Arty Farty Anyone?

We took the boys to ANZAC park this afternoon and since I got a gazillion photos I thought I would post the arty farty ones all together since they don't require my brain to write anything much to go with them. We didn't get down there till about 5pm so the light was fading fast and the sunset decided to do it's pretty colours RIGHT BEHIND THE CASINO! That is just the way it works I guess. I have posted some other arty farty photos of the memorials here ages ago.

The Eternal Flame at sunset.

(mummy brag coming up... I'm quite proud that without being reminded what it was about Lion told me that the flame never goes out because we will never forget the people that died fighting for us to be safe)

Wreaths resting at the memorial.

ANZAC memorial.


Wolf and Dragon in silhouette against the marina.

Boats on pink water.

Pink reflections. Including the stupid ugly casino.

Some more sunset.

Um, it's a bollard. Nothing much more to say for this one :)

That's it for tonight... I might just grab myself one more ANZAC biscuit before bed. Maybe two.

My Child is a Creative Genius... could also be called My Child Cant Be Bothered to Take more Than Two Minutes To Create Anything For Me At Kindy

Lion is creative, VERY creative, just not in your stereotypical loves to paint and draw and glue type creative way... He can create an alter-ego and stay in character for days on end, never faltering. He can see birds and animals and machinery where to anyone else there is NOTHING THERE. He creates his own games that have highly complex rules (at least as soon as I think I have them figured out there is a whole new facet to them). He turns a toast cooling rack (becasuse we all love cold toast???) into a grapple or a digger or a harvester. He is creative. I am believing however that his kindy teachers pin him down every few weeks and force him to put some sort of marks on paper so that they can feel justified in putting my fees towards craft equipment. Here is the latest installment that came home last week...

I used the old "so tell me all about this lovely picture" trick. "it's a skog mummy" "oh, silly me, I was holding it upside down, now I see it. Yes it does look like a skog" "No it doesnt because I left it's legs off" "oh" (well what else could I say????)

And here's another one in a different medium...

mmmmm, yellow... yep, he's quite the artist. See the star hiding behind that yellow paper??? That is the artist (aka Lion) screaming through his art that he is feeling like he is hiding in the background trying to get out, he can peek around the edges but just cant get past the main players. No, no, actually it's saying he feels like a star stuck in a world of um, yellow triangles... okay, I've lost my art interpretation skills since uni.

We got a little more with this one, I was so excited with this one I actually asked the teacher if it was really his and if he had help and "really, is it his?" and yes, it's his, he did it, he used all those colours and different strokes and the whole piece of paper...

And finally, he does seem to feel more confident expressing himself with collage, particularly buttons and christmas decorations...

And all of these have been hung on the wall. So whose kids bring home beautiful art works every week and wonder what to do with them all? Send them to me! this is it for a year of kindy! one day a week sinc the end of January, this is the craft I have to show. Actually I also have a massive box creation that is a working model of an excavator, moving parts and all. I gush over them all equally, I love that he gets so excited that I am excited about his art.

Note: Lion's kindy is brilliant, they are worth every cent we pay them (when we remember to pay) and they put up with him and I dont care if he does craft or not. It's more like I am dropping him off with friends. I just wish he would cry when I leave, just once. And perhaps NOT cry when I come to pick him up, just once.

Can someone find me a genie???

I have decided I need a genie. I will henceforth be rubbing every lamp, teapot, bottle, pickle jar, milk carton, etc until one appears.
This week I did some invitations up for an evangelism event our playgroup/bible study is putting on. I started with wine and cheese on the front since it's a wine and cheese evening but then I got the title from the speaker and decided that it may just look like we were inviting them to an AA meeting. I had a great time doing this! I really miss that sort of work, I miss editing my photos, I miss having the time to take great photos, I miss having kids that would co-operate to get their photos taken (I got maybe the first 3 months out of each of them), I miss all things photography.

I have actually been embarrassed to admit on here that I once was a photographer because of the state of many of my photos I post on here. I say “once” and it makes me sound like I’ve retired and now I just potter around the garden. No, I did the degree, got the letters after my name (have never actually put them there) did a stint as a clinical photographer, needed to give that up to do the mission work that we love and unfortunately have pushed the photography further and further aside. I have been asked to do endless weddings but I’d rather gouge out my eyes than hand myself over to overbearing mothers and bridezillas and meddling family and questions about why I didn’t take any sunset photos “because my friend had sunset photos and they were really great but you didn’t take any…” when it would seem obvious to me that if you had your wedding at 10am there wont be a sunset to take photos of. So, I hand the weddings over to other photographers and wait for someone to commission me for some piece of fine art or some great graphic masterpiece or well funded medical research (okay, my tastes are a little eclectic) but it just isn’t coming. So this week I am doing some staff photos for a friends company. Eeeeek, photos of people. But I need the time to do more of this, I always feel relaxed after I have messed around with photos, I feel like I have had some time to myself but at the same time I have been doing something “useful”. So here’s where the genie comes in. I need three wishes…

1. Time. I know that isn’t in the rules, I’ve seen the genie movies, you can’t have more time, they can’t bend time, turn back time, stop time or anything like that but I need them to, just for me. I want time for all the regular stuff that you need to do with photography but I also want time to spend on my black and white work. I want to be in the darkroom, by myself, with some good music, printing up pieces that I love.

2. Opportunities. To be paid for doing the photography I love would be great, unfortunately for the casual photographer the money is in the people shots. Weddings, portraiture, that sort of thing. Made painfully obvious by the fact that my works from uni are almost all hanging on my walls instead of being sold to well paying customers.

3. Chocolate. Okay, not really related to everything else but that never ending packet of timtams would be great!!!!!

I could possibly add a faster computer to the list to handle the editing stuff but if I had the chocolate I could cope with whatever this beast of a computer dishes out!

I have always imagined my walls filled with beautiful black and white images of my family that I took, I developed, I printed by hand. I imagined teaching my kids to use a REAL camera and showing them how to develop and print their own black and white works of art (still time, I would never let them in a darkroom at the ages they are now). I have a darkroom, it's just not at my house and is currently storing a lot of stuff of mine and other peoples.

So if you come across a genie, HE’S MINE!!! Send him this way and I’ll give you some of my timtams!