Moving Forward

So we have finally moved and beginning our new married life together. It's been an interesting time. We spent a couple of weeks living with my parents which turned out to be so good. It was nice to spend time with Mum and Dad but also relax a bit after moving. We got married on April 4th and moved down to Kent on the same day! Our wedding night was spent in a beautiful hotel in the middle of the Kent countryside. It was just wonderful and even more so when we woke up the next day and could actually see where we were since we had arrived in the middle of the night!

Into our second week staying at Mum's we saw a private add for a 2 bed apartment in Whitstable. So we decided to go take a look and sure enough it was "the one". It was available at the end of April so we have another 2 weeks to kind of pack and sort ourselves out again. I couldn't wait. I was sick of living out of a suitcase and not having my main pc.

Whitstable was our first choice when we were discussing moving from Yorkshire to Kent (300 miles away). We both wanted to live near the coast plus Steve was stationed near here when he was in the RAF a few years ago. So we both felt really happy to get somewhere really quickly. The apartment has 2 bedrooms, one of which we've turned into our office. We've got the smaller one as our bedroom. We both like to have lots of space when working plus Steve is hoping to paint again one day so having the larger of the bedrooms for our office/craft/art space made sense.

Our landlord is really nice and the area is so very quiet. We have a ground floor apartment at the back and side of a purpose built "cul de sac" of apartments. There are 4 to a block and lots of really beautiful communal gardens. I like overlooking the gardens and treees. There are alsorts of lovely birds and a friendly little squirrel that visits!

There's a 8 minute walk to the beach and about a 5 minute walk to the town. It's quite idyllic. The town is really old fashioned with various shops such as butchers, bakers, greengrocers. There's a library and lots of little galleries, tea rooms and art/craft shops and boutiques. The beach is all pebbles and very much a fishing/yachting community. We much prefer it to the usual commercial English seaside towns. It's much quieter and perfect for us.

So yeah. We can finally breathe a sigh of relief that we have our own little place and can start our life together now. I still have my moments of grief and emotional outbursts due to my previous marriage and what happened but it gets less and less. I'm so blessed with Steve and we both feel like we were always meant to be together. One day I'll write and share how we met and all the amazing things in our lives that brought us to this point.

And my children: my wonderful and precious children. I love them so much and I'm so proud of every one of them in all they have achieved and in all they are doing. I miss Jenni so much now she's in New Zealand but I also know that she followed her heart and I also know that it was an answer to prayer. She's where God wants her to be and because of that I'm happy for her and it's easier to bear being away from her. I'm planning to go out there later on in the year. Just pray that my house sells.

My work and art. I've suffered a major blow to my inspiration and creativity. I'm not sure what happened. I had a fab job opportunity creating scrapbooking designs and papers for a UK photo book company; I was designing for Scrap Girls and working on my new website when suddenly it all fell to pieces. I lost my inspiration and my creativity hit an all time low. I had to leave Scrap Girls design team and couldn't work on my website as we didn't have the internet for several weeks.

It all made me cry. I felt desperate. I have a ton of ideas for products, work and art and couldn't seem to get any of them done. Ugh! I missed being on the design team for Scrap Girls and my custom work slowed down quite a bit. I spoke to a couple of close friends who really helped me pointing out that I've gone through an awful lot over the past 4 yrs or so. I had to just sit and take stock. Just breathe and relax for a little while. Look forward and start living again.

Slowly but surely my inspiration is returning again. I spoke to Scrap Girls and am re-joining their design team which has given me a little bit of a push in regards to my creativity. I spent time working on my inspiration journal just sketching out new ideas as well as opening up Painter again. It's been awhile since I did any digital art so it was great to just push pixels around just for the love of doing it.

Life is good. I have a new man in my life who is a wonderful, loving husband. I have 5 amazing kids and a beautiful granddaughter. And a sense of real hope again. A future. It's a different picture than I used to imagine but it's a future nonetheless with new hopes and dreams.