowers…. But that is not useful just something else to get dusty….although I suppose you could wash them off under the tap rather than dust them (grin)
And of course we have already established that I am not adversed to a bit of tye dye (wink)
Anyway waste not want not, mend and make do, saving pennies (or should i say piastres) and doing our bit for the environment, that’s us. Although smoking shisha is probably not good for the environment….neither is staying in and making those cheap, delicious but lethal vegetable curries ….apologies to the ozone layer (wink)