I think I have fallen in love!

I think I have fallen in love! This week I received my first pay cheque - a nice little reward. And to celebrate Den bought me a 50mm 1.8f!!! I have had my eye on this for some time - so many of my friends have it - Leah, Amy, Val and Selena to name a few - who swear by it. When I saw Nancy's photos this week and I was drooling onto my computer, I thought I have to have this lens! I put in a request for my birthday in April. I was rewarded early!






What an amazing lens! Hard to describe ... rich and vibrant but at the same time subtle and soft. Just got to get used to having a fixed lens. Take a look at this photo below. Katie and I got a new Disney CD from the library this week - just to add to our collection (take a look in sidebar) and I was busy adding numbers to our/my ipod. Here she is below dancing her little heart out to Hannah Montana "Best of Both Worlds"! LOL! She issued a request for pom poms! I obliged! But look at these photos - mostly SOOC - and her moving at a million miles an hour!




I wonder who gave her the cheerleading tips - hmmm ... lol ;)






Onto photo challenges for this week. My PCF52 - my very first photo with the 50mm! The late afternoon light streaming in our window is very harsh. But what a photo! Can you tell I am really impressed .... with Katie learning her words for school and my SOOC photo.






Linda set the fabulous "nature's grunge" challenge in PCF this week. As I was hanging out the washing on Saturday my eyes fell on this little fella literally "weeding" his way through our pavers out the back. Always nature attempting to reclaim.





Develop on Fridays is now fortnightly. This fortnight Jefra (new link in my sidebar) set a fabulous challenge of simplicity. I have become much more aware of distractions in photos, that is why I am a big fan of fill the frame. That is why I also struggle with many of the full body photos I require to do the fantasy/extraction scrapping pages I love to dabble in - I usually don't have any! The challenge was to take a photo and then simplify it. Here is Katie playing school and taking the roll. My out-takes:



My final selection:

Here is Den preparing lunch on Saturday - the out-takes:

My final selection - whilst still a "busy" photo, I converted to black and white as I really loved this shot telling more of the story.

Scrap pages this week (remember to click on all pages for credits) Oscraps: Spotlight to highlight some of the fab designers we have there:

Hollie of "Holliewood Studios" came out with this fab kit "The Thing Finder". I straight away thought of all the "I Spy" books or "Where's Wally" we have read. The children and I put this page together and had a blast.

Finally the very talented Emily Powers has these amazing textured photo overlays. I thought to try them all and then decide on one for my page. I could not decided and stuck with using them all! Combined with Nini's fabulous FREE frames, I really liked this page:

Catscrap news this week - a wonderful new collab out and one more using Dawn Inkip's kits - I loved the elements so much I thought they needed a page of their own.

Finally a couple of pages with Ange Designs. I always love a full pager and having done a few pages on the restorative powers of a cup of tea of late, I decided to adopt a different approach on this one and went with one of my favourite philosophers quotes.

Have a fabulous week everyone!