Hubby Lifting: Part 1

Now that I'm a married woman, Adam and I has delegated out duties between the two of us. I'm in charge of all decorating and Adam is in charge of the electronics and heavy lifting (aka Hubby Lifting). Where the two meet (like a media center), we have to work together to agree.

While Adam is waiting for the US Government to allow him to legally work, I've provided him with a list of honey-do items. I've got to keep him busy!

One of those items was to hang the didgeridoo that I got for my birthday from the Watts family. Adam tasked me with figuring out how to hang a didgeridoo. After much trolling of the web, I found two options - a purpose made hanger that cost a lot of money and gets sent from Switzerland (really-weird!) or as suggested on a DIY site, use a towel holder. I opted for the towel holder. So off we went to Lowe's. I couldn't really find anything I liked but then Adam found pull-backs for curtains and we thought "why not?"

After some discussion, we finally decided where to hang it and now we have a beautiful didgeridoo to remind me of my time in Australia.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Christmas

This year we were supposed to spend Christmas in Australia but the US Immigration had other ideas.

To help Adam feel a bit more at home we try to incorporate some Australian traditions. We have champagne while we open the presents. We bought him some shrimp (not quite the same as prawns and Morton Bay bugs, but it'll do). We also buy bon-bons to open before dinner.

But this year my mom out did herself - she bought Adam a beach cricket set. Of course we couldn't just let it sit unused but we don't have a beach so the snow will have to do. Adam has spent the evening teaching the family all about cricket. This included hands on learning and the lessons were caught on camera.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Screen Printing for Dummies

* This post has been sitting in draft for almost a year.  I thought I should post it.


HA has always had this idea of making tshirts.  After our project earlier this year of making the picture for Gravity, we thought they would make a great tshirt.


DM, in his thoughtfulness, brought back HA a t-shirt making kit on one of his trips back to the US.


So the boys set aside a weekend to make tshirts.  The first step was to find the tshirts.  It's hard to find good quality, inexpensive tshirts in Australia but the boys found them.  The next step was to decide on what went on the tshirt.  HA had one particular quote he wanted on it so that was the first tshirt.  Then we have a friend that was leaving Canberra to move to Brisbane, so they decided to make a tshirt for him.


I had no idea screen printing was such a time consuming job.

The ingredients

The saying is printed onto a wire screen

The screen is placed on top of the tshirt and the paint is run over it.  This part was a three person job.

The final product.  We had to redo DM's b/c the paint was too thin. But we thought it would be funny to switch out the tshirts late into the night so that people wouldn't be sure if the shirt was fuzzy or if their vision was fuzzy.

The final product that the boys wore out in Sydney!

The Red Center

I've always had a bucket list of things I'd like to do before I leave Australia.  One of those things is visiting Uluru or better known as "The Rock".  My friend DM is also moving back to the US in May and he also had this trip on his bucket list...so, we decided to do a quick weekend.  Everyone I know that's visited Uluru have said that you don't need more than two days there - so we decided to do the trip in a long weekend.

We got to Uluru at around noon on Saturday and drove directly to the resort.  There is only one resort in Uluru so there aren't alot of choices.  It is literally in the middle of nowhere.

There wasn't much to do at the resort so we headed out to the rock.  When it came right down to it, we were not prepared.  None of us had sunscreen. I was wearing flip flops.  And we had no water.  Completely unprepared.

It was worth it though.  The Rock is beautiful and much bigger than you'd expect.  But, I'd like to confirm, you really don't need more than a day in Uluru.  We went out to the Helga's and hiked around a bit.  Then we drove to The Rock and hiked just a little bit and drove around the entire thing in about an hour.  We choose not to climb to the top b/c it's not respectful to the natives.

The Helga's - There was way more vegetation than I expected.

Hiking the Helga's

What I imagine Mars to look like

Always alot of love between HA and DM

What the boys did while I took pictures

Sunset

We ended up having dinner at the resort and having a few beers but there wasn't much else to do so we were in bed fairly early.  The next day, we decided we didn't need to see the rock at sun rise so we started our road trip to Alice Springs.  It was quite a long drive.

