What happened to providing a good service?

I'm very aware that my posts in the run up to Christmas have been, shall we say, less than festive. For that I apologise.

But I'm more than a little befuddled as to why I'm currently sitting here having to fix Chloe's "professionally" taken school photograph. I'm glad I asked for the jpeg on disk rather than having the photo printed, but I'm wondering just what exactly I paid £25 for the privilege of.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this...


dark and dreary little offering probably isn't the best job a "professional" photographer could have done.

Robert bought my mum a digital photo frame for my mum and has filled it with photos of Chloe. She's always complaining that she doesn't have enough and I really wanted to be able to add her school photo into the mix before wrapping it up.

The addition of a bit of light and a warming filter helped a lot I think...


And I have a bit of a thing for cropped photos like this one recently....



And taken just a little bit further ...



I love that the difference in colour between her two eyes is a lot more obvious in the last one. It's her thing, she loves that one is brown and one is blue.

Ten minutes, total!! So why couldn't the photographer have done that?

First Day at School. Piece of Cake!

I'm so pleased because Chloe had a brilliant first day at school.

We even managed to start off in the morning on a high note. Normally, she isn't a big fan of breakfast. She'll pick at her food or just have something tiny like half a slice of toast and some juice, but this morning she sat happily and munched through a bowl of weetabix, some strawberries and a glass of apple juice in about 15 minutes.

We managed to get the uniform on without any problems. She didn't grow six inches over night so everything still fit.

And she looked so cute wearing it. She knows it too.




We walked to the school and I was a little concerned because she was really happy the entire way, but as soon as we reached the top of the steps and the P1 courtyard was in front of us she hesitated, just for a split second but it was there. Usually Chloe is the type of kid to run into any situation with both guns blazing and its a very rare sight to see her unsure of herself. On the few occasions its happened before she has went one of two ways. Either she shrugs it off and runs on anyway, or she falls to pieces, wants a hug and refuses to carry on. Thankfully today was a good day.



After a few minutes one of the women from her old daycare arrived with three kids she recognised as friends and they played together for five minutes or so before her new teacher opened the door to their cloakroom and invited them in.

After that I didn't get a look in.


I managed to squeeze past some of the other mums into the cloakroom to give Chloe her little envelope for the snack scheme just in time to hear her teacher ask her name and for Chloe to reply "I'm the butterfly". I took both of us a second to realise that she'd spotted her hanger with her name and a picture of a blue and purple butterfly above it.

She was only in school today for a bit less that 3 hours and she'll start her full days of 3.5 hours tomorrow. We collected her shortly after noon and she talked a mile a minute the whole way home, even making us stop in the street every now and again while she explained something in spite of the heavy rain.



Best of all she's really excited to be going again tomorrow and that she will be able to go every day. I've heard stories of some kids arriving home from school saying about how brilliant it was, but what do you mean I have to go again tomorrow I thought that was it. So its really good that she understands that it isn't a one off thing.

Oh and I'm to tell you that her teacher gave her a spider sticker which says "Very Good Work" because she was able to write her own name on a painting of the three of us. I'm blue, Dad's yellow and Chloe's green but because those things tend to come home in bundles at the end of term, that's all I know about the painting for the minute.

I hope everyone else planning for the first day of school this year have just as good a day.

Tallships Belfast 2009 - Possibly Part 1

Yes, you heard me right, possibly part one. You see there were two cameras there on Thursday and I've yet to get my hands on the other one. The other one being the one which contains all of the photos of Toots.

Actually, do you know what, I can't be bothered with all that anymore. She hasn't let me call her Toots in months and its getting difficult to remember to call her that here. The other camera contains all the photos of Chloe. As far as she's concerned she's a big girl now and the baby names have got to go. So there you go.

Anyway, where was I....

Yes, well, we arrived in Belfast at 8.40am (much too early) so we had a lovely breakfast (rice krispie squares, brownies and coffee) at Cafe Italia in Hill Street. Obviously Chloe had milk and not coffee, but she really enjoyed the coffee shop because it meant she was able to wave at the bin men. It's become a little ritual for her to stand at the window and wave and smile at the bin men on a Thursday morning and they always smile and wave back. A lovelier bunch of blokes you're unlikely to meet.

After breakfast we walked slowly over to the Odyssey and were lucky enough to be one of the few people already there, meaning that I was able to get nice clean photos of the ships before the crowds started to arrive. Because honestly once the crowds did start to pile in, as I've mentioned before I'm a wee shortarse so the chances of a good photo later in the day went complete out the window.




