Instagram and the 365 project!

I've decided to take another stab at taking a photo a day for a year, made much simpler by the fact that I now own a smart phone with a ok-ish camera and I have Instagram - a free iPhone app that adds filters to photos and shares them on your Instagram account and with Facebook, etc. (however you configure it to). I'm enjoying taking photos again! Yay!
So, without further ado, here are some of my fave pics so far. If you have an iPhone with Instagram installed, you can follow me on Instagram, my username is Sheeeva. Be warned, I take a LOT of photos of my cats!

Ready, teddy, go

When I have the time and inclination, I make teddy bears. My favourite fabric to use is polar fleece, but I have made bears out of all sorts of fabric, including satin and car upholstery!
Anyway, these were four that I made last year.

Testing my zoom

I have a 12x optical zoom and I took this pic at the camera's zoom limit. It's actually pretty clear! This is a duck that was wandering around at Spier.

Ready for your close-up, Miss Lily?

After the burglary, I had to get a new camera. I've been playing around with it, trying to get to grips with how it functions - it's a bit fancier than my old beloved camera. This is a pic of Lily, taken with the super macro function (fixed lens - I have to physically get close to the subject to take the photo), aperture priority mode and natural light. Isn't she gorgeous?

One year ago

One year ago tonight, we lost a friend. Ivan was killed, I'm still not sure how or why.
I don't understand why someone like Ivan had to die. He was only 38, he had so much life to look forward to. I totally took for granted that we would attend each others children's weddings - that we would be friends until we were old.
There are so many other people who deserve to die, why him?
Last year we had such good times together - memories that I will never forget. Ivan showed us Cape Town and he showed us, by example, how to live. How to be spontaneous. How to laugh! How to accept people.
I miss him, I miss our friendship because, even though his wife and girls remain, it's not the same. Something is missing. He is.

Tristan's 5 seconds of fame!

Tristan was an extra in the latest MTN ad. He runs across the screen and you don't even see his face, but it's so exciting to see him on TV!















This is a screen capture of him in the ad:













And here is the actual ad:

Dolphins

I took 253 photos of whales and dolphins while on holiday last week. They're all a bit grainy, but this is the best of the bunch. I loved seeing the dolphins, so carefree!

It's winter here

So it's been raining a lot. Don't the drops of water look like gems on the leaves?

Beach babes LO

Lily the pink

Whoo-hoo, I actually got a decent photo of one of our cats. They either squint or look away when I try to take a photo, and if I try without the red-eye and flash, they move and I end up with a blurry smear! This is Lily, AKA Lily the pink AKA The Bin Raider AKA Pissy Puss (she pees in the bath!)

Together

I love this photo! DH took it of us on Tuesday morning. My gorgeous munchkins!

Some of my layouts

Whoo-hoo, I've been doing some paper scrapping (at last).

The blue LO is about our holiday last year September - it was fabulous! The sketch is from Creating Keepsakes latest issue.

The other one is about Tristan's first tooth to fall out. I don't want to let on that the tooth fairy doesn't exist, so I deviously hid the tiny little toofer in a shaker box!

Hug scrapbook layout

I made this today for a competition. My first try at sewing on a page - ouch! My poor finger!

Garden flowers

Practising my close-up photography again.

Clip clop

Ugh, you know those silly toy shoes that get sold for little girls? Well we bought Shaelyn a pair last Sunday. They were broken before we even left the shops, so she didn't get to wear them. Rob's dad offered to repair them and we had to put up with 3 days of incessant "where are my shoes?" questions. *sigh* Anyway, Dad brought the shoes around on Thursday and Shaelyn was clip-clopping around the house with them until yesterday afternoon, by which time they were broken again. We'll buy her new ones tomorrow!

Tristan's art

I have a cold or something and yesterday I decided to spend the morning in bed. When Tristan heard that I was sick, he made these two drawings for me. The first one is me in the sun. The second one is me with my remote control alien - see the remote in my hand and the alien on the ground next to me? :D

Shopping cat

Hippie dog

The kids were drawing with their chalks outside and Meg happened to lie on one of the drawings. Then she was walking around for the rest of the afternoon with a flower print on her side!

The terrible twins

I love it when cats sit next to each other like this and mimic one another's movements!

Me and my shadow