Favourite Photo Friday - 26/4/13

Another Europe photo this week. It's starting to get cold here. Not Canberra Winter cold yet, but we've noticed it cooling down. It seems like only yesterday we were freezing our bottoms off in Europe.  It was starting to get pretty cold just before we left, particularly on our trip through Belgium. Belgium in December, definitely cold!

On our last weekend of the trip we were in Bruges.  Just like the rumours, Bruges is beautiful...... The canals and buildings are just gorgeous.  I could have taken photos all day! Well, I pretty much did.  We also didn't mind the food. You can't knock a place that has fantastic chocolate, waffles and many michelin star restaurants.

This photo was taken on a very cold morning as we were wandering the streets of Bruges. I think it was below zero and we were walking around admiring the sites between stopping into shops for chocolate purchases........ hot chocolate among them!

D80 with Tokina 12-24mm f4.0
ISO 1250, focal length 12mm
Exposure: 1/1600 @ f/4.0

Toddling in the garden........

I'm just catching up on some of my editing and blogging prior to our little trip to Melbourne, after which there will no doubt be plenty of editing and blogging!. I came across these photos I took when Astrid was 'helping' us garden over the Easter weekend.  Digging with a spade, sitting in the dirt and pulling out weeds is fantastic when you are a toddler!  It doesn't matter if you occasionally get a plant rather than a weed, as long as there is dirt involved.

What I didn't get a good photo of was the state of her pants when she had been digging for awhile. I think that was a 4 outfit day, hence the old clothes.

Do you think she was having fun?

Playing dress-ups with Dad's clothes......

When you are a toddler there is nothing better than donning Dad's new bike jersey and running around being cute.  It doesn't matter that it's enormous on you, you just think you are the bees knees!

Even the cat had to be in on the action....... Oh he so loves Astrid cuddles, not!

Then it's time to try on Dad's work shirt.  I think that I now know what I'm doing with all the old business shirts, turning them into painting smocks!

Favourite Photo Friday - 19/4/13

For this weeks Friday photo I have delved into our photos from last years Europe trip. We took a little over 5000 photos during our 2 months away and I diligently sorted, and tagged and backed up all of them as we went so we could keep track. I started out editing all the good photos from each day once Astrid was asleep at night, but the editing software ran very slowly on my laptop, and the laptop screen size left a lot to be desired. Editing was taking 5 times the amount of time it does at home, so after a week or two of sitting up half the night editing I gave up and just edited a few key shots from each day that were going to end up on our daily blog posts. The blog writing was keeping me busy enough!

The end result is I have a huge amount of photos I need to go back and edit and start compiling into albums. Now that I haven't looked at the photos for a few months I'm almost excited to go through them again. When we first got home it was the last thing I felt like doing, but now it will be fun to look at all the cool things we did, saw and experienced again through our photos.

Today's photo is one we took on our first full day in Paris. Astrid had woken at ridiculous o'clock (I think it was 3am?) and decided it was time to be up and about. We tried to keep her quiet and amused in our apartment, which anyone who was following our trip will remember was the size of a shoebox.  After a couple of hours we gave up on that idea and headed out to explore.  We wandered down past the Louvre and along the Seine, eventually ending up at the Eiffel Tower. We were walking along the Seine pre-dawn and it was beautiful watching all the lights sparkling on the river.

That morning was lovely, and we really felt like we were in Paris finally! Later that morning Astrid even tried her first Parisian croissant (soon to be a love affair!).  Here is one of my favourite shots from that day - the view from one of the bridges back up the Seine, as the sun came up. Just how I remember it!

 

 D80 with Tokina 12-24mm f4.0
ISO 1250, focal length 14mm
Exposure: 1/15 @ f/4.0

Watching Playschool........

Playschool is pretty much the best thing ever when you are 21 months old, and Astrid! It's really the only TV she likes and watches. She started her Playschool obsession while we were travelling through Europe and it was a savior during long flights and train trips.

These days she is happy to sit down and watch an episode or two and let her parents get something done. It's the only time we can be guaranteed she is both quiet and still!

Astrid has taken to sitting on her beanbag or a pile of cushions and rugs in front of the coffee table for a better view.  She is rather cute propped up watching her favourite show.

Our only challenge is convincing her that sometimes playschool is over and there aren't any more on. We think she has figured out that we can make them appear on demand and tries to negotiate further episodes by repeated pleading of 'just one more please mummy/daddy'. One more is never enough though.........

This week in the garden - foliage and flowers!

I love our garden in Autumn! This year the weather has been unseasonably warm and nothing approaching a frost yet, despite being half way through Autumn already.  All our deciduous trees are just starting to have their leaves change and some of the flowering perennials like the dahlias and snapdragons are still out.

Here are a few pictures from the weekend.......

Our lovely Forest Pansies

The Dahlias

The Snapdragons

Favourite Photo Friday - 12/4/13

This is one of my favourite pictures of Astrid. It was taken when she was 3.5 months old. It's hard to believe she was ever that little!

We have the colour version on a large canvas on our media room wall and the black and white version is in her first year album.  I love both and I can never decide which I like better........ which one do you like?

 

 D80 with Nikon 50mm f1.8
ISO 500, focal length 50mm
Exposure: 1/800 @ f/2.0

Pear and almond butter cake, birthday baking!

It was my birthday the other week, and I decided I wanted cake.  Anto offered to make one but he was very busy at work that week and I was already making him his Cadbury Creme egg cupcakes so Astrid and I decided to do the cake making at the same time.

The recipe we used is here on our recipe blog, should anyone wish to try it for themselves.

Pears are still in season and I like cakes with fruit in them and had been meaning to give this recipe a try for awhile. Caramelised pear, chocolate and almonds, you can't go wrong!

The first step was to caramelise the pear in the butter and brown sugar mix. They started out looking (and smelling good) and ended up lovely and golden and smelling divine.  If they weren't too hot I might have eaten them all then and there!

Then it was time for the cake base. The flour and sugar were creamed, the eggs added and the almond meal, vanilla and flour beaten through.

The base mix was spread into the prepared pan and it was time to layer up the cake.

First on went dark chocolate....... 

Then the pear mix........ 

Then the flaked almonds...... 

Then it was into the oven. Definitely put this cake onto a tray. It has so much butter in it that it tends to bubble up and out of the tin. The tray stopped our already filthy oven from getting worse.

The cooking time was about 1 hour 20, longer than the recipe indicated but it's a very dense cake. While it appeared cooked when tested I think it could have done with another 5 mins as it dropped slightly in the centre on cooling.

 Here is what the finished product looked like, served with a mixture of marscapone, vanilla and double cream. It was definitely delicious, if not the prettiest cake in the world!