Branching out into a new form of expression

Yesterday I dropped the car off at the mechanic and walked home with Sally on my back. I had packed my camera into my bag as I left the house - it was a minimal bag with no baby stuff, my keys/wallet/mobile triad, water, sunglasses. camera.

 

I took my time and wended my way through the suburbs back to my house. It was a short walk (3-4km perhaps?) and lovely mild Spring weather.

Sally went to sleep on my back pretty quickly and so I was even less inclined to hurry home. We'd had a pretty ordinary night as she's cutting another tooth and going through a brain growth phase. At just less than 6 months she is now adept at rolling over back-->front and is mobile. Not crawling or creeping but enough so she can move and throw up on my boot this afternoon though.

I took the opportunity to use my camera (which is just a point and shoot Sony DSC-W180) and test out its marco function.

I love taking photos and this week I bought a "new" camera which has upgraded me from "I take photos" to "maybe I'm a photographer". I bought a second hand Nikon D40 from a professional photographer with an extra two batteries, 18-55 Nikkor lens, charger, strap and a UV filter.

I want to be knowledgeable about photography and cameras and so forth but I also want to just explore an artform. I'm not artistic at all. I'm crafty and creative but art, not so much. Is photography an artform? Not prepared to open that can o' worms right here but is this the artform that I've been looking for?

Oh yeah, back to the photographs. This one above is awesome - I loved the dew and didn't realise it had a bug in it as well but I will get into Lightroom and see how much I can blow it up.

So for giftmas this year, expect photographs from me :). And yes please for photography tips, or suggestions of equipment or things to photograph. I like little things, and flowers because of their colours. And rainbows. I'm not brave enough to get into photographing people yet but I want to!

Photo a day for January 2010 - week 1

So I planned on taking 1 photo every day for a year. As you can see from my timeline for January, not a bad start for the year with . Next time I think I'll publish these weekly - a month is a LOT to digest and reflect on.

This picture hangs in our bedroom. It is of a cafe street in Melbourne. The guy paints with a palette knife and trowel and can be found in the Victoria Markets in Melbourne.
TheHusband's crazy hair. This is him at our traditional family friends laksa night, looking a little worse for wear as we were halfway through CRAZYSEASON at work.
This is the pot of joy that greats us at our front door. Pigs face and little houses. Makes me very happy to see!
I try to regularly tip my bag out as it's a huge hobo bag from Etsy that Kate gifted me last year, and things tend to accumulate in it. In this case it wasn't too bad - mobile, keys, wallet, sunglasses, pen, Emergency flower essence, two lipbalms and a lip stain, business cards, some change, a hair clip and my pregnancy details (the orange book). I really want her Scooter Bag as well as the Hobo that I have is actually a little too deep for my arms and will graduate to a baby bag when Puggles arrives.
Jon invited a few of us over for dessert and this was his amazing preparation!

5/7 for the first week. Enjoy.

What's this font?

Ideas? I'd love to know!

A walk in the park

x

Respect is not demanded but it is commanded

The title actually has nothing to do with anything. Have some pictures to cheer yourself up.

The Rules:
1) Answer each of the questions below and search for the answer using the Flickr Search engine.
2) Choose a photo from the first three pages for each question.
3) Copy the URL of your favorite photo into this site (you'll want to set it up to have four columns and three rows to get a result like mine).
4) Printscreen, crop, save mosaic to some form of photo hosting thing and share with the world!

1. First Name (Emma)
2. Favorite Food (mint)
3. Hometown (Adelaide)
4. Favorite Color (orange)
5. Celebrity Crush (David Tenant)
6. Favorite Drink (creamy cocktail)
7. Dream Vacation (Paris)
8. Favorite Dessert (berry pie)
9. What I Want To Be When I Grow Up (midwife and mother)
10. What I Love Most In The World (love)
11. One Word That Describes Me (creative)
12. My LiveJournal Name

1. Emma Watson, 2. chocolate mint cupcake, 3. A Day Out, 4. orange for orange day!, 5. Thoroughly Good People, 6. Creamy chocolate cocktail, 7. Last day in Paris, 8. 3 Berry Pie, 9. It's a GIRL!!!, 10. he loves me/he loves me not., 11. "Creative Hands" - Mindy, 12. for badylugz (which hasn't shown up but click the link to see!)

Hippo birdy two ewes

I'm older today! 29 now! Yay! Nearly at the end of my 20s. Not sure how I feel about that. Today's horrorscope tells me:

It’s not a good day to postpone tasks or chores until tomorrow, no matter how straight-forward things may seem. Right now the signs are looking good for getting ahead of yourself in terms of work or school, so take advantage, because tomorrow’s planets warn of an unforeseen increase in your workload!

which means I should get organised to get out of the house to go and renew my license (wow that means I've had it for 10 years now!) and do a few other things. And do more of my assignment instead of playing online Uno...

