just another day...

bubbles and mothers day

kids had some friends over last weekend. took some scrumptious photos and later realised i had the camera on lowest res - no bigger than they are here. blah.

should i apologise for a six week blogging holiday?  actually i quite enjoyed it.  started off because i was too busy to blog, then i had some health issues so didn't feel like it, then it had been so long trying to catch up seemed overwhelming, and then i just started enjoying not having to blog.

 

but must just blog mothers day loot.  it started with a picture by phoebe with some words dictated to her kinder teacher..

 

can you read it?  the prompt is "i think my mum is special because..." and my delightful daughters first answer is "... she hugs me and says sorry when she yells at me..."

excellent.

also a decorated canvas bag that every mum got, and a handmade table that not every mum got, just me.  complete with placemat, coaster and flowers.  the table's a little wobbly though so i didn't really trust it with the flowers.

but wait there's more.  that's just from phoebe.

alex got most of his booty from the school mother's day stall, but also made a placemat for me in class.  some truly precious spelling in here.

i didn't get the traditional mothers day sleep in or breakfast, because frank was up even earlier being a good son-in-law, driving my mum to our local market where she has a stall every week.  and the kids are too young to be trusted alone with toasters and kettles.  oh, and the fridge flooded so while some chick on the radio was saying 'happy mothers day to all the mum's out there, hope you're being spoiled with lots of pressies and your feet up' i was defrosting the ancient fridge and mopping the kitchen floor before 9am.

 

much was forgiven and forgotten though when frank arrived home with these.  the flowers and the chocolates that is, i'd bought nigella earlier in the week as my main mothers day pressie :)  some scrummy recipes in there - i recommend it already.

lots more to catch up on including a tag from the lovely jennifer about my quirks (far out where do i start?) and lots of layout shares, but my pc is already having a memory breakdown so this will have to do for now.

easter catch up

 

a horrid bout of food poisoning saw me down for the count for the lead up to easter which means that eggs blown with all good intentions never got dyed - not that that would stop phoebe.  this is her 'nest' (that would be my paint palette) complete with chickens, eggs and egg wrappers.  you might also spy my tarisota nani-bird in there.

 

 

it also meant our easter morning egg hunt nearly went totally unrecorded, as i spent most of my time faffing with white balance and exposure which had been set for indoor low light photos the night before.

 

 

last year i had a migraine the night before the school easter bonnet parade, this year it was food poisoning.  i'm seeing a theme and i think its called easterbonnetparade-itis.

 

anyone else got one of these at home?

this is me. i know - the insufferable half face camera covered head shot.    i took this because i just got about 8 inches cut off the bottom of my hair and caz wanted to see it.  only i couldn't figure out how to take the shot with both eyes open.

 

 

 

couple of easter themed layouts on the aussie blog - you can see more detail there.  the lovely mel did a couple of gorgeous ones too.

bottom one is of easter egg hunt 'bridge club' organised for the kids last week at a nearby park.  i was mid-sickness but thanks to all their efforts all i had to do was turn up, take photos and go home and sleep for the rest of the day.

 

be vewy vewy quiet. they're hunting wabbits.

   

we gave the pre-school kids a minute head start which phoebe in particular really didn't need.  they had instructions to find 22 eggs each and then stop. by the time i checked her bag there were already 32 cloistered in there, only she can't count that high so didn't know. 

my brother and his family arrive from london for a flying visit next week.  i'm very much looking forward to seeing them (through my new lens!!) and alex is more excited about his arrival than father christmas' i think.  anyway i'm desperately trying to get a million things done for sia and other stuff before their arrival (when i'm not procrastinating with long blog posts.. :) )

hope you all had a happy eggy easter.

crazy hair day

crazy hair day at school, raising money for the leukemia foundation.  a couple of brave little souls got their heads shaved, others just needed to.

honestly. this gorgoeus kid can't even look threatening with a cherry red mohawk!

