Days 26-28 Friendship & Food

So it's nearly a month since I started this crazy project and during the week I totally struggle with it, but on the weekends I love it as I get to take photo's of my friends and favourite things.  I'm writing this post Monday afternoon and I'm going to group the whole weekend together as I didn't actually take that many spectactular photo's but they are all a bit of fun.

Friday Night (26th August 11) was girls night - every couple of months all my old high school girlfriends get together for Indian Dinner and copious amounts of wine.  Not many of us still live in the area but we always try and meet up in Hornsby as it is kinda central (except for the Queenslanders) and most of our families still live in the area so we all have somewhere to crash after a few vino's!!!  I am so blessed to still have a wonderful group of girlfriends who know you so well and who you can pick up a conversation with at any time no matter how long since you last saw them.  Tonight's dinner was in honour of Stacey visiting from Qld and also to plan our 40th Birthday Adventure - yep it's looming and we are going to go away for a weekend to Party.  It was lovely to see everyone and we had a brilliant night, laughing, sharing stories about our families and love lives, and planning our weekend away and of course a few of us ended up partying at the RSL afterward (that's 3 weeks in a row for me and I'm far too old for this lifestyle!!!).  Today's photo is of 3 of my closest friends, Tina - my bestie, Sasha and Tracy-Lee taken at the RSL during Pre-Dinner Drinks.  I did take some photo's of all the girls but they are really crap - hopefully Tina's worked out better than mine did.

Saturday (27th August 11) - I woke up sick - not just hungover sick but bronchitis/ tonsilitis kind of sick - I had no voice and felt like crap with a filthy cough.  Tina and I had stayed over at her Brothers house and after a few hours playing with the kids trying to get the motivation to move, we went out for breaky with her sister in law to her favourite cafe.  This photo is of my gorgeous coffee - isn't it pretty - and some pineapple juice to soothe the throat.  It was a crappy photo so I put some effects on it to make it look better - however I didn't really take many other photo's as I spent the entire day on the couch and had a super early night to try and feel better - so this is it for today.

Sunday (28th August 11) - Spring is coming - you can feel it in the air which is brilliant as I HATE winter. I was up early for a Sunday which was good - still feeling average but decided to treat myself to a yummy breaky of french toast, strawberries and coffee, I downloaded a new app on my phone this morning which let's me take crazy action shots and had a bit of fun playing with it - hence the double photo, how beautiful is the sky - both of these were taken on my front verandah - I bought the coffee pot for $2 the other week and I love it, especially now it's warming up I will be spending most of my weekend mornings (when I'm home) eating breaky out on my lovely verandah with my music pumping in the background and a good book or magazine - such a great way to start the day.  The rest of my day was super productive but I didn't take many more photo's - I did however, clean my yard, got rid of loads of weeds, painted a door and had a wicked dance rehearsal.  I also got to talk to my bro, sis in law and niece who live in Scotland which was nice - Eadie (my neice) is soooo cute - it makes me a bit sad that they are so far away and we miss out on getting to cuddle her and watch her grow but thank goodness for Skype - at least we can see each other these days and hopefully when they return at least she will know our faces.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend also.

Cheers Donna

Day 25 - 25th August 11 - Orange

Again - nothing interesting to write today, except that it is a stunning (almost) spring day so I got out and about at lunch again and explored another part of St Leonards.

Again - I took lots of tree and flower shots - I'm going to have to start thinking of something more exciting to photograph if I'm going to last a year!!!

Why this one - I like the colours, I like the focus and I like that Spring is nearly here and that the sun is shining and the flowers blooming.

1 sleep til the weekend - whoooooooo - it's going to be another good one, going out with the school girls on Friday Night yay.

Day 23 - 23rd August 11 - Out of Focus

Today I finally had the time to play around a bit with the manual settings on my camera.  A few years ago I did a photography course and I have dug out my notes and had a read but I have no idea how to do these settings on the digital and I actually didn't take the best notes so will have to start doing some internet research to make up a file on how to use all these settings. 

I mucked around for about an hour trying all the different settings on the camera and again most of the photo's came out too dark so I did have to edit them a bit to make them lighter but I really like this photo. 

It is of a a beautiful butterfly hanging on my wall and below are a few of the other shots I took.  I am going to try and expirement alot more with the manual settings now and see how I go, could be interesting!!!.  The biggest issue is having the time to take shot after shot until you get the right one, it's ok on the weekend but on weekday's with a limited timeframe between getting home and getting dark, it could be interesting.  Next mission is to dig out my tripod and start using it regularly.

ciao donna

Day 24 - 24th August 11 - Ripple

Nothing exciting to write about today - it's hump day!!  I worked, I danced and other than a quick pit stop at the water on the way home I totally forgot about taking photo's today. 

This was taken at Brisbane Waters, Gosford and was shot using my manual settings, still don't know which one as I have lost our instruction book and am just winging it at the moment.  I was hoping to get a few sunset shots, unfortunately sunset happened really quickly and most of the shot's I got were quite dark and boring, however I think this is beautiful - I like the ripple, I like the contrast of colours and shadow - I think it is just simple and pretty.

