Christmas - Been and Gone

Well, Christmas has been and gone in its usual whirlwind of excitement and family events. The kid's are all really pleased with their "booty". Niamh is now the proud owner of a Nintendo DS, while Liam scored big time on Lego and many Star Wars themed goodies (including Lego!!), Erin was excited about a Littlest Pet Shop "e-pet" and also a kids die-cutting machine (following in her mothers footsteps there!). Me well my camera arrived in my hot little hands the weekend before Christmas! You could say all my Christmases had come at once! The camera is fantastic and I can't wait to have the time to really put it to the test. The photos I have taken with it are awesome but I still need to print some out to see how they look. So I guess I had better add a few in to share! The first two were taken with the new 24-70mm f2.8 lens too. Another great bit of glass! This is Jessie, she is a gorgeous little dog belonging to our good friends and "almost" neighbours. Well, you probably recognise who this is! But what I love about this photo was that it was taken at night, indoors using only lamp light, hand held at ISO 6400!! And you can't tell!! There is no really obvious noise!!! There was very little editing done to this photo too, basically this is straight out of the camera! I can honestly say this is one of the best features about this camera, being able to crank up the ISO to use the available light means less need for the tripod or flash!! Cool! And here is my littlest one, what a heartbreaker he is going to be! This photo was taken playing around with the plastic fantastic 50mm f 1.8 lens. And it seems to work beautifully on this new beastie too. I have really noticed the difference in field of view that having a full frame sensor offers too. Opening up all kinds of things! Oh and here is the Christmas card final cut. Now that cards have been and gone I won't be spoiling it for anyone! I was rather pleased with this one, even if it did take a while to have full co-operation from my models!! So, besides getting through Christmas and New Year I have also been working on the next issue of City Chat for Scrapbook City. It is coming along nicely and should be to the printers soon. One of the things I got to play around with were some new page protectors from We R Memory Keepers that have 6 4x6 pockets in a 12x12 layout. I had seen these in US mags and the like for a little while and thought they were a great way to make you print and store photos in an album without feeling the need to scrap everything. So I did up a "sample" for the newsletter and thought I would share it here too. I will be looking forward to printing out more photos to just have and keep in the albums now. Very cool new product. I know they are available now from Scrapbook City so drop them a line if you are interested. Well, that is all for now. I am hoping to get some scrapping challenges done and just scrap some more in general and I have samples for new classes to finish. These will be cool as I am doing some Hybrid classes this term. Three different themed classes which come with a digi kit and then you print out and complete the layout with hands on bits and pieces! Lots of fun. I will post the samples here when I am finished. Catch you soon. Thanks for dropping by! Oh one last thing, a big congratulations goes out to Lauren and Josh on their engagement! And also to the lovely Carole Janson on her Pink Paisley design team postition!!! Very cool!!