biography

so as I was watching canon videos I seen one featuring a p
photographer named Jackie Ranken talking about "practically black" photography for a competition she was judging and after watching the video I realized, hey, that was an autobiography!!
I was ecstatic because I have been stressing out about getting everything done for exhibition and I had done one of the things without even noticing,

although she weas talking about photography she introduced herself and her background. it was really interesting for me to then go back and watch it again as if it was an autobiography. it helped me realize that an autobiography didn't have to be pages long and I have probably done some myself without even noticing!

here is the link, there a great set of videos on photography although all there doing is making me want my camera even more :D

http://www.canon.com.au/worldofeos/learn/get-creative/Practically-black-tips-and-tricks.aspx

speaking of which, if I can stick to my (extremely tight) budget I can get it in 5 weeks, 5 days, 1min and 12 seconds :D ...



roughly ;)

walking, talking and buying!!

so this is what my day (between 12 and 3.30) looked like.. I walked from school, to harey normans, to dick smiths, to camera house, to myer, BACK to harvey normans and then BACK to camera house and finally, to my mothers work!! but I have to admit .. it was definatly worth it!!

I HAVE A CAMERA!!! :D

well, not yet but I have one on layby and i am super excited!!

after doing alot of research I decided that the best ddeal for me was the canon eso DSLR 600D creative pack.. what a mouth ful!! basically it comes with a bag, two batterys and three lenses (yay!) as well as a 200 dollar photo printing voucher and e-course that comes with all camera house cameras and I also got a tripod thrown in for free and an 8gig SD card for $20.

I have been slowly researching cameras for a while now and recently I have gotten right into it because, well, I have the money (lol) and when I first started looking I knewI wanted a canon (but was trying to stay open minded - which was a chalange for me!) but I was looking at the model below the one I am getting so I am very glad I waited and basically the main feature of the one I am getting is that it has a flip screen so I can turn it in and the screen will be protected which will be great added protection!

I have also been watching heaps of videos off the canon website and have decided that the only other thing I need is a flashlite and then I will be set but I forgot about that today so will look into it next time.
I am sooo excited about getting this camera and am doing everything I can to get more money so I can get it sooner!!

on another note, I have been noticing that my blog is looking quite a bit black and white . . .

but hopefully that will change very soon!!! :D

I'llleave you with a few photos of my newest purchase (to be)

flowers~!~

one ~ little ~ flower

comparible to the tip of a dress makers pin 

so delicate

so fiddly 

so so so time consuming!!

. . . 

especially when I have to make 150 of them! 



~



an aray of colours



~



the colours I spent hours choosing



~



so many flowers!

clarification...

so I would just like to clarify that at the start of term three I had completed 32 journal entrys on my blog and I will now start blogging again ... and hopefully keep at it! so far I have done 7 - with this bringing it up to 8 ;) which I am pretty pleased with as I only started a few days ago and every blog I write I am getting closer to the 50 that we need to do! and If you look at it this way I am 20% there already ... only another 80% to go :/ I want to aim at having my compolsary entrys done by the essay exam date which is the 28th of november which is 55 days away and not counting full a beans and other days that I wont be at city campus I have 27 school days EEEK!!! thats more that two entrys per school day ... so mabye Im not so confident... I guess I can do an entry on full a beans and my cake class each time I go there and thats two a week... I only have to do five a week ... lets jus say it will be interesting!

beginners cake decorating class

ok so this post may be a bit belated but atleast i remembered before my next class... which is in all of 2 hours :/

but I signed up for a class through adult ed and it (as the title says) a beginers cake decorating one... I was planning to do an informational interview with the lady from "tamar valley cakes" but then I seen her class advertized and I jumped at the chance to take part in it! ... luckly I did because it sold out in a few hours and they had to do another class!

on the first day we learnt about fondant and flower paste, covering a cake board and making cutout shape things with the flower paste.

this week we are filling holes in a fruit cake (which i made very late last night) and to be honest im not sure what else!

I learnt so much and gemma gave us heaps of tips which would have taken ages for us to figure out! anyway, im keen for tonight and once again i will keep fyou updated :)

crackle cookies...

the best thing yet!!
so they may not be the best thing Ive made but cookie wise... amazing!

I tend to have a problem when making cookies.. there always over cooked and hard as a rock... kind of
but no matter how many times i cook them i cant get them right ...

then I seen a recipe for these crackle cookies and omg i had to try them ...

and im so glad I did!!!!!

they are really flat and I thought they were going to be rock hart but you bite into them and they just crumble and melt!!!!

there so soft and WAY sugary!!! (mabye a bit to sugary...)

but omg amazing!!!

im thinking of adjusting the recipe a tiny bit mabye looking at the butter content aswell as flour content and mabye not o much sugar but im thinking that texture wize I am heading towards mrs fields!


will post the recipe and photos tomorrow but for now....