Came across this tire tree on the way to Alice Springs

We failed to realize that we weren't getting to Alice Springs until late afternoon on a Sunday.  This meant that nothing was open.  So, we made the best of it and found a pub and drank beer all afternoon and then had dinner at a pub.  I don't really have anything to post about Alice.  I wouldn't suggest visiting.

Project 52 - Week 7 [Catch Up]

I've decided that I'm going to try and catch up on my missed weeks for Project 52.  It might take me a while but I'll eventually have 52 entries.

One of the reasons I wanted to learn to take nice pictures is that I love to capture candid pictures of my friends and family.  I love the journalistic style of pictures where you capture a person in a very genuine moment.  One thing I've learned is a good candid shot still needs a lot of preparation.  You have to make sure your exposure is correct, the lighting is flattering, and the background/foreground will make a pretty picture.  Alot of the photographers that I follow tend to take alot of these candid type shots.  I love them. 

So when my friend LB asked me to take pictures of her and her family, I had to study up on how I would shoot them.  You may remember that I posted some pictures of her son, Silas, back in January.  LB and family are moving back to the states on Monday so it became imperative that we found some time to take pictures.  Unfortunately, our schedules have never worked out where we're both in Canberra at the same time.  Thankfully, on their last weekend in town, we were able to make it work.

We decided to meet up at around 8am so that we could try and catch some of the morning light.  But when we woke up, it was very foggy and overcast.  I got up a bit early so I could go check out the location Leah had suggested and to see if the weather was going to cooperate.  Thankfully, it was clear enough that I thought we could continue with the shoot.

Silas was very busy during the whole shoot.  I think he liked the shots where he could run around the best though he sometimes didn't like it when I got in his way.  He didn't much like the posed sitting shots but he cooperated for a few of them.

Below are some of my favorites from the session.  Thanks to LB for letting me practice with her and the family and thank you for letting me post them to the blog.



This is probably my favorite one!




I had to include this one.  Silas wanted nothing to do with the wet grass.

Project 52 - Week 6

The theme for Week 6 was "Words".  I'm going to be honest, I wasn't really feeling the theme last week and, well, I didn't even try to take some pictures. 

However, this past weekend in Canberra, the multi-cultural festival was being held.  This is one of HA's favorite weekends of the year, so on Saturday evening, we headed out.  When I attended the event two years ago, it was fairly busy but not so overly busy that you wanted to shoot people.  Unfortunately, I couldn't say that about this year.  The festival was crammed with people - which is good for Canberra - not so good for someone who hates crowds.

My point is, this festival was very busy and parking in downtown Canberra is at a premium.  On the walk home, HA and I were getting a kick out of how all the Aussie's were parking wherever they could - this includes on sidewalks and grass areas.  Which led me to this picture.  I took it with my iphone so it's not great quality.



Words - that people don't pay attention to

This is definitely an Aussie trait.  They will park anywhere that is available without repercussion of a ticket.  It can get quite funny.

Also while I was out walking the lake this weekend, I came across this:

You can't really tell in this picture, but it's clear that the trolley has been in the lake for some time - it's quite rusted.  How it got pulled out of the water, I'm not real sure.  But it's now sitting in the grass by the lake.  I took this picture with the Hipstamatic app on my iphone.

Project 52 - Week 5

This week's theme for the Project 52 was "Muse".  I'm still experimenting to find my style and to be quite honest, to find the time to practice.  The themes for the Project 52 don't come out in Australia until late on Saturday so that generally leaves me Sunday as a free day to try and take pictures.  Otherwise, I have to take the pictures in the evening after work.  I'm not quick to come up with ideas for the theme.  Quite often HA will provide me with an idea.  Getting good at photography is hard work and if you don't have an eye for the composition, it's very difficult.

