golly gosh isn't this the prettiest thing you've ever seen!

I have made no secret of the fact that I have been longing for an i-phone for, well, pretty much since they came out. I have watched as my friends have taken the plunge and coveted them from afar. I have seen how great all those apps look and lusted after the pretty covers. I have waited, and stuck with my trusty Nokia for the duration of my contract (because I'm not one to back out of contracts!) Until finally, my contract ran out and I decided that life is too short and that it's good for the soul to treat yourself once in a while! And so I give you......my new i-phone!

 

 

Ok, I admit I'm toying with you a bit here only showing the box, but it's my birthday tomorrow and I want to wait until I have a pretty cover before the actual phone makes its blog debut! But let it be known that we were destined to be together, in fact, it's like a little part of me I didn't know was missing has suddenly popped into place! And as I suspected, those apps are just the most terrific fun ever! Oh how I love it :)

What are you loving this weekend?

Friday photo faves

I've sort of made a promise to myself that I'm going to take a photo a day to document my last year of my 30s. I've tried this before, the photo a day thing with limited success but I really want to challenge myself, and what a cool record of a year it could be if I stick with it. So spurred on by the ever lovely Maegan and the 102 others who have signed up to do the same, I've been cracking the camera out each day, whether I've felt inspired or not. I'm allowing myself until next Saturday to get into the rhythm since my final 30-something year doesn't start until then :)

And you know what? It's been really fun. Trying to think of new ways to take photos of things I've taken hundreds of photos of before. Setting up little still lifes around the house. And just getting back into the habit of documenting our daily life again. I've missed taking photos of the things we do and the general stuff that makes us us.

I'm also rediscovering the joy in just taking pictures for me. Even on the days when I'm not really in the mood to get the camera out, once I start I just want to keep on going. I think this is what I've always loved about photography, that when I look through the lens I see things differently from other people. It's a little bit addictive. And although the things I'm taking pictures of may not be what people expect someone to take photos of, these pictures are my way of showing the world how I see it. Which I think is pretty cool!

Surely not too many mums out there are taking pictures of the new Match Attax binder, but I'm pretty sure this is going to be a big feature of our lives over the next few months, and so it's a part of the world that I inhabit. Admittedly, this is a huge can of worms which I will most likely moan about in posts over the next few months, but for now it seems important to one of us and that makes me happy.

And if ever there was a time of year to be taking photos, surely it has to be now. All that autumnal colour and amazing light - it's photography heaven! 

My favourite of this week, though, has nothing to do with autumn, but oh how it makes me smile. Meet 'Pupil of the Week' from Room 10! His reward for 'good comprehension answers'! Can you hear my heart sing?

I'm excited about trundling along on this little photography journey of a year in my life. And writing about it here gives me that extra push I need to be disciplined and keep going. So please, come back in a week or two and see how I'm getting on - a little company on a long journey always makes it so much more fun!
 
 
  
 

Too cool for school

Too cool. Too cute. Too small! It would be fair to say I'm a little in shock at how quickly school days have overtaken baby days. Surely it was only a few weeks ago that Conor and I spent our mornings with our frineds and their equally small babies at baby massage. It certainly seems that way to me. But apparently that was actually 4 years ago. We appear to have gone from this

to this in an unacceptably short period of time!

 

Let me show you that again. From this

 

to this!

 

And how this happened I have absolutely no idea. So grown up. And with such an amazingly huge knot in his tie for one so young. Like the flattened-with-water hair, it's all about the style!

Really, I have nothing more to say about these pictures other than they amaze me in so many ways. And at the risk of this turning into a tearfest I shall leave it at that :)
   

Pompeii - Italy photofest part 2 (don't say I didn't warn you!)

Just before you begin, I'm going to offer the warning again. There were literally 100s of photos of ancient ruins on my memory card and it was hard to narrow them down! So leave now if you want - I won't hold it against anyone.

Pompeii was top of our to-do list for our Italian adventure. I remember learning about the eruption of Vesuvius when I was in school and have long wanted to visit there. Patrick was particularly excited about the visit. He has a book which tells the story of the disaster based on some of the findings the archaeologists have made there. I think that really helped both him and me to imagine the events as we were walking along the cobbled streets and listening to the audio tour tell us about the buildings and life at that time.

