Going away to camp

Last weekend I attended my third scrapbooking camp. (2010 and 2011 blogs here). I think I've written enough previously about how I refuse to feel ashamed/embarrassed that it's my hobby. Everybody needs a hobby. Mine involves putting memories on a page in a pleasing manner!

Camp this year was mercifully not as freezing as last time. I did still use my electric blanket though! I worked on three different projects: a wedding album (using a "quick kit", it was amazing, took me only 3.5hrs to complete), my everyday album and an album for my New Zealand trip photos from 2005. This last album is a really meaningful one for me, as it contains photos I thought were lost forever in a hard drive crash 5 years ago. A friend was recently able to retrieve them (would you believe hubby held onto the hard drive all this time? What an angel!) and I had an absolute ball starting to scrap them. So many memories came flooding back!

Here are some pics of layouts I did.

 And below is one my mum did - she is putting together a gorgeous album of our wedding of her own.

Needless to say, after 2 1/2 days of solid scrapbooking, I will not be doing any more for a little while!

Baa-leted

We had a local council election this weekend. Annoying after just having voted in the state election, yes, but I was rather looking forward to checking out people’s voting day garage sales.

Unfortunately it poured down rain and my enthusiasm was dampened (I borrowed a little pun from my twitter there, it was so good I just had to repeat it, sorry. I’m not witty very often). Instead I stayed inside and pottered about doing housework. I also seized the opportunity to do a few things I have been putting off to do with wedding photos – ie. Email them to people as promised and also upload a heap of the professional ones to Facebook.

I continue to be overwhelmed by my friends’ and family’s interest in my wedding photos – they were THERE for goodness sake. But I get it, I get it. They didn’t get to see the bridal shoot so I have emailed some of the prime ones off. I also put a heap up on Facebook.

Within an hour I was deleting a Facebook comment for the first time. While this may be a familiar action to many of you who run fan pages for your blogs (though I hope to god people don’t leave nasty comments on them regularly!) it was a first for me, and remember this was my personal page.

I posted this photo:

It cracks me up. We were supposed to be taking a shot of us kissing with the silhouette being the feature. C was making me laugh by making shadow puppets, and the photographer captured him doing a barking dog. A friend commented – “what was he doing? Is he insinuating you’re a bitch?”

I’m sorry – WHAT? How do you even interpret that from a fun, lighthearted photo. FROM OUR WEDDING DAY. Anyways, I responded by explaining no, he’s just making me laugh. Then deleted her comment. I didn’t want my family reading that!

Whenever I delete a useless email at work I say obnoxiously “BAA-LETED!”. I must admit I did it with this comment too. I have no idea where I got this from but I still find it amusing.

When was the last time you deleted a comment? Do you exercise your right to moderate your own Facebook or blog?

A treasure trove of memories

A crashed computer is a painful thing. Heartbreaking, really. And when there is no hope of data recovery you just tend to cry a litte then put on your Big Girl Pants and carry on.

Back in 2007, my PC died. At the time, I blamed C because he was the one using it at the time, but I suspect the poor old thing just had had enough. He took it to his supposedly genius neighbour to try to fix, but to no avail.

I was inconsolable - though I had backed up photos of two of my big holidays, I hadn't backed up anything else. This was before the days of USBs and external hard drives, everything usually got burnt to 700MB CDs. I had lost all of my pics from my New Zealand Lord of the Rings trip, and all my everyday photos from 2004 up to that point.

Recently, when our current PC died and our new Geek Friend managed to retrieve all the data, C had a brainwave. He had for some strange reason kept my old hard drive, perhaps clinging to the hope that one day he would be able to fix it. Five years later (last week), he took it to Geek Friend and begged her to get him out of the shit with me and back in the good books!

And she did! She managed to extract all the corrupted data, and rescued all my old photos. I cannot tell you how happy this has made me. As a scrapbooker, I have always keenly felt the loss of these memories, and I was so moved when I was able to see them again.

These photos brought back so many memories. Most of all though, I was grateful to get back my NZ photos, and now have the task of deciding what type of project to choose for them! I am wavering between a digital book and a traditional scrapbook album.

I thought I would share some of these photos with you all, as some are truly beautiful, and some historic!

A little background: In December 2003 I was at the height of my Lord of the Rings fangirliness. I flew to New Zealand with two friends for a two-week holiday. We rented a car and drove ourselves around, staying wherever we ended up that night. We visited many LOTR filming locations and ended up in Wellington for the big Return of the King premiere and celebrations. We went to the TheOneRing.net party and watched the parade the next day. It was just ace.

Rotarua

Queenstown

A "tarn" in the mountains above Queenstown. The Rohan refugee scene from The Two Towers was filmed here.

Coromandel Ranges

Franz Josef Glacier

Franz Josef Glacier

Somewhere in Marlborough. I think they filmed some Narnia stuff on this beach (many years later of course).

Same Marlborough beach

Te Anau

Tongariro National Park. The Mt Doom scenes were filmed up here.

Wellington, Return of the King weekend. Telecom New Zealand renamed its mobile cell tower in honour of the occasion.

Ian McKellan soaking up the adoration of fans

Elvish warriors

Ah, so many wonderful memories! Watching Peter Jackson's production videos of The Hobbit filming really makes me emotional. New Zealand has a special place in my heart and though I've already been twice, I want to go there again soon.

Have you found anything recently that you thought was lost?

A walk in the sun

Yesterday, feeling a bit sluggish, lethargic and frankly bored, I struck on the fantastic idea of walking across the river on my lunch break. Now, the weather in Brisbane has been FANTASTIC the past few days, (apart from a bit of smoky haze from pre-bushfire season back burning) so I was looking forward to getting some Vitamin D onto my skin from the sun.

I knew that there was a pedestrian footbridge built across the river a while ago, but was very vague on where it was. Google Maps to the rescue! I figured out it began at Tank St and goes across to GOMA. It’s called the Kurilpa Bridge and turns out it’s just two blocks from my work.

I took a few photos as I went, as I rarely get a chance to see Brisbane from the middle of the river. I only had half an hour, so regretfully I had to turn around at the GOMA end and hot-foot it back to the office. But I think this is something I might indulge in once a week when the weather’s good!

The week in pictures

A week in pictures post...

Bought a lounge. It cost an insane amount of money but I am so, so happy about it. Our current lounge is a 15-year-old hand-me-down from C's parents. Ours new one is getting made in chocolate suede, they said it will be ready in a few weeks! Bought from Fantastic Furniture at Morayfield. Great customer service, and I feel virtuous knowing I have bought Australian Made.

I actually baked! Some say a packet mix doesn't count, I say if you mix something with something then put it in an oven, THAT'S BAKING!

Bought these lovely plastic bangles from a jumble sale at work for $2. I think they look like jade. Might give one to mum.

Symapthised with our local pizza place - do hope prices stop "going nuts" for them. They're charging $1 more on a family-sized pizza so I don't really mind the rise so much.

Went to Invitation House at The Emporium - got a few ideas for the wedding invites.

Of course C's favourite was the dearest thing in the shop...

Absolutely HAD to get photos of myself in this corner - it's outside the Alex Perry Apartments sales office in Ann Street. That's astroturf I'm standing on folks. What a cool little niche.

Some may remember a few weeks ago I bought two tubs of Peter's ice cream and got a 6-month mag subscription. Well, first issue arrived on Friday. Hurray for home magazines! I sat and read this one this afternoon while having a cuppa.

AND...

I played far too much Tiny Tower. This game is so addictive!