Building!

Very quickly, because Lisa wants to see -



See something in the bokeh?



Yep, the stumps for our new house!







Then the floor!





And the littlest builder who is on light duties - "The bigger ones can do the heavy parts!" He would also like Lisa to know its not finished yet!!! "Tell her we've got lots more parts to put on it"!! In case you couldn't tell!

Almost warmer

The almond trees blossom this time every year as it starts to get a little warmer, a little promise of better things to come.





And some of the boy -



This one was taken in his bedroom which has a large north facing window. I'd been taking them of him a little further back not directly in the sun when he moved forward and gave me this. Too good to miss though I knew his hair and shoulder would be blown. Turned out to be a good thing thankfully because its not often you get a look like this. Just the wall behind him, I do have a backdrop but I've never used it!



One good thing about winter, the lush green grass! Trying to capture it while I can because it will all be dead soon enough with stage 4 water restrictions still in. The little rocking chair was mine when I was a child, given to me by my grand parents, cute huh!



He looks kinda comtemplative here and he is, contemplating how he can get off the chair lol! He won't walk barefoot on grass which can be handy if you don't want him to move for a bit!

These just make me happy -





He gets the cheesiest smile happening when he gives me flowers, its sooo cute!

And just to show he doesn't always swan around with a photogenic look on his face! -



Still cute though.

There's more on Flickr, you can click the thingy on the side, it shows the newest ones (well it does after a while anyway). I'm pretty sure thats all anyone comes here to see, certainly not for my words which I just struggle to get out. I'm actually trying to decide whether its worth keeping up with a blog or not... really not sure. Layouts I guess, might post some next time.

Cover Boy!

Just amazing! Made me so very happy! (right when I really needed it too!)
And for those who haven't seen the mag here are my layouts too -







And some photos


Yeah, he glows in the dark! This one is at Braeside Park, right near where I grew up. We started walking down to the wetlands but the little man couldn't so we headed to the playground where he found this fun spinning thing! Jordy and I spent last week in Melbourne, attempting to destress a little.



Pom Pom's placemat on his head, he loves these placemats, he and Bianca fight over them! They both even try to take them to Southland, god knows what for!





I get a lot of this upsidedown-ness when the camera is out!







Bought him this while we were down from Ikea. It spins and he can pull the cover down and hide in it!



By the river



Also by the river with the sunset glowing on the water and cliff behind him.

Some Photos

Just some photos


Cold weather beginning


Jordan's 4th Birthday


More Puddle fun, Jordy and Bianca


Nana pushes high! Wish I had have been able to get them both in this better but couldn't due to the trees. Jordan and Jesse getting pushed on the swing by Nana.


Reflection. Used BILs 70-200 L lens on this occasion, loved it so much I went and bought myself the 24-70 L, beautiful lens but wouldn't you know it Jordan doesn't like it ("it's too big, where has your smaller lens gone?"!!). Ahh, he'll get used to it.


The boy.


A fairy sighting.


Very pretty fairy she was! And good too, though not cheap, she required payment for these. She requested $10 but Lisa suggested she would be just as happy with a pinky purple one ($5 and she was, afterall they are her favourite coulours!Thankfully she doesn't prefer yellow or green!) Still worth it though, we got so many good ones of her.


Stacks more from the past couple of months on Flickr, even more on the HD that are just not gonna get seen due to lack of time!

Layouts

Just some more layouts that for one reason or another I never uploaded to my gallery. They are from the past few months, I didn't have a mass scrapping session! All use my stuff, one Jason Gaylor brush used down the side of the one called Rare.










Oh and check out my boy on a bag!

You can lead a horse to water

Poor neglected Blog! 2 months, too many photos and layouts to post and I really don't know where to start!Um, with a photo maybe.

My beautiful son. This photo had such a huge response on Flickr, my first explore Top 10 and front page! Flickr is such an inspirational place, amazing.


This one actually won me a prize! I won Childish David's texture actions in the Totally Texture pool's moody comp. I've only had a little play but they are awesome actions, really easy and have masks to remove texture from areas if desired.

So why the title of this post? You can't make it drink, nor my boy. We have struggled with his eating and drinking (lack of) since he was a baby. His paed told us to research gastrostomy tubes (tube into his tummy for feeds)because that is likely what he will be recommending. We know it is time, its starting to cause problems in his little body, more than just being small. We are ok with it, relieved even except for the surgery part. No idea on when a decision will be made, things move slowly in the bush.

Slowly isn't even the word for our subdivision. I just searched back in the blog to see when we sold the front half of our property, you think I would have blogged that, nope! Anyway it was over a year ago and we were told we were nearly there... apparantly we are really nearly there now. We believe it was signed at the titles office last week though getting hold of anyone who could confirm that is proving difficult. If it was (and we really, really need it to be), settlement would happen in the next few weeks. Its not just the house, other things are dependent on settlement. We are so lucky that the buyer of the front half wasn't in a hurry.


My second explore top 10! Parkdale, Melbourne on sunset, HDR. HDR for anyone curious stands for high dynamic range. This one is a 3 exposure HDR. You take photos with differing exposures of the same scene and then tone-map them with software. PS CS2 can do this which is what I used. You need to use a tripod really, to make sure the different exposures all line up perfectly. I was suprised I pulled this one off as I handheld it, balancing on top of one of the posts and it was bloody windy!

So I was feeling so incredibly homesick for Melbourne a few weeks ago, really, really wanted to be back there. We went down and ended up spending two weeks there. Caught up with most people I needed to, had some awesome times with my family. Jordy loved having his cousins nearby. Lots of shopping and trips to the beach. Met up with the very talented Dale
and her gorgeous daughter. I had lots of willing models for photos, my nieces and nephews especially. The 2 littlest ones just loved the camera! Stacks of photos yet to go through. We had a wonderful time, well until my boys both got sick. Soothed the homesickness for now, for a while at least.

Now I always say I'll post some layouts and never do, I've got a heap of unshared ones so I'll post just a couple.


Lisa Whitney's artsy fartsy sampler


Lynn Grieveson's Bellisimo kit

More next time. Oh yeah and on digi scrapping, I did get my Digital Scrapbooking Mag sometime ago with my Enjoy-autumn leaves layout in it. I've also had 3 more accepted by them (well one is for the web extension of the mag but they pay you the same for it, how awaesome is that!).

"Stung-ed"!

Jordan showing his eye - "Where the bee hit me"! He got 3 stings last Wednesday as did Joel, we were having a look at a tree that had just fallen near our place. Turns out he's allergic, he ended up with hives all over - that was a little confusing for him - "I haven't got hives its just a rash" he told us! He thought we were meaning bee hives! So he missed out on kinder, he didn't want to go and it was probably for the best, he was very swollen, itchy and quite grumpy.







Jordan painting earlier last week. Normally we paint outside but its been too hot. Makes for a colourful floor thats for sure. I had to laugh though, I told him to be more careful with the paint, then splattered some everywhere myself! He said "Now Mum, please be more careful you just got paint on my foot!" Ooops! He actually splattered some on my camera!



The camera had a bit of a rough week actually! He got me here too!





The exif data for the bath ones will only be on the middle one at Flickr (click them to view) because I de-noised the other two in noiseware which saves as a new file, but was the same for all of them, ISO 1600, f 1.8, 1/125s. Yeah my bathrooms dark! Although I love shallow DOF, I would have liked a slightly wider depth of field on the last one to get his hand in focus as well but I had no choice, there wasn't enough light! The focus on the bubble rather than the boy in the middle one was intentional in case anyone is wondering!

I should put some of my layouts here too but I can't be bothered now! Maybe next time.