Fun in the Sun

I woke up! Today was the perfect summer day & as we were granddaughter sitting we thought a day at the beach would be fun - and it certainly was. So we packed a picnic & drove up the road through the Waitakere Ranges to Cornwallis beach, it's a lovely long beach with lots of grass and trees but you can only swim when the tide is in otherwise you have to walk miles when it's out! I used to go there when I was young to stay in one of the baches (holiday home) right on the beach but many years ago they were all pulled down and it is now a council reserve. Mmmm I wonder if I can find any photos of those days - in the meantime here's a few I took today.

Blog365 - Day 7

We've been to the beach with our granddaughters today so now it's time for a lie down - will post photos when I wake up, if I do!

Blog365 - Day 6

Yesterday I went to my cousin's husband's funeral at one of the loveliest cemeteries I've been to, the gardens were just stunning. I took a few photos for my cousin and am going to send her this little memorial of the funeral. I've had to blur the family photos to preserve their privacy. Another cousin was the celebrant which was lovely. He was in the Army in WWII so they played the Last Post, that was when I broke down, it gets me every time, I was doing very well up until then. RIP .....

Blog365 - Day 5

Just a quick entry today, we're off to a funeral so I probably won't feel much like posting later. This is my latest LO from xmas day, we had such a fun day at DS's place and even though it was a hot summer day Becky still wanted to cuddle up with her new gifts.

Heritage Photos

Another layout I did today of my two sons, they probably won't be pleased to know they are now considered to be heritage! The journalling reads:-
Letter to Scott & Glenn
I have very few photos of you as you were growing up. We didn’t have a camera and with little money to throw around it wasn’t a priority. I had no idea that I would be so frustrated in the future at not having any otherwise I would have made it my TOP priority. That is the reason I’m bugging you constantly for photos of your own children, I don’t want them to miss out like you have. In this one you are sitting on your favourite rocking horse holding Mintie the cat, c1973.

Blog365 - Day 4

I've finally started sorting through my holiday photos and realised I haven't posted any from xmas eve so here's just a few, won't bore you with too many seeing it's long gone. Xmas eve was a lovely warm night so we walked to a housing estate 5 mins away where every year all the houses put on a lovely xmas lights display. This is the first time I've taken photos of lights at night so I didn't have a clue as to what camera settings I should have - I just took one and turned the dial, took another one and turned the dial and so on all night, some were horrible some good and a couple not too bad at all! Oh yes, the Santa in the window is my bedroom window, would you believe the colour of the curtains is actually lilac.

Blog365 - Day 3

Another hot day so we didn't go anywhere exciting. Some of the Scatterdaisies wanted me to do a tutorial on how I did my 'mosaic' of the weekly photos - well, I'm not too hot on tutorials so here's a brief idea of how it's done and then I'll look for a link to a tutorial on Digital Scrapbooking because that's what it's called.

It's all done in PhotoShop or a similar graphics programme. Basically it's done with layers of jpg or psd (PhotoShop) files - loaded in one by one and placed wherever you like until it's how you want it to look, then you merge all the layers together and save it as another jpg file and then you print it out and/or upload it to the Internet somewhere. Of course it's not that easy and does take a lot of learning, for me anyway, maybe you're a quick learner LOL - but it's a lot of fun and you get to make some lovely albums to pass onto your grandchildren/whoever you want.

My gallery is at http://dawn-in-nz.digitalscrapbookplace.com/ - do have a look around at the DigitalScrapBookPlace where you'll find hundreds of other digital scrapbookers and their digital layouts.

These are a few links to more information:-

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/university/Scrapping101/benefits.shtml

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/university/Scrapping101/basics.shtml

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/university/tutorials/tutorials.shtml

Don't feel as overwhelmed by all the tutorials on this last page as I was - after the initial shock I just chose 'Creating Your First Layout' and the graphics programme I use (PhotoShop Elements 4) and slowly followed the instructions with a few swear words thrown in and I was away, the addiction was upon me!

Here's the layout I did today, click on it to see a larger version. Now you can see why I'm not so good on tutorials, absolutely hopeless explanation!

Blog365 - Day 2

Well, I nearly didn't make it past the first day! I remembered just in time as I was going to bed - so just a short one today. The heat is starting to get to me but it's the humidity that is the worst, 83% at the moment, I have the fan going flat out but it seems like it's just moving hot air around!

