Quilt Cruise & Scrapbook Cruise 2013

Yes I know, very very late coming, but nevertheless, here it is, the short but sweet, sum up of our cruise.
The instructors, Dorothy Clee and Amanda Daly, did a wonderful job. Dorothy, as usual, had everything organized before hand and new the system for setting up the sewing machines and all the cords and power outlets, not an easy thing to do on a ship I must say. With her incredible side man (lady), Larraine, they had the room all set up and ready to go the night we left port.

Quilting Cruises can be a bit of a challenge with all the set up and things we need to arrange ahead of time, but all went well and the ladies had a great time.
A 14 day cruise to New Zealand with 8 sea days, so plenty of time to have classes and free time to work on their projects as we had the room the entire time throughout the cruise. It was a great cruise, although as I had 2 groups, there was a lot of behind the scenes stuff to do.

Dorothy has some great pics on her blog of the quilts and some of the ladies in the group (she also has taken the time to write a great review of the cruise, well worth a read) Dorothy's blog

We are planning another quilt cruise on the Voyager of the Seas again. This is going to be a 10 night South Pacific and Fiji cruise on 27th February, 2014. You can find out about it here Crafting Cruises

The other cruise was our 4th Scrapbook Cruise with Melissa Kennedy. We had 2 conference rooms for each group. They were great size rooms, with plenty of space to spread out. The scrapbook group this time were very spoiled, they had a table to themselves. So each lady got to really spread out. I don't think we can manage that again, so they were lucky.

We did have a few problems with the scrapbook room though, but it was sorted out eventually. The air conditioning had some repairs done to it, unfortunately, the maintenance guy was not really very good at his repairs and over night we had a leak. The sad part was, 4 ladies had water all over their tables and all the work they had out on the tables, were soaking wet. Paper, wet, a disaster!

The other problem was that in New Zealand, the tides are low (or something like that), so they had to have the gangway on deck 2, where the conference rooms are. We had a choice of rooms and as the quilters had sewing machines and extension cords everywhere, they decided to move the scrapbook room. What that meant was, on each of the NZ ports, 3 in total, the ladies had to pack up and the tables were all moved. The crew would set the tables up again at the end of the port day, but still, a lot of moving around for them. The ladies were great about it though, which was a relief for me I can tell you!

We are still working on a cruise date for Melissa, not as many options for next year and groups are buying up fast which means no group space for us. Hopefully we'll have something arranged in the next couple of weeks. Keep checking back on our website Crafting Cruises

Keeping up with the bloggers

I tried for a short time to keep up with the blogging, to no success sadly. It seems like something that should be easy enough to do, I mean, look at how many people are blogging every day! But to my disappointment, mainly in my lack of discipline, I as yet, haven't been able to do it.
So once again, I will really try hard to keep up with blogging and for now, try my best to do at least once a week. That shouldn't be too hard to do right!
So here goes. I'm about to write about our just sailed, latest CraftingCruises

The Voyager

Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas left Singapore yesterday en route to Perth and will arrive in 2 weeks’ time. Very exciting to have such a big ship doing a full season of cruises out of Australia. The ladies on our 2 cruise groups, 4TH-SCRAPBOOK-cruise and 2nd QuiltCruise2013 are also very excited about it.

I'll post more info as soon as I get it.

visitors

Well I haven't been able to  keep up so well. I thought once a week at least would be easy, hum, not so.
My parents arrived from Melbourne, Australia on Tuesday, so it's been great catching up with them. They're here for a month and we plan on doing a few day trips as well as having my dad help with work around the yard, we want a veggie garden and a few other things. So we'll have lots of projects to keep him busy.

My inlaws will also be here for a week next week, so we'll have a really full house. Hopefully, lots of helpers around for me to catch up on some things around the place. It's amazing how someone so small, can take up so much time. But overall, Cassandra is good at occupying herself and great company for me.

On the cruising front I can't believe our 2 cruises in Australia 4th Scrapbook Cruise and the 2nd Australian Quilt Cruise, are just about at final payment time. Wow did that year go fast! I'll be setting up a Yahoo group so we can all chat and get to know each other before the cruise. Should be a fantastic cruise on the Voyager of the Seas. If you're joining us, look forward to seeing you soon!

Keeping up

Isn't funny how when you first start something, you have such good intentions and think you'll be able to do it without any trouble. Or when you meet up with a group of people you all tend to say, "hey we need to do this again" and everyone says of course they will. Only to find the good intentions kind of gave way to reality like, other schedules, things that come up last minute or that you just lose enthusiasm.

Yes, that's me too, you only have to look at this blog to see that!. But on a good note, I am trying harder to keep some things regular, like Cassandra's weekly  toddlers music class and another meet up. The only down side is, it seems everything is now for her and no 'adult social things at all' I guess that's life with a busy husband who is almost always off playing music on weekends and not out or visiting other families. Oh well.

On a good note, I think he will be making time to update our CraftingCruises website. I am going to do my best to keep up with the blog (some enthusiasm  such as a sign that someone is actually reading it would help!) and will be adding a yahoo groups forum for the cruises, which will be added, along with the existing forum, on our Craftingcruises website.
Let's see how we go!

2013 Australian Crafting Cruises

We have 2 cruises in January 2013, a quilting cruise and a scrapbook cruise. Both are actually on the same ship on the same sailing! Yes I'm going to be running around like crazy with both groups!!
The sailing date is 13th to the 27th January, 2013. It's a 14 night New Zealand and South Pacific cruise on the big Royal Caribbean cruise line's ship, Voyager. This will be the first time the large Voyager ships have ventured over to Australia and I can tell you, it will be a huge hit.

The 2nd Quilting Cruise with Dorothy Clee and a guest instructor, Amanda Daly, will have 5 classes. All classes are held on sea days in the mornings so you have all afternoon at explore to enjoy the amazing ship.
Dorothy has lots of info on the classes and great pics of her work, on her blog, definitely worth reading Dorothy's blog 

The 4th Annual Scrapbook Cruise  with Melissa Kennedy as the instructor, will have 6 classes. We have a good size group on this cruise and a few loyal repeat cruises. A few have been on the last three of them. You can go to Melissa's blog to see samples of her work and some posts from the last couple of cruises.

Go to Craftingcruises.com for additional information. We also have a forum with lots of information on general cruising.

Flights to Australia

So I'm a little late doing this, but I had to make sure everything was going ahead with the cruises. Oh I need to fill you in on our 2 cruises next!
So looking at the flights from Qantas and VAustralia Oh My Goodness!!!! I think they've mixed up the first class fares with economy!!! I know prices have gone up and I'm sure with the fuel situation at the moment, they will go up again. But really, almost $5000 for just Cassandra and I, that is insane!!
Maybe I need to start hanging out in some of the popular celebrity bars in Hollywood, I can try to catch a ride on someones private jet!