Day 77 - 17 March 2012 - play

Hello!

This week's theme over at Carly Robertson's Photo Friday Challenge is play. Day 77 gave me heaps of opportunities to capture play photos, as we attended my niece's 1st birthday party.

This photo is my little girl counting for hide-and-seek.

We had a fun day.

:-)
Michelle

Day 74 - 14 March 2012 - Everyday

Hello!

Day 74 saw me capture my photo for the Photo Friday Challenge, which has a theme this week of Everyday. I left work early and because I was early, the train was almost empty. Usually it is jam-packed full and there is no chance of a photo. This is the train, I take it to and from work.

I'll tell you a story about the behaviour of people who are catching this train. They updated the timetables a few months ago and now there is an all-stations train followed by an express train a few minutes later leaving from Central Station.  I can take either, because they both stop at my station. The strange behaviour I have noticed is that when the all-stations train comes, everyone crowds around the door to get in (normal), but if you are at the back of the pack (which I often am because I'm usually just catching it with a second to spare), you'll suddenly find yourself stuck behind immobile people who are gathered around the doors. You can't get in because these people are blocking the doorway. It took me a while to figure out what was happening. And this is CRAZY. People are crowding around the door of the first train so that when the express train arrives they'll be the first on the train, so the people who NEED to get the all-stations train have to PUSH people out of the way to get on. The funny thing is, when I have missed that all stations train and had to wait for the express, I don't encounter problems getting on the train or getting a seat usually (and I don't crowd the door), so I don't know why people do this. Strange.

You really did get an EVERYDAY photo and story with this one, LOL!

:-)
Michelle

Day 68 - 8 March 2012 - Blurry/OOF

Hello!

Day 68's journey was to attempt to capture this week's photo for Carly's Photo Friday Challenge where the theme is Blurry/OOF (out of focus). I raced around my yard, looking for subjects, clicking away. I collected all sorts of images, too many to share!  Then while I was editing away, trying to find one or two worth sharing, my daughter started her violin practice next to me and I remembered that one of my 2012 in Photos buddies had taken a photo of her son on his violin that I wanted to try out. So out came the camera again, and I got my photo.

I'm going to try this again, because I'd like to stage it a bit and get the chance to focus on a few different focal points along the violin, and get more of the bow in. This time it was just me clicking away while she played. Lucky for me she was in a mood to LET me click away at her.

Thank-you, Carly, for setting this challenge. It really did challenge me to use my manual focus and practise working with depth of field. I could do with more practice, obviously, but this was a great start. Thank-you.

Now I will share some of the plethora of other photos I took.

Bird of Paradise. We have a beautiful huge plant, but it hides in the middle of some shrubs, so we rarely see it. I pulled the branches back to capture this photo.

 I'm not sure what this is. It is a weedy vine that wanders along our retaining wall.

The retaining wall. I like this photo. Pattern and texture.

 Dead Agapanthus flower head with a couple of old seeds hanging on. I quite like the colours in this photo.

 Jade Fern (I think that is its name). These are new shoots. Gorgeous colours. The mature leaves are green.

 Still the Jade Fern.

 Murraya (Mock Orange). Oh, these smell divine...heavenly!

I hope you enjoyed your wander through my garden with me! Thanks for visiting!

:-)
Michelle

Day 57 - 26 February 2012 - Sweetness

Hello!

It's Day 57! I can't believe I'm managing to keep up with this daily photo business! Today's post is also my entry into this week's Photo Friday Challenge, where the theme is sweetness.

Today was the day of our morning tea for my mother-in-law's birthday. I made quiche, chocolate slice, macarons and cupcakes. The cupcake recipe you can find on yesterday's post.  I should give you the macaron recipe too, because they were DELICIOUS. It was my first time making them, and I'll be making them again. Looking at this photo, I wish I'd chosen my white tablecloth instead of my Italian lemon one, LOL!

I actually used a couple of different recipes to make the macarons. The first one I looked at didn't tell me how or when to mix the egg white mixture with the almond mixture! Following here is my adaptation of the recipes I looked at:

Macarons
Ingredients
150g icing sugar
75g ground almonds (almond meal)
2 large egg whites (room temperature)
35g caster sugar
food colouring

Method
Preheat oven to 170c/325F and line two baking sheets with non-stick baking paper.
Sift the icing sugar and almond meal together.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Then add caster sugar 1 tablespoon at a time and continue beating until the eggwhite mixture is stiff and glossy.
Mix colouring and almond meal and icing sugar into the egg mixture. Mix it in well (you aren't gently folding here, you are making sure it is all mixed together). The mixture should be thick but still wet.
Place the mixture into a piping bag with a plain nozzle and pipe circles onto the baking paper.
Set aside for at least 30 minutes to allow the mixture to settle and for a "skin" to form on top of the macarons. (One recipe I read recommended setting them aside for 5 hours! Which I didn't do.)
Place in oven for 9 - 10 minutes. Remove from oven and leave to cool on the tray.

You can join these with jam, cream, buttercream, or ganache. This time I used the buttercream from my cupcakes (see my cupcake recipe), but next time I think I might make a ganache, the buttercream was a bit sweet for me. The macarons by themselves were divine!

Here's another photo:

Have I made you hungry for sweets?

:-)
Michelle

Day 47 - 16 February 2012 - Love

Hello!

Day 47 I looked for my "love" photo for Carly's Photo Friday Challenge. I've been looking for this photo all week. I had all sorts of ideas of catching my girls being nice to each other, or something similar, LOL! Ah, it is so rare for me to capture my girls being loving in a photograph, I was truly suffering from delusions when I first thought of the idea. It didn't help that I spent three days in Canberra, or that my big girl headed off to camp today.

