Archive for the ‘friends and family’ Category
Friday, 27 March 2009
Hey I’m alive!
Phew, what a week it’s been. Getting the magazine to press in the day job, and getting ready for Saturday’s wedding in the ‘evening job’ has certainly taken it’s toll this week. Oh and I’ve also been working on setting up the client-side of my website, with the help of the indispensable Paul. On Tuesday I went to check out the venue for tomorrow’s wedding, and yesterday I finally met up with the couple. It was slightly nerve wracking not having met the clients until two days before the big day, but luckily it turned out that they’re all-round lovely people.
Running around all over town has meant that I have had zero time for housework and the flat is an absolute mess, which kind of adds to the stress of everything. Hopefully, unless I’m completely dead, I can do something about that on Sunday. S is off to Ireland on Sunday for two weeks with work. It’ll be strange having an empty house for that long…
Despite being tired and stressed I’m really looking forward to Saturday. It’s great to finally start shooting these weddings that have been in the pipelines for so long. It’s actually the enjoyable side of running the business, unlike all the admin work that’s been piling up recently.
It’s Layla’s birthday on Sunday (I know this since she’s been reminding me every day for the last month), and today we went out for a celebratory lunch in Nando’s in her honor. It was only my second time in Nando’s ever, and it wasn’t half bad. Even if my food took forever to arrive and I then had to practically run back to the office as my lunch hour was up. Oh well.
I’m taking a couple of days off work next week (thank god for April and the start of new holiday year) in order to process tomorrow’s wedding and partly to avoid all the G20 hoopla. I just have no energy for any extra commuting disruptions.
But yeah, I’m alive, just a bit snowed under!
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Hellos & goodbyes
Paul came over from Ireland for a quick visit. We had fish & chips, went shopping in Kingston, saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona, and learned about the importance of truth. Good times.
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Christmas roundup
Christmas kicked off on Christmas Eve when we celebrated Finnish xmas at home with S. It was such a treat to be able to watch Santa’s Hotline via the miracle of the interwebs. For my generation of Finns listening to little kids phoning Santa, trying to impress him at the last minute, and make sure he’ll find the right address, is a pretty integral part of getting xmas started. And of course then there’s The Snowman, a true sign that yet another year has passed and Christmas is here.
In a fairly non-traditional fashion, I had pancakes and hot chocolate for breakfast.
On Christmas Day we headed to Essex for the English onslaught of xmas traditions. This lasted for two days, and included two different turkeys.
Such happy Christmassy faces… :D
Certain someone got an air drums set for Christmas. Much hilarity ensued.
And finally, here’s my loot. I must have been a fairly good girl this year!
Monday, 22 December 2008
The day that wasn’t
Uhh it was ghastly to go back to work just when you had sort of slipped into that Christmassy state of being. To ease the pain we went for a nice pub lunch with Layla. Made it all seem a bit more bearable.
Now finally the holiday stretches in front of me. I have waited for this moment for so long. I hope it doesn’t go by in a flash!
Sunday, 14 December 2008
Sunday visitors
Today the in-laws came down for a visit and brought Stu a fancy pants coffee maker birthday present. They also treated us to a lovely meal at the pub. Just what the doctor ordered.
Friday, 12 December 2008
The dark side
This is just to wish Stu & Nikki happy 30th birthday! Welcome to the dark side! :D
Sunday, 30 November 2008
Party people
Saturday, 1 November 2008
Flutastic
The stupid cold that has been doing the rounds has finally caught up with me. But I won’t go down without a fight! I’ve been consuming vast amounts of echinea and hot lemon and they’re helping me to keep my head above the water, so to speak. Jen came over for yesterday’s Antony and the Johnson’s gig (more about that when my head isn’t quite so woolly – it’s safe to say it was mindblowing though), and I was clever enough to take Friday off work so we had a chance to spend some time together and pop to Richmond for a bit of shopping. Today she’s gone to central London on her own, while I’ve been trying to go through my to-do-list, with Stu constantly complaining that I should be in bed.
