This is the Campo Manin lion in Venice.

Venice - window shopping

I really wanted to buy everything. I love these "velvet" shops in Venice. This is another digital scrapbooking kit by Marcee Duggar of The Digital Scrapbook Place.

Oh, the handbag in the middle was 200 euros.

Just on the scrapbooking, I work in Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, and from Marcee's Maisee page kit I used a background, a circular frame (cutting out the picture with the cookie cutter tool), an element of barbed wire and an overlay.

Can you see my sister in the background - taking the photo?

Venice - Campo Santa Maria Formosa

One of my very favorite squares...

It's only a few yards from the convent hotel and I like to watch all the locals pass by. Very few tourists like me, just locals.

This picture, and the Camogli one under it, are both made from the digital scrapping of the very talented Marcee Duggar of The Digital Scrapbook Place - where I hang out on a forum.

Venice, early morning

Pashmina weather.

Camogli

I went to Camogli again this October. One of my very favorite places...

Venice - water

My students had a lesson today at computer club about two ways to use digital scrapbooking. One is to frame a photo, and the other is to create a piece of personal artwork...

Swarovski crystal tennis bracelets

These are bracelets I really wanted from our day in Capri - the ones in the centre. There are exquisite pink sapphires, some white, some black diamonds, aquamarines, amethysts, emeralds...

OK, I first saw them in a store in Portofino on the Ligurian coast, on the Italian Riviera. They start at 1700 euros for the cheapest, going up to 3000 euros for the white diamonds. This is for just one of these gorgeous tennis braclets. And they look best with a few on your arm. These in Capri cost even more!

So - being me - I got five. Two pale green peridot colored ones and three brown diamond colored ones. From Sorrento. And mine are Swarovski crystal at a very tiny fraction of that price. I'll never forget the pink sapphires though. My gosh they were gorgeous!

Leslie's custard ice cream mixture

1 egg
1 cup sugar
1 cup buttermilk
1 1/2 cups heavy thickened cream, I use home brand
1 tsp vanilla

I use my Bamix - stick blender and mix it all well.

Turn on hotplate, when hot, put saucepan on top of it and stir for two minutes while it gets hot. Do not boil. Take off hotplate and immediately strain into a bowl. Cool for an hour or so, then gladwrap and place in fridge for 24 hours.

My shortcut that I use every time now, is, when cool, place in freezer, gladwrapped for an hour, with the flavouring (or fruit mixture) added to it, then run it through the ice cream maker.

Takes less than 30 minutes to run it through. Takes a day to set hard.

Butterscotch Sauce for all sorts of good things

1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup heavy cream
2 tsp vanilla or 1 tsp of the good vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

Put in sauce pan and cook while stirring for 5 minutes. Let cool and store in fridge. Can be used to pour over ice cream as a topping, or to make butterscotch ice cream or in milk shakes.

To make butterscotch ice cream you combine the two mixtures and put them through the ice cream maker.

Click on the image to make it bigger. This was the day we arrived in Venice at the end of September - we always get a water taxi from the airport. This is the convent hotel, Istituto San Giuseppe, which is right near Campo Santa Formosa. And it's only two minutes from Piazza San Marco. You can see the front door of the convent.

There is a supermarket 100 meters away, and it's just so close to everything we like to go to - the Rialto, San Marco, Campo Santa Maria Formosa... Calle dei Fabbri for the shopping!

Italy trip

We had just arrived in Venice at the start of our trip and this is in Piazza San Marco outside the church.



After eight nights in Venice we picked up the hire car, a Mercedes, and drove to Santa Margherita Ligure where we stayed for another eight nights. We went to Portofino twice and went up to Castle Brown and even walked along to the lighthouse.