Shooting in the RAW!

Well that's what Wayne likes to call it anyway ;).


It's been a while between posts. I'm such a bad blogger, and really the only reason I keep it up is as a reference to what we did when and where (and even then, my record keeping skills leave much to be desired!)... and it came in handy when I did this...

I totally love Anna's week in review layouts (love ALL her work actually), but I think that a weekly LO is a little ambitious for me ;).. so when the month in review brush came out, had to grab it! This is a round up of January.. I had WAY to many photos to choose from though so I ended up with a pretty cluttered LO... hence the black and white, makes it look a lot neater :). Credits: A month in review brushes - Anna Aspnes. Monoblendz Grafix papers - Anna Aspnes. Fonts: Avant garde, Bernard Mt Condensed. Love my fotofusion too, would not have been able to do it without it... I might actually upgrade it one of this days too, so I can actually get a full 2 page spread done with out having to enlarge later ;).

Saturday night Julieanne had a sleepover at her friends house (oh and I just realised I left that off my Jan LO - her first sleepover - doh!! Opening PS as I type... grrrr... now the system is sooooo sloooooooow), as she'd been before I wasn't overly concerned about it this time, so Wayne convinced me to go out to his aunties restaurant in Healesville... well at 9.30 we get the phone call that she wanted to come home... we were over an hour away!! Terrible parents that we are ;).. but it would have to be the one time that we go out that it happens.. anyway, we'd organised Wayne's parents to go an get her, but then 2 minutes later get a phone call that she was sound asleep... ah children, life would be boring without them right?!

We went to the movies on Sunday and saw a 3D screening of "meet the Robinson's". It was a fun movie, nothing to jump up and down about, but it had a great message, as most of those Disney movies do... speaking of movies, I was talking to a lady at work about it the other day, and we both had to say that we weren't that impressed by "happy feet"... ooooo how un-Australian is that?!? It was a wonderful movie, but I don't think that it's deserved all the hype that it's got, and I can' believe that it won an Oscar over "Cars"... that was a good movie ;)... OK will get off my soapbox now lol... Anyway, the kids loved the movie (back to "meet the Robinson's now") even with the glasses, and afterwards we had dinner at TGI's.. which ended in a tired child throwing a tantrum (not mine), but I was glad for it, as otherwise it might have been a late one, which Julieanne really didn't need, after the Saturday night.

Also managed to do this for the ad challenge over at DD. I don't often do challenges but thought I should give it a go. Journaling: These are the days of Miracle and Wonder.Mordialloc Festival Sunday the 18th of March. Julieanne and Isabella on the Teacup ride. They were the only 2 on the ride, but they seemed to have a wonderful time, waving to use and laughing, and generally having fun just being children. It was so nice to see them enjoying their childhood, as I sometimes think we tend to force them to grow up way to fast. I hope that they will look back on these days and think of them as days of Miracle and Wonder, and hope they don’t pass to quickly. Credits: Font Al Capone. Anna Aspnes: Ad challenge Film Frame. Katie Pertiet: On the Edge Flourishes 2.

Umm, and suppose I should explain the title of this post, well I've decided to finally start shooting RAW.. I've been doing it on and off for a while now, but really couldn't be bothered with it all, but after playing with some files I did notice the difference in quality.. now I just need to get some bigger compact flash cards.. those 256 ones that I have just ain't going to make it ;). Oh and I also found this handy little tool for windows uses.. I was sick of not being able to see the thumbnail in windows explorer so did a google and found this.. and it actually works! And it also has (apparently haven't tried it yet) has a save as feature that lets you just save it as a jpeg... handy for emailing I suppose without having to open PS (and yes it has finished opening lol). Also found this too. It actually allows me to see my psd thumbnails (although not the big preview).. yay.. no more bridge!

Well... I might leave it there... round of applause if you actually made it this far ;).

TFL and TTFN :)

Little update...

But not much to say really :).

The weekend seems to fly past (as it usually does!). Saturday night we went to my mum and dads for dinner and watched the Concert for George, which mum had just got on DVD. I know it's fairly old but it was great to see. Me being a huge Beatles fan loved it... and I want to get a jacket like Ringo's for Wayne! Amazing how much George's son looked like him too... spitting image, although just a little smaller.

Yesterday we ended up at the Mordialloc Festival. We were supposed to go to the in-laws for lunch, but the local festival was on so ended up there... needless to say we were really not dressed for it, and my neck did get a little burnt.

It was fairly busy, but there was a great atmosphere there with lots of live music, food and drinks and hippy stalls. Rides too, but Julieanne only went on 2 of them ($5 a ride a bit on the dear side)... the teapots with Isabella

and the Cha-Cha with Daddy


It still surprises me how much of a speed freak she is, she just loves her fast rides (and this was fast), but is afraid of a moth.. funny girl :).

