Darcy
Photo by PJ.
piccolo puppies
My friend Kate came around today to meet the puppies and request more photos of the puppies on the blog, please. Oh, okay then.
That’s Saffy on the left with the big white tip on her tail. Darcy, out of focus in the foreground, is slightly bigger, slightly darker and has only a little bit of a white tip on her tail. The thing under Saffy’s eye, I’m sorry to say, is just dirt. We gave them a bath tonight, on account of them smelling like dogs. Dogs who had just spent half an hour chewing lamb bones that had been thoughtfully split open lengthwise in order to access the marrow, which ended up all over both of their faces and all of their paws.
Anyway, moving on…
Kate asked how much they weighed and since I didn’t know we got out the kitchen scales. Turns out Darcy’s got about 300gm on Saffy which, when you only weigh a bit over 1.5kgs is quite a lot.
Just for the record, I’ve got a squillion pictures of them on both cameras but I’m having technical issues tonight (meaning I have no idea what I’m doing and PJ isn’t able to help because he’s got More Important Things To Do if you can believe that). As soon as I get them ready, I’ll post them. Including… are you sitting down? A picture of Saffy looking NOT VERY IMPRESSED at being given a bath. They’re so cute when they’re cranky.
The pups are here.
(all images by PJ)
You think that’s cute?
A minute ago, Saffy got up and toddled out of the crate where she and Darcy were sleeping. She went and had a little drink of water, then came over to say hello to me and we had a little cuddle. After a minute I guided her gently back towards the crate where Darcy had started to whimper in her sleep; her breathing quickened and her legs were twitching as though she was having a bad dream. Saffy crept back into the crate, lay down against Darcy – spooning her – and put her front left leg over Darcy’s shoulder. A moment later they were both asleep again.
You can’t make this stuff up. It took all of our collective self control not to burst into tears, didn’t it Madi?
Yes, it did.
On this day
On this day last year, I woke up in Oslo. I am really dying to go back there. It is a stunningly beautiful city, and I spent many, many hours walking around the streets just outside the city centre, marvelling at the architecture and the light. I hope I can go back soon.
What keeps me going.
This is a piccolo latte. Actually, it’s two piccolo lattes. I’ve switched from drinking flat whites to two piccolo lattes, which is almost the same thing but I’m pretty sure it’s still less milk. And that seems to be making a big and positive difference in my life these days.
Good luck finding the focus point in either of these pictures. Geez, I’m losing my game.
Half a pound. Each.
They are so tiny.
This is Saffy – she belongs to Madeleine.
She is quite outrageously cute.
And this is Darcy, who belongs to Ella. Darcy has a little tuft of white hair on her forehead, which may or may not remain. Otherwise, they’re a little hard to tell apart.
I mean, come on, this is just ridiculous.
We went to meet Juliann, the breeder, in a carpark just of the highway she comes in on. I didn’t know how it was going to happen, but we were going to see three pups and the girls would choose which two they wanted. Juliann opened the puppy carrying case on the back seat of her car and handed one to Madeleine, one to Ella and the third to PJ. There was no discussion, it was all over immediately. PJ gave the third one back (eventually!) and the girls didn’t let go of the pups they’d been given.
We get to bring them home with us on September 17th. I’ll try really hard not to let this become a Puppy Blog but the first few weeks might be a little difficult.
chalk&cheese
Right now, our elder daughter is tucked up in our bed, watching the DVD of Downton Abbey, a British drama set in 1912 about a very wealthy family and their army of servants.
Our younger daughter, meanwhile, is wearing her Socceroos tshirt and watching the DVD of the Socceroos v Uruguay World Cup Qualifying Match (played in Sydney in 2005, for the 2006 World Cup).
Two girls, but they really couldn’t be less alike. Love it.
(Ella scored two goals at soccer today, and assisted with two others… very proud!)
macaron heaven
L-R: chocolate-chocolate macaron, hazelnut & truffle macaron, orange & chocolate macaron, raspberry & white chocolate macaron, salted caramel macaron.
(the biscuits look a little puffy at the edges because, apparently, the almonds were a bit tricky this week… it didn’t effect the flavour at all, but Marilyn – who makes them – wanted to let me know that they ‘shouldn’t look like that’. You know what Marilyn? I wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t said anything!)
The hazelnut & truffle macaron had some bling on top:
From Dream Cuisine at the Farmers’ Markets.
first blossoms
We don’t have fruit trees in our new garden but we do have one of these. Aren’t they pretty?I’m really going to miss the fig tree from our last house; though maybe we can make friends with the new tenants…
Kerrye O
This is my friend Kerrye. We went to school together, from high school until the end of Year 12. Sometime after that she went to America, and she’s been there ever since. She came back to Canberra to celebrate her 40th birthday with family and friends, and I offered to take a couple of Birthday Portraits for her (plus some ‘corporate’ shots she needed for work). It took a minute for her to warm up to the camera but she got there in the end, and I reckon she looks fabulous.
dying of cute
Meet Darcy and Millie… they’ll be coming to live with us just as soon as they’re old enough… old enough to leave their mother and that’s an aspect of the whole adopt-a-puppy scenario that I don’t want to think about lest my ovaries start aching.
