Look who was sneaking around our back yard!!

Scouting out good spots to hide surprises!

enjoy J

Happy Birthday Mummy!

Well here we are! I turned 32 today. I had not planned on working at all but got called into the one school I told myself not to turn down. I had a good day at work but the morning was better! The boys gave me lots of great surprises - a Barbie, a new camera bag, some flowers a special cake made by Daddy and a big balloon! My Nanna, Mum and Dad and PeaPal Glenda gave me enough money to buy my first lens for my camera! The boys made cards at school today and Caden wrote in his all on his own!! Mum and Dad came over and took the boys and I out to tea at our favourite Chinese restaurant. mmm yummy! Mum also baked a cake which made it three for the day! lucky me!!

here is a few pics from the day!

     

 

ok that's enough for today!

enjoy J

Week 1 Photography 101 - Aperture

This is the first week to the 2Peas 12 weeks to better photos course. I did this a bout 18 months ago but have decided to revisit it along with some others on the forum.

Week one is about selecting the appropriate aperture values for the situation. the lower the f number the wider open the aperture is and thus more light gets into your camera thus making the camera work faster to capture your photos. The result of a open aperture is that you create the blurry backgrounds that is sometimes referred to as Bokeh and depth of field (DOF). The assignment this week is to focus on a single point and step up the aperture values (f-stops) and have a look at the different results.

enjoy J

Easter is on its way!

We stopped to get some groceries on the way home and the kids got an Easter egg each. Tyler called out to me in the car while going home " mummy quick its dripping!" when we reached home and I got a chance to have a look he really was dripping! icky!

so he licked what he could off his hand, swiped some down the front window of the house (as you do when you are 2) and smeared more around his mouth - all before I could get the key in the door to send him to the bathroom to clean up. Yay I actually got the messy Easter egg photos early this year!!

The boys received a big stack of information books from Ian and Rhondda today. Caden just loves reading them. He has already picked up info on volcanoes and lava just from me reading a couple of pages to him at bed time!

Thanks!

Before bed time snack of yoghurt!

enjoy J

outside play at school

While picking the boys up the day finally arrived that they didn't want to go home straight away as they were having too much fun playing with their friends. I didn't get any photos of Caden with his friends as I wasn't sure about the whole privacy issue for the other parents so Tyler was it! He was having a blast with these big interlocking blocks! The photo of me Tyler took. I think these kids are going to be photographers in training - not surprising that!!<

enjoy J

Art at school

I finally took the camera when I picked the boys up  - or should I say that I actually took it into school. I am so glad that I did because I realised that Caden had all this artwork that he has been doing during the day hanging up in the room. His writing of his name and spelling is coming along really well and by looking at his art he is going really well with so many different things.

family portrait of 4

the class's gallery of family portraits

painting of autumn colours

sand and glue art

food dye art using eye droppers

cracked shapes that involved cutting and pasting it back together

rainbow handprints

enjoy J

Its a Lazy Town around here!

Caden is VERY into Lazy town at the moment. It is a bit hard to find merchandise to decorate with as most is in the UK! but we managed to download a couple of little posters for his room and then Daddy put his rusty art skills to the test and produced this awesome Sportacus Airship painting!!

 

One very happy Sportacus!

enjoy J

fun in a bag!

The one thing that Josy has loved doing since she was a kitten is play in bags. well she was at it again today!

enjoy J

Mowing with Daddy - {safety/risk}

My daily POTD topics don't seem to be blogged about regularly at the moment! bad me! but on the other hand I haev been busy putting things into perspective, trying to get a new Internet provider organised, I worked 4 days last week and had appointments for Caden's ears. whew now we can sit and go Ahhh!

Ok back to the topic. I have been trying to think of safety/risk things to take photos of. well nothing was springing to mind then yesterday  morning Daz gets up and him an Tyler don the gear for mowing. they put on their hats, special ears, get the whipper snipper and off they go!

cheese!!

filling up the Whipper snippers with petrol!

starting it up!

what I saw out the from window - T just wanting to be way out the front with daddy!

love those chubby cheeks!

these were taken with f5.6 either ISO100 or 400, 1/1000s CWB and edited with a curve lighten, soft light 25% opacity, occasional masking for lightening under T's hat, flatten, sharpen and save for web.

enjoy J