MissyMuh

T is for ...

Ok i remembered what i was gonna talk about for T....my tattoo!! I got it when i was about 20. It's on my lower back, so i always forget it is there. It is just a pretty swirly design and it also has Luke written under it. I don't have a photo of it right now, but i will try to add one later.

I actually passed out when i had it done LOL... i remember sitting on the chair, and i was leaning forward a bit. The pain wasn't excruciation but it was a bit ouchy...and the next thing i know i was being tapped on the shoulder by the tattoo guy. I didn't fall off the chair or anything and i think i was only out for about 20 seconds. He was really cool about it, didn't laugh at me or anything. He let me lay down for a few min then we continued on.

Anyway, i have been wanting to get another one for ages, something to do with the kids, but i just can't decide what. My latest idea is two baby birds, but i don't want anything too cheesy... i also have no idea where to get it put. I only want it to be small, so maybe on my foot or ankle or something. I'm open to suggestions.

 

OOH! i just remembered something else starting with T that i haven't mentioned here yet. I'm going to Tassie!! In November (24th-25th) i am offering 6 photo sessions in Launceston (2 spots already taken so be quick!!). If you want more info then just give me an email clairbremner@hotmail.com

I had a photo session with a gorgeous family on Sunday. They were such a loving family, you could tell that both parents adored their daughter Louise. And she was super-dooper cute...even if she did chuck a wobbly when we had to go home from the park LOL. Here are some sneak peeks for her mummy and daddy. 

Today i also made a dress for Charlee, and did some scrapping, but those will have to wait until tomorrow. xx

Q.....R....S

Quiet: I like peace. I like quiet. i like to hear the wind blow.....

Rest: Oh how i love my sleep. I need sleep or i just don't function properly. I am not one of those people that can survive on 3-4 hours a night. I need my full 10-12 hours or i am super grumpy the next day. And i am so SO not a morning person LOL.
I was pretty lucky with my kids, both of them were pretty good sleepers as babies. Koby took about 6 months to sleep a full 8 hours at night, but even then he would only wake once at about 3am for a bottle and go right back to sleep. Charlee slept through the night a full 6-8 hours when she was about 4 weeks..no kidding. She was a fantastic sleeper. There were a few nights here and there when she was sick and would fuss a bit, but most of the time it was last bottle at 10-11pm and she'd sleep till 7am the next morning. Bliss. 

Scrapbooking:  I started scrapbooking just after Charlee was born. Before then i had heard about it, but i had never really seen anything that inspired me to take it up as a hobby. The layouts i had seen were all very basic, and rather boring. And it took me ages to get my head around why you would want to stick photos down on a page with pretty ribbons.
(Below: My first LO published)

It wasn't until i did my first few pages and looked up on the net about it that i realized it was more than just sticking down photos and arranging them to look pretty. It was a way for me to record memories, just like taking photos, but with more information. To accompany the photos i could record dates, places, words that were said, things that were done.
I was in charge from then on of recording my family's life, our legacy, our relationships. Funny things the kids said, places we visited, what i felt and thought about them. Things that surely after a few months i would have forgotten (having such a terrible memory and all).
(June Guest DT layout for Designing Memories)

To say i was a prolific scrapper would be an understatement LOL. I can easily get 2..3..4 layouts done in one sitting once i am in the mood and i have everything i need. I find that if i have too long a break from scrapping it takes me a while to get my mojo back.  So i try to do at least 2 pages a week, even if i am not feeling particularly inspired, just to keep the juices flowing. Creation breeds creativity, so i find the more i do, the better i get.

I had my first layouts published in Scrapbook Creations back in December. I was SO excited. Since then i have had at least one layout (sometimes 3-4) in every SC, bar one, for this year. Scrapbook Creations is by far my favourite mag, it always was, even before i was published in it. It's just so well put together and the articles are always inspirational and well written. I also love For Keeps, and have my first three layouts published by them coming out in issue 60.

The one thing i really need to improve on with my scrapping is my storage issues. I only own two albums and they are both bulging with layouts. The rest are just filed away in piles and piles of pizza boxes waiting to be put into albums. They are not even in plastic sleeves, they are just piled one on top of the other. In no order at all. I also have no idea where all these layouts are going to live once i die. Hopefully, buy the time that day comes, i will have done a heck of a lot more scrapping...so who is going to store all of these layouts??? I can see myself renting out some storage room somewhere to house the piles and piles of layouts documenting every moment of my children's lives.... it's a worrying prospect.

P is for....

