100 Days of Happy

There is a new challenge going around Facebook, #100HappyDays, http://100happydays.com/ a few weeks ago a friend was telling me about it and said it would be good for me to do.....I agreed it was a good idea then made excuses why I wouldn't be able to do it now, not enough time to process my photo, when I am working I don't always take a photo, the clarity on my phone camera is not good, I will wait until I get a new one, I am too busy, blah blah blah...I was one of the 71% who would find an excuse not to be happy.

I was making excuses alright but as I thought about it I realised I can find something to make me happy any day, all I had to do was take a photo of it....or find one from my collection, I was stressing about the taking a photo yet the challenge is to submit a photo.

When my girls were little I used to ask how their day was, I would get 'fine', 'good', 'alright' as answers, when asked what they did they would tell me  'stuff', 'played', 'work', you know the same answers all parents get, I found when I asked what was the best part of the day they were more giving with their answers and soon it was a competition to see who had the best day. I did not have to ask the question many times before it became natural to share the best part of your day with the family. I now get txt messages from all my girls saying 'guess what' when they have something exciting to share with me. (I will often reply with something totally random)

I won't bore you with all the photos I will be sharing on Facebook, just the really special things that make me happy, some days the hard part is deciding which happy to post.

I joined a group of photographer at 5:30am to shoot the sunrise over Brisbane, I am not a sunrise photogragher as I am usually driving to work as the sun comes up, I don't want to get up early on my days off. This day I was starting work a bit later and had plenty of time to do both. It was also the first really cold day of the year and boy was that a surprise.

With Mothers day approaching the shops are full of pots of flowers, I treated myself to a pot of daffodils - these were going to be my happy photo for the day. After a few macro shots of the flowers I decided to take an 'in the garden' photo. My gorgeous Lilly  decided to see what I was doing on the ground, this was the perfect result

Seeing my photos displayed in the local library  - this is a seriously happy moment.

Spending the afternoon with friends and showing them a new photography trick. (I have had 2 requests from other people to try this since posting on FB)

Birthday

It was my birthday on Tuesday, I love my birthday every year, I don't worry about getting older, I worry about staying the same. The only thing I don't like about birthdays is  the enviable question "what do you want", I feel pressured into having a list...I am happy with a nice dinner, smelly candles, flowers and my family. Simple things, the girls think I need more...So this year I was prepared, I told my family what I wanted....and I got everything I wanted and more.

I especially love birthdays that go on for days/weeks. I stated celebrating early when my sister and I spent a day at the Eumundi markets, a sisters day for my birthday, she brought me a hot chocolate calla lilly, it had one beautiful flower the day she brought it and it flowered again on my actual birthday.

Hot Chocolate Calla Lilly

I am also very lucky to have a beautiful flowering orchid that flowers every year for my birthday. (I know it is because it is the start of spring....but I like to believe it is for me)

Birthday Orchids

The Saturday before my birthday this year for the federal election. I was so pleased that I had already planned a weekend away with HWMBO, we postal voted and went into a media blackout on Friday, it was very good to escape from the hype surrounding an election. (I considered this a gift in itself)
We had a wonderful weekend at the Bunya Mountains, I got some awesome photos - they will be in a post of their own.

I treated myself to a new lens for my birthday (actually it was a reward for a good tax refund, that happened to coincide with my birthday) It is a wide angle lens which adds so much more to my landscape photos. So far I am very very happy.

Point cartwright sunset

New cushions for my couch, a bread knife, a lens, a weekend away, a flowering pot plant, beautiful flowers in the garden, a gift coming any day from daughter #2 in the UK. What more can I possibly need. A visit from the neighborhood snake, this snake has been around for years all our neighbors have reported visits from him. Tuesday was the first sighting since it began to get cold. We were calling him Harry as in Harry huge...now he is BS which stands for Birthday Snake (or just Big Snake). I love him he is so beautiful. I do have a healthy respect for him and don't get too close. 

Birthday Snake

Curled up in the warm sun

Not such good news for my birthday week, parting with a huge amount of money for Daughter #3 to get braces. I know it will be worth it when her teeth are straight.

Blue bands on the braces

Happy Birthday to me and my other friends who celebrate at this time of year also.

Do what you love.....Love what you do 

Still raining or is it raining again

Once again the weekend was wet, it looks like the whole week is going to be wet again, as severe weather warnings have been issued. Possible flash flooding and high seas. I am a bit over it, even our duck is looking a bit put out with being wet all the time. Lilly (our golden retriever) is getting bored - she doesn't like to be wet so she wont go outside, a bored puppy can only mean one thing....mess. She has destroyed 2 of her squeaky toys this week... pulling out all the stuffing  because she likes to play with the squeaker. ***note to self, buy toys with out squeakers***

Pre stuffing removal , before the rain

The advantage of a wet weekend was I spent a lot of time working on the wedding photos, I allowed myself a few days of sulking (if you saw my previous post you will understand http://rozzy35.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/the-rain-and-pain.html) I am happy with the photos and if the Bride is not, well she is too hard to please.

I will share a few today, I haven't finished yet - although I am now under pressure to have them all done by Thursday. I was going to Dropbox the photos to the bride, then I decided I wanted to see her face as she looked at them for the first time. I need to know she is happy so I will hand deliver a disk after work Thursday.

This is the first photo I edited - I wanted it for my 52 week challenge - The idea is to post a photo taken each week on Flickr, with all this rain I am struggling to get photos.

There is so many photos to chose from, I am going to let the bride pick her favorites, this is a selection of what I have processed so far. I had a scan through Ra Ra's photos, we have got all the main moments. Thank goodness, this wedding work is a lot of hard work, the bride and groom were great happy to do what ever was asked, the family were a lot harder to control. couldn't get them to look the same way for a photo, hard to get them to smile. Even the bridesmaid refused to smile most of the time. 

Live and learn, if I ever do another wedding a few things will happen - I will charge *** even a nominal fee***, this way my time will be important to the family, I will not waste my time on those who don't want to smile or even get their photo taken, if the family don't want photos with the Bride and Groom I will not wait for the squabbles to settle I will walk away.

AND most importantly, I will check my files before formatting the card in my camera - this I will do ever time now. Just because it is a new card doesn't mean it is not faulty.

the men in the rain

For the groom....Carlton garter belt

Mother and daughter 

All ready to go