Watery Wednesday - This Is Special :-)

Today I have a special Guest Photographer !!!


Meet 8 yr old Taylor ... a little friend of mine, who is 8 years old. I look after her, while her Mum and Dad work.

Yesterday, we took a walk over to the little lake, near where I live and I started teaching her the basics of photography.

She took these photos using my little digital camera. I had it attached to a strap around her neck and a strap at her wrist. No way was she going to drop it :-)

I don't think she did too bad her first time out, in fact I think she did pretty well for an 8yr old ! What do you think ??


She was really excited and proud about this one. After she took it she came over and said that she'd got the goose's reflection. Not a bad eye to be thinking about that..


Mum and babies ..


She was really fascinated with the clouds and the gulls flying above the little island..


She loved those clouds :-)


I think the goose thought we had food, because it started swimming towards us at a great rate of knots. I think the way she caught the reflections was really cool as well..


I'd been explaining to her about not putting her subject center of the photo ... I think she achieved that really well with her photo of the fountain..

I think her final count of photos was something like 140. She had fun. I also had a ball passing on the little things I know. :-)

Have a great rest of the week. We are going out on Thursday or Friday to take more photos. :-)

Mellow Yellow Monday - Fun In The Sun

Okay, this is my first Mellow Yellow Monday post, so I went into my archives for something that was yellow or had yellow in it and found this one...


My little friend , Taylor, posing on the play equipment at one of our local parks.

They've painted everything in bright, primary colours, including this vibrant yellow.:-)

Friday Foto Finish Fiesta - Let Sleeping Dogs (And Children) Lie...

It's Friday and it's a Fiesta !! At least it is, thanks to Candid Carrie ! :-)


I walked into the living room and found my little friend, Taylor, fast asleep on the couch.

Noticed a little lump, near her, under the blanket ....


I gently lifted the blanket and found Sparky, curled up in a ball, slumbering away, nose to nose with her.... :-)

Too cute for words :-)

It's Kind Of Looking For Glasses When They're On Your Head And Other Menopausal Moments !!

Realised last night, that I'd forgotten to do my 'Weighty Matters Monday' post.

We went fossil hunting, on Sunday, in the bed of what was once Lake Lahontan, which was a large lake that covered much of Northern Nevada over 9000 years ago.

I was pretty tired and actually slept in till 9:27, Monday morning. Probably fortunate that I didn't have school and wasn't scheduled to pick up Taylor till 3pm. :-)

Finally remembered to weigh myself, sometime in the afternoon. I remained the same as last week.

Wasn't too surprised, as I got pretty dehydrated on Sunday.

There ain't no toilets out there in the desert, baby, and my injured knee doesn't do to well with the squatting thing, so I wasn't sure how I was going to manage the peeing thing. Men certainly have an advantage, in that department !! :-)

I've noticed that whenever I get dehydrated, I retain water like crazy the next day ... so hopefully, that will come off in the next day or so and I'll have a good weight loss next week..

Okay ... now to the title of my post and a quick explanation about the accompanying video.

The first part of the video, shows my feet crunching through gypsum flakes, as I walk back up a slope, after taking photos of an old ruin.

Then I realise that Sparky, one of my dogs, was not right at my heels, like he's been all day.

Look back down the slope and there he sits, looking all forlorn. Poor thing was really pooped out and obviously decided he was going to not climb up that slope !

Sent Taylor down after him. She gets down there and starts yelling up at me to take a picture. You can hear her faintly on the video if you turn it up.

I couldn't figure out why my stupid camera would not take a photo. You can hear me on the video, telling everybody that it wouldn't 'take'.

In the meantime, Taylor's yelling at me to 'Take a picture' and Sparky's just sitting there, obviously wondering why someone didn't just pick him up and carry him up the slope!

Finally I give up and turn the camera off. Once I turn it back on, it takes photos fine :-)

It wasn't till I got home and found this video, that I realised, I must have accidentally hit the record button, when I started up the slope ...

So I had video evidence of one of my, what I like to call, 'menopausal moments' !!

Sorry about the choppiness and wild swinging and the views of my feet, but when you don't know you're filming then that stuff happens! :-)




Sparky, watching me trying to figure out why my camera won't fire, decides he may as well take a short nap. :-)


Taylor, carying him back up the slope....

Girly Girl...

Last Friday, Taylor and I took a trip to 'Girly Girl' at the Mall.

She had her 8th Birthday Party there, and she won a Makeover on the prize wheel.

Taylor's Mum dropped her and the prize certificate at my place and off we went to get her made over :-)


First decision is whether she wanted to be a Princess or a Rock Star..