After we'd all had enough of that we walked across to the beach.. once again not really dressed for it as Julieanne is demonstrating here by hitching her skirt WAY up ;) (ooo, the compression has made the colours all weird.. oh well)

We then had dinner at Cafe Blah Blah and I had a lovely Chicken parma (Waynes standard)... and the sticky date was beautiful!

We had an early night last night, but we are all still tired! Another early one again tonight I think. Also picked some of our tomatoes today.. not the best looking ones, but they taste alright!

Still trying to figure out our home loan too... we are paying WAY to much at the moment, (care of our stupidity and a hopeless mortgage broker!), so hopefully that gets sorted out quickly, because we can't take much more of it as it is..

Also did this quick LO. I got the idea from Photoshop Creative Magazine (I think it's that way around), after doing a quick flick through in the newsagent.. didn't buy the magazine though, so had to go off memory... I had all these 4x4 photos and really didn't know what to do with them (as they are not of my fav topic) so just did this as a test... CC most welcome as always.. Used Roughed up tool kit by Rhonna Farrer. Fonts AL SongWriter, 28 Days later.

Well no more news on the wobbly tooth either... still just wobbly.. how long do these things generally take?!

Turns out I had more to say than I thought lol.

Lastly Hugs to a certain friend that has had some bad things happen and is feeling a little low.. thinking of you :).

TFL and TTFN

Wobbly Tooth!!

Wahhh... Julieanne has a wobbly tooth. She's going to lose those precious baby teeth, and I'm not happy about it!! I don't want her to grow up just yet, but I suppose it has to happen doesn't it? Wayne says it's about time, he seems to think that she is fairly late in losing them, but she's only just turned six, and I always thought that 6-7 was the average for losing that first tooth... Anyway, Julieanne is pretty excited about the whole thing.. lol, she just knows that the tooth fairy is going to come and give her some money ;)... Not too sure how much the tooth fairy actually pays these days though lol.....

Just a pic of those teeth....



On another note, we went camping on the weekend, and I must say that it was an experience. We haven't been for about 11 years so I'd sort of forgotten how grotty you can get after a couple of days with no shower! It was just so dusty! We camped right next to the Latrobe river at Hawthorn Bridge (or so I'm told anyway! I really haven't got the foggiest idea of where we were!). Then on Saturday the trail bikes stared appearing. Not that I have anything against bikes, but they are VERY noisy and I'd really prefer to hear the running river. Anyway, we packed up Sunday and found another *isolated* spot. Isolated because you needed a 4x4 to get there, and really we could not hear any other person around at all :). I was a little concerned about snakes though, but I just kept telling myself that they are more scared of us than we are of them lol....

I wasn't too sure how Julieanne would go, but she seemed to really enjoy it. And even manged to go to sleep! She loves her own bed and generally has issues sleeping somewhere else, but she was happy on her Bratz lilo.

Must say that it was FANTASTIC to get back home though!!! Even though we didn't have a shower straight away (had to put rock on the drive. MORE DUST!!), it was great to just have running hot water to wash my hands properly. Worst thing of all though is that I did not take one photo!! And I call myself the family photographer...

TFL and TTFN :)

There's a rainbow outside...

Well at the moment there is, it does look like it's fading though. Not the way I'd planned to start my post (actually I had no idea of where to start it lol), but it will do :).

Not a lot happening in my end of the world, but that's good. I helped my parents with their flowers last night, and I'm feeling it today... bit of a downer about the timing as I was going to and see some of the MAC girls, but it didn't happen oh well :).

We are going camping on the weekend too.. don't know if I'm actually looking forward to it though, as I can tell I'm going to get REALLY bored, we are going to Hawthorn Bridge, and I'm not 100% sure where that is exactly, but I know that there really isn't a lot to do. I'm not one to be sitting around doing nothing, and with no power my laptop is not going to be of much use :(. I was hoping that the new Digital Scrapbooking mag would be here by now but not yet... I suppose I'll find something to do ;)... hopefully I can take some good photos.

Not a lot going on in the layout department.

I had to redo the last one I did as I wasn't really happy with it. I do like this one better. Any CC is most welcome though.

And going through my photo folders I can across this scanned one. I thought it was such a happy photo I had to scrap it... even though the quality is pretty bad.... Ahhhh I love my Canon350D (even though this was taken with the film equivalent, scanning does not do any favours ;) )

Anyway, have to go and make Julieanne her breakfast.

TFL & TTFN