Donna xoxo

Day 22 - Birthday Presents

Day 22 - Monday 22nd August

It's Monday and I don't have a huge amount of time to think about Photography on Monday's as I go dancing til late, but on my way home I had the inspiration to stage a photo of my birthday presents.  I'm not too happy with the light, especially as it is really dark on the right hand side, however on the screen it looked ok so I thought it would work out ok and I turned things around a few times to try and get the light right but didn't have a huge amount of time to play.   

This is the first time I have staged a shoot like this and it is something I can improve on.

ciao donna xoxo

Day 21 - Beach

Sunday - the sun is shining, the water is sparkling and despite the fact I have a stack of jobs to do around the house, I'm out of the house for a long walk on the beach.  One of the things I love most about living on the coast is the fact that the beach is so close to me know, I am a total beach bum, I love the sand, I love the surf and try to get there as often as I physically can.  Today I decided to go for a longer drive (20 mins as opposed to 10) to visit Kilcare Beach - in the 90's many a NYE was spent partying at this beach and I thought it would be nice to go somewhere different,  I should warn you this post is photo heavy!

After about 3 hours of aimless wandering and over 200 photo's later, I had walked from one end of the beach to the other, the surf was pumping, there was lots of people out with their dogs, the fishermen were catching giant fish and the weather held out until I got back to the car which was great!  

Being at the beach and listening to the surf is like my form of meditation, and having this "me" time was good for the soul as I could experiment with my photography and think about a few things that are playing on my mind, however it still would have been nice to share such a beautiful day with someone else (the disadvantage of not having many friends on the coast).  The only bad thing was that the surf was riddled with blue bottles so I only got my feet wet once - the water was beautiful but I don't like stingers so spent most of the day walking the soft sand, which after yesterday's post is probably a good thing, my calf muscles are killing me as I write this post. - Donna

Day 20 - Costume Nightmare

This is a bit of a delayed post as I am writing this on Monday - but for those that know me well you may find this little story amusing!

As mentioned on Sat I was pretty hungover from my Friday Night Birthday shenanigans and spent the morning sleeping and doing nothing.  In the afternoon I was off on an excursion with my dancing girls.  We have a show coming up soon and we were off to Oxford St to buy costumes.  The shop we were buying from was like a mini heaven to me, feathers, sequins, disco balls, pretty, pretty, pretty.  Finding a costume to fit my fat arse was a different story!!  For those that don't know, the dancing that I do is Brazilian Samba - you know the girls in the g-strings and feathers!!! Yep that's what they want me to wear - ARRRRRGGGGHHH!!!!!!! 

All the girls were trying on these teeny tiny costumes that were stunning and I was secretly freaking out while trying to play cool at the same time, It's not that all the girls are super stick thin girls, they all just have flat stomachs and smaller boobs.  After picking through the g-strings and so called bra's, I eventually found a couple of dresses that I quite liked and one of them fit me YAY - only problem, it was backless and let me tell you now - I ain't dancing without a bra on, but it was so pretty, a whole front of sequins and then a feathered skirt and it could be made in pink and everything, however long story short - Nat (my gorgeous russian dance teacher) decided that she wants us all in the same costume - hence my photo of the day. 

I am expected to wear this in October this year - insert a trillion expletives, I think it is gorgeous but just not on someone like me, and because my bloody boobs are so big, I have to get a top custom made to fit by bringing in my own bra.  I have no idea how I am expected to find the confidence to wear something this skimpy between now and October, for goodness sake, I don't even wear a bikini in summer - I wear boardies.  As much as I would like to lose a bit of weight I don't have the motiviation to go on such a mega diet that would be required for me to feel confident in this - so I'm not really sure what I'm going to do - beside just being healthier overall (which I'm trying to do) and hoping that I lose some weight, In my head -I have 3 other options

1. Not eat for the next month (never going to happen LOL)
2. Buy a flesh coloured body suit - but then I think it will look weird as all the other girls are getting fake tans and I think it would accentuate my weight/ uncomfortableness even more
3. Suck it up and hope for the best.

My other stress about this costume nightmare is it costs $150 - something I just don't have to spend on a costume!  So watch this space and I'll keep you updated with the next instalment of my costume nightmare!

The rest of my day was fabo, I had a drink with one of the dancing girls on our way home - then went to an engagement party where I had a great time and actually had one of the best ab workouts I've had in ages laughing at my friends Tara and Matt!  I also had a good chat tonight with my friend Emma who was the one who got me started on this project - it's nice to be able to share this journey with someone else is is struggling with similar things (time, motivation, making it interesting).  Emma is actually shooting with mostly manual functions on her camera - I'm still working out how to use these functions but hopefully over the next few months I too can go fully manual.  Emma also has a blog - http://emmaandtheirwins.blogspot.com/ - if you want to see another 365 project in the making!
cheers Donna