Daily Journaling Week 4 in Napier ♥

I'm following the prompts of the original Documented Life Project 2014. Week 4 : Write a secret message and then paint over all but one key word. It's my wedding anniversary this week - 25 years happily married is definitely something to be celebrated ♥ This was the FB message that my husband posted on Friday : 

It's been Wellington Anniversary weekend in my part of the world - Monday off and Napier only a couple of hours away. We set off on Saturday morning for a lovely weekend of just the two of us. I took some art supplies so I could do my daily journal art page whilst away. Decided to start with the lovely message and photo above, backed with some appropriate scrap booking paper so it's a flap in the middle of the spread.

I had torn a page out of a large print novel thinking I would highlight a hidden message. I must admit I selected the page by seeing the word married, but the others I found once I started the project. I outlined the words first with charcoal pencil, smudged with blending stump. I then applied tombow markers around and blended with water.

To "hide/disguise" the other words, I then drew over the background with my lovely white sharpie - this looks really effective 

My original spread started with old paint

and now it looks like this - love to include small photos for memory keeping where I can

You can see all my posts about this project HERE and my Flickr album HERE.
Because I always like to look at other people's holiday photos, here are highlights of our long weekend in Napier to finish. We stayed HERE and would definitely stay again

We did our research before we left, and ate very well. Recommend all of these - all open lunch and dinner so noted when we were there. The Thirsty Whale (lunch)

Three Doors Up (dinner)

Elephant Hill winery (lunch - especially superb - their Chardonnay too)

And can't go past brunch at Ujazi 

We had warm temperatures though a bit windy. Drove out to Ocean Beach on the coast - bit wild and wonderful - got our feet wet

Visited Birdwoods gallery again - always inspired by their art

Walked along Marine Parade 

and enjoyed the views out to Cape Kidnappers

And at the end of our time we discovered a new sculpture by Paul Dibble

Divine ♥ But then I've never seen a Dibble sculpture I didn't like....We've been to Napier before and always love it - just in case you're considering a visit...