Photography.
I live and breath photography. When i am not actually taking photos i am thinking about the photos i could be taking. When i am driving i am always "seeing" great photo locations, or beautiful light and colors. When i don't have my camera with me, i ALWAYS see something that i would love to photograph. Sometimes i wish my eyes were cameras so i could just photograph everything. I think it has something to do with the fact that i have a terrible memory...and i mean bad bad bad... i forget things that i have done the day before. I forget things i have said to people... i forget people LOL (especially names...terrible)... i'm hopeless, so i think photography is my way of making sure i have a permanent record of things that i can look back on. Especially my kids.

Before i had kids i enjoyed taking photos of things, but the passion wasn't there yet. It wasn't until Koby came along that i realized how important it was to photograph everything they do. I wish i had taken so many more photos of him when her was a tiny new baby. At the time i only had my SLR so it was expensive to keep developing film. So i really only took maybe one roll of film every month or so, and so there are these parts that are missing. Faces that he use to make that i don't remember. How small his feet were. The way he would poke out his bottom lip when he slept. I have snap shots of him asleep in his cot, or sitting up and laughing, but if i knew then what i know now about photographing kids i would have made so much more of an effort.

I find it completely amazing that there are people out there that only ever have one "pixi photo" style portrait of their child taken every year and that is it. Don't you realize that it is not your child that you are seeing in those photos?? Yes it looks like them, but how often does your child dress up like a fireman and sit on a pretend truck?? Or sit in a flowerpot surrounded with fake daises?? It's not natural, and it is not going to remind you of how they really were at that age. It's not going to give you something real and believable to look back on in years to come. Yes it will show you a likeness of them. But it's not them.

  This is my main drive behind being a children's photographer. I want to give these people memories. Moments. I want to show them images of their children laughing and dancing and being silly. I want to give them something to look back on that shows them exactly how their child was at that moment in time.  They are not always perfect. They don't always want to smile. But that's kids..sometimes they are sad, cranky, snotty, hungry, tired, silly, loud.... but it's always real.

Here are some of my all time favourite photos i have taken of my kids.

In this one charlee was only about 11 months.

Charlee at about 10 months

Koby when he was 2, and a few weeks ago..

N....O....

No: This is Charlee's favourite thing to say right now and it drives me mad...even when she means yes she still says "no" just for the sake of it and because she knows it annoys me.

"do you want rice bubbles for breakfast??"
"no"
"toast??"
"...no"
"ok"....*i start eating my toast*.... 30 seconds later...
"I want it toast now mummy".......

"No i don't WANT to get dressed, i no like you"
"no...GO WAY!"
"NO, don't want shoes, i want my boots"
"No, I no want sleepy time"
"No no no...i don't want to..no"

Oil painting. When i was back in my art school days it was one of my favourite mediums. I had the grand illusion once that you weren't considered a real artist until you painted in oil. After all, that's what all the masters used. But they really are not very practical and extremely messy and they stink to high heaven. I now generally only paint with acrylics. When i do paint i like to work quickly. I can finish an entire painting in only one day (those that have seen me scrap will not find that hard to believe lol). So Acrylics make much more sense. But occasionally i like to break out the oils for old times sake. Here are some snippets of my most recent paintings.... (well the middle one was actually done about 4 years ago so i guess not really THAT recent PMSL) ...

M is for...

Macca's: Love it. We have tried very hard to instill the idea into our children that McDonald's is a "sometimes food", but unfortunately we don't follow those rules ourselves LOL. We limit them to having it at the most once a week (usually for lunch on Friday with daddy as a treat) but whenever Luke and i are out somewhere we always seem to end up at a Macca's munchin' down a cheese burger. Or if Luke is out somewhere late at night, and i am still up, he will bring me home a chocolate Sunday, if he is feeling particularly romantic he'll get a super sized one.....mmmm....Sunday....

