Camping in Nathalia!

For Christmas this year Andrew and I, along with Laura and Tim decided not to give each other gifts but rather to go away camping together for a few nights. Great idea! We ended up going to a little town called Nathalia, about 2.5 hours north of the city where Andrew and Laura used to go when they were younger. We stayed in the same caravan park that they used to stay in (they both commented on how much smaller it was than what they remembered...) and had a blast drinking, playing games and grilling out. It was so relaxing and it was great to get some much needed sibling time together!

One of our nights down there we decided to get some yummy food to take down to the river to grill for dinner. We prepared what we could ahead of time and took ourselves and little Alfo down to the river to a lovely lovely BBQ and picnic bench. As soon as we got there, Alfred, who over the first couple of days in Nathalia turned into a river dog, jumped right in and started chasing ducks! I think he was helped along by Andrew who pointed out the ducks and encouraged him to go get them... needless to say, Alf jumped in and swam off down river chasing the ducks. I was actually a bit worried he wasn't going to come back!

Tim and Laura manned the BBQ while Andrew and I walked across the street to get some drinks. The town is tiny and was pretty quite which added to its appeal. I love small towns. When we got back dinner was ready and wicked delicious. Nothing better than BBQ outdoors for dinner. Love it.

After dinner I took a few quick photos because it was so sunny and warm and the light was really fun to play with. Alfo is a good little subject to practice on and was feeling extra lovey at this point. There are a couple funny pictures of him giving kisses to Laura and Tim. Lucky!

Once the bugs started coming out to play we headed back to our little caravan and made S'mores... which Laura has heard me talk about (and by talk about I mean sing their praises and call them the most amazing desert in the world) for 4 years now and had never tried one. She LOVED it. Classic photo. Tim has become a fan as well although I didn't get a photo of him because I was too concerned about eating my own S'more rather than taking pictures. They were delicious though. We each had 2 that night and 2 the next night. Yummo.

Thanks Laura and Tim for such a fun and relaxing trip away! We had a blast! Lets do it again ASAP.

A Very Aussie Christmas - Ho ho ho!

To those of you who have not experience a hot Christmas, let me tell you... it's hard to even imagine how different it is to a cold snowy Christmas around the fire. Christmas in Australia is a wonderful event. You get to wear shorts or a sun dress rather than flannel pj's, play outside in the sun rather than snow, put on sunscreen and sunnies rather than a hat, scarf, mittens and slippers and we eat yummy seafood on the barbie rather than warm comfort food. I do miss cold Christmas and all the traditions and comfort that go along with what I'm used to, but I like to think of Aussie Christmas as a bit of an adventure! And let me tell you... this year it definitely was!

Andrew and I decided that Christmas Eve would be a good day to move from our little unit in Keilor to a big beautiful brand spanking new townhouse in Newport that Anna and Ron have spent the last few years building. It's been a work in progress for ages but let me tell you it was worth the wait and was a great (although hot and tiring) start to Christmas. Here's a few pictures of the new place!

The photos above are how the place looked on Christmas morning... I was pretty impressed at how quickly we unpacked and set up most of the house. Yay us! Big thanks to Anna, Ron, Laura and Tim for all their help!

Andrew started off Christmas morning testing out the new kitchen by making me fried eggs on toast with some yummy tomatoes that he grew in our back garden. (Yes, all Andrew's plants made the trip in the back of the moving truck from Keilor to Newport with only 1 casualty, poor little tomato plant snapped in 2!)

Next we stuck Alfred and ourselves in the car and headed over to Anna and Ron's place for Christmas lunch! Anna had beautiful Christmas decorations and chef Tim prepared a delicious feast of shrimp, calamari, fish and steak. Anna and Laura made some delicious salads as well. I love Christmas at Nana Anna's! Never leave hungry!

 While all of this cooking and preparing was going on, Andrew helped out by finding alcohol under the kitchen floor (I believe it was 20 year old port, which was actually delicious!) and babysitting the 3 puppies. Aren't I lucky to have such a helpful husband!