Several memories will linger from our visit to Pompeii. First, the heat. It was stifling. There was no shade. We had 2 small people with us. It was the hottest I think I have ever been!

Secondly, that Conor wore his Crocs. There was nothing in our preparatory reading which had said 'Wear closed shoes with thick socks because there is sand and dust everywhere and you will suffer unimaginably if you don't'. And we did! Every 30 seconds we had to stop to shake the stones and sand out of his shoes. It would be fair to say that he doesn't suffer well!

But the lasting memory I will have of Pompeii is the scale of the site and the grandeur that is evident in the excavations. Pillars and statues. Symmetry everywhere. How amazing it must have been in the amphitheatre at the height of its glory. Just amazing.

(clearly these last 2 photos are more evidence that we were there than of the grandeur!)

I could lie and say that these are the last photos of Italy I shall post, but you know there are more on my computer and that you will either see them as they are or in a layout someday soon. But I shall try and post of other delights like our visit to the north coast this weekend or the piles of laundry that are building around here. You shall have to wait and see!
 

Italy photofest!

It has taken me almost 10 days to accept that our holiday is over and that grey skies are likely to prevail until the day we start back to school. It just seems so darn unfair that a trip you have planned for for months is over so quickly and has been transformed into a mountain of memories to delve into during the rest of summer and a folder of photos which will wait to be printed or scrapped. However, today it is sunny (for now) and I feel inspired to share some of our holiday with you. It will be easier for all of us if I do this in stints, so this will be phase 1 of the photofest!

We stayed in a beautiful little town called Sant'Agata, about 20 minutes from Sorrento, up in the hills where a gentle breeze made the mediterranean temperatures just perfect. Our apartment was beautiful but the pool area was just amazing. On our first day there I felt like I was in some 1930s Agatha Christie novel (possibly Evil Under the Sun but without any of the evil and treachery!) There were only 7 apartments and the pool was rarely very busy which was great for the boys as they learnt to swim and for us as we remembered how to unwind!

Sorrento was absolutely everything I imagined it would be, and then some. Piazzas with cafes and restaurants, old cobbled streets festooned with bougainvillea winding their way to the sea, fishing boats and seafood, sunsets to die for and friendly Italians who never seemed to tire of Conor's white blond curls!

And Vesuvius, always present but slightly hazy during our visit.

I remember thinking when we took these pictures that it would be impossible to forget how hot the sun felt on our skin and how desperate we were for a drink, but alas I just can't recreate the feeling (not without turning the heat up full and leaning against the radiator in the kitchen!) We shall simply have to print these photos and start an Italy Fund jar to save for next year!

Look out for photofest part 2, in which you will get to see a hundred photos of the ancient ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum, because that is all there seemed to be on my memory card when I uploaded it! For now, I am heading out into the sun to see if there is any warmth in it at all at this latitude!

time flies

10 years ago ...

:: we got married.

:: it was much sunnier and warmer!

:: we thought being married was easy peasy (ha!)

:: we could nip to the shops any old time we liked without having to arrange childcare.

:: we dreamt of the day we would have a family (or that might just have been me!)

:: we each thought the other was the bee's knees! (we mostly still do!)

:: we had no idea what lay ahead of us.

:: we thought we couldn't be happier - we were wrong :)

Today we....

:: woke early because of the rain beating down on the roof.

:: had 2 small boys clambering over us in bed.

:: spent much of the day ferrying the boys to and from CSSM at church - 3 separate time slots!

:: managed to grab an anniversary coffee at the garden centre.

:: spent a lot of time sorting out car/house/money issues.

:: one of us sustained a pretty bad football injury - as yet not returned from the hospital!

:: still think we are pretty lucky that the other one chose us!

I can only imagine what the next 10 years will bring!!

