Bit misty eyed!

At my nan’s house yesterday, she was going through the photos of Lauren’s Christening. I had put all the photos on to CD for my Aunt who went to Asda and got some prints for nan 🙂 Lauren had some professional shots done (which looked so cute btw!) and my Aunt had been discussing just how much these prints were! £18 for a print that would cost pence if you got them developed yourself… I said this is how the photographers make their money! I’m guessing the photographers might have had a small fee if not done it for free, to photograph the children around our hometown at the local paper… They are running a baby competition as they always do – only to enter you must have a photo done by the photographer – you cannot enter your own. That’s when they charge the parents such high fees for prints, as that’s where they make their money.

Anywho, back to my point.

So my nan was completely gushing over my photos. I just love taking them, and I do my best, and ultimately it’s all headed for the designated scrapbooks anyway – so in this case the photos were going to end up in Lauren’s album. But it was what she was saying about the photos that made me get a little choked up lol. She held up a photo of Leanne and said: “This looks like a professional took it!” and continued to go on about how wonderful the shots were.

Awwwwwwwwww 🙂

And speaking of photography, I got these shots from Claire’s mum – which other than the group photo I took at the end on timer and did a mad dash to get in the photo & the one my dad took of me, Claire and Stewart – proves I was there lol!

Stroud half marathon

It was awful weather to be running in

(you have to look super hard on this one to spot my dad crossing the line… the woman got in the way!)

But super proud of my dad and my Uncle Brian who got in at 1:40 and 1:46 ish, my dad was hoping to get in at 1 hour 45, but knocked 5 mins off. The last time he did it was 1994 (so 14 years ago!) and he managed it in about 1:30 back then. Bit disappointed that the muddy field we were all stood in had no hot food etc. Glad I took a thermos of hot choccy as it was COLD! Had to laugh though, the guy who crossed the line first (1 hour 5 mins) started to walk slowly and stretch after he had got across the line… only some flaming loonatic somehow got on to the course in his car (dispite the fact the roads were blocked off – go figure!) drove through the finishing line – and honked his horn at the winner to get him out the way!!! What cheek! He shouldn’t have been there anyway – surely the big inflatable “FINISH” line was a bit of a giveaway, along with the crowds of people lining the road! Luckily he was apprehended and given a stern ticking off.
I have some more scrapping material for my class now 🙂 Speaking of class I do have some pages to share. The lighting is awful in here (after all it is grey and horrible and raining) so I will just take it in a bit with the flash.

Christening

Lots and lots of pics, so the ones of the event itself will be under the cut… So, yesterday afternoon I had a Eureka moment when I remembered that I got all of the information for Emily’s book on Wikipedia, and I had it in my head to do something similar for Lauren’s.

and for the Christening itself, it was cool 🙂 Lots of pictures lol!

Beach goodness

When I got home, the first thing I did was get in the bath and scrub my feet and legs to get the mud off. Went to Weston-Super-Mare today (or as it’s generally known – Weston-Super-Mud) Was good fun. I took my bucket and spade, even if I didn’t get a look in and the Guy spent the entire time building sandcastles instead of me lol.

Busy… again (do I ever stop?)

Ok, in my defence you cannot really see them properly in this one…

Yup, the photos arrived and just need to be put into an album. Once I find one. The book you see in that picture is the guestbook I’m working on. A completely blank canvas on which to work… I just hope people don’t mind that I am not sitting at the computer and designing lined pages for them to fill in as well! I’m simply doing photo pages and the rest is up to wedding party guests, but I am designing the pages and will be running the pages through the printer. This is why I picked up a spiral bound book – you can take out pages and put them back in again.

I wonder if I consciously take on a ton of stuff to do. It’s all I ever post about – being really busy lol. I’ve got quite a bit done, and I’m just waiting for the photobooks to arrive, need to finish the guestbook and put photos into an album when I get one, mark them up with numbers, get some order forms done so people can tell me which ones they want. I’m charging them at cost. Basically if it costs me 15p per 6×4 print, that’s what I’m asking for from people. I had quite a shock at one photographer when I was being nosey at print prices – £5 for a 6×4!

Anyway, I’ve got to do some more and grab some food before I head out to my parents. Stewart should be home any time now 🙂 I text him earlier to wish him a safe journey home. I hope he enjoyed his honeymoon – and I can take the pictures over to show them too!

I’ve got a new toy

I often look over the blog of photographers for The Image Is Found, and came across the actions they use for their photos: Get Totally Rad. They have a little section “Download Sample”, so that’s what I did and I have 3 actions… 1 of which I am magically in love with…

I need those actions *sniff*

Obviously photos from the wedding last Saturday. I have roughly scanned through the photos and have uploaded just a few for friends and family only to view. None have been proofed at all, minus the odd one or two that have been lightened, and these 3 I picked specifically because no one was in them and I could post freely, as I won’t have time just yet to ask them to go through and pick which, if any, I can post here and on my photography site. They wouldn’t go for our idea of being in the local paper which kinda bummed me out – I’d have loved to have seen “photography by Kirsty Base” under a wedding photo of my brother and new Sister-in-law in our local paper! I have also yet to even think of starting that DVD for nan in the morning! YIKES!!

