photo-a-day April

Yikes! What just happened to April?! How is it already May? I feel like April was made of sand and it has disappeared through my fingers. So grab a cuppa (or something a little stronger) and let me present my April as seen through the filter of Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim's photo a day challenge...

day 1: your reflection | day 2: colour | day 3: mail

I was pretty excited to do this challenge on our overseas holiday. It actually turned out to be harder than I expected. Mainly because I am very strict on myself that the photo must be taken on the day of the challenge. And sometimes I was just so busy enjoying what we were doing that I would forget to look for the moment that would match the word!

We arrived in Paris and were super excited to find ourselves staying in a gorgeous spacious apartment. I was taking photos to capture its loveliness when I caught my reflection in the window. And then proceeded to lean half way out the window to try and capture this shot!

I we all fell in love with Paris. Miss M convinced me to buy flowers for our apartment from this gorgeous colourful flower stand. I loved the way that cafes and shops bustled for space with pedestrians creating a beautiful lively atmosphere.

If you did not receive one of these gorgeous postcards, you are not alone. We spent ages choosing and buying them, then never got round to writing and posting. My mum was the only lucky recipient of a card. The only other card that was written was handed over on our return!

day 4: someone who makes you happy

I loved having so much time with my family the actual choice for day four's photo is mr g and miss m dancing around the courtyard of the Louvre (I just included the other two pics because I thought they looked good together and help show how happy we were in Paris)

day 5: tiny | day 6: lunch | day 7: shadow

We went to Disneyland on day 5 and there is nothing tiny about Disneyland, everything is larger than life. I was grasping at straws when I chose tiny green man for day 5. 

I was really starting to drop the photo a day ball towards the end of our holiday. This was our last day in Paris, and we rushed to get the train back to London, and then to Windsor for our last night in England. I forgot to take a photo of the Cornish Pasty I ate for lunch. Luckily the girl had saved half her 

sausage roll for later. 

Our flight home was not until 10:30pm, so we went to Legoland for a last hurrah. It was cold and 

cloudy and overcast. It was also Easter Saturday so absolutely packed! This lego urn in the Lost City of Atlantis ride was the best shadow I could come up with.

day 8: inside your wallet | day 9: younger you | day 10: cold

On the plane on the way home I emptied out what was left in my wallet for UNICEF.

Finally we were back home. And rolling back the years, here I am with my sister in 1978, checking out the flooding on our farm after Sunday School.

My brain was still feeling fried on day 10, so for cold, all I could think of was the fire as a solution to cold.

day 11: where you had breakfast

I made crepes for breakfast to try and recapture the feeling of Paris. Then I looked outside the kitchen window and remembered (just like Dorothy) there is no place like home.

day 12: stairs | day 13: something you found

Visitors to Intrinsic are welcomed by our fabulous pink staircase (and a little pre-visit exercise!)

I dropped my shiny new iPhone in the carpark twice. I now have a cover for it and need to get the screen fixed. Luckily it still works.

day 14: how you feel today | day 15: sunset

I spent the afternoon on day 14 sitting watching soccer at the beautiful St Peter's College chatting to my sister-in-law. I wish our husbands still played for the same club, so that we could do this more often. Mr G now plays on the other side of the city and I never go watch any more. I felt happy and nostalgic and content. But then sad and anxious because Mr G's team lost!

We never see much of a sunrise or sunset from our house, too many trees in the way. But the sunset really didn't matter, as I finally caught up with my family again.

day 16: flower | day 17: something you don't like | day 18: hair

Beautiful flowers from Mr G.

I don't like turning right with out a turning arrow. I also don't like focussing on stuff I don't like.

Braided miss m's hair. Perfect timing.

day 19: orange (part a&b) | day 20: something you drew

I took two photos for orange and chose the leaves, because we'd just done flower a couple of days ago. But I really love both.

Oh my! Trying to chose what to use for something I drew. Talk about performance anxiety. I really haven't done anything new for such along time, everything felt so dated. It was not a work day otherwise I would have chosen one of the new cards. (I am particularly proud of then!) I was going to photograph one of the calendar pages, when I remembered the mugs. I love that I can have my morning cup of tea in a mug I illustrated. Clever me!!

day 21: bottle | day 22: the last thing you bought | day 23: vegetable

Cooking curry for dinner and drinking wine (not from the bottle!). Very nice way to spend a Saturday evening. 

I was stooged by the local kids and bought three walnuts for $1.00. I just liked their entrepreneurial initiative!

I discovered (from someone else on Instagram) that if you store spring onions on the bench in a jar of water, you can snip them and the will keep on growing. I tested this out and sure enough it works. It is May 1 today and my spring onions are still going!

day 24: something you're grateful for | day 25: looking down | day 26: black+white

I watched 'Marley and Me' on the weekend for the first time. I cried and cried and the pup had to be day 24's choice. He's not really a puppy anymore and I can't imagine our house without him.

We went to the dawn service for ANZAC day then I got excited and made anzac biscuits when we got home. I then plonked myself down in front of the fire for the rest of the day.

Another rushed panic shot for black+white

day 27: somewhere you went | day 28: 1pm | day 29: circle

Day 27 was a Friday, so naturally I was at my sister's house. Looking glamourous as always!

I was waiting to pick the girl up at 1pm after a lovely coffee at Mary Martins. Then I realised that pick up time was actually 1:15. Which explains why I was the only parent waiting at 1:00!

Sunday afternoon called for a little glass of something to settle my nerves as I tried to bake and play mousetrap at the same time!

day 30: something that makes you sad

Imagining flames leaping up the valley and destroying everything makes me sad.

But there is no point in dwelling on sad. There are too many good things in life to enjoy and celebrate. Like finishing another month of photo a day challenges and being another month closer to my goal of taking a photo everyday for a year. Or having a fabulous holiday. And saving for the next one. Or having a fabulous birthday and sharing it with gorgeous people. Or just being alive with beautiful friends and family to love and be loved by.

What are you celebrating?

go me... I kept the photo-a-day dream alive for another month

I am now so far behind with my Fat Mum Slim photo a day posts that it seemed overwhelming (and potentially boring) to try and give each pic the star treatment. So I thought I'd just do the wrap up of March and leave it at that.

My last entry was March day 14, or day 74 of 365, which was clouds. So from the pink car to my black and white face are all new to the blog. Day 20 was my first day of taking the challenge on our overseas adventure. I had thought that it would be way better than it actually was doing the photo a day challenge overseas. It was fun, but so often I was thinking 'if only today's challenge was yesterday or tomorrow'. I suspect that I am also a little weary after all the planning that went into our holiday, then the holiday itself and now recovering and trying to adjust and catch up with normal life.

But I am still doing April. So I must actually really like it! Hopefully I'll share the April photos soon. Hope you are having a fabulous weekend xx

hello again! it's been awhile

So much has happened since my last post. It is hard to know where to start. Well, obviously I started with choosing some of my favourite snaps. This took a really long time and was really hard. I brought home 1500 photos, so to choose 12 images to epitomise our awesome holiday was really quite the achievement!

For now I just want to say we are back and we had a brilliant time. Totally worth all the saving and planning and taking the girl out of school. I'm planning to post more about the trip later, focussing on the individual places we stayed. And a post on our accommodation. We stayed in some really great places, a massive thank you to trip advisor for providing such a great service.

My highlights were:

1. The fabulous Spring weather, that made sightseeing so lovely
2. The simple pleasure of flying a kite on the beach in Cornwall
3. The Manchester United pre-match dinner package
4. Our Paris apartment and location
5. So much history

While we were away I also had a couple of bloggy highlights, that had me feeling a little like a 15 year old again. I have no good segue from holiday highlights to this story, but I just really want to share both. And, well, it's my blog, so I can do what I like!!

So, I was on the way to the airport about to embark on our super exciting adventure, when I received a text from my sister telling me that I my blog had just been posted on Facebook by Fox in Flats! Eeeek!! Lets just say that I felt like the cool girl at school had just asked me to sit next to her! But that's not all it actually gets better. Andrea from Fox in Flats has put together a list of her top 50 style dare bloggers and.... I'm on it!!! Sooo excited to be amongst such fabulous company. And really am having that 15 year old 'the cool girl likes me feeling'.

If that wasn't enough excitement for one jet-setting girl to cope with, I opened Instagram on holidays (not the exciting part of the story) and in my news feed Chantelle from Fat Mum Slim was following me! Just to add a bit of background for the non-Instagram users amongst you, Chantelle creates the photo-a-day challenges and her Instagram feed is full of comments from randoms calling out "follow me", "give me a shout out",  "Fat Mum Slim you're so awesome blah blah blah". So to be one of the people she has chosen to follow definitely made me feel like a geeky 15 year old who had been spoken to by the cool girl!

Isn't that weird that I am getting close to 40 and I think I have got my act together and I'm all cool and stuff, but without scratching too deeply it turns out that I am still just as insecure and dorky as I was in high school! Have you had a moment when you realised that you haven't changed much in spite of the passage of time, or are you really quite different from your teenage self? 

four more sleeps

I am so excited! We are heading off to England and France on Tuesday. I need to get stuck in to the laundry tomorrow so that I can then get stuck into packing.
I'm hoping that I'll be able to keep you updated with some snippets from our journey, if I can just work out how to post from my phone or iPad. If you are reading this post then it worked!
I'm about to press send, so fingers crossed!