DH is off for another week so we've decided to try and tame our garden, a very miniscule one thank goodness! When we moved nearly 9 years ago we were disappointed to find the builders had already covered the ground with black polythene and bark without first replacing the soil that had been removed, hence it's just compacted clay underneath! All the local cats think it's their own personal toilet so we've decided to remove everything and cover it again with something they won't like, probably a small stone chip of some sort. That is going to take us at least all week and probably more so not much time out for doing any photowalking of note but I promise I will post some photos soon, as soon as I get time to sort them out.

In the meantime here's a digital layout I did of DGS Harry on xmas day.

What have I done.....

....I must be mad! I've just joined Blog365 which is self explanatory I guess - anyone would think I had nothing better to do with my time - http://blog365.ning.com/ - let's see how long it lasts.

Scatterday V

Okay, I hope I have this right! Not the best photos but I only arrived home from holiday yesterday and today was just a blur of unpacking, washing, shopping, grandchildren sitting and downloading over 1300 photos from my camera! I rushed these photos through but I promise to do better next week! The Office Items stumped me a bit, I could only think of Velcro and do you think I could find mine - so in the end I went with my 'volumes' for Dummies! The rest is self-explanatory - I thought my V in the Visor of the car was a brainwave :).

Happy New Year

Hello, I'm home again! Had a fabulous nine days in a little place called Tararu which is just out of Thames on the Coromandel Peninsular - 1.5 hrs drive from home. We stayed in a friend's caravan and apart from the first night when we froze (and of course I didn't take any winter woollies did I!) the weather was absolutely perfect, long hot sunny days (a little too hot but I'm not complaining) and lovely evenings with a cool breeze to go walking in. After wanting to get away to fill up my new 4 gig camera card I didn't actually manage to fill it but I still have plenty of photos to post over the new few days/weeks.

That's all for now except to say I've just joined the Scatterday ladies so hope to post my first Scatterday photos this Saturday. Don't know what Scatterdays is? Check out Michelle's blog where you can read all about it and have a look at the other blogs in the Scatterday blog ring -
http://michellewatters.blogspot.com/

Christmas Eve

Well, I'm finally finished wrapping the presents, making the calendars and a few tags to hang on the tree. Tomorrow we'll be visiting DH's 87 year old mother before we head off to DS's place for a Christmas feast with the rest of the family who are in Auckland. This year there's only two of our children here, with wives & 3 children between them, the other four children (and 3 grandchildren) are in Macau, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane respectively. Weatherwise it's looking not too bad, at least it's not raining and hot if somewhat overcast - let's see what it's like when daylight breaks! Have a wonderful day everyone - Merry Christmas to all.

Merry Christmas

This is a peep at the calendar I've made for my grandchildren for xmas, you can see photos of each page in my scrapbooking gallery here:-
http://www.dawn-in-nz.digitalscrapbookplace.com/


And this is a board game I made for the kids to play while opening their presents, yeah right Nana, don't be so silly! Well, I thought it was a good idea. Again you can see it better if you click on it.

In case I don't get a chance to post again before xmas day I'd like to wish all my visitors a wonderful time with family and friends and have a very merry christmas. This is my six grandchildren taken at various times over the last 10 years. The eldest, Lauren in the tartan dress, is now 10, the rest are Rebecca 7, Kate 5, Liam 3, Harrison 2½ & Riley 2.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

The Lighthouse

On the 2 December we finally took a trip to Awhitu to the restored lighthouse that I've been wanting to do for such a long time! The lighthouse is at the south side of the Manukau Heads which is the entrance to the harbour from the Tasman sea, a rough place where boats founder and have often sunk in the past! I fully intend to do a layout with lots more photos but the xmas rush has taken over my life so it will have to wait until next month now. You can get a closer view of the lighthouse by clicking on the photo.

Xmas Holidays

Yay it's the start of our annual holidays today, can't wait to get away and fill up my NEW 4 GB camera memory stick DH gave me for xmas today. The trouble is I now need a new hdd to put the photos onto, my current one is full up! So, still trying to catch up from being absent for so long. I was up to the end of October and our weekend trip to Tauranga. On the 18 November we went to watch DS play a game of softball and I took a few photos while we were there. This layout is his son following in Dad's footsteps and the second one is Dad following in his Dad's footsteps!