This past weekend, I was in Sydney.  Friday night I was at a concert for Grinderman and on Saturday, I saw "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" at the Opera House with my friend LB - which, by the way, I HIGHLY recommend.  The show was fantastic - I would love to see the American version.  While we were in Sydney, we also went to the zoo and Watson's Bay.  Both areas of Sydney have phenomenal views.  Every time I go to Sydney, I am so inspired and wish I knew how to take those breathtaking landscapes pictures that you find in stores.  Sydney is one of the reasons I wanted to learn to take good pictures.  So in that vein, I decided to have the city of Sydney as my Muse.



I'm finding that I like my pictures with a border - I feel like they make the picture pop more.  At the same time, I think I need to keep playing with my style to find what suits me.

What's your muse?

Project 52 - Week 3

The theme for this weeks Project 52 was "Shades of Grey".  I had this vision of finding someone with beautiful thick grey hair and getting an amazing picture.  Unfortunately, I don't know anyone with grey hair.  Or, at least, I don't know them well enough to be like "hey, can I take pictures of your grey hair?"

So I thought all week about what I wanted to do.  I wanted to take a picture that would highlight the many shades of grey but also be something that wouldn't require traveling somewhere or alot of setup time.

On top of that, I didn't have much time this week.  I had things scheduled for every night after work so it also needed to be a picture I could take at home and wouldn't need alot of natural sunlight.

So, Thursday night I took the easy way out and bought some beautiful gerber daisies from the supermarket and headed home to try and do something creative with them.  Unfortunately, the boys called and I ended up getting drinks until late in the evening Thursday.  I had plans to go watch the Australian Open that weekend so Friday rolled around and I was frantically packing so we could catch our plane.  I took a few pics of the flowers, converted them to black and white and uploaded to Flickr so that I could have an entry.  It didn't turn out too badly for a quick 10 minutes of work.  What do you think?



This week's theme is "Soothing Repetition".  I'm not sure how I like this theme. I may go my own way this week.  Stay tuned!

Rain, Rain Go Away

For those of you that don't pay attention to Australian news, you might be surprised to find out that Australia is currently experiencing some of the worst floods in the last century.  Portions of Queensland have been experiencing flooding since late December but these floods were expected and, while damaging, were manageable.  Early this weekend, the capital of Queensland, Brisbane, realized that they too would soon be flooded if the rain continued to fall.  The peak of the flooding is expected tomorrow (Thursday) so what you're reading about now is not the worst that is expected (see article below).

HA's family lives in Brisbane and I have quite a few friends and co-workers who live in Brisbane.  I spent my Christmas holiday there and joked that the city would flood if the rain kept at that pace.

Thankfully, everyone I know is safe and accounted for.  HA's sister's property has flooded and they are cutoff from town but they are safe and have an evacuation plan if necessary.

Please keep Queensland in your thoughts and if you'd like to and are able to, donate to the relief effort:
Queensland Flood Relief Appeal

For more information and a picture into what's being experienced, here is a good article from The Australian:
Australian Flood Article

Project 52 - Week 2

This weekend, I got to babysit for my friend Leah.  Her son Silas is one of the cutest and most chilled out kids I know.  He's 13 months old, but while I was babysitting, all I had to do was make sure he didn't put his finger in a socket.  Otherwise, he entertained himself.

While I was babysitting, I thought I might practice taking some pictures.  Photographing HA is easy cause he poses however I tell him to but children are a completely different story.  They move around alot more and they decide when they want to smile.

I had hoped the weather would be nice, but, in true Aussie fashion, it was raining.  I took some pictures of him in the apartment but alot of them had very messy backgrounds so they weren't great.  However, I did get a few cute ones.

The one below is my favorite from the session.  I think he was looking at HA at the time trying to decide if he was ok with him being there or not.  Silas has very expressive eyes.  In nearly all the pictures I got, you can look at it and make up what he's thinking based on his expression.

ISO:800
1/640
f5.3
Focal Length: 165mm
Add Color Pop 2 action by thecoffeeshopblog.com and an additional vignette

I'm also participating in a group Project 52 with MCP Actions.  They'll provide a theme every week and you provide the picture.  This week's theme is "Illustrate a Song". I'm still working out what I can do for this theme.  If I come up with a picture, I'll post it later this week.

