Supper

As the end of my food theme we have the remnants of my Friday night supper, which had been devoured whilst watching the new QI series. I'm a bit of a Steven fry fan but also love the gorgeous Alan Davies. I've recently been watching the Jonathan Creek series over again!

I think over the weekend I'll just take a couple of random snaps and think up a new theme for next week.

Spaghetti

Okay so its yet another baby photo, but this spaghetti sauce all over the face, hair, top etc. is not a common occurrence so it had to be captured! You should have seen her when she was finished, she had to have a bath!!

Furry yoghurt

Imagine my delight when I opened my yoghurt to find a mini garden in the tub! Lovely jubbly.

I am not overtly happy about this photo, it just wasn't working for me. I couldn't work out how to make it better so gave up!

Pancake day!

We had pancakes for tea with our friends and then later I made an extra batch for my photo! I used up quite a lot of my maple syrup taking this shot.

It was definitely worth it though :-)

Masterchef inspired

Today's photo is the first of my food theme for the week. We had about 20 eggs in the fridge so I decided I needed to begin using them up. What better way than yummy meringues accompanied by lashings of cream and strawberries?

This was actually my second attempt (taken a couple of hours later) as the card wasn't in my camera when I took the first flickers and most of the components had been eaten up. Thankfully we weren't so greedy this evening and there was a bit left over, enough to make up my photo.

I did rush this a little and am not as happy with it as I was with the first lot but hey ho .... moral of the story today - always check your memory card is in the camera before you do a shoot!

facepaints

Tired mummy, tired babies, lazy face painting and lazy photo of the day.

Saturday 21st - Muddy Face

Having just recently learnt to walk and therefore explore a little, Seren decided to take a closer look at the ducks by a stream and ended up taking a closer look at the ground instead. Obviously I was taking photos of her little exploration so when she fell I captured the whole thing and the aftermath. She was fine after a few wipes and cuddles!

Friday 20th - seaview

Looking out over Piel Castle from Roa Island. It was very cold and rather windy.

To see more photos of our mini holiday check out Nathan's latest film made up entirely of still shots only.

Thursday 19th - The Priory

The Priory, Cartwell, South Lakes.

On our first evening of our mini break we went out for a meal and had to pass the priory on our way to the village square. As you can see it was pitch black but the lights were on and it just looked fantastic and eerie, especially with that old twisted tree in front of the window.

Unfortunately we didn't have the tripod with us and couldn't quite get the camera at the exact angle and position I wanted but this was the best we could do in the circumstances. I has just decided to go for a really long exposure shot when whoever it was inside the church decided to leave and turn the lights out and thus ended our little photo shoot!

This be me dug

Bronx the dog chillin' in my mum's lounge.

Nathan and I are staying at my mum's tonight, then tomorrow we are leaving the children and dog with her and heading off to a b&b for a couple of days, yay! Hopefully I will be 100% better and see many an interesting thing to take photographs of.

Tuesday balloon

Too tired and unwell to think last night, or indeed tidy up, so I combined the two for my photo.

Monday Kisses

Cosy fire

Like I say, not feeling so well today so have been resting most of the time. Am currently at my Aunt's for the night and decided to take a few shots of her fire. I tried a few at various exposures. The 4 - 5 second ones looked like there was a roaring fire, but I prefer this 1/4sec shot because I like the shape and movement of the flames.

3 - 2 - 1

Blast off!!

I know yesterday was valentines day and I could have been creative in a lovely dovey photo way but it was also a very special person's birthday party so I was busy doing other things.

To be honest I've not been feeling all that well the past few days so my blog photos have taken a backseat but for obvious reasons I still took the odd photo yesterday. Here is the cake I made. Its not a fab photo but the birthday boy was getting impatient to blow those candles out!

Boots

This is definitely a last minute not really got much inspiration and feeling quite tired photo. My little squishy is walking now but because she's so little we had to go to an independant shoe shop (i.e. not clarks) to buy her teeny tiny boots imported from Europe. I was going to take a photo of them anyway, like I have always done with Charis's new shoes, so thought I'd pop it on here.

Pretty city lights

Taken whilst driving home from a lovely meal with some friends this evening. Well actually I got out of the car to take the photo but you get the idea. I do like night shots. When we were last in Berlin they had their light festival where many of the major buildings and landmarks in the city were lit up and there were literally thousands of people taking photos.

I wish we lived somewhere that a, had the sort of city that would look great lit up and b, had the weather for it!

Goose Attack

Feeding the geese became quite an exciting experience this morning when about 40 of the things ran across the grass and hounded myself and the girls. At the same time a huge flock of pigeons descended upon us to get their 'share' of the two slices of mouldy bread we had with us.

I had hoped to get a better composed photo of more of the geese spread across the field but they weren't terribly obliging and they were frightening the girls quite a bit.

Logs in the park

Taken in our local little park just up the canal from our house. They executed numerous trees last year and these logs have been looking ornamental ever since. I wasn't entirely satisfied with this photo at the time, but daughter number one had already made her way across the park and into the play area so for the sake of looking like a responsible parent I felt I should follow her.