 

the lovely olivia.  how beautiful is this girl. 

while her mum was busy snapping away inside, i was swiping photos of her and her kids :)

check out those eyelashes.  he turns three on sunday.  happy birthday rylie!!

 

 

and you know who wasn't going to be left out.  we went for the leopard spot look.  and clever me took along a camera sans memory card, so i snapped this one when we got home. it's been hot and this girl can whip off a dress faster than light i tell ya.

 

hot. icy pole weather.  the mohawk didn't last the day.

 

did i mention it was hot?  phoebe decided to find a cool breeze in the hallway without anyone even noticing. fast asleep with her pillow and 'blanky'.   alex nearly tripped over her on about his fourth bedroom escape attempt.

 

 

a couple of layout shares for an article in last months for keeps.  the top one is how two kids can amuse themselves with light sabers and a bar of soap.  the bottom one is about 'flanny', phoebe's invisible friend she's had for years now.

looking forward to a fun weekend of scrapping and friends at crop for kids tomorrow.  see all you melbourne girls there!

who's left at home to shoot

when i first started scrapping i had two full time and willing subjects that i could aim my camera at all the time.  and then alex went to school so phoebe became my main victim focus.  now she's spending more time at kinder, both me and jesse were at a loss.  till he fell asleep this afternoon with one of his rawhide sticks in his mouth looking to all the world like he had a 30 a day habit..

and then he heard the shutter click..

he spent just enough time in each pose before changing position slightly.  i think he's been watching phoebe.  anyway if you've ever read dooce you'll be familiar with chuck who i just love.  i'm toying with the concept...

anyway the tarisota gallery has just exploded with some amazing work from the usual suspects as well as two new unbelievably talented and welcome permanent additions in the form of jill who has had me in awe of her work for a while now and jo who is our new digi-guru and is about to have me in awe with all of her skills.  welcome to them - they're keeping us 'oldies' on our toes with both their talent and enthusiasm.

this months collection is very very beautiful.  it's been out of my comfort zone in that the papers are quite dark and elegant (two things i'm so not) - but very versatile and fantastic for boy scrappers.  as ever i found myself with more ideas than time, but here are a couple.  check out the gallery though to be blown away completely.

 

 

 

made me laugh that nic howard copied my theme almost exactly.  you'd think she could think of her own thing to do with an owl.  actually though, in fact i think she also has a clone of my son.  or is it all boys that just can't turn off and go to sleep without hours of procrastination, reading and complaints of hunger...?

 

 

taking a lot of photos of the kids sleeping lately that would be because it's really low light and i can.  phoebe sets herself up at night with babies and soft toys arranged around her very specifically and i just love being able to record it properly now with the 50mm 1.4 without having to turn the lights on.

i've been working really hard over the last week on my classes for sia, though i can tell you that wouldn't be as hard as cheryl and sally and the steering committee have been getting this amazing event off the ground.  i'll be posting sneaks for the classes as soon as i get an all clear :)

 

i'm reassessing my scrapping a bit lately.  i think i have to on a regular basis because it's easy to get the balance out of whack, and recently my scrapbook pages have been led by the photos rather than the stories.  i blame the camera to some extent - obviously there's more temptation to scrap a beautifully set up shot.  i dont want it to be at the expense of the detail though, so i'm setting myself a journalling challenge. 

a lot of the time as well i do have a story to go with a photo but i run out out room to tell it amongst all the irresistible embellishments and a need to showcase half a dozen patterned papers.  so for the next month or so, to get the story telling habit back, i'm going to journal first, find photo second and then figure out what product works best with it. 

now this is a classic example, up last week on the aussie scrap source blog.  i was honestly blown away by these deja views papers - i adored the colour palette, the quality of the papers and cutting out the delicious flowers to balance the photo became my priority.  luckily this is just an old photo i hadn't used yet that worked well with it - there was actually no story.  the tree is in the front garden and phoebe posed.  but if there were a story, where would i put it.