Christmas in Australia

Because HA went home with me last year for Christmas, there was an agreement that I would stay in Australia with him this year. I made this agreement over a year ago not having any idea where I’d be living or where I’d be working. So as Christmas got closer and closer and I continued to live in Australia, I realized that I really was going to have to spend Christmas in Australia.


I began to worry about gifts for HA’s family. My personal motto on gifts are that they should be items that someone wants but would probably never buy themselves. I don’t like to buy the “easy” gift – perfume, dvd’s..they make great gifts, but where I can, I like to make them a bit more personalized. So, I asked HA for the rules around gift giving. His response – “We buys each person a gift". There were going to be 11 people at Christmas – not including Adam and I. That's alot of gifts to buy! So I set out buying gifts. I picked up a few in the US when I was home for Thanksgiving but the majority of my shopping had to happen in Australia. Unfortunately the shopping in Australia sucks….especially in Canberra. So given this, I ended up have a number of gifts shipped from the US. Even without much help from HA for ideas, I ended up with gifts that I felt good about.


Before I go much further here, I think it’s very important to explain that Christmas in Oz is NOTHING like Christmas in the US. In the US, there are constant holiday songs, all of the malls are decked out, there’s a Santa at every mall, and…there’s a spirit to Christmas. It’s not like that here. I didn’t hear one Christmas song on the radio, the only Santa I saw at the mall was skinny and sitting in front of a green screen so you could be photoshopped onto a beach, and the decorations in the stores were depressing. To help with trying to get into the Christmas mood, I purchased a little tree and hung some lights in the apartment which helped a bit.

So Christmas Eve rolls around and HA and I walk into work (we got to wear jeans!). We work for a half day, then go home to finish wrapping presents before we have to catch our flight. We end up having to take three decent size suitcases b/c of all our presents. We finally get to Brisbane after our flight had to circle for 45 minutes in the air. Unfortunately, we were so late that his brother and nephews had to go home to sleep so we couldn’t all have Xmas Eve dinner together. In my house, we have a very quiet dinner of chili and cornbread and then stay up playing board games. In HA’s family, they have turkey for Xmas Eve dinner – poached turkey. I didn’t even realize it was turkey until after dinner – I had thought it was pork. It wasn’t quite the traditional turkey dinner I’m used to but it was nice to have a bit of familiarity.

We got to stay in the "adult house" while we were there.  Meaning we stayed with HA's sister at her house on the river.  It was actually really nice to have a bit of quiet time.  The three nephews were alot of work.  I grew up with girls - I'm not used to having so many boys around.  The picture below is of his sister's house on the one sunny day we got.  I'd like to note that they live right on the Brisbane river which is now flooding.  I've included a picture of the river as well.  Since we were there, the water has risen 4 to 5 meters.  Their house isn't on the flood plane and expect to be ok though.

Looking down to the river. Most of the land you see by the river has flooded.

On Christmas day, we get to his parents house mid-morning and very quickly get to opening presents. The three boys hand out the presents – at least that’s the same – the youngest handing out the presents. I quickly realize, though, that HA may not have given me the correct rules for gifts. I’m starting to notice that there are a lot of gifts being given by multiple people – primarily by the couples. Example: HA Sister and Bro-in-law gives me a gift. My suspicions are quickly confirmed when both his sisters say “why didn’t you go in on gifts together?? You didn’t need to buy each individual person a gift”. Hmmmm..at least I know if I do Christmas with them again.
After presents, dinner starts to be set up. As we had turkey for Xmas eve dinner, can you guess what we’re having for Christmas dinner? That’s right – SEAFOOD. Well, seafood and a lot of pork & ham. This is a tradition in the HA family – one that I think I struggled with the most. The seafood dinners weren’t new to me – we have one every time we go to visit HA’s family. But they were different. So we sat outside under the covered patio while it rained and had seafood.


Christmas dinner - notice on the top picture that the skin is pulled back from the pig leg.

Much of the rest of the time we spent in Brisbane was spent at his parents house playing the Kinect that I got HA. The boys really enjoyed it and it kept everyone entertained. I did get a break on Monday when HA’s mom scheduled a spa day for all the girls. That was really nice to get a massage and then relax with champagne in the spa.

