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Three Corners– Up!

Posted on October 31, 2008

This months theme cho­sen by Jenty was Look Up!  I loved this theme because I’m con­stantly look­ing up.  I love the archi­tec­ture here in Man­ches­ter and that draws my eye up.  I tried to get all artsy fartsy on this theme but in the end I was drawn to these three photos.

Did any­one join us this month?  Go over and see what Jenty and Corey came up with this month.  Also wanted to men­tion that the sky is almost always gray here which is why my pho­tos look like they are blown out/over exposed.  What lit­tle bit of blue sky there is when I take the photo just does not appear on my pho­tos.  If I could fix that I would!  Sadly I live in the UK’s ver­sion of Sea­tle– gray and rainy but with crappy cof­fee (I got the cof­fee bit from Sub­ur­ban Mum)

Tomor­row I’ll talk about  how Squidge ended up on the cover of the Man­ches­ter Ikea cat­a­logue.

Tantrumz, Antz in your Pantz & Ikea Rockz!!

Posted on October 30, 2008

Yes­ter­day Squidge had a grade A choice cut prime qual­ity tantrum!  In the carpark/parking lot out­side of Toys­Rus.  It was soo much fun– I can’t even begin to describe how much fun it was.  I had gone to Next to see if I could find some cheapy black shoes.  I wanted to take our xmas card photo and she doesn’t own any black shoes.  A waste of a trip.  It was look­ing really gray and decided I would take pho­tos some other day.  Squidge needed to pee so off to Toys-R-Us.  It’s some kind of cos­mic joke that the only places with pub­lic toi­lets are TRU or Bor­ders.  I was on the wrong end for Bor­ders so off to TRU we went.  We spent some time there look­ing around and play­ing.  All the while I was telling her she couldn’t have any­thing.  She was OK with this.  In the end I thought she was being really good so I’d buy her a lit­tle bal­loon.  Noth­ing major just a lit­tle bal­loon.  As we waited to pay she started to act up.  I told her a cou­ple of times to get up off the floor.  She didn’t.  I told her one more time to get up or we would leave with­out the bal­loon.  You know where this is head­ing right.  So I took the bal­loon off her, hauled her up over my shoul­der and out we went.  The entire time she was scream­ing NO MOMMY! PWEASE!!! NO MOMMY! NO MOMMY! MOMMY PWEASE!!!  We spent about 10 min­utes with me try­ing to get her in the car.  She would stiffen up like a 2x4 when­ever I tried putting her in the carseat.  I would press down and she just would.not.bend.  OHMAIGAWD!!!  So I finally get my scream­ing, seething, foam­ing at the mouth mak­ing her­self sick kid in the car.  I explained to her why she didn’t get the bal­loon and that I was very sad.  Then I turned up the radio as loud as it would go to drown out her screams.  Oh yes a fun filled after­noon.   When I pulled up to the house I was glad to see that the police were NOT at my house.  I was cer­tain some con­cerned shop­per was going to called them on me.

This morn­ing we headed out to a indoor soft­play place/thingie/warehouse/hanger.  It was very nice, the place was very clean the set up was good.  We sat down at a table and watched them have a good time.  Squidge is in a really cute stage right now.  She just loves to hug and give me lots of kisses.  It’s cute and exhaust­ing at the same time.  She’s always climb­ing and jump­ing on/over me.  The other night she must have had a night­mare and she called out to me.  She wouldn’t set­tle back down so I took her into bed with me.  I woke up in the morn­ing with her cradling my head and giv­ing me kisses.  AAAAAAWW!!  It made me almost not want to kill her for wak­ing me up at 6:30!!

I want to thank my Aunt Lil­iana for the adorable coat she sent Squidge.  I’ve been try­ing to get a photo of it on but haven’t had a chance the weather has been hor­ri­ble and when I finally think I’ll be able to get out­side Squidge falls asleep!!  Hope­fully I’ll get a photo of it this weekend.

A big huge CONGRATULATIONS  to my friend Byr­ney.  She’s hav­ing a baby– woot!!  I’m vot­ing for 14th of May, my birth­day.  I think it would be funny as Squidge shares her birth­day w/ Richard, Byrney’s husband.

*FOR SALE* Nikon 55-200mm f/4.-5.6 AFS DX VR Lens *FOR SALE*

Posted on October 28, 2008

It’s a fan­tas­tic lit­tle lens.  I love it but rarely use it. I bought it in August so it really is brand new.  I just find that I tend to use my 50mm almost exclu­sively and just don’t need this lens.  I chose this lens over the 70-300mm because this one had much bet­ter reviews.  When I have used it I have been very happy with the results.  If you look on my flickr stream the pho­tos from the Pump­kin Olympics were taken with this lens.

A high-quality com­pact 3.6x DX zoom designed specif­i­cally to work with Nikon’s D80 and D40/ D40x cam­eras. The 55-200mm lens is an afford­able entry-level lens which fea­tures Nikon’s cut­ting edge Vibra­tion Reduc­tion sta­bil­i­sa­tion sys­tem and exclu­sive Silent Wave Motor for fast, quiet and pre­cise auto focusing.