Other dot points in my life:

• Doctors don't have a clue, and what they say is usually crap. I have little respect for most obstetricians to give honest, balanced advice but am rather spoilt by having a lovely GP who does call it like it is. The fact that a physician then doesn't do the same thing as my GP shouldn't surprise me but it did. Physicians make money by convincing people that they are broken, incapable, at risk and on a long slow path to barely being able to function (MUCH LIKE MANY OBS!!!!!) and I need to talk to more people who know I'm amazing, driven and focused, as well as progressing amazingly well and if not, then I'm able to adapt.
• House hunting blows goats. Especially when you find the perfect house, and the perfect landlord, who thinks you're perfect... only to say absolutely not to having a cat. And so I have to call up and beg for a reconsideration. When we're getting, but in the meantime my stomach is in knots waiting.
• Baby show was horrendous and amazing and fabulous all in one today. There were LOTS of formula companies there that made me VERY VERY angry. The only helium balloons were from K@ricare for eg and that made me want to break things. I made a point of going to the cloth nappy places, and to the sling places, and to the breast feeding association and so forth, rather than the standard crap. I did look at prams but that was more for fun with my sister. I miss being around women and midwives something fierce - October can't come soon enough!

Cutest toddler ever:

Very cute puppy:

New hair:

And so on and so on - more are on Flickr

Progress on 101 things

I have managed to mark a few things off my 101 things in 1001 days list:
#68 from a lovely gift from ManFriend;
#69 and #49 last weekend;
#72 in style on 26th with a bbq and JJJ Hottest 100 party; and
#87 and #90 just these past few days!

Next on my list:
#9
#11
#67
#73
#95

I went to the zoo

If you notice that the animals are all in the shade, half asleep, or looking pained, it's because it was VERY hot that day and the poor animals weren't really enjoying it. I loves the zoo though - this was Taronga Zoo in Sydney and it is an amazing place.

Tuesday I've got Friday on my mind...

Things are going on in my life and I've been of two minds as to whether to post here or not. On one hand, this is a blog. It's public. It's read by who knows whom, and so forth. But on the other hand, I need to have somewhere to write about:

• school
• life
• health
• fitness
• ttc
• wedding, marriage, that kind of thing
  
• moving house
• cooking, crafting and creating
  

in a respectful-but-totally-me way. Mostly because otherwise I will be labelled as obsessed by friends and family, and mostly by ManFriend (soon to be TheHusband actually, with only 3 weeks to go, but I think I need another name for him on here) as I tend to get obsessed with the details of something, get to be an expert in it, then move on. No harm, no foul - I just like having knowledge!

So I will turn over a new leaf on here and post some Real stuff that is going on in my life. Not just the minutea that I tend to post about here.

So, here are some photos of me! I got a new dress and loves it. I struggled to take a photo of that at the time as I don't have a tripod, but this is the best shot so far:



I have a heap more photos on my camera of recent excitements so will get the off in a minute and upload them... bring on instant transfer, sortage, improvement, upload, tagging and presentation of photos!!

Photo challenge

This weekend I have a lot of time to myself and while I want to finish knitting a project before I have my shoulder operation, I came up with a challenge to take some photos - feel free to steal and copy!

1. A self portrait
2. Where you live
   
3. Your favourite thing
4. A seasonal / nature shot
   
5. The place you spend most of your time
   
6. Something that sums up a dream / wish / goal / desire you have for the future
7. Happiness for you is...
   
8. Something you see on a walk / bike ride / picnic / drive / other activity you do this month
9. People you see but don't know
   
10. A typical meal or food experience for you
    

Engagement party planning

Because it's my blog, because I'm in the home stretch of Nablopomo, and because the e party is next Saturday, here are some thoughts:

• I have a dress to wear. It is fabulous. I also have shoes to wear - I have to put some grip on the bottom of them still though!
  

• I'll deal with my hair next week - it may have faded a lot by then and need topping up but it may also be amazing still.

I need to organise a few things:

• food for me and Manfriend
• drinks for us as well
• rubbish bags
• card table
• things to sit on
  
• ice and ice boxes
• balloons so people can find us in the gardens
  
• eyebrow wax
• massage
• camera charged and ready to take photos
• napkins and plates (biodegradable)
• celebratory cupcakes (because I want them and my sister is an amazing pastry chef)
• Long Island Iced Tea (and a container to carry it in)
• ?music
  

Flowers!

Summer doesn't really set in around here until late January, and in the meantime the flowers are gorgeous!













And proof that occassionally water does fall from the sky here:

Hair today, gone tomorrow

Before: , During: , After:

More photos are on Flickr oddly enough. It's a response to stress in part (exams, uni being horrible, work, injury, Centrelink... how much more can a girl handle?) but is also because I love love love having short hair. It's not that long ago that I had short hair that was also kind of blonde (it was more Tweety Bird than the lemon it is now though):


That was my 25th birthday, 3.5 years ago. I just threw the watch away as I'd worn the silver coating off it and it now left green marks on my arm. The necklace I still own and love to pieces. And the dress for that matter!