We were testing my new cheapo macro ring flash on each other yesterday.
We’re supposedly going down the pub tonight, not quite sure how I’ll cope with that though… hmm. Might have to change that to a Sunday lunch thing, we’ll see. I don’t want to be a bad host though, it’s just that I feel pretty shit…
Since the concert finished at a reasonable hour last night (who knew symphony orchestras are so punctual!), we decided to come back home afterwards. Originally we were going to stay at Sooz’s flat, while she’s living it up in NY. I must say I was pretty glad to wake up in my own bed this morning.
Here’s our train arriving at Vauxhall last night.
P.S. if anyone is interested in booking me to shoot their wedding at a discount price, I’m currently running a pretty generous wedding photography promotion!
Thursday, 25 September 2008
My average day in pictures
Saw this challenge here and loved it. The aim is to photograph your daily commute and what you have for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I widened it a bit to include pretty much the whole day. So, here’s my ‘average day’ in pictures.
8am. I leave for work. The street looks fairly quiet. But then again, it always does.
On our station, waiting for my train.
I get a seat, result! First we cross the bridge over to Richmond.
Getting closer and closer to Waterloo (I had more pics from along the way, but this entry was getting waaay too long).
Get off the train. I then walk to the other end of Waterloo station.
1st and 2nd escalator down to Jubilee line.
2nd and 3rd escalator…
I just manage to run into a tube that’s ready to leave. Can’t get a proper picture as am squished against the wall.
Get off the train at London Bridge. There’s two escalators but the other pic was too blurry.
Finally some air!
9am. Our swipey thingy isn’t working at the moment so I have to ring the bell to get in.
Can you guess what the official company colour is? :P
Have a muesli bar for breakfast. Suz has left me a note.
It’s press day so I’m super busy getting pages through pre-press in the first half of the day.
1.30pm. Meet Layla in the lift, we then wonder where to go for lunch.
I get to treat myself to a tuna melt in Costa, since it’s a hectic day and all.
Back to work. There’s the view as well. Super.
Layla calls me into a ‘very important’ meeting in her office. Bump into Hassan in the stairway. Serious business.
John sees a photo op and elbows into our ‘very important’ meeting.
5pm. I force Layla to walk back to Waterloo with me, since the sun is out.
See, is sunny!
There are those sunflowers again.
Nearly at Waterloo now.
5.30pm. Walk back across Waterloo station again.
I get on Layla’s (stupid) train. No seats. I have to change trains at Richmond.
6ish pm. I get off the train and go to the store to get some bits and pieces for dinner tonight.
Almost home, just around the corner.
Nasty spider tries to prevent me from getting to the front door. I showed him!
6.30. Get in and have some water. I see that the sun is just setting so get my SLR out and take a picture for 365 Bokeh.
Start making dinner, but get bored with it so S takes over and cooks me sausage and mash. Is nice. I do the dishes though! I spend some quality time with the sofa and remote.
Have shower, update bloggy things and then head to bed. Where did the evening go?
Friday, 19 September 2008
Here comes the sun
The sun came out to play today in honour of it being Friday!
It’s been a long old week, or at least it feels like it. I had two days of training in Farringdon (what a bitch that was to get to!) on Wednesday and Thursday, so it seemed to sort of stretch the whole thing out. It was nice though, the training. I would even go as far as to say inspiring. Hmm. Let’s not get carried away though.
Hopefully this weekend I’ll have time to catch up with stuff. There sure is a lot of it to catch up with.
The Bride-to-be enjoying some rays (and trying not to pose :P)
Monday, 1 September 2008
9 years and counting…
I have a feeling someone’s going to kill me for this, but you’re allowed to be mushy at specific times of year! We’re not ‘officially’ celebrating 1 September any more since the wedding, as apparently wedding anniversaries are the only ‘proper’ anniversaries. :P But never the less, today still means something to me, and I can at least celebrate our 9th anniversary of being together with this mush-fest of pictures. :D If nothing else, looking at it brings back good memories (while also making me feel incredibly old, like where an earth did 9 years disappear??). Also, check out that fringe. WTF. :D
(Sorry S, I know it must be a pain to be married to an overly sentimental photographer!)