She fancied herself as a Princess. She belongs to this little club, at school, that they named the 'Pretty, Pretty Princesses', so how could she be anything else. Being a Princess, apparently involves having your hair done in an up do.


Then came the decision about what colour eyeshadow to apply ...


She chose a pretty shade of lilac ...


Then there was glitter blush to the cheeks...


And a pretty pink lipstick gloss. I was rather amused at the people who stopped to watch. However, as soon as they saw my camera, they took off running..


Then came the serious business of painting the nails..


Which also involved copious amounts of gold glitter, at which point, I wanted to break into a rendition of 'Goldfinger'..


What was left after the nail glittering, was sprinkled over the hair. Later that evening, I found a whole trail of it down my sleeve, where she'd rested her head..


Showing off the fingernail bling .....


Then they wrapped a pink feather boa around her neck .... put her on stage ... and turned on a Hannah Montana tape. She has this 'YOU WANT ME TO SING!!!' look on her face..


Princess turned Future Rock Star !!! You saw her here first, folks!!

I had to laugh when we leaving. It had started to rain lightly as we left the Mall.

Miss Taylor, looks out the door and announces in a tone of horror 'It's raining, I've just had a makeover!!'

Okay, I roll my eyes and stiffle my laughter. She holds her jacket over her head as we dash over to the Mall bus terminal.

We step inside of the bus shelter and Little Miss Diva eyes the roof and announces 'Good, it's not leaking. Perfect!!'

Another BAER from me and then it's Taylor's turn to do the eye roll thing when I call her Mum to tell her the latest utterings from her offspring. :-)

Don't you just love kids and what they come out with....

Mamma Mia !!!!

Meet my co-blogger for today, Taylor. I've been looking after Taylor, since she was around 3 months old. She is now almost 8. Her Mum is one of my best friends. Taylor is now going to tell you what she thought of 'Mamma Mia'.

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Hi everybody, Taylor here. i liked the part when they sang dancing queen. i also liked the end. i also liked when they sang Mamma Mia. On the end they sang and danced to Waterloo and the men came out dressed in Disco clothes and it was funny. Bye.
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I'm back ...

I really liked 'Mamma Mia'. I would see it again and I will buy the DVD.

Meryl Streep really shows what a versatile actress she is. She also has a pretty good set of pipes on her. Boy, is she also athletic. She has given me something to aspire too. Namely doing the splits while jumping on the bed, doing a pretty impressive cannonball off a dock and clambering up and down walls and dancing.. Not bad for a 59 yr old. A role model for middle-aged women, everywhere!! :-)

Julie Walters has been a favourite, of mine, from way back. I loved her in 'Educating Rita' and 'Calender Girls', plus numerous other films and TV shows. The scene at the end, where she dances on the table, while singing 'Take A Chance On Me' is hilarious.

Piers Brosnan, Christine Baranski, Colin Firth, etc all do a great job as well.

And it has Abba's music in it and it's filmed in Greece. :-) What more could you want??

Mamma Mia pulls you in right at the beginning and keeps you toe tapping most of the way through the movie. The urge to get up and dance in the aisles is quite strong.

There are moments in the movie where the pace slows down and you feel your attention start to wander, but then WHAM, it's off at a breakneck pace again.

I possibly would not have taken Taylor with me, if I'd been warned about a couple of things in the movie. There are three or four rather raunchy bits, mostly involving Christine Baranski's character. Fortunately, they only lasted a second and went completely over the top of Taylor's head.

Having said that, there was nothing offensive in the movie. No gratuitous sex scenes, no nudity, except for one brief moment when you see the bare butt cheeks of one of the male leads. Not Pier's unfortunately. :-)

It's just the sort of raunch that you'd expect when a group of middle aged women get together. Believe me, we can be pretty raunchy lot. ;-) Yeah and I know I'm mentioning raunchy a lot!

I don't want to give any spoilers, so I won't post what the raunchy bits were. If you're thinking of taking your kids, your elderly aunt or the local priest, and you want to assess whether it would be suitable, then you're more than welcome to email me and I'll give you a rundown..

Taylor really enjoyed it. She quietly sang along to some of the songs, to the amusement of the patrons sitting close to us. She danced out of the theatre and sang 'Dancing Queen' for the next 40 minutes or so.

Me, I walked out with a smile on my face. It's definitely a feel good movie.

Lastly, the actors obviously had heaps of fun making this movie and it just shows!

Below is Taylor giving me and passing motorists, her rendition of 'Dancing Queen' while we were waiting for the bus. I really like the leap at the end. :-)