Cherries

Jacob has discovered cherries, he's never really had them before because I was always a bit fearful that he might choke on the stone.

Bit messy though

Encouraging Friends

I belong the the most amazing homegroup. We often eat cake and drink tea. We also pray for each other and encourage each other in our life and our faith. A couple of weeks ago we had an encouragement night, everyone bought small gifts for each other. There was also a game of encouragement consequences. Unfortunately due to the chicken pox I was unable to make it. Luci very kindly brought my stuff around to me last night. I have yet to buy all my presents for my girlies but once we are no longer contagious I shall shop.

I thought it would be interesting to share with you their answers for me from Encouragement Consequences.

1. What qualities, skills and strengths does this person have?
Wisdom, knowledgeable, integrity, gentle, peaceful, natural, honest & genuine, creative, clever, problem-solver, resourceful

2. Name a funny moment you have had with them (or something close)
Pigeon poo on Abbie's head "Dirty Pigeon" "Those people are laughing at me still" "No that was us"
When you phoned us to say you had had a baby
The dress rehearsal for the choir (dressing up)

3. Describe this person in 3 words
Genuine, loyal, generous

4. What famous person do they remind you of?
Catherine Zeta Jones (determined and successful)

5. What colour do they remind you of?
Purple

6. How does this person make you happy?
By listening to your stories about the things other people have done that make us laugh

7. What animal would they be?
Owl

8. What would you say this persons spiritual gifts are?
Wisdom, insight - you bring clarity to situations, leadership

9. What flavour cupcake would they be?
Lemon Cupcake

10. If you could spend a day with them what would you do?
Go to the zoo, do some scrapbooking

11. Say something random about them
Teaches us about having babies

12. If they were a sport what would they be?
Rugby

13. Write the first object that come to mind
Camera

A couple of explanations:

2. I had a Daniel in the afternoon, quite short labour, only had gas and air. I rang Abbie and said "Hi how are you? I had my baby today" She didn't believe me at first
When I said we had a dress rehearsal, someone thought we would be wearing costumes.

9. I have a great recipe for lemon cheesecake cupcakes

12. Apparently rugby, because I'm hardcore

Wrong Feet

Jacob loves his crocs because he can put them on himself. He doesn't always put them on the right feet though!

A Bit Spotty

We have had Chicken Pox in our house for the last two weeks. There seems to have been a bit of an epidemic in our area. Nearly all of the children at Jacob's nursery have had it including his two best friends. I'm still waiting for Daniel's spots to come out though. My husband never had it as a child though so we are wondering whether he will get it too.

Don't be fooled by the smiles in this photo, Jacob has been grumpy, irritable, stubborn and whingy. Glad he's back to normal, which means he'll be back in nursery on Tuesday.

A Weekend in the Dales

Mike and I spent a weekend in the Yorkshire Dales recently for our 5th Wedding Anniversary. We had beautiful weather and stayed in the lovely town of Hawes. It was great to get away and do some walking without Jacob and Daniel. We visited some beautiful places and managed to find several geocaches in the area, can't wait to do it again.

Pretty Pendants

My friend Leigh has just opened her crafty bits website. It is so lovely, I especially love the domino pendants but she does lots of other things too. Every single piece is hand-made, which means each piece is completely unique.

Pendants

Necklaces

Bangles

Earrings

Keychains/Bag Charms

Phone Charms

Birthday Sketch Challenge #1

Over at Capture These Sketches they are celebrating their 1st birthday with 9 days of sketches. I love a good sketch so thought I would play along. Here is sketch #1 courtesy of Ally from the DT.

I took lots of picture of Jacob on the bouncy castle a few weeks ago at a party. The sun was really bright and he had his hat on so I didn't get any great ones, the sketch was great because I could the photos into circles and the focus was on Jacob.

For every layout you collect a bithday decal and here is my first one.

Can't wait to start the net one.

Bootcamp

I have been rubbish at blogging recently. I don't know why though. I keep thinking, I must put that on my blog but just don't get around to it. I must try harder.

So, I thought today I would tell you about my weekend away at photography Bootcamp. It was run by the fabulous Cheryl Johnson from Feel Good Photos. I had been planning to go to a scrap retreat ths year and then this popped up in google reader and I booked there and then.

I had a brilliant time, everyone was great and I learnt loads. I took quite a lot of photos and some of them turned out quite well. I felt extremely out of my depth on the Friday but really got into the swing of things on the Saturday. I understand apertures, shutter speeds and ISO now. I just need to play about with to see which combos yield the best results in different places. I really enjoyed photographing the models, especially baby Anastasia. I've put a couple of pics for you to see. What do you think?

I just need to learn how to do some post production now.