Day out

I should have been going to see Avril Lavigne in concert tonight (I should be there right now) but sadly things didn’t quite work out.

So I invited The Guy down, and I left him in bed to go visit my nan… Got home at 1pm to find him still in bed lol. My baby doesn’t sleep so well – in fact I went to bed late (11pm is late for me!) and I remember hearing him up still at 1am. But it was somewhat fun to burst into the room, open curtains and the windows as the weather was gorgeous and sunny dispite a slight hiccup with some light showers about 11.15am ish. Then to jump on the bed, accidentally squashing him as I’m so accident prone it’s unfunny and saying rather loudly: “IT’S TIME TO GET UP”… only because I was up at 8.30 thanks to my internal body clock which is in this routine where I’m up early – although did have a lie in this morning hehe – and I’m just jealous. Then I got asked why I didn’t wake him sooner, bless.

We went to the Forest this afternoon after drooling over all the houses on MTV Cribs.

Some coffee for him, and some Apple Juice and flapjack for meeee.

We took my camera and got some awesome shots… Which make me super happy because I have cool pics to put in the scrapbook, and my baby is getting a GREAT eye for those pictures, and some of these he took of me just melt my heart 🙂 I have some sweet shots of me to put in my Book Of Me. It’s going to be so much fun having another photographer around here to share my passion, methinks 🙂

(and look at the length of my haaaaaaaaaair. I can’t wait to have it cut off, although I love it and I know I’ll miss it when it’s gone… It’s annoying the heck out of me and needs to be cut off.)

and someone’s doggy came running up to me for some fuss. Oh! sooooooooo cute!

For more, check out the Photostream @ flickr.

Chocolate Chops

Emily at nan’s looking up at me by the door.

She also has the cutest “royal wave” – just like the Queen lol!

Lauren: “Oh no – it’s that crazy lady again, with a camera for a face!”

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and to share some stuff I’m loving right now:
Unphotographable. A fantastic idea, especially for scrapbookers simply because you cannot take a photo of everything – but just because of this doesn’t mean a great moment or event needs to be forgotten just because there is no photo.
Pinkpaislee. I’ve been following Holly McCaig for quite sometime, and even went through a phase where I only purchased Holly’s digital kits. I absolutely love her work – from her digital kits to her photography, and when I saw she was doing actual paper products I saved and waited and this week I finally got her Office Lingo line… and I adore it. Can’t wait to scrap!
Two Peas Creating Garden. Love love love. Full of inspiration. And I just can’t help but drool over the mini books section. Because I am a sucker for minibooks.
Bento. Yes I am a fussy eater, but I’m loving the idea. Cute looking, healthy packed lunchboxes. I’ve added the EAT MY BENTO LJ community to my bloglines so I can catch up on stuff, and although cookingcute.com hasn’t been updated in a while is still so worthwhile checking out. I’m currently browsing the blueberryland store thinking how awesome it would be to have a cute bento box 🙂 Maybe someday soon.

Getting there slowly!

I am slowly making my way through the photos, but I’ve had other deadlines such as wedding party invitations that I needed to design, print and get ready for my brother which took priority.

The Guy is heading over tonight as well, and other such tasks to do (my poor housework has seriously suffered!) so I thank everyone for their patience… You must remember I was not paid to do the photos for Jax Dance, nor was I thanked or mentioned at the show. I took 2 Saturdays of my own freetime to do this favour, and the fact I have to go through 774 photos to pick out the best ones, crop them and proof them as well will take me a fair time! I have currently spent (not including the 5 hours from my time of the rehearsal day and 8 and a half hours spent on the day of the show) 6 hours going through the photos and I have done about 100 or so of them.

Jolly good time

A big hello to all those people from the show last night 🙂 Please leave your messages on this post here: At the end of the entry you will see a link “Add comment”, so please leave your e-mail address and I will get back to you ASAP.

I have a whopping 776 images to go through so I hope everyone bears with me and it was also lucky that I stashed my spare battery in my pocket. I’ve never used up a battery so fast! Part way through the second half pressing the button wasn’t doing anything and I checked the display to see the battery picture flashing at me.

Anyway, getting ahead of myself lol, we left Gloucestershire at 2.40 and once we arrived in Broham the first thing we had to do was go to the pub! We wandered down there, and it was a gorgeous day so the gang sat in the gardens to eat.

I hung out backstage with the gang for a short while, and managed to get this shot of Claire… I like to think of as a happy accident. There is a red light on backstage and Claire just jokingly posed as I caught her lol:

Matt outside practising:

and the gang on stage, just for an idea of how the photos came out: