A Hard Week

It seems forever since I have updated. Life has been tough this past week - not only have we had a house load of visitors (which was the highlight of the week) Steve has also been away in Brissie for the past four days for work and also for some much enjoyed Father/Son time. He stayed at Sarah's whilst she flew home to spend some time here.
I have been sick again - bad cold and completely lost my voice. It has been gone for a week now, and is still not the best. This has been really a stressful time for me as I should have phoned 60 odd students this week before my Orientation evening which is due to be held this Wednesday. It is very difficult to make phone calls when you don't have a voice. To add a little more stress, on Thursday night, I opened an email which was suspected of containing a virsus, so I spent most of Friday trying to get information off my computer before I had to pack it up and return it to Toowoomba to be rebooted. All the information I needed for my Orientation is on this computer and I can tell you the thought of being without it almost made me feel ill.

Anyway after stressing about it for a couple of hours, I realized that I needed someone to pray for me cause stressing about it wasn't getting me anyway, so after sharing how totally lousy I was feeling with the girls from SoF, and asking them to remember to pray for me, I just had to leave it in God's hands.

Well about half an hour later I got a phone call from work to see if I had sent my computer off yet (I was in the process of packing it into its box for its homeward journey when the phone call came). They had found out more information on the virus and were able to check my computer remotely, so after checking it and making sure it was all OK, and re loading some more protection on it, it was declared safe, and ready to use again. I was so thankful - it truely was an answer to prayer. Mind you when I visited the doctor that afternoon she could tell my day had been stressful as my blood pressure was a little high - so now I have to work on a bit more of a healthier lifestyle ( eg. going back to the gym more regularly like daily rather than the hit and miss it has been the last couple of months) Mind you when I go more regularly I feel so much better.
I had a lovely visit from my daughter Sarah this weekend - (Well as much as she enjoyed spending time with her Mum and sister, she really wanted to catch these guys.) Her husband's band "Falling Short" were in town to lauch their new EP "Aperture". They have spent the week, playing schools in Rocky and Gladstone, and then did a concert Friday night in Gladstone, and Saturday night in Rocky. They have certainly improved out of sight since they left Rocky three years ago, and although I must say I am showing my age, as the loudness kind of gets to me a bit now, (might also have something to do with the cold I have at the moment also) I did enjoy hearing them play.
Scrapbooking news, I have done three paper layouts this week, although I am unable to show you at the moment cause until yesterday the weather has been lousy here and I haven't been able to photograph them yet, so next update I will share them with you.

Rowena from Willro & Co Designs has just put out another new kit and it is fabulous so I have had a little play with it also this week. Her kits just keep getting better and better. Looking forward to playing around with it a lot more after this Wednesday.






































For this Layout I used the New Willro & Co Design Kit "All Crinkled "
The Heart is from the Willro & Co " All Natural" Kit
Frame: Miss Mint Twinkletoes Doodle Frame.

The other good news is that I started my photography course this week, and already I have
learnt so much - the secret is getting out and playing with my camera more, but I do understand so much more about Aperture and Shutter Priority now. Also learnt a few other tricks that I am looking forward to playing around with. Had fun with the portraits,

We got to photograph one of the guys taking the photography course and this photo was taking advantage of full sunlight without shadows on the face - cause taught a couple of tricks to help us take shots with our subject squinting from the brightness of the sunlight in their face. I was quite happy with this shot.

These next couple of photos were out of direct sunshine but working with our backdrops.




My landscrap photos though need heaps more practice, but the exciting thing is, these shots were not taken on Auto. Saturday we went on a field trip, - just a stroll along the river bank, down an alley way and have fun putting into practice the things we had learnt in class earlier in the week. Have a couple of photos to share with you - looking forward though to going out with Steve and Chloe and practicing some more, also looking forward to the class this week and learning more.

With this boat, we were playing around with our Aperture priority and trying different F stops. Lots of good fun and I can't believe the differet shots we got.
With the house boat, the first photo, I focused on the boat, and the surroundings were quite dark, so then I focused on the trees in the background and then moved my camera down so that the photo was the centre of the photo and I couldn't beleive how much this changed the photo. The first photo of this boat, Aperture F6.3, Shutter 1/1250
The second photo stilll had an Aperture of F6.3, but the shutter speed was 1/400.













































Just a few more different shots of playing around with the Aperture. This last photo was taken just on sunset, using the Shutter Priority, and using our tripods. Realized that I need a new tripod - ours is nearly 30 years old, and not as stable as it should be, so might have to put an order in for a new light weight one. We were talking photos of cars taking off from the traffic lights - love the trail of lights in this photos.













Loving this new toy I have. Steve got a photo of me playing with it in front of the fire one night last week. So much warmer to be able to curl up on the lounge, laptop on my knee with the rest of the family in front of the fireplace.

Hope to update again soon with photos of the paper layouts I have done recently. Looking forward to my photography class again tomorrow night - think there will be another field trip again next weekend, so might have some more photos to share next week.

Have a great week.