I took a couple of photos of the frozen canal too but I had one of the girls on my back in the carrier and was a little wobbly and nearly fell in trying to get the composition right. I decided it wasn't really worth the risk of hypothermia and/or drowning.

I also captured some geese flying over me but a rather annoyingly placed lamppost spoiled the shot. However I shall endeavour to take a similar one again sometime.

Outdoors

Looking longingly out of the window....

Today's photo is a nice introduction to this weeks 'theme' where I shall venture outdoors. I am going to take some photos of our garden, street and local area. The weather still isn't fab but I'm getting a little bored of just taking photos indoors.

Train in snow

I've had a social life this weekend and decided to take my camera out with me this evening. I don't drive and buses are ridiculously expensive so I get the train into the city centre. When I got to the station I had a few minutes spare so I thought I'd try taking a couple of pics of the train coming in. I didn't have my tripod with me so as you can see my hand isn't quite steady enough and its not fabulously composed but I like it anyway.

I think this is one I shall pop onto my reshoot list and take more thought and time over it.

Jodrell Bank

The Lovell Telescope, Jodrell Bank.

Decided to end my theme and start a new one on MOnday, so today's and tomorrow's will just be random photos.

Family Life - Bedtime

Its one of the most wonderful moments ever the point when you realise your children are sound asleep.

I remember when I was little my mum saying - jokingly of course - 'I love you most when you are asleep'. As a child, who thought nothing could be better than spending time with me, I never quite understood how she could possibly prefer me asleep - surely I was more fun to be around when I was awake?!

Now I completely understand!

Of course I love my girls when they are awake but there is something rather peaceful and contemplative about watching your children sleeping. I think possibly you can appreciate them without actually having to 'do' anything.

Family Life - Girly Day

It is Seren's first birthday today and we were meant to be going to meet some lovely friends of mine and their kiddies at a soft play centre over in Rotherham, but sadly we had to cancel due to the weather!

Instead, the girls and I had a lazy day indoors doing girly things. We snuggled on the buddha bag watching telly, baked yummy things, did a little dancing and singings and as you can see, put up Charis' hair. Here she is chilling out after a 'hard' days play.

Family Life - Typical Evening

In our house once the children are in bed generally the rest of the evening is spent with one or both of us on our computers, playing with our cameras, watching tv or playing on the wii. We do communicate occasionally, ordering cups of tea, sharing anecdotes of the day, that sort of thing, usually via skype! Okay so I'm exaggerating slightly, we do actually go out or spend time 'together' too, but this above cenario is definitely commonplace in the Rae household.

This evening, (well last night really) after my weekly Wednesday bath and Nathan's canoe club, I played with my camera whilst he used my laptop.

Family Life - Laundry

For many of you, doing the laundry may not be a particularly big part of life. Those of you with young children will, I'm sure, agree with me when I say that doing the laundry feels like an ongoing endless chore!

I'm certain I must spend a good few hours loading & unloading the washing machine and sorting through piles of clothes each week. Yay!

Family life - Toy box

Seren's most recent game is to get in her toy box and one by one empty all the toys onto the floor around her. She then gets in and out and in and out.

We have regular head in the bottom legs sticking up out of the top, or falling out onto her head type situations, but she just gets back in there and carries on.

We had a little birthday tea party for her this evening and she was absolutely loving her toy box game so I made the most of the opportunity and got my camera out. The speed she moves is pretty impressive and I wanted the photo to give the impression of 'toddler in action' but without her being a complete blur.

Me

So we are into the second month of my year long photo a day.... Thought it was about time I tried out a self portrait.

Nathan went to bed at the same time as the children so I had the evening to myself. I set myself up in the living room and snapped away. I wasn't going for anything exciting and lets be honest I'm not looking my best, I'm in my comfy (aka scruffy) clothes and I'm tired but its me and there we are!

Actually getting myself in shot was more difficult than expected but once I'd worked it out my main aim was just to get a picture of myself that looks vaguely decent! I've intentionally washed out the colour a little as I liked it that way. Perhaps I was subconsciously going for the 1970's photobooth look as this reminds me a lot of my mums pics of when she was a student (although she had typical 1970's long hair and glasses).

Anyway, I've decided for this next month I'm going to set myself little themes probably lasting from 3 days to a week depending on how creative I'm feeling. My first theme starting 'tomorrow' (Monday) is going to be based around our everyday family life. I shall resist taking photos of the girls every day and hopefully focus on what we do, where we go, what we see, or basic every day mundane things and try and make them interesting.

Leah life model

This is Saturday's photo.

Leah does life modelling for artists and we took some photos of her face at various angles for them to take away home to finish off their drawings.

This was by far my favourite.

I also took a few other photos today whilst walking by the river Tees. I was torn which to use as my daily photo and decided that as its the last day of the month I'd add this one as an extra - purely for my own benefit really!

Last night

This is Friday's photo. Basically I never really had chance to take a photo all day as I was in a course, then travelling up to Barnard castle and then eating food and then trying to put children to bed arghhh!

The girls wouldn't go to bed, as you can see, so this was taken at something like 11.30pm.