Sunday, 20 July 2008
Wedding anniversay, Dirty Dancing and a lot of pictures
Today is our first ever wedding anniversary. Surprisingly, this time I won’t add how quickly a year has gone, as it feels like ages since the wedding! So much has happened in a year… we changed jobs, homes, countries… everything really. It’s been quite a whirlwind of a year.
So far today we’ve been mostly trying to prepare for holidays at the end of next week. Washing clothes, getting the suitcases down from the loft, that sort of thing. We’re planning on driving down to some little country pub for lunch later on.
Yesterday we went to see Riina, Noa and Elli, and in the evening us adults went to a (yet another) picnic concert at Audley End house. This time we were more prepared though, with an actual picnic, woolly cardigan, and the most genius idea of all, woolly socks! The weather was also a bit more pleasant. Even though it rained on and off during the day, the skies cleared by the evening and we had blue skies and sunshine, all the way until the sun went down. That’s when my woolly socks really came into their own!
No matter how tacky the idea of the ‘Music of Dirty Dancing’ sounds like, it truly was great fun, with everyone singing along and dancing around us. And the place was gorgeous! I’m definitely going to attend another picnic concert there, maybe next summer. I’m sure we’ll slowly advance into picnic master-class!
First, there was some baking to be done…
Then S attended Elli’s ‘beauty class’…
Noa fell on his bike and broke his front teeth a couple of weeks ago. Hardcore.
Riina’s budgie.
We arrived at Audley End just when the concert kicked off. There were some very fancy picnic set-ups, with tables and wind breakers and all, to be seen all around. There’s still a lot to learn…
Blue sky!
Our picnic was a bit more humble, but most delicious never the less!
It got a bit chilly after the sun went down, but it was all still throughly enjoyable up to the end.
Full moon.
We decided to drive home in the night. Was quite nice actually, even though we got stuck in some roadworks.
Monday, 23 June 2008
My trainers are cuter than your trainers
Aren’t these just the prettiest trainers you’ve ever seen?? Thank you eBay! <3 
I’m using the joy of the pretty new trainers as an attempt to distract myself from the frustration over the stupidity of my office’s new policy to block just about anything you could do online. No more flickr, no more facebook, no more Jaiku, not even personal blogs! Pfft. Moronic. Some would say fascist even. This will seriously hamper my plans to take over the world.
There was one nice thing that happened today though (since I got the trainers on Saturday already they don’t really qualify for today’s nice things) and that was having lunch with the lovely Anne. It was quite relaxing to get a bit of a ‘Finnish break’ in the middle of a frustrating work day. :D
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Giggles
Antonia wanted some quick portraits of herself (for a super-secret-project :P) so I obliged. I like these giggly out-takes the best.
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Birthday girl
Sooz’s birthday celebrations were rather restrained yesterday, due to my still aching head and the rubbish weather. We made up for it today though with a trip to the New Forest. Was a lovely day out and the sun even shone throughout. Will post photobloggy pictures in a minute. Yikes, also have to go to bed very soon! :O
Friday, 9 May 2008
Last day of freedom
Since it was effectively our last day of holiday, we decided to rent a car on a whim. Financially not the most viable option but it was so worth it. It was lovely to have that sense of freedom, not being dependent on anyone to get us from point a to point b, even if it was just for a few hours. We drove to Kuusijärvi to enjoy the sunny day and silence. Had a little picnic by the lake.
Then we drove to Järvenpää to see Johanna and the gang. Olli and Aleksi are growing way too fast! It’s scary. Aleksi was already speaking, to the extent of correcting Stu’s Finnish pronunciation. :D
All in all, the day was a perfect ending to our little Finnish trip.