Mum: I just realized that i completely forgot to mention my Dad under the letter D...oops, sorry dad... i am pretty sure he doesn't read this anyway, so he wouldn't have noticed. My Mum and Dad are very down to earth, simple people. They run their own (usually very stressful) business and have done so for as long as i can remember. But when it's time to relax they like nothing more than chucking some sausages on a bbq and sitting around doing absolutely nothing. They have always been very supportive of anything us kids have wanted to do. I don't ever remember a moment when they said "no, we don't want you to do that"...well ok, except maybe my dad and the whole tatoo idea but i ended up getting one anyway and he wasn't too devastated LOL.
Even when at 20 i announced to them that i was almost 4 month pregnant, after an initial pause of shock, they were both instantly happy and ready to help me out in anyway. And never made me feel like the "naughty little girl" that Lukes family made me feel like (and still sometimes do).
I can't go past the "mum" topic without mention my experience as a mum. Some days it is the most stressful frustrating thing i have ever put myself through. Take right now for instance, i am trying to type loving words about my offspring while they are playing wrestle-mania with each other on the couch in the background making a god-awful racket and mess to boot. But  other days it's wonderful. Ok i lie, most days are like this and worse, but i am constantly amazed at how i still manage to love them so much once they are tucked up in bed. I never understood how much my own mother could have possible loved me until i became one myself, and that is the honest truth.
And besides the almost constant yelling and cursing i think i make a pretty darn good mum. I am still learning everything as i go along, but i think that's what all mums do really. You can't know how to be a mum until you have been a mum.

Other things: Yesterday i met my mate Shirls at a local park. We swapped children for the morning, she photographed mine (which she quickly discovered was no easy task LOL) and i Photographed Abby, who like the perfect child stood exactly where her mother told her long enough for us to get some lovely shots of her tee hee... I think i still managed to take more photos of my own children than Abby, but by comparison they were actually behaving rather well so i made the most of it. Here are a few of my favorites shots of the three of them.

L is for ....

**warning mushy lovey-dovey post ahead. Feel free to skip if feeling particuarly queezy**

Luke: My life would SO not even be worth living if he was not in it. I couldn't even picture it. It just doesn't work, doesn't make sense, everything i see in the future has him in it. He is virtually all i have ever known of love. As pitiful as it may sound to some, he was my first ever "serious" boyfriend. I had experienced crushes and flings with others, but he was the first boy i ever really kissed.  Actually, we did have one of those little "flings" i was talking about back in year 7. It didn't really go anywhere, it was just an infatuation that lasted for a few weeks and died over the Christmas holidays. The following year, he was interested in someone else.

I was definitely not his first girlfriend LOL he was a bit of a ladies man in his youth... but by the time he got to me he was so over the whole girlfriend thing that he was more than happy to settle. At the time i wasn't sure if that was such a good thing, but apparently he finally found one he could picture being with for longer than a month, so i guess that's a compliment LOL..

Anyway, in year 11 he started going out with my best friend. So naturally i started to hang out with him too, in fact my friend actually asked me to make sure i "included him" in the group. I hadn't really paid that much attention to him since year 7, but we had a few classes together so i we started chatting in class and working on things together. In the beginning it was purely a friendship (as hard as that may be for some people to believe, we really had no other agenda at the time). Anyway things between my friend and Luke became a little rocky (which happened often with my friend's relationships LOL) and Luke began to turn to me for advice and to try and help him figure out what was going through said friends head at the time.

We began chatting at night on ICQ (an older version of MSN messenger). My friend found out that we were spending quite a lot of time together and naturally got jealous. She then tried to set me up in certain situations to try and trap me and "catch me in the act" of stealing her boyfriend (which i should at this point emphasis the fact that all she managed to do during this pointless process was push as both closer together LOL). Anyway, it's a long and drawn out story which obviously resulted in Luke and I realizing that the relationship that we had developed was no longer a "just friends" relationship, so we started going out as a couple. That was back in September 1998.  This photo was taken shortly after. Awwwww

In September 2002, three months after Koby was born, we got married at Camberwell Baptist Church.  It was a rather rushed marriage, not by our choice, Lukes parents and family being rather religious (ok replace the word "rather" with "fanatical" and you're getting closer to the real picture) told us in no uncertain terms that we HAD to get married ASAP after Koby was born. In fact they made us start planing the wedding before luke had even proposed to me. Even though we had both already discussed and agreed on getting married before i was pregnant with Koby. But if i had had things my way we would have lived together and planned the resulting wedding over about 12 months, and not 6. So as a result the wedding, although lovely, was rather rushed and not exactly as i had planned. For example it would have been nice to have had a little longer that three months after having a baby to loose weight to fit into a decent wedding dress....me bitter? no...
 

But to our credit we have not looked back since. He makes me laugh so hard i cry. No matter how terrible i look in the morning he will still kiss me goodbye. He motivates me to do things that, if left on my own, i'd never get around to doing. He is patient with me. Goes to work every day just to provide money for his family, and very rarely spends it on himself. He has sacrificed dreams for us. I know, like any other 20-something year old guy, that he would much rather be out drinking with his mates most nights and spending money on useless things, but instead of doing that he is home with us. The older he gets the more gorgeous he gets. I love that he can't make a decision on what to wear without my input. In fact he can't make a decision on anything without my input LOL, and i am honored that after almost 10 years together he still thinks my opinion is worthy enough to hear.  I love him, that's all there is to it.