After a lovely and verry yummo Christmas lunch, Tim made us all Bomb Alaska complete with blow torch (shout out to A2-Drewseph!) and sparklers!

Then, all of a sudden, the skies opened up and it started to downpour with a special little Christmas addition of hail! Only in Melbourne! I heard it didn't snow on Christmas back in Boston so I thought it kind of cool that all the way over here in sunny, warm Australia, we had a hail storm on Christmas day! Luckily, there was no damage to our cars or the house in Bacchus Marsh. We found out a week later when we went back to clean up the Keilor unit that most of the roof tiles on the unit complex had been damaged and replaced! Yikes! Thank goodness we had the intuition to move out of there the day before! We win. And by we, I mean our cars, which would have had mucho hail damage!

  Love the picture of Laura above watching the storm from the window. Too cute. Anyway, after lunch we were all so full and tired from watching the storm that we snuggled in on the comfy couches and just chatted the afternoon away. Some of us (cough, Ron, cough) even slipped in a little nap! (Sorry Ron, the picture was just way too classic not to post! This is what happens when your daughter-in-law comes hand in hand with a camera!) I think it's a sign of a very successful Christmas.

After driving home in the rain the sun decided to peak out to reveal a beautiful stormy sky.

What a beautiful ending to a relaxing, warm, family Aussie Christmas. Heart.

Man Cold - The End of the World as We Know It

Andrew has a Man Cold. The world is ending. He thinks he's going to die. Nothing will ever manage to make him well again. Sadness. (At least he has me around to document his final hours ;) He's going to love it. Sneaky sneaky!)

Study Time

I snapped this quick, but super cute photo of Alfred helping Andrew "study" for his Thermodynamics (don't ask... I have no idea other than that it involves sciency stuff and numbers) exam earlier this week. I'm not sure how much "studying" Andrew got done as football was on TV!  He he he.

Sem B Folio - Abstract Representations of Personality

Greetings from OZ-land everyone!

I know I have a few posts to catch up on, but seeing as how I've spent the past month working away intensely on images for our 2nd semester of year 2 folio I thought I'd quickly post them before we spend 2 full days in presentations.

The short version of what this folio is about is basically trying to abstractly represent individuals (family and friends) using movement and colour. A lot of research went into this folio and I also used quotes from some individuals to try and give me a bit of deeper insight into their personality.

I am really happy with all of the final images and while it was really arty and conceptual, I loved having the chance to explore this before the heat gets turned up next year for our final year at PSC. The prints are big and the colour just pops off the BFK Rieves watercolour paper... they look like paintings which is what I had been going for since the beginning.

When I showed the images throughout the semester in class for feedback, it was actually really creepy how our tutor was able to pin-point the personality of pretty much every image without knowing any of the people they are about or which image represented each person. He even got so close with Drew's (A2) image to know he was an engineer, he even specified bridges! What?!?! He knew that mom's was a fierce, passionate and feisty person who was always doing a number of different things at once, he called me out on being a happy romantic (awww, I so am!), he knew Laura's was all about imagination and child-like creativity, Andrew he knew was all about technology (the boy has every gadget known to man)... he hasn't seen all of the finished ones but he was pretty spot on!

The images were created from photographing numerous different things, sunsets, trees, puddle reflections, grafiti, clouds, blinds, flowers etc. Some movement was done in camera, some in editing. Some colour is true to life and some is changed in editing... it was so much fun to play around with these to get them to look right.

Anyway, here they are... I won't tell you whose is whose yet but see if you can guess. The people involved were Madre and Padre, myself and Andrew, Twinnie and Drew, Meg, Kaela, Anna, Ron, Laura, Ian, Shanny, Lexo and Sarah Hartman.

Good luck to all 2nd years with presenting tomorrow and Thursday! I can't believe we are almost done with 2nd year... where the heck has the time gone?