December Daily

Here's another page from my December Daily that I am working on. Thought I would find out a little bit about where the Candy Cane came from and journalled that.

Snow Flake Brokeh

Two years ago I attempted to take photos of my Christmas Tree lights getting the brokeh to be in the shape of a heart. I saw a tutorial on Kevin and Amanda's blog and gave it a go but couldn't get it to work. On her blog today she mentioned the tutorial again so I gave it another shot and this time used a snowflake punch to give it the shape. It is more fiddly than it looks and I didn't do a particularly good job at taking photos however they are showing pretty snowflakes. Might invest in one of the little kits next year for Christmas instead of trying to make my own.

Origin of the word "BROKEH" for those photography buffs:-

The term comes from the Japanese word boke (暈け or ボケ), which means "blur" or "haze", or boke-aji (ボケ味), the "blur quality". The Japanese term boke is also used in the sense of a mental haze or senility.[9] The term bokashi (暈かし) is related, meaning intentional blurring or gradation.

Coloured Twinkle Lights

I found a box of coloured lights today in my Christmas stuff so we had a little play around with them in some late night photos after the kids bath time.

December Daily - Day 18

Today's activity was centred around wrapping the presents. I had specific ideas how I wanted this year's presents wrapped however I ended up going with some wrapping paper from IKEA (gotta love that store) and little cards for the front of the presents. I have one more present to buy and wrap and then I'm done. Tomorrow I have to express post some presents to Melbourne and Perth so they arrive in time and this week I need to do some baking of some Christmas slices etc. My sisters and I all make different slices and bring them to Mum's house on Christmas morning and then to my place for Christmas lunch and any other family gatherings over the holidays. I am famous for my "Belgium Chocolate Slice" which I have been making for many years now. Funny thing is I only ever make it at Christmas time, it's sort of a tradition with my family even though you can make it anytime during the year I always save it up for Christmas. How are your Christmas activities going? It always seems like a frantic rush in the end for some reason.

December Daily - Day 17

Yesterday's December Daily featured the things my kids love doing. James loves constructing and Sienna loves playing with the dirt. Click on the photo to enlarge to read the journalling.

December Daily - Trip to the City

I never go to the city as my life is lived in the surburbs and it has been years since I have ventured into Brisbane city itself. We get to Southbank often which is just over the river from the city however, today we headed for the Queen Street Mall to see the Myer Christmas windows and have a ride on the little train. Here's the collection of photos from our little trip.

December Daily - Day 13

It's hard not to be putting this together as the days go by but I am getting all the pictures sorted in anticipation for the kit arriving very soon from the States. Here is Day 13 which was spent at Rainbow Bay, Queensland, Australia.

December Daily

Here's a few random pages which I'm working on at the moment for my December Daily. I've put together the rest of Day 1 with a little collection of our night out at Tim's lights complete with kids eating sausages while we were there. The picture at the bottom is of the kids making healthy yoghurt berry ice cream and we put them into Santa, Reindeer and Gingerbread men moulds. James is pouring the excess into ice cream cone shapes.

December Daily - Day 7

Today I finished putting up our Christmas decorations around the place and attempted to photograph them. I don't think I would get a job for a magazine however, I was thrilled with my photo of the corner with the lamp and my new rustic wreath which I purchased after Christmas last year. I saw it at Wheel and Barrow (my favourite shop since finding out about them on Bert Newton's morning show when I was living in Melbourne about 8 years ago). Luckily for me a few years later Wheel and Barrow came to Brisbane and I cannot walk out of there without buying something. I saw the wooden wreath and was going to buy it however I had bought quite a few Christmas presents and I didn't have any more hands to carry it and I was tired so decided against it. Luckily for me after Christmas it was $15 off which was much more reasonable. How's your decorating going?

Getting into the spirit of Christmas

Sienna got out her little piano tonight and wanted to play a tune. I found the little music sheet recently which had numbers on it so you hit the 5 key or the 7 key. No on one in this household can read sheet music so the numbers are very handly indeed. Anyway she kept asking me for my reading glasses because the numbers were so small and I explained to her that they wouldn't help her but she kept insisting so I looked at the sheet and boy were those numbers tiny. I could hardly read them myself even with my glasses on. I ended up writing them down on a paper of A4 paper so she could play the tune. Just because the song was "Happy Birthday" doesn't mean anything as we still did it around the Christmas tree. James got in on the act as well and wanted to have a go.

December Daily 2011

A couple of my photos for December Daily.