Wacky Letterboxes

I've always had a fascination for letterboxes out of the ordinary so on my walks & trips I've taken photos of lots of them over the years. These are just a few of them!

Christmas is looming fast...

I recently took part in a holiday recipe collection at DSP and thought I would post my recipe here. There are two versions for those who live in different parts of the world. I always use glace cherries (maraschino), soak them in the rum or coffee liqueur overnight (or longer) then use the liquid to make the truffles with mmmmm - don't forget to keep them away from the toddlers though!

Leaving comments

Thank you to everyone who leaves comments, I love to get them as I guess everyone does, I really should leave more myself. Susan, that face of Harry's is a Vegemite face - all good kiwis are brought up on it, it's a yeast extraction spread. Yes, I do have lots of photos of the restored lighthouse, a layout on them is coming soon.

Peacocks at KatiKati

While we were having lunch at the bird gardens I noticed the male Peacock eyeing up the female one at the bottom of the hill and all of a sudden he burst into bloom LOL. So in my hurry to get down there to get a few photos I didn't set the camera on the right settings and all the photos were a little blurred, I've fixed them the best I could but I was so disappointed, it's not every day you get a chance to photograph a male displaying his finery. These two LOs are actually a combination of two different males, one of them was at the Zoo but he didn't give a display while I was there.

KatiKati Bird Gardens

As mentioned before, on the way home from our weekend in Tauranga I saw a sign that said KatiKati Bird Gardens so we went down that road to have a look. We spent an idyllic two hours there having lunch and walking around the beautiful gardens, feeding a lot of the birds by hand and even walking through the cages of some of them. This LO really doesn't do it justice, I'll post a few more photos later. BTW if you're wondering about the Moa bird, it is now extinct although it used to roam NZ many hundreds of years ago. Bones of the Moa are always being found and there are skeletons of it in some of the museums, this one is just a statue!

A few photos...

These are a few photos I've taken over the last month or so with added captions.

This one was taken early in the morning before normal people were up and about - on the beach at Mount Maunganui the weekend we were in Tauranga. We stayed at a hotel across the road from the beach and for that time of year the weather was perfect.

This one was taken at Cornwallis Beach which is just 10 mins drive away from where we live in Waitakere, Auckland.

This one I took at the Auckland Zoo the day we were there, Labour Day holiday on 22nd Oct. Yes, I was in the cage with them, people were allowed to walk through their cage which was a large open air one with a netting roof, it was fascinating.

Another bird one, this one DH took at the KatiKati Bird Gardens which we called into on our way home from Tauranga, more on that later.

One of the walk way ramps going down onto Mount Maunganui beach through the sand dunes.

And this one is right on the beach.

I took this on one of the many stops on the way to Tauranga. On the way there is a long haul up through the mountains called the Kaimai Ranges & this was the view from the top.

DGS Harry one weekend when we had him while his parents took off to Sydney for the weekend.

This cute little family I think had only just hatched because they walked around in this group the whole time they were following Mum. They were in the backyard of son's house which backs onto the coast of Waitakere.

Another one taken at Cornwallis Beach with DGDs Lauren & Becky. The large frame is one that is put there by the council to frame your photographs, there are lots of them dotted all over the country.

And finally this one I took near Matamata just after we stopped in at Hobbiton.

It's Monday again...

Okay, well the weekend flew by so fast I barely saw it! So where was I up to - oh yes the end of October. On the 27th we drove to Tauranga (a 3 or more hour drive depending on how often you stop, we stop a lot to take photos!) for my niece's 40th birthday party. On the way we stopped for a coffee in Matamata which is famous for being where some of the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed. Their information centre is built in the shape of a hobbit house!

Don't forget, to see a larger version just click on the photo or layout.

A Day at the Zoo

Back on 22 October we took our grandson Harry to the Auckland Zoo for the day. Unfortunately it started to rain so we had to cut it short but I did manage to get a couple of gigabytes of photos!

Time flies when you're having fun...

Oh my is it that long since I last posted, tut tut. Here's a few photo layouts of the places I've been since last time. I'll post a few more tomorrow, summer has started to kick in here so we've been out and about a few times. Last weekend we drove down to the South Manukau Heads to have a look at the restored Lighthouse there and on the way passed these beautiful watergardens. We lingered so long here that the rest of the day was a bit of a rush.