photography project

Sarah January 4, 2014

Santa at the Dock #countrykids

I know, i know christmas is over but this little outing happened just before the big day and so now is my chance to blog it. So hang in there for the last little remnant of christmassy-ness 😉

We are family members of the local canoe and kayak club. It is a fabulous club that is SUCH incredible value for money and puts on some fab courses/events and challenges throughout the year. The kids, in the winter, are often in the pool with the club and their kayaks practicing all sorts of techniques and drills. They really do love it and for what they charge ( a minimal once a year fee) for the whole family. It is probably the best value thing we do.

On the sunday before christmas (which happened to be our wedding anniversary) the club held their santa paddle in the docks. The idea for a fun and social paddle up and through the docks for mince pies and hot mulled wine and then return to the marina bar for some hot chocolate and cake. The kids were keen to have a go and we ventured off with our santa hats.

The problem was a little that my OH, who is normally super prepared, had under-estimated the weather, which whilst was glorious sunshine was really really cold! So they were a little unprepared for an hour and a bits kayaking in cold water! As i watched them go off i did wonder how long they were going to cope with being so cold!

But they did pretty well, apart from my eldest girl who ended up taking a swim! eek! and so got a ride in a long boat wrapped in the coats of some generous other rowers. They all really enjoyed it. it was fun to get down there myself and see them row. Often the events are in the evenings and so the OH, who is the keen rower, takes them and i stay at home with the younger ones.

It was lovely to see it for myself. The little girls and i wondered along the seafront, bracing ourselves against the cold before we retreated to the boat house for some lovely hot chocolate and warm up.

We spied them returning under the bridge and ran out to shout and wave at them. My boy had managed the row completely , something he was really chuffed about but both the girls had ended up hitching a ride, our youngest daughter managed to row half the distance to the mince pie stop but i think after that the thought of rowing all the way back was too much for her. I have to say i was really proud of how well they did. Im not even sure i could manage it!!

They got to get into their warm clothes and then sit snuggled in the clubhouse, hands clasping a large, frothy hot chocolate with marshmallows on top. Rosey faced, they told me their stories of the trip including the ‘swim’ 😉

We had just enough time to see the last of the sun setting on the boats in the marina and then we headed home to really get ready for the big day!!

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Sarah December 30, 2013

getting back to the beginning…

Funny isnt it how the end of a year can make you very reflective. It seems to make us all look back and review. Maybe its the endless review programmes, or the adverts that flick us through the events of the year. But we all seem to do it.

There are a few things about this coming year that i am both excited and scared about….But recently i have been thinking a lot about my blog and where it is going, what it means for me and why, in fact, i started doing it at all. A conversation i had with another online blogger recently bought it all back to me. The reason i started blogging, one of the big reasons behind my interest in photography and my passion for telling stories.

It all started with this:

This is a scrapbook page and for me, this is where blogging began. I was interested in telling my kids stories and influenced by a friend I took up scrapbooking. Telling stories, through photographs, words and embellishments. Pretty soon i was scouring the american craft sites for good import deals on scrapping supplies. I captured moments of my kids lives in paper and print and filled albums with them. This is just one example of one of the pages i did. This is my sweet girl who is turning 8 in a few days time. EIGHT! She was a few months old and this was around the time when i started my blog read by my OH and my mum back then!! : )

Back then I was inspired by some incredibly talented scrapbookers…all inspiring but all over the water in the States.