Con­sid­ered to be the pio­neer of inno­v­a­tive cam­era tech­nol­ogy, Nikon is con­stantly seek­ing ways to make it pos­si­ble for pho­tog­ra­phers with any level of expe­ri­ence to get strik­ing results. With optics designed for the Nikon DX For­mat dig­i­tal SLR cam­eras, this high-performance com­pact lens deliv­ers a pic­ture angle equiv­a­lent to that of a 35mm for­mat, 82.5-300mm zoom lens, which enables users to get close to unap­proach­able subjects.

Nikon’s Vibra­tion Reduc­tion func­tion com­pen­sates for cam­era shake to pro­duce sharper, clearer pic­tures in unsteady or poorly-lit conditions.

reviews

Ken Rock­well says The Nikon 55-200mm VR is excel­lent and very inex­pen­sive. It’s the lens bar­gain of 2007.

Ama­zon UK reviews gave it 4 stars.

I’m also sell­ing my Nikon D40.  It’s less than a year old, I got it for xmas last year.  It comes with the kit lens, all of the software/manuals, a mem­ory card, an addi­tional D40 book and a cam­era bag.

Any­one inter­ested please email me lindy[dot]simon[at]gmail[dot]com

Pumpkins and Puppies

Posted on October 28, 2008

Hi! How have you been??  Sorry about leav­ing for a few days.  My com­puter appears to be a lit­tle bet­ter (hold­ing my breath and cross­ing my fin­gers that I didn’t just jinx it) and I’m much hap­pier.  I still want a Mac but hell I want to be 5’7″ with legs that go on for­ever too.

As a SAHM I am con­stantly look­ing for things to do, things that don’t cost too much money.  Things that will be fun for Squidge and that will give me oppor­tu­ni­ties to prac­tice my pho­tog­ra­phy.  While surf­ing the inter­webs I found some­thing called the Pump­kin and Hal­loween Olympics– intrigu­ing and excit­ing.  The Brits don’t really do Hal­loween.  Not like we do Hal­loween.  Last year I looked for a pump­kin patch type of place and didn’t  have any luck.  As you can imag­ine I was excited but skep­ti­cal but still I decided to give it a shot.  I sent out emails to some friends and arranged to meet them at the ‘Olympics’.

We had a fan­tas­tic time.  There were REAL pump­kins and some lit­tle gourds for toss­ing and rolling.

Squidge even bobbed for apples!  It was very very cool.

Got it!!

Isn’t Noah just the cutest lit­tle vampire??

Every time I looked at him a cer­tain song would run through my mind.

If I were a rich man,
Ya ha dee­dle dee­dle, bubba bubba dee­dle dee­dle dum.
All day long I’d biddy biddy bum.
If I were a wealthy man.

So all in all a pretty good day out.  The weather was fan­tas­tic, it had been rain­ing for days but Sun­day it was beau­ti­ful.  Squidge has had a lit­tle bit of a cold so we haven’t really done any­thing for days and days.  It was good to get out and chat with adults and breath in the crisp autumn air.

While we were out Wal was slog­ging it out in the bath­room.  We have a new toi­let, sink and floor –Woot!!  All we have left to do it the bath­tub and the tiling.  I say only but those are some pretty big jobs.  I’m just happy that things are get­ting done.  We’re also plan­ning on doing the kitchen and our bed­room.  I might start on our bed­room while Wal is away.  I’m plan­ning on tear­ing down some book­shelves, pull up the car­pet and fin­ish the floor­boards.  After that it’s just a new coat of paint on the walls and a new bed.

Color

Posted on October 23, 2008

I just love the color of Autumn.  The sky con­tin­ues to be gray and over­cast but just look down and you see an ever chang­ing kalei­descope of color.  The other day Squidge and I went to the park, a reg­u­lar activ­ity of ours.

I had been sav­ing stale bread to feed the pigeons ducks and finally remem­bered to bring it with me this time.  I don’t have any pho­tos of Squidge feed­ing the pigeons ducks because I was too busy ‘sav­ing her’.  Those pigeons ducks are greedy lit­tle bug­gers.  The would hover in front of her steal­ing the bread.  As you can imag­ine there was much screech­ing and grab­bing of legs.

This month the Three Cor­ners theme is UP and I keep hav­ing to remind myself to look up.  Feel free to join Corey, Jenty and I this month.  Just post pho­tos of your inter­pre­ta­tion of the theme on the last day of the month.  I’d love to see what every­one comes up with!

We’re all a bit under the weather here.  Squidge sounds so piti­ful w/ her crack­ing squeaky voice.  I was itch­ing to go out today but fig­ured I should stay in.  I might regret this deci­sion as it was a beau­ti­ful day and it will prob­a­bly rain for a week straight now.

I appre­ci­ate all the sug­ges­tions on my last post.  Unfor­tu­nately for me and my com­puter, my recy­cle box is reg­u­larly emp­tied, my temp inter­net file is stripped bare and I checked for viruses/ad/spyware.  I’ve deleted all my pho­tos except for this months pho­tos and am this close to delet­ing my pho­to­shop ele­ments.  I’m going to hold off on delet­ing any­thing else.  I’m instead going to bring this lit­tle ole lap­top to see the Doc.  At least that way I can get a diag­no­sis and some recomen­da­tions.

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