Back to reality - can't believe it's over..

All ready to go!

It's been a few weeks now since I returned from the most wonderful holiday - Tim Holtz cruise to the Carribean.  It was an amazing experience, even better than last year - I think because it was my second cruise I knew what to expect and wasn't so nervous, and I was sharing with my roomie Carolyn from last years cruise too.  This time we were sailing from Port Canaveral, so the flight was a bit longer than last time.

We decided to spend the night at the Disney All Star Sports resort in Florida before the cruise, we had hoped we'd arrive in time to meet some of the others for dinner, but it took us so long to find the right place to get the Disney Magic Express, then get checked in that it was too late. We hit the diner then just crawled into bed - long day of travel.  Loved the towel mickey on the bed though!

Next morning we had a few hours to kill before taking the shuttle to Port Canaveral to board the ship.

First order of the day was breakfast, pancakes with warm strawberries and extremely crispy bacon, the pancakes were so good - must be healthy a wee bit - did have fruit with them :)

We then had a walk around the resort, the place is so big and beautifully laid out, there's a wonderful pool, a Disney store, diner, amusements - we didn't see all of it.

While walking around I saw a shadow darting across the ground, and found this wee fellow on a tree, who knew lizards could be cute?

I loved how the stairs to the upper apartments were made to look like lifeguard stations - and just loved the beautiful blue sky.

The shuttle came to pick us up, and we got to see some of the other resorts and beautiful scenery on the way to the port.

Near Port Canaveral

Disney ship at Port Canaveral

Boarding the ship went really smoothly, and just as we stepped on board I heard voices calling my name - it was Pat and Lorraine, who Carolyn and I had met on the cruise last year.  It was so great to see them and catch up.

Lorraine

Pat

This time our cabin was on deck six, just above the Promenade deck, which made it so handy for getting to the conference centre for class and Mario's marketplace.  Last time it took almost to the end of the cruise before we worked out the easiest way to get there!

Children's pool

Promenade

Later that evening we had our welcome reception, we were given our ScrapMap cruise tote - a mini rucksack, and then all madly swapped out our trades before Jim West introduced Tim and his team.
My trades seemed to be well received, and I gave one to Tim too - think he liked it.

My trades - dress form pencil holders

It was great to see fellow crafters I'd met on the New England cruise, and to put faces to the usernames on
cruise yahoo group.  There's so much to write about and photos to share that I'm not going to try and cram it all into one blog-post.  Stay tuned for the next installment :)