Sunday, April 28, 2013

Playing with Light at the Science Centre

Today we headed into the Science Centre to see their new exhibit called "Playing with Light" which was awesome.  We have a yearly pass to the Science Centre and it expires on Tuesday so we had to go today to get the benefit of this show.  We got in there about 11 am and it wasn't very busy which was great for us and about 10 mins into it they announced that the "sound show" was on so we headed into the little room to listen to information about sound and all the kids participated and answered questions and got a go up the front.  I actually found it very interesting and the kids thought it was great to.  James didn't want to be a Science Assistant however Sienna did so she stood up there and was part of the demonstration about "sound waves".  We had a great time and totally worth going to see it.   James loved the "Dodge the Laser" which if you picture your mind back to Catherine Zeta-Jones in Entrapment with Sean Connery where she is practising all night to get through those laser beams so they can get the mask.  James loved this bit.

My favourite was "Painting with Infrared" where you had a bit paintbrush type gadget which you clicked over a laser colour (red, yellow, green, blue) and then you started painting the wall with the laser - I thought that was super cool.  I know Sienna loves painting rainbows so I suggested she have a go at that because she could use all the colours and not have to think of something to draw bearing in mind people are lined up waiting while the drawing is going on.  I came back to it later and drew the word Mum.

There were lots of interesting things there and it was a happy, fun morning.  Here's a few pictures from our time at "Playing with Light".




Friday, April 26, 2013

Sleeping In

This morning I went to check on Sienna at 7.00 am as I hadn't heard her awake and nor had she come in to say good morning to me when I discovered this scene in her room.  She was still fast asleep curled up in bed with her ducky and two other teddies.



It is very unlike Sienna to be sleeping in and in fact unlike both my kids so when they do it firstly I have to check that they are breathing and just asleep because it's unusual.  Sienna finally woke up at 7.30 am just as I was wondering in to take a picture on my iphone.  The above photos were taken on my DSLR with a pumped up ISO.  Sienna is usually the first one to wake up in our house anywhere from 5.30-6.00 am so sleeping in until 7.30 am was a big thing.  Hopefully it was all that bike riding she did at Bellbird Grove yesterday on grass rather than her coming down with something.

Thursday, April 25, 2013

Anzac Day 2013

Today we went for a BBQ to Bellbird Grove with my family as we did last year on Anzac Day and of course  the kids wanted to make Anzac Biscuits today.  We also made some lemonade with our home grown lemons and pita bread with Rosemary and Sea Salt which all mind you were consumed in a matter of seconds.  Here's how our day looked today.












    

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Week in the Life 2012 (WITL)

This time last year I participated in the Week in the Life Project which is the brain child of the very talented Ali Edwards.  Last year was my 4th year I have done this project and I had this printed into a book with Blurb and I would have to say it's one of my favourite projects and photo book.

After seeing Lynette Nettio's WITL for 2011 I was hooked on her fabulous design and purchased her templates for my pages.  I added lots of different things to my book and it went something like this.
  • Introduction to our family
  • Family Mealtimes
  • Seeing the Everyday
  • Monday - 4 double spreads (morning, lunch, afternoon and evening)
  • Tuesday  - same as above
  • Wednesday - same as above
  • Thursday - same as above
  • Friday - same as above
  • Saturday - same as above
  • Sunday - same as above
  • Instagram pics
  • Profile picture of James and his list of favourites ie meals, snacks, tv shows, dvd, games etc
  • Profile picture of Sienna - same as above
  • Profile picture of Kathy - same as above
  • History and photos of our suburb from Wikipedia
  • 21 questions to ask your kids (these were asked the month before but wanted them included because it was how they viewed things at 8 and 5 in 2012)

So all of these pages gave an insight into our life in April 2012 and I just LOVE IT.

I have participated in Photo a Day for a year which at the beginning of the year can seem extremely daunting to be committed to that every day.  It's actually quite easy whereas this 7 day intensive photo taking from morning to night with everything you are doing is crazy intense and I think harder than photo a day project.  However the rewards from looking at this book far outweighs the paparazzi style of photography once you have your finished book in your hands.

I tackled this project in a few stages as follows:-

  1. During the 7 days just take as many photos as you can and you are not going to use them all however you are going to have a big choice then and what you take on the day may not make it into the book but it gives you options and you are still recording your life anyway.
  2. About a month later I picked and added the photos I wanted to the templates and left it at that.
  3. About a month later I started putting words to the templates about the pictures and these are all saved as jpegs so one double page is one jpeg file which is uploaded into blurb to span 2 pages.
  4. Then after that I uploaded them all to Blurb and had to check the "bleed" margins so that my words wouldn't be cut off so this was a little time consuming as I would see I might need to make the word columns narrower and adjust the file in photoshop, save it as my jpeg and load it up again.  Because the book was going to be quite thick in the middle I didn't want any words cut off so this was important.
  5. Doing it in stages helps because it is a big task and even Lynette said when she started to put the book together she didn't realize how much time it would take to get it all done but also believes it is totally worth it. 

I could have tackled this project one stage a week but raising kids, helping with homework, dinners, baths reading and down time this was how I tackled my project and as we all know spending a lot of time on one project for a long time in the end you just want it finished.  Stages worked best for me ie Taking photos, putting photos into templates, writing words, loading them into blurb, checking page bleed so that the words wouldn't end up in the bindings so adjusting and reloading and then ORDERING and RECEIVING which was the best part.....this time last year was when we did this project and I can remember every little thing we did because of this book and it brings back special memories.  If you have never participated in Week in the Life 2013 should be your year so keep an eye out for Ali Edwards posts come fall.  She usually gets well prepared the month before with templates and helpful tips.

Here are some of the pages but not all of them.  Ali is doing WITL in fall this year (which I think is our September) so I will be doing it again in 2013 and I think I'll just stick with this same format and book from Blurb and the quality of this book is outstanding.



















Monday, April 22, 2013

Afternoon Light

Yesterday afternoon the light in the backyard was stunning and the kids were standing in the perfect spot for me to capture it (with a bit of "to the left" "to the right" from me) however I was thrilled with these few shots and particularly of James since he is not always in the mood for photos as much as his sister so I have heaps of her at the moment but I so love this one of James.  In the first photo of Sienna she is holding a lizard that she caught, she loves insects and little creatures and is always catching things in our backyard and I love this about her.










Sunday, April 21, 2013

On Our Walk

Yesterday afternoon we went for our Photo Walk to look for "Patterns" and we came across two beautiful Tawny Frog Mouth Owls in two trees in our street about 6 houses away.  It was so wonderful seeing them in the suburbs and knowing they were safe in the trees.  When we came across them I had my standard 24-70mm zoom lens on and walked home to get my 70-200 zoom to get some closer pictures of these beautiful creatures.  These Owls were such an unexpected surprize on our little neighbourhood walk.


Saturday, April 20, 2013

Photo Walk | Pattern

This afternoon Aunty Lisa, the kids and I went for a little Photo Walk which is inspired by Photo Walks posted by Elise Cripe on her blog.  The kids and I have only done one Photo Walk in our neighbourhood which was May last year and that Photo Walk was on TEXTURE.  Today's Photo Walk Theme was PATTERN.  Here's our photos from the patterns we discovered while we were on our little walk.
















And the end of our walk we spotted this guy in the trees. Actually one of the neighbours was out washing his car and told us about the Owls and I went home to change lenses to get some close up photos of him.  There were two Owls in the tree and sitting there quite happily.  He said they are there every day and fly off about 6pm at night and return to the same tree during the day.  What a special experience it was seeing these Owls in our neighbourhood.