speaking of more changes though, i was dead thrilled to have the lovely nic finlayson join the design team at aussie scrap source.  she's an old friend who i respect and admire in both scrapbooking and real life, so having her join us is very very cool.

anyway. enough of the ramble.  or more to the point - here's to more of the ramble :)

 

oh and by the way nic h didn't really steal my idea.  i think we posted our layouts within an hour of each other and hers is totally more expertly executed. 

gosh it's been a while

my family has had a bit of a sad trot lately, beginning with the tragic and unexpected passing of my step-cousin, a vital young woman of my age with a 4 yo daughter before christmas and (hopefully) ending with the long fought though expected death of my aunt after a two year battle with cancer.   her two older sisters - my mother and aunt were with her till the end. the three of them have a long and adventure-filled history.

that, along with a few other changes, job uncertainty with frank and yet more work than i could ever wish for for me, a new kinder schedule and a house that just won't clean itself comes some way to explain my absence.

in other news...

i'm being scrapjacked! i must say i do love a guilt free scraplift and this is great fun.  they sent me a huge pack of fab Bella! products and i came up iwth the above.  the (minimal) papers are scrummy new Paper Trunk '1974'. 

i love what Sharryn and Louise have produced already and look forward to seeing everyone elses. 

 

 

 

A couple of recent layouts from the aussie scrap source blog.  honestly star wars is so big in the house right now i'm not sure when i'll be able to do an alex layout with them in it in some way.

i find i'm loving a kind of central square look in my layouts at the moment.

 

and another actually .. for a fontwerks feature in  for keeps.  i'm not a big stamper but i love the size of both of these fontwerks alphas and enjoyed playing with this one.

 

 

these photos are from australia day weekend, so they're long overdue.  we went to see the sand sculptures in Frankston.  Truly the intricacy and attention to detail in the sculptures was just amazing, and certainly worth more than the cursory glances my two gave them before whining for ice creams and swims in the sea.  me - i just wanted to play with the cool depth of field in my new lens.

now while i'm here, scroll back up a few photos and tell me - who else reckons frank looks just like the scarecrow in the wizard of oz.  and i can't believe it's never struck me before!

 

 

the highlight of the day should have been the sand sculptures, but it was actually this.  we call these 'walls of ears' because the climbing things on the one in the park near us look just like ears.   when i do this layout it's probably going to be titled determination.  alex wasn't so keen and came back to land pretty quickly, but phoebe was going to give it all she had to reach that buzzer at the top.

the exif data on my camera tells me they started at 2.01 pm

 

 

she was here at 2.06 pm

2.11 pm.  by now when she got this close and then slipped not just frank and i, but the whole crowd waiting at the bottom all let out a collective 'ohhhh.'

 

2.16 pm.  and again. so close but no cigar.  this time the attendants caught her when she got near the ground, because she'd pretty much gone over whatever time limit you get, and i didn't mind because my neck was stiff and the camera batteries were all but worn out.  she got a round of applause from the bystanders.  not bad going for a just turned five year old we thought.

 

 

what do you do

when big brother has happily and excitedly gone back to school for a new year in grade one, and after nearly two months of having a constant playmate your bereft daughter doesn't know what to do with herself?

 

 

you take her to cindy's house who spoils her with doughnuts, cookies and princess art seed bead projects..

 

 

and you have other twinkly friends over and make fairy cupcakes.

 

 

i haven't shared any scrapping for a while, such is my love affair with my new camera.  so here's a few from a sassafras lass post on the aussie blog from last week...