Now I say nice clean shots with nobody getting in the way, but when I went back and checked the photos later I realised one managed to sneak in. The funny thing is I didn't even notice this guy when I took the photo! I still like it though, one of my favourites if I'm honest.




Chloe's favourite ship was the Bounty. Obviously! Honestly, that child's seen the Spongebob Movie too many times. As far as she was concerned The Bounty just looked like a pirate ship and she was perfectly happy with that. Trust me, there was little point in trying to explain otherwise to her. Pirate Ship, full stop.





Mine was the Mircea. I mean just look at it. It's such a beautiful boat to see. Unfortunately, Chloe was exhausted (as was I) before we managed to make it far enough past the Port of Belfast to see if the Mircea was open to visitors and when we arrived on the dock side we couldn't even see the Bounty because of the crowds around it. Maybe if I'd persevered and given it a bit of the "Mummy Shoulder" we could have made our way through the queues. I must be going soft in my old age.




The obligatory photo of Harland and Wolff or Samson and Goliath if you prefer. It has to be done really, they're what Belfast is best known for.




And, of course I couldn't leave without taking a quick photo of the Human Statue. This guy's fantastic, Chloe almost ran for the hills when she'd been staring at him for a few minute, asking why a statue would have sunglasses, and he bent down and put his hand out for her. You've never seen a child move so fast.




All in told we had a great day. A long, very exhausting day where I spent a fair amount of time emptying the contents of Belfast Harbour out of my silly little shoes, but a great one nonetheless.

We had brioche and candied fruits. I now have a fridge well and truly stocked with salami, cured hams and cheeses.

And I had my paella followed by a maple syrup crepe because nom nom nom.

And, if only because this wouldn't be a true SeetheWoods post without me having a gripe about something.....

Belfast City Council spent seven years and roughly £3 million organising the events surrounding the Tall Ships and just in case anyone from Belfast City Council happens to read this post, I have a little question. Would it really have killed you to have lit a citronella candle or two, because ... wasps ... EVERYWHERE?

We may have to pick Chloe up from her Nana's early tomorrow and head over to Crawfordsburn or somewhere like that to see if we can see them leaving the harbour.

Tale of the Lost and Found Phone Photos

onto two I'm pleased with myself today, I managed to get a ton of photographs sorted out last night and filed properly. It'll hopefully make them much easier to find. I also copied a load as slide showscd's for my mum. She'll eventually ask me for prints of the ones she wants, it would be too much to print all of them (although she would if she could).

I completely forgot to take my camera to the park with us last week, but the husband managed to take a couple of photos on the Blackberry.





Her upper body strength is amazing, but I think all kids are like that aren't they. She swung like that for ages.

I'm surprised actually that they turned out as well as they did considering its supposed to be a phone, pleasantly surprised really its a lot handier to carry around than my huge camera. I really do need to see about getting myself something more compact. Any suggestions of a nice, compact and more importantly easy to use camera would be really appreciated.

I've been thinking ahead. Sometimes being organised can be a bit of a pain and yo may hate me for it, but I've been double checking my Christmas list and making sure that I've made a good start on everything I'm going to need.

Then while I was sorting out photographs I came across this one.




Its another shot snapped with a phone. We were at the Christmas Market in Belfast in December and Toots loved the merry-go-round and I mean loved it, I think this was her third or fourth go and clearly she's still enjoying herself, plus this one also shows why I'm so impressed with the blackberry photos.

And just because it made me laugh.




This was taken one morning when I was at work very early and the husband had the job of getting Toots ready for daycare. Notice the subtle use of three hair clips down the side of her head.

When I collected her from daycare that evening, the girls told me that they had to stop themselves laughing when he dropped her off, because those three visible hair clips were in fact three of twelve.

He managed to fit twelve hair clips on the head of a three year old.

Although he still maintains that he and Toots did it "for a laugh" backed up by the fact that he took a photograph. Hmmm, the jury's still out on that one.

So that's another box on the great never ending to do list checked.

Again though if any has any good suggestions for a camera I'd love to hear them. I do like my big old camera and its very good for taking photos, but there is a short delay between pressing the button and taking the shot which is fine for static things. Try getting a four year old to stand still long enough to take a photo though, I've missed more than enough photos of her already.