Gone sailing

 

Or rather, taking several flights to Italian shores. It's really all too exciting, and we definitely need this holiday - especially after the stress of packing for foreign shores with a child who is "not really interested in food"!  I'll be back in the blogoshpere in a couple of weeks, so until then, arrivederci :)

never work with children

You are probably no stranger to my boys on this blog, especially as they are more often than not the main subjects in my photos. And, if I do say so myself, I have shared some gorgeous shots of them over the years. Shots that have great lighting, lovely composure and catchlights galore. Today I thought you might like to see some more photos of them, so without further ado, I give you yesterday's photos.

This is the type of photo I have literally thousands of on my computer. And I have most likely deleted thousands more. But while I love the technically great ones, these are the ones that make me laugh out loud and that I go back to time and again when I want to remember a particular event or trip we took. They are the ones that show me how amazing these two are, even in the midst of the mid afternoon meltdowns and panic attacks about wobbly teeth falling out! The photos that will bring a smile to my face even when I am at the point of throwing an uncooperative computer out the window. Of course, I did threaten them in order to get this next photo. I mean, what kind of semi-professional photograher would I be if I didn't get the cute brothers together shot?

I took these pictures yesterday at Mount Stewart, one of my favourite places in the world. In fact, I think it merits a whole blog post of its own so that I can show you just how it has achieved such elevated status!

The other wonderful thing about Mount Stewart in the sun yesterday was that I got to sport my fabulous new sandals. Oh how I love them! (And my sister for not minding that I totally copied her and got the same ones she already had but in a different colour.)  Wearing Fly shoes is like having a permanent foot holiday! If you haven't yet enjoyed this treat I would highly recommend it - there is no limit to the joy you will experience or to the additional injection of style to your (I imagine already fabulous) outfit!

So now you know how I've been spending the sunny days, how about you?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

One moment in time

A couple of weeks ago I came across a post on lucky number 13 which got me pretty excited. Amy alerted me to an event on the New York Times photojournalism blog Lens which wanted to capture a moment in time across our world. All you had to do was check out what your time was and then take a picture during that minute and upload it to their website. Well, the photogeek in me was beyond excited to have the chance to take part in a worldwide photo event! So I duly found out my time - 4pm - primed the camera and waited patiently. In the time that I waited I planned many fancy dancy photos which would show my photographic prowess to the world at large - stunning portraits of the boys, or close ups of bluebells in the hedge. Perhaps I could walk down to the beach and shoot a perfect landscape. The possibilities were endless in my mind. But the reality was this - it was a Sunday afternoon and there is a football net in our garden. The only shot I was ever going to have the opportunity to get was going to involve both a ball and a net. And 2 giddy boys! This is the best of what I got during that minute of time.

I love it so much more than any of the shots I had planned in my head. And just now I checked out the virtual globe of photos (tens of thousands that were uploaded!) and found my shot right here! The photogeek in me is nearly bursting with excitement over the whole project. You should check it out if you have a few moments (or a lot of moments because you'll be going nowhere for hours once you start!). So amazing to see what's going on in thousands of lives all over the world at exactly the same moment. I love photos. And the internet rocks!

Incidentally, the bluebells in the hedge did get a brief look in!

No realities.....just blessings

Today it seems only right to push aside any of the realities of the past week that have irritated me or upset our plans (like the shocking rain and the almost fatal virus on our laptop) and stick to the blessing of this weekend's celebrations. Particularly as it was so aptly included on some of the Easter cards Patrick designed.

 

Love the onoing line of evangelistic art he has going on! Also, the amazing action I used on this photo is by Johanna Riddell - she most kindly posted them for free on her blog! Love the vintage look it's given this picture.

As an additional nod to Easter, I thought I'd share some of the beautiful Easter-ish images I found on flickr recently. Really, the inspiration on there is nothing short of amazing and I have been known to lose almost days of my life just moving from one photostream to another!  Really, look how lovely these pictures are.
 

1. *** *** ***, 2. Blue Jelly Beans...., 3. Untitled, 4. Target Tuesday: Easter Egg Dishes, 5. Spring Pastels, 6. 93/365 - Green, 7. Bowl Of Paper Flower Eggs, 8. the vase~, 9. Painted Eggs

I have lots more to post about, photos of the boys and some layouts, but I'm going to leave that for a day or two because the sun has come out for this glorious day and I intend to enjoy it to the full. I hope you have a great Easter :)