America has a huge scrapbooking industry and some of the very popular girls who do it properly make their living out of it. I was inspired in particular by this lady Cathy Zielske (i have two of her books!) who not only did i think her clean and simple approach to design knocked the socks off pretty much anything else out there. I knew that we would be friends, she was my type of person. Adored her kids and OH but also knew the significance and peace in getting up half and hour before the alarm just to have some time alone. I liked everything about her. She took amazing pictures, often in black and white and she wrote incredible stories and memories of her kids but not only that, she wrote about the importance of documenting you. Putting down on paper what made you, mama, tick. Cathy wrote about her addiction to coffee, her new love of running, her favourite book…She photographed the small parts of her life that she treasured. A pantone mug, a window seat, the first bloom after snow and I lapped it up…

I used to blog about it, share pages online and get feedback from fellow scrapbookers. I made friends. I discovered linkys (although not sure they were called that then) that were new then, like the photo-a-day challenges and the ‘word for the year.’ Things that are around now in different formats and hosted by others but nevertheless started, for me and many others, in the slightly chintzy world of scrapbooking.

I gave up when the mess drove me potty. It wasn’t an instant thing i just gradually couldn’t stand the amount of mess. We had more kids, less space and i do like a bit of tidy. 🙂 Stumbling across another blog one day, I discovered the world of digital scrapbooking and as my confidence with photoshop was increasing I started to experiment with digital pages a little. The host of that blog also became one of my favourite online friends and is quite a star in the world of scrapping.

My interest slowly morphed more into the technical aspects of photography and i started to leave scrapbooking behind and focus on portraiture and newborn photography.

Ive been thinking about the beginnings of this all recently. Not necessarily scrapbooking but all those women who i used to follow with enthusiasm that have now fallen out of my timeline and my twitter feed. It made me sad a little, sad that i lost sight of what my blog was about and sad that i seemed to have forgotten something that i really really loved…and i feel like it is maybe something i need to re-visit.

Im not saying you are going to be seeing scrapbook pages popping up all the time. I have a LOT more stuff going on right now in life in general, try 2 whole extra kids 😉 So realistically its not going to happen. It may, it may not..we will see how it goes. I have followed Cathy Z on instagram and read her blog for the first time in a long time. Her daughter is going to college now for goodness sake. 😉

But I am going to go back to reading those that inspired me. I am going to read their blogs. Like properly READ. Not just skim. READ their words, follow their links maybe even join in a little, or maybe not. 🙂 Im not putting the new year pressure thing on.

It feels good to be doing something, i have been a bit disenchanted with my blogging, the pursuit of better stats, higher rankings and frantic commenting. Im not saying I am not going to do all of those things. I do take part in some linkys that i really enjoy and thats not going to change. But it feels good to go back to the start..even if ultimately that leads me in a different direction. Im always up for a bit of change….inspired by quotes like this…

Motivational Monday

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Sarah December 28, 2013

#silentsunday #365 #photooftheweek #sundayphoto

TheBoyandMe's 365 Linky

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Sarah December 23, 2013

Its all in the dough #Ordinarymoments #magicmoments

The mad and crazy rush of christmas is upon us. It is the day before christmas eve. Or christmas Steve as we have heard our little ones say before. Heh! a day to celebrate all Steves in a christmassy way. So apartyofseven is home from school. That means a LOT of noise and a lot of people. The kids are generally happy to play together, although it isnt always harmonious. 🙂 There isnt a lot of time for quality time. We try and have some moments of quality family time and i actually think that the festivities sort of lend themselves to that happening. But it is harder to seek out time with either just one person or by yourself! Thats when it is time for a trip to the loo!!

But spending time with just one of my kids is rare but during term time i am given that opportunity…and one thing that she likes to do is play dough. I like play dough, it has a really therapeutic quality to it. Its also fairly universal and even my older kids will sidle up and have a little go at forming something out of the moulding clay. They almost can’t help themselves!

This time my daughter was deteremined to have a go at making some cake looking play dough. She likes to focus on food group! that and making endless sausage shaped play dough through the hole in the bar-b-q type thing that came in an old set ages ago. This day was one of the first that she had actually asked me to put her bobble in her hair. it didnt last long, she took it out soon after. But it was cute while it lastest!

In such a large family i think it is important to try and make small bits of quality time for each person. it can be really hard and sometimes what they want to do fills me with dread BUT i really believe that they get benefit from it. 🙂

Pretty important to get quality time for mama too!!