I got home last night from my travel and read my big girl a story before lights out. This morning I helped get her organised and gave her big cuddles to fortify her for her very first ever school camp. As I was choofing her out the front door to grab a lift to school with Daddy, I thought about the "love" theme and ran back inside the house for my camera.

I see one of my jobs as a parent is to help my girls grow up confident and able to go away from the home knowing that they are safe to take these little risks and that they are loved completely, either for little trips like this, or for the big one when they eventually leave home. I could see my girl had butterflies in her tummy, but she went out to the car, got in, and waved me good-bye with a giant smile on her face.  I'm totally proud of her. And I will be giving her giant hugs when I pick her up from school tomorrow afternoon.

:-)
Michelle

Day 36 - 5 February 2012 - Animals

Hello!

Day 36 is also my entry into Photo Friday Challenge for this week. The theme this week is animals. Today I had photographic frenzy trying to capture an animal. First I'll start with my actual final photo... then I'll show you the runners-up, LOL!

Here is my dog, Coco, my gorgeous spoodle (aka a cockapoo).

I'll show you a quick selection of the photos I took to try to capture her. This is only a few of the many:

Can you tell she doesn't sit still?

Here are my other animal subjects of today.
My daughter's fish, Bubbles:

Our budgie, Sunny:

And my friend's guinea pigs, and I forget their names for the moment, Sunshine and Princess?

The guinea pigs were funny. They were outside their cage and chewing the bars to try to get back inside.

It was a fun day, thanks for the theme this week, Carly, I really enjoyed it.

:-)
Michelle

Day 28 - 28 January 2012 - Shoes

Hello!

As well as being Day 28, it's also time for the Photo Friday Challenge. The theme this week is Shoes.

Shoes have been on my mind for the last few weeks. Being the start of the school year I had to take my eldest daughter shopping for some new shoes for school. At the shop I took her to the kids section and selected a pair that I thought would fit - oh, the groans and moans that followed! Being the same size as I would wear, I put the shoes on, and then conceded her point that they were VERY uncomfortable. We headed off to the "ladies" section and found the perfect pair. Twice the price, but the perfect pair, nonetheless.  Here is the point of this whole story... my 9 year old daughter has bigger feet than me! I had to get her a pair of shoes a half size bigger than my own size. One day my first-born is going to tower over me, LOL!

Today's photo is her shoes and my shoes matched together. It is no optical illusion, those shiny white shoes are bigger than my old greyed shoes.

Thanks for visiting!

:-)
Michelle

Day 22 - 22 January 2012 - Pocket Light

Hello!

Today I attempted to get my Photo Friday Challenge photo taken. I'm not really sure I captured the theme for this week. I might try again. The theme is "pocket light", meaning you need to capture a small pocket of light in the photograph with the rest being dark.

What I found was a Rain Lily. We have rain lilies all around  our pool. You would never know they were there, but when it rains, up they pop, and they flower gorgeous pink flowers a day or so later.  Most of them live under our hedge in the shade. This particular flower had the plant under the hedge and the flower reaching out into the light.

I'm thinking the shade may not have been dark enough for the flower to qualify as pocket light.

I also took a few other flower photos today, which I will share also.

My daughter's rose bush.

I liked this photo, but I decided to crop it a bit closer to see what I got. I can't decide which version I like better - this one, or the next one.

Some rose buds, too.

I also caught my dog, Coco, in a pose. It is very rare for her to sit still long enough, or to show me her eyes, for me to get a photo. It happened today.

She was covered in dirt. She'd been having fun!

:-)
Michelle

Day 15 - 15 January 2012, a little SPARKLE

Hello!

This week's theme at Photo Friday Challenge is "Sparkle". I have spent the last couple of days thinking about Sparkle.

Yesterday I was going to take my camera to my daughter's swim squad session and capture the sparkling water while the kids swam their thousands of laps, but I forgot my camera, oops! That's how you ended up seeing my dinner yesterday instead. :-)

Today I decided it was the day to capture Sparkle. And it is raining. Not much light. Not much sparkling happening around here. LOL! 

I decided that Sparkle for me brought up images of diamonds. Now, I don't own as many diamonds as I would like to, but I do have three in my engagement ring.  Much like a self-portrait, taking a portrait of your hand is quite a tricky task! I took my hand all over the house, wiggled it around in the light, and had a very challenging time trying to get that ring to actually SPARKLE.  I even cleaned it!

This photo is the result of my hand's photographic session:

Trust me, they do sparkle, and I love these rings. We haven't been apart since my husband gave them to me. They stay glued to my fingers day-in, day-out, every single day.

:-)
Michelle

Day 6 - 6 January 2012 - Self Portrait

Hello!

Until this afternoon, I had a photograph of my washing line filled with the rainbow laundry of my two girls planned for Day 6. Then I saw Lori's post for Day 5, and thought perhaps I would try a self-portrait instead.  My rainbow laundry can wait for another day, LOL!

I didn't realise how tricky a self portrait would be with an SLR. I'd forgotten that the auto-focus required my eye to be behind the viewfinder (the focus points are decided based on what I'm looking at). So I manual focused on my knee at a distance that I thought my face would be from the lens, turned the camera around, and took the photo in manual focus. Actually I took about 15 photos. No make-up, hair straight from an afternoon swim, this photo definitely needed some "special" treatment.

Here it is:

I'm going to play around with colour a bit more this year. This was fun.

:-)
Michelle

Edited to add: I just found another photo challenge which I would like to take part in. It is Photo Friday Challenge by Carly. By luck, my Friday photo was a self-portrait. :-)