K is for...

Koby: I discovered i was pregnant with Koby whilst having an ultrasound for an unrelated matter (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) when i was 20. The ultrasound technician quite calmly turned to me and said..."i think i have found part of your problem... there is no way to beat around the bush with this, so i'll just say it...you are having a baby"...she then swung around the monitor and i saw him wriggling around. I was almost at the 4 month mark.
Now i know you may be thinking how on earth could i have not know i was almost four months pregnant??? Well my menstrual cycle has always been irregular. I could go 4-5 months without having a visit from "Aunt Flo" sometimes so it was not unusual and no alarm bells started rigging when i missed it for a few months. I had been suffering from IBS symptoms even before i was pregnant so the increased nausea bloating and cramps that went along with it, i just assumed were part of the condition. I even had the doctor examine my stomach  a week before the ultrasound and he didn't feel a baby in there, so i was completely surprised.
Anyway, the rest of my pregnancy ran fairly smoothly (besides a minor incident requiring a Amniocentesis test) and three days after my 21st birthday he was born at 10:45pm via emergency Cesarean section after i had been in labor for nearly 23hours. I developed pre-eclampsia during labor and only progressed to 7cm dilation, and he then got stuck in my pelvis. He was 8lbs 10oz and was named Koby Ethan half an hour after being born. He was a super easy baby. I don't think a pair of 20-something year old first time parents could have asked for a nicer more content baby.
He is a very smart boy, his imagination is incredible as is his memory. He remembers things that  happened when he was only 2 and 3, things that even i don't remember. He is very sensitive and also very social. He will make a friend where ever we go.  Within ten minuets of being in a playground or play center he will have made a friend to play with. I argue with him more than anyone else i the family, purely because we are SO alike. He is also very stubborn like his father, when he wants something he wants it his way and his way only.   

Knitting: I have knitted things on and off since i was a child. My mum taught me to knit, and i would spend about a week knitting everyday (usually a very lopsided scalf) i would then get bored with it, and put it aside never to be picked up again. Unfortunately my knitting habits haven't changed much since childhood. I have attempted to make several tops, cardigans and boleros and failed at them all. I either get bored with it, or it it ends up so wonky that it's not worth going on with. Crochet on the other hand i seem to be having more luck with. I have a few orders for my Friends and i am merrily making my way through them (in fact i am gonna have to stop taking orders for them soon so i can catch up on the ones i have already taken orders for). I find crochet to be a lot more fulfilling because i can complete a project in one evening rather than four months, like this little guy whom took me little over 30 min to make yesterday. Charlee adores turtles, so i made her an itty bitty turtle she has christened "wittle turtle". If i do ever get the urge to knit again, these gorgeous little ballet slippers are going to be the first on my list. Definitely not practical but they are oh so sweet.

Weather today is glorious! A whopping 25 degrees (the warmest it has been in months). Here is a photo of my sweetness wearing a smock top i made her and munching on a big juicy strawberry. Lovely.

I is for....

Ice cream: Fav flavor is Licorice (yes there is such a thing) and i am also quite partial to boring old French Vanilla.

ISO: one of my favourite camera functions...if all else fails boost the ISO *lol*

J is for....

June: My birthday month (22nd to be precise) ad  Koby's is on the 25th. He was actually due on my birthday but decided to stay put for a few extra days.

Junk: I seem to accumulate a lot of junk. I'm not exactly a hoarder...well ok maybe i am... a lot of it is stuff that i do want to keep and intend on using at some stage. But there is also a whole heap of stuff in the shed out the back which is literally just junk that i can't seem to get rid of. Some of it is Luke's (who is far worse than me when it comes to throwing things out).

During the hard rubbish collection time i am pretty ruthless. Toys that are broken, or missing too many parts get thrown out, old papers and junk get thrown out, but there still always seems to be a ton of clutter around that i just can't get rid of. I hate clutter, but our house really doesn't have many places to hide things.