 

 

told you i'd be back soon

i've actually got lots of things to share, i've neglected the blog for so long (in reality it's only a couple of weeks) that it feels a little overwhelming.

if you're observant you may have detected a difference in the quality of the pics between my last post and the one before that.  if you haven't i may have just wasted an awful lot of money.

i bought myself a pressie.  i've been saving long and hard for it for a long time and it's been the sort of situation where every time i got near my goal, money would be needed for something else.  but finally i got there, and a couple of weeks ago i bought myself the nikon d80 dslr i've been coveting. 

now, apparently, i can take photos like this amazing and beautiful person.  ha. maybe not.

jumping from a point and shoot to an slr isn't as great a learning curve as it might have been because after spending nearly five years with my minolta dimage z1 i pushed it to every conceivable limit i could.  it was expensive - for us - at the time, it's served me brilliantly and i will never complain about it - it's a fully functioned creature and with it i have experimented with and learned much about aperture, depth of field, shutter speeds, iso, white balance and a whole lot more.

above and beyond all that, it alone captured around 30,000 of the most precious shots of my children's early childhood and that's absolutely nothing to sneeze at. 

the images have softened with its age, and as i've explored it's functions i've duly marvelled at it's abilities and been frustrated at its shortcomings.  but because it alone has got me where i am today - it's enabled me to work from home in a way i could never have imagined before, to share my creative work, to produce every month still life vignette and product shots for tarisota, i retire it gracefully.  (actually i may not retire it completely at all as it's a hell of a lot lighter in my handbag than the nikon!

call me sentimental, but that little machine has been my teacher, my keeper of memories, and my career-from-home-enabler.  that's no mean feat.

 

moving on though, here is a chronological journey (minus phoebe's birthday ones i've already shared) through some of the pics my d80 has produced just in the last couple of weeks, starting with one of the very first.   if you think there's a lot here you're probably right, but they are culled from nearly 2,000 i've already shot in around two weeks :)

i bought the much talked about 50mm 1.4 lens at the same time, figuring in for a penny in for a pound, really. and i don't regret it for a minute.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i am and always have been a 'words' girl.  pretty layouts are wonderful but it's the journalling, the thoughts, the stories that make a page for me.  i LOVE that with the depth of field with this lens, you can tell your story without words.

i hope you forgive my long winded picture post :)  i'm sure i'll settle soon.  or maybe not.  it's worth noting as well that every single one of these pics and phoebe's birthday pics (withe exception of the one with the balloons behind her) are unedited straight out of camera.  unbelievably cool.

five

my baby girl turned five last week.

granny rang to sing happy birthday to her.  phoebe took the phone away from her ear for a moment and whispered to me with what looked suspiciously like an eye roll and said "granny does this every year doesn't she mummy?".  yes hon, i'm afraid so.

 

presents.  one of the aspects of having a birthday this close to christmas is that you may possibly have your presents wrapped with leftover christmas paper.

 

implements at the ready to get the damned toy out of the dreaded packaging.

 

said present unwrapped, inspected and abandoned.

 

birthday cake no. 1. nigella lawsons sour cream chocolate cake.

 

bridge club birthday party no. 1  (thanks girls :) )

 

 

 

street party?!

 

birthday cake no.2 .  nigella lawson's lemon and almond. with raspberries.  heaven in a cake tin.

 

birthday party no. 2 at a playcentre

 

 

 

 

 

 

and now she's five.

lots more to share.. standby :)

holiday

apparently 'jesus the sailor' was getting a bit old.  did i mention she also sang "the cattle are glowing..."? 

i've had a little blog holiday.  i meant to post a little picture like this before i went away, because this screams 'on holiday and all is good' to me, but i hadn't taken it yet.

anyway, i'm still kind of on holiday (actually a lot to catch up on) so the gist of what we've been up to can, i hope, be got from these.

 

 

jesus the sailor is here

is what phoebe's been swanning around singing this morning.

anyway, a quick summary in photos.  thank goodness alex was feeling (though not looking) better by christmas eve and felt like helping to decorate the gingerbread house.

 

evening saw us at our local carols by twilight. i think alex felt very self conscious but he wanted to go.

 

phoebe's first fireworks..

 

and by 4am the presents were wrapped, stocking hung, santa's shortbread and reindeer's carrots 'eaten', eggnog made and all was ready for the children to wake at 6.21am. except me.

hope you all had a happy and peaceful christmas.