This is HA and his nephew playing boxing on the Kinect.  His nephew has a broken arm so everyone had to play with one had behind their back.  His nephew beat everyone in the family.

HA also took me for a drive to the Gold Coast to have a nice lunch on the water and then a bit of shopping (thankfully it didn’t rain that day!). On the drive to the coast, we stopped at Yatala Pies which apparently are some of the best pies in the country (think savory pies – not sweet). The pie was pretty good. I had a steak pie with mashed potatoes and peas. It sounds gross but it’s pretty yummy.

Yatala Pie - Steak pie with mashed potatoes and peas

On Thursday, we said good-bye to HA’s family and headed on to Sydney for New Year’s Eve! But I’ll leave that for another post.

Oprah-stralia!

The country has gone crazy!  Crazy for Oprah!  It's amazing to me the hysteria that this woman can invoke.  From the moment she landed, all of the news stations have been following her around.

Yesterday, she filmed two shows at the Opera house.  350,000 people turned up to try and get tickets to the taping.  There were only 6,000 tickets to give away.  Hotel prices are tripled for this weekend and this is AFTER Oprah has left the country (I know b/c I was going to go to Sydney but it's too expensive now). 

One of the television stations showed a woman burst into tears as Oprah drove by and waved to her.  This woman had to be in her 30's.  I thought only teenage girls burst into tears when Justin Beiber walked into a room.

On Sunday, HA and I were in Kingston getting dinner and there was a man in a suit with an earpiece.  My first thought wasn't "oh, the prime minister must be around".   No, no - my first thought was "wonder if Oprah is in town?"

This is crazy and the amount of tourism that will come out of her visit here will be on the crazy scale as well.  I'm ready for her to go home.

Halloween in Oz Part 2

I had my Australian Halloween party this weekend.  Apparently, the folks putting on the party were a bit concerned that they had an American coming to the party so they really wanted to do everything up.  And they did a great job.  They had all kind of decorations and they even rented a bunch of B-Horror movies to show on the TV.  At one point they had "Nightmare on My Street" by Fresh Prince playing (though I'm not sure if that was on purpose or not).  They also carved their first pumpkin for the event.  So there was a bit of a competition between my pumpkin and theirs throughout the evening.  It was interesting overhearing the commentary.  I didn't get a picture of their pumpkin for comparison but I was very impressed with Cai's very sharp and clean edge cuts.

I was very impressed b/c Australian pumpkins are very thick.  I'd say the shell was probably around two inches thick.  That made it very had to do any circular cuts.  There were also a ton of seeds but the inside wasn't too terribly messy.  Here's a picture of my pumpkin.  What do you think?

Our costumes for the party didn't turn out as well as I would have liked.  The costume I ordered was a bit short (you could see my bum) and a bit tight.  Had I been going to a party where I knew everyone, I probably would have worn the outfit and just taking the crap I would have been given.  But since this was a party where I knew about 4 people, I decided it was inappropriate and had to quickly throw something else together.  We're having a 1920's themed Christmas party for work this year and when I was in the states in October, I bought a few props to go with my outfit.  I used those with a dress I already had and did a very lame version of a flapper.

We took along our friend MayDay who also had to throw together a last minute costume.  We went to the one costume shop in the city to try and find something but when we saw that the costumes averaged about $150, we quickly decided to come up with something else.  MayDay, in his cleverness, decided he'd go as a cricketer.  He was planning on buying the Aussie jersey for the Ashes anyway, so we did that and bought a cricket bat and some shin pads and he was ready to go.  I suspect that the Aussie's at the party thought he was a bit lame but I thought it was pretty clever for an American to go as a cricketer.

Everyone at the party got into the spirit and wore costumes.  Most of them were thrown together and included fake blood but there were a few good ones.  One of my good friends, Boris, bought a Captain America costume (clever since he's an Aussie).  He ended up winning the costume contest.  I have pictures of Captain America on my camera but I'll have to load them up later.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of me, HA, and MayDay.