We also have WAY to many clothes as a family. I reckon we could easily cloth a small African village just from our own wardrobes and have plenty left for ourselves. Once again i think Luke is worse than me by far. His clothes take up three wardrobes in this house. He has some in ours, half of Koby's wardrobe is Luke's clothes and he also has things stashed away in Charlee's room. I bag up my stuff once or twice a year and send it to Op shops but he has a harder time parting with things than i do. So as a result there is always piles of clothes randomly around the house. Drives me mad, i am always either shifting them from one room to another, or i spend 3 hours attempting to put it all away only to have it explode all over the house again after a few days.

Anyway, here are a few sneaky peek shots for Tracy. I photographed her lovely family last weekend.

H is for...

Hayley: My sister (6 years younger) whom i was never really too impressed with. She was always prettier than me, thinner than me and more popular than i could ever have been (in fact she still is LOL). So as a result i tended to make myself pay as little attention to her as possible. It was just easier that way.
I regret that now though. Like my brother, i know hardly anything about her and we are no where near as close as what i hoped i would be with a sister.  I still have very little in common with her, but if i knew her better i think we would find that we had very similar personalities. We are both klutzes, forgetful and somewhat dagy (all said in the nicest possible way hun PMSL).
I can thank her for introducing me to scrap booking. She was the one who brought me my first kit. She started out doing it when she worked at Spotlight for a while but she doesn't do it any more. She is a fantastic babysitter and will spend hours watching Dora with Charlee, colouring in, and playing Play station games with Koby. And i wish her nothing but happiness.

Hugh Grant: Ok i know it's kinda embarrassing, but i really love Hugh. Actually i think it's just the movies he is in. I am a fan of a lot of his movies, not necessarily because he is in them, but it helps i guess. Love Actually is an all time fav, along with Sence and Sensibility, Bridget Jones, Two Weeks Notice.... i could go on. He's hilarious, oh-so-charming and you can't go past that accent. 

And for something completely off topic, i got my first Qtea kit today. Gorgeous! Couldn't be happier. If you haven't heard of these before you are missing out. Danielle has started her own mini kit club with gorgeous unique and vintage items. Such a sweet little pack of things and the price is right. So head on over and subscribe to them if you haven't already. Well worth it. Love love love...

G is for...

Goodies! ok so it doesn't really fall into the whole "Encyclopedia of me" thing, but i went op shopping today and had to show off what i got LOL.. It's been a while since i have managed to get a good haul of stuff, lately i haven't had much luck finding things. I think there must be some other sneaky people about that keep pinching the good things before i get there tee hee... anyway here's what i picked up today...

Some lovely vintage sheets. One with bright flowers and the other a patchwork design. Both will be made into summery skirts and dresses for Charlee, and if i am motivated enough other summery things to re-stock the Charlee's Closet store.
A crochet pattern book, with step by step photos on how to make a granny square and also a cool crocheted hat. Another old book to be pulled apart for scrapping purposes, and some sweet buttons and trims.

A couple of old table cloths that i am actually planning on using as table cloths for a change PMSL (who would have thought?!?), a very sweet hand knitted cardigan for Missy, it's a really nice soft wool too not the scratchy acrylic you sometimes find. And some other random fabric scraps, the brown one is actually ribbing, which you can never have enough of. All that came to a grand total of $11.20.

I also came home to a lovely pizza box full of goodies i picked up at Blue Bazaar. So overall a pretty good morning.
I had Charlee with me today for a change. She hasn't been well this past week so i decided to not send her to Playgroup. I took her to the doctor this morning because besides coughing, a snotty nose and puffy gooey eyes she had also started complaining of sore ears.
I am not one to rush my kids to the doctor at the slightest cough, i usually let them suffer through it for a while to see if it will clear up on it's own (mean mummy). But once they start complaining of sore ears i know well enough to get them checked out. But thankfully she doesn't have an ear infection and apparently she is now on the back end of whatever she had. So she should be back to her noisy joyful self in the next day or two.
We have quite a few play dates organized for this week, so i'm glad she is getting better.

You may or may not remember a few months back, my grandmother fell and broke her hip...well she was doing very well. She was walking about again with the aid of a walking stick, she was driving and pottering along with her merry little life until last week when she fell over again and broke her pelivis. Would you believe it!! She was walking along with some friends not paying attention and tripped up on a bit of carpet. Because the hip that was shattered is now all titanium, instead of breaking again her pelvis copped all the force. So she is back in hospital again. I spoke to her on the phone the other day and the first thing she said to me was
"I am a stupid, stupid woman Clair, i've gone and done it again. But all is not lost because my St Kilder footy team won over the weekend!"
  PMSL...she is quite the avid footy supporter.... so all is well as long as the Saints keep on playin....