Fancy a free canvas?!

A surprisingly fast snail race...

Usually at Easter The West Family enjoys a rabbit race of the wind up kind...

But this year with a touch inspiration from The Woodland Trust's Nature Detectives,

We decided to embrace a snail race instead.

 

As you can see from this little Snail he is sooooo excited.....

I can understand the concern on his face...

The West Children are not very patient...

So in the spirit of speeding up a snail race.......

They decided to involve Snail floatation devises and a paddling pool!!

 

So shall we introduce you to the competitors...

 

 

 

 So now you are familiar with the speedy little racers let's begin the BIG race!!

Moments later the race was over and the winner was revealed...

So that is the BIG Easter race over with for another year!!

Well Done Samuel!!

I Heart Faces - Pets

This week at I Heart Faces the challenge Subject is Pets

Here is my entry...

 

This is Pudding a Chocolate Labrador at just 6 weeks old.

Feliz Aniversário Hugo!!

We had the pleasure of joining in with birthday celebrations of a very cool little boy today!

He had a Mario birthday... which Micah especially loved.
This fabulous family are from Brazil who are some of the nicest,
sweetest people you will ever chance to meet.
Now the birthday boy was especially brave and wonderful today because sadly he has the chicken pox!
But he managed to put on a brave face and some chamomile lotion and party the afternoon away!!

As you can see he wasn't going to let a few spots spoil his big day!

So onto the cake.... Ummmmmm cake!!

Of course No Mario party is complete without a Mario cake!
Or for that matter a sparkler candle!!

What a beautiful and fabulously fun family!
Now everyone enjoyed the cake... yes that's right back to the scrummy stuff...

His little sister loved her cake and was very refined eating it with a spoon.
(So pretty!)

And well Micah was very proud of his cake until he realised he had accidentally pinched the birthday boys cake...
All was quickly rectified but not before snapping a photo of the all important cake.

It does look rather delish!

Everyone had fun from Aunties and little Sister...

 

To Lili's and West Daddy's....

 

And little babies not even a year...

 

One of which true to baby form had alot of fun with the wrapping paper and some bubbles....

 

All in all it was a lovely way to spend a Saturday.

More pictures to follow in the next couple of days......

And I have not forgotten about the recipe for the Ultimate dessert from the last post... Coming Soon!!

The Yummiest Dessert ever........ or at least I hope so!!

Today has been a super busy day and it is not going to get any less busy for a while.

So I thought I would take a minute and show you what I spent the morning doing.

With the help of the children we have made a amazing cake for Good Friday's big family meal!

This cake is the master of all cakes!

It consists of a delectable biscuit base, which is far more than just biscuit.

With it nuts, granola and honey mixed with digestive biscuit.

Then their is a layer of delicate dark chocolate mousse with a touch of sea salt

(don't knock it until you've tried it!)

Then a layer of melt in the mouth milk chocolate cheesecake.

Then a layer of white chocolate, vanilla and honey cream.....ummmmm!

Topped with fresh blueberry and caramelised brown sugar to add a lovely crisp topping!

Then surrounded by milk and white chocolate swirls,

and finished with two Hotel Chocolat Small eggs.

Know you have read all about it would you like to see it?

Here it is.....

 

And just so you can really appreciate the crispy, blueberry goodness here is the top too.....

 

And a closer look at my little friend there...

 

If anyone would like the full recipe for this seriously hardcore dessert please let me know and I will post the recipe and how too.

Hope you all have a lovely Easter!!

Updated April Special Offer...

Following from the incredible popularity of the April offer, and being a bunch of softies, we have decided to extend the April offer AND make it even better!

We are offering a session package containing:

• Pre - session consultation
• A two hour photographic session
• Post processing
• 10 high resolution images on CD - With copyright release (so you can make as many prints as you like)!!!

OR, if you prefer to have our high-quality finished prints instead of the 10 images

• Two 8"x10" and six 6"x4" prints of your choice
  

All for just £60!!!

Normal cost would be £160, so that's a saving of £100!

All images can be purchased as prints, canvases or photobooks at an extra cost (price on application) and extra copyright released images can be purchased at a cost of £10 each.

We look forward to creating memories that will last a lifetime with you!

Subscribe to this feed or you can find us on Facebook to keep up to date with our latest offers and news.

This offer is restricted to the first 50 applicants and your date will be secured upon receipt of a £20 non refundable deposit, with the remaining fee payable two weeks prior to shoot.

Sessions must be booked by April 31st 2011 and scheduled for a date before October 1st 2011
Offer is limited to week days if session is taken in July or August.
A suplimentary charge may apply for travel if session is required more than 20 miles from Gainsborough.
This is charged at a rate of 30p a mile.

We take paypal, cash or cheque.

More than just a wall....

We are fortunate to have some 10ft ceilings in our middle floor.

These are such huge amazing blank canvases that they just have to be utilized!

So that is exactly what we decided to do...

We have so many photos we love, 

so we decided to make our walls into a family gallery.

Here is how it looks so far....

We have sooooo many more pictures we want to add to it, 

but we are going to get 3 done each month.

So with time our walls will be filled with fabulous memories!

Easter holidays day 1...

Well the long awaited Easter holidays are here...

That means two weeks of over excited children to entertain!

 So we have spent some of the morning coming up with a plan of what activities we would all like to do.

These range from Pond dipping to Snail racing with many, many other activities in between.