Darcy is Ella’s and Millie is Madeleine’s. They are King Charles Cavalier Spaniel x Poodle puppies, aka cavoodles. The girls have been asking for puppies since forever. Madi’s favourite toy when she was little was one of those toy puppies with wheels for legs that you pull along behind you. She went everywhere with her. And her first word – I kid you not – was “woof.”
(this photo was taken by the breeder)
Spinning Skirts
My friend Sophie has somehow found the time to sew some new Spinning Skirts for her etsy store. We bought one for PJ’s niece, Ava, for Christmas last year and I took this photo of her twirling in it. Sophie finds the most beautiful fabrics for these skirts, and she has a great eye for putting complementary colours together. These are great for a special occasion but also just for having fun!I was shooting in shutter priority mode. I chose the shutter speed (and focal length) while the camera selected everything else. I boosted the exposure in post-processing. So, yeah, totally cheated.
ISO 80050mm f/6.3 1/13 sec
This was a bit more successful – and PJ did the post processing on this one.
ISO 32050mm f/1.4 1/100 sec
wool
I am a ‘VIP Customer’ at a store in the city that sells both mens’ and womens’ clothes. For my birthday they sent me a $20 gift voucher, which was lovely. I went into the store yesterday but couldn’t find anything that I particularly needed. They were having a sale, though, with an additional 40% off for VIP card holders, so I kept looking. Eventually I spotted this green 100% merino wool scarf in the mens’ section. It was $69, on sale for $39, minus another 40% took it down to $23.40. I handed over my gift voucher and $3.40. Result? Happy husband. And I’m going to borrow it every chance I get.
Miss Molly
This is Molly, our next door neighbour. She’s a cavoodle, and if the planets are as well aligned as I think they are then we’re about to get a Molly too. Actually, two Mollys. Can you even imagine? Good golly.
rouge
I bought several bunches of flowers at the Farmers’ Markets last Saturay morning, to decorate the tables at my birthday party. I bought a lot of yellow tulips and gerberas but, having just been presented with the beautiful green vase from my daughters I decided to buy some extra tulips to keep at home. I picked some red ones, and by the end of the week they were wide open. I love the colours in this photo, and the sneaky iris in the top corner.
emerald
Somewhere in my archives is a post about my green glass collection. When I was in Oslo last year I spent a few hours in a small town called Drøbak (here’s the story I wrote on the THAI Airways site) and found two glasses in a gallery/store which I stumbled across – I’d gone to Drøbak to see the Christmas Shop. Then in Copenhagen, I found a little glassworks and gallery in a side street and bought a beautiful green bowl. In Sweden, there was a glassworks at the train station in the town of Båstad where I was visiting friends, and I bought a little glass apple. I’ll post pictures of these things soon, I can’t find the original shots in my archives!
These four things started my green glass obsession/collection, and when I got back to Canberra I went immediately to the Glassworks in Kingston to see if they had anything green. Yes, they did.
Harriet Schwartzrock is a local glass blower and she makes stunning vases, among other things. It’s always the colour that leaps out at me, and her green vase caught my attention right away. I dropped a none-too-subtle hint to the family that this might make a nice birthday present one day.
The cafe I am now working in has a selection of Harriet’s vases for use on all the tables, and there are a couple of her business partner’s creations as well (his are more like glass installations – very large, dramatic pieces). Among Harriet’s vases are a couple of the coveted green ones.
Last Friday I was at work and a friend of the owners was helping out behind the coffee machine. She was introduced to me as ‘Harry’ and we worked together all morning before someone told me she is a glass artist.
What are the odds?
Of course I told her my whole spiel about going to Oslo and Copenhagen and Bastad and my love of green glass and how I had discovered her beautiful vases…
On Saturday morning, I unwrapped my birthday present from Madi and Ella. I’ll give you one guess.
(taken with my iPhone camera)
In a few days time, I’ll post some more photos. Because you’ll never guess what else I got.
focussed
You can tell when the girls are focussing on the task at hand – Ella pokes her tongue out and Madeleine tightens her mouth into a thin line. It’s so cute. Well, it is to me, because I’m their mother. Everything they do is cute.
GeorgianaBanana
This is Georgiana (Georgie, aka Georgie Banana). She is the youngest of my dear friend Penny’s three daughters, and the last to warm up to the presence of a big lens in her face. But once she gets going, she can strike a pose as good as the rest of ‘em.
I need to update the galleries on my Trish Smith Photography homepage, I’ve got a lot of new, very cute kids in my portfolio!
Over to you…