Toward the end of this post I will include the list the children came up with.

Surprisingly other than egg hunts none of the activities have much if any cost too them.

Anyway today they decided to start of the fun with a Egg Hunt organised by the two oldest boys.

We provided them with a bag of foil wrapped eggs to hide.

The little ones were very excited about this and kept peeking so had to be sent to the living room to wait.

The boys were very good at hiding the eggs....

 

They hid them all over the place.

The garden mirrors....

With the garden toys....

 

....and in the apple tree as well as many, many more places.

When they found them they were very very excited....

 

As you can see Micah was rather pleased with himself and his green egg...

Liliana waited all of a minute before tucking in....

Fairy Larakia found a few and was rather proud!

Oliver really rather enjoyed finding them too.... 

Just in case the chocolate around the mouth is not evidence enough....

 

He thought you might like to see the inside his mouth too so you can truly appreciate the chocolaty goodness!

I realise that with me behind the camera it would be easy to think with no photos I am not really there so.....

here is a self portrait in one of our garden mirrors.... which needs a little spring clean!!

This lovely hunt is being followed by a yummy BBQ, cooked by the best BBQ chef in the world, David!!

Ummmmmmmmmm!!!

So as promised here is the children's list (not all will necessarily be done this holidays)

1.  Plant Sunflowers
2. Plant Vegetables
3. Camp out in the garden
4. Camp fire
5. Roast Marshmallows on the garden fireplace
6. Paddling pool
7. Picnics
8. Walk by the river
9. Visit the Play park
10. BBQ'S (Many!!)
11. Ice Cream Factory
12. Easter Hunt
13. Walk in Sherwood Forest
14. Visit Clumber Park
15. Visit Harwell Woods
16. Bake Cakes
17. Homemade Pizzas
18. Make Easter Nests
19. Snail Race
20. Who am I - Woodland Animal version
21. Pond dipping - need ideas where to go for this!
22. Bare Foot Walk
23. Colouring Competition
24. Crazy food picnic
25. Teddy Bears Picnic
26. Making Easter cards for our lovely neighbour Jenny
27. Make Jenny cakes
28. Easter Bonnet making
29. Leaf printing
30. Role playing

Sounds like I have alot of planning ahead!!

We hope you all have a lovely Easter!

If you have any more ideas for us, Please SHARE them below.... 

Lots of people view this blog and they all love lots of ideas!!!

Camera crazy...

Since my latest camera came I have been a little photo mad!

I love photography more than well chocolate and yes I am going to say it, shoes!

There is nothing better than seeing something and capturing it exactly the way you want too.

Today was the last day of school before the Easter holidays.

We attended the school Easter service and it was well, interesting!

My highlight was watching my children perform in songs and with puppets.

They were truly wonderful!

But Larakia coming 2nd place for merits was fabulous too!!

Though I do not remember a single merit certificate giving that she did not get one, she is amazing.

While waiting - we always get there early so we can get seats with good photographing space - I got bored and so went in search of pictures to take, oh and took Liliana to the crazy weird out door toilet.

Sadly when I came back despite David saving my seat and telling a couple twice that it was taken, 

I returned to find my seat had been taken : (

David managed to on the third attempt to get them to move enough so that I could sit back with my family,

however my view had become somewhat restricted.

It was lovely though to see Larakia in perfect view through his camera despite not being able to see her at all from where I was.

Nevermind, I managed to get some good pictures outside of the church.

Here they are...

These are my fav from the bunch, I hope you like them too!

Have a beautiful Easter everyone!

A busy couple of days...

Oh my word what a busy couple of days it has been!

Yesterday I had the privilege, with the help of a fabulous friend to organise and run the schools annual         Easter egg hunt.

It was really great fun and the children were amazing, 

though it was alot of hard work and I was exhausted afterwards.

I was so proud of my beautiful children who helped in anyway they could with the running,

Harrison even ran around putting clues out for me!

It is so nice to know when the children are older they will have memories of their Mummy coming and doing some of the fun things at school. 

I will also have those memories forever, love it!

Then today was Blue bag day,

twice a year we have a company called Bag to school come and take away everyones old clothes and textiles they don't want anymore and they give us £500 per tonne!

That went smoothly with little work needed, which was fab after yesterday.

I have to say though some of out PTA have alot of energy!

This evening I decided to relax a little and for me that means getting some editing done.

This is what I did tonight....

I hope you like them!

 

I love photography but I love photographing Babies even more!

When those babies are adorable it makes it all the better!

 

What a beautiful family.

Well I hope you are all having a wonderful and productive week.

x

New to the World.....

Today I had the pleasure of photographing a newborn baby named Joseph.

Ohhh he is the cutest little boy ever!!

He was so wonderfully behaved, slept the whole way through.

 

It was lovely to have cuddles with such a Sweet little man.

 

This family is the most inspiring family I think I have ever met.

 

They are here while Daddy studies.

He makes Violins and violas from blocks of wood!

It is incredible to see his workshop and violins in differing stages of finished.... 

I wish I had taken a photograph of some of his creations.

 

Anyway back to the sweet and wonderfully cute baby....

 

His Mummy is amazing too, 

She is an inspiration, she has taken to being a new Mum in her stride.

Which is something amazing for most of us to achieve!

But when you are in a whole different country to all your family it is just incredible!

 

Thank you Ssu-han and Chung-wei!

Your Baby is soooooooo cute!

He gives lovely cuddles too!!