Im going to enjoy a cookie :)

driving again

"on the road again . . .
Just can't wait to get on the road again."*quoting shrek how sad!*

so far I've been driving 4 times! (WOW) but ive only been driving around windsor park and industrial areas but yesterday I actually went on the road haha ... i pretty much went up a road and then back down but it was a pretty big loop and so much fun! I may have freaked out a bit and almost wiped off a car but no one was in it so thats ok! :/ but then when we went to the supermarket we realized that there was no one on the roads so we turned around and I drove along the highway!
I am constantly on mum about going for a drive! its so much fun!!!
will keep you updated!!

hopefully its all good news ;)

cooking away ...

today (at 9pm) I made this...

a gooey butter cake...
http://tidymom.net/2011/st-louis-gooey-butter-cake-recipe/

eating away

yummy shortbready crust



whats that in the background??!!


it had an interesting taste ... the texture was familier ... mabye kind of custard pie(ish)???



hmm.. seams to resemble something???? :/



the icing (sugar) on the cake (slice)



trying to capture that perfect shot

down it falls

ok, settle down shauna~!

what the cake/slice should look like

me going overboard!

anyway, its in the cooling stage now and will be going out for testing tomorrow!

an extreemly dificult situation

no it wasn't cooking a complicated recipe or sewing something that needs precise detail.. it was much harder.. driving! hahaha

so after going to service tas five times I was finally able to go for my L's! why?? well basically - mum forgot I had a birth certificate insisting that the "copy" was the only original we had... anyway, I eventually got everything I needed and was sitting my test first thing Thursday morning! now, i cant exactly say that I know how much I passed by but lets just say that it was 100% because I was pretty confident that I got them all right lol...
so nerves started to build inside me and I really wanted to go for a drive but as it was pouring down with rain yesterday.. we decided it wasn't the best time to get into a car for the first time so today we went out to legana's industrial area and drove around a big circle! ... it was very ... (claustrophobic) in the drivers seat ... and I was freaking out when I simply turned the key.. clearly I haven't done any (under aged) driving :p

it was an interesting experience, theres so much to do! The first time a car came the opposite way I freaked out and pulled over but I got better at it and ended up doing 16.3ks (going round and round circles!) there were alot of left turns involved so we decided to do a three point turn and go the opposite way.. everything felt backwards and not right!!!

It was kind of like learning how to ride a bike all over again ... only this 'bike' can potentially ruin the lives of multiple people... and we wont mention the first time mum got me riding a two wheeler........

as for now, i cant wait to get back in the car and turn corners :P I'm even giving up my sleep in to go driving!!!

editing....

oh the joy of editing!! I just wrote a 1000+ word essay and edited it four times along with getting 2 teachers to look at it.. I started writing it 4 or so days ago and got half way through it only to start again and I am sure that I read each pargraph 5+ times as I write it and 3+ times as I proof read it. I also done a major swap of the paragraph orders which ment reading them about 7 times over and over again making sure it soulded and flowed right.. fun!
acording to my amazing calculations thats 25500+ (take careful note of the plus!)

my little word calculator... x=amount of words in peice === x*25.5 = amount of words read

(essay) 1320 * 25.5 = 33660 which is close to half of a novel
(project proposal) 2336 * 25.5 = 59568 = 20000 words off an entire novel
(last three blogs I read)  1101+784+871= 2756 which is 1000 words of half of a novel

hmm... so thats close to 2 entire novels in a week marianne...... ;)





but on a serious side, I can actually see the point in editing i mean, through editing... once i finished the essay I read through it and desided that the order wasnt right and it didnt flow proporly.. last year I would have just left it but instead I swapped it around and read it 50 billion times! but in the end I was happier with the result and glad i put in the extra effort...


and to thing that I just finished a 1300 word essay and came here to blog about it ...
... something must be wrong!

dreams... (of lemons?!?!?!)

wow!!! ok so its been so long since i was last on here that i didn't even know how to find it!! grr... 10min later however, i finally arrive!!! theres SOOO much to blog about ... one thing in particular (very exciting!) but first, i must catch my dream before it runs away on me..

hmm...

well after many times of writing my down my dream . . . I have came to the conclusion that there is no possible way of writing it and not sounding ridiculously . . .  umm . . . (i think idiotic is the word I'm looking for....)


anyway,
this dream, it was a weird dream, a good weird dream, a confusing weird dream..!!

so it was some type of a cake competition ... i think we had an hour to make some type of cupcake .. possibly a sponge ... I know chocolate wasn't involved in it though... if it was I would have dominated!!! haha anyway, I was struggling to figure out what to make (as you do in an imaginary cake competition!) but then somehow... I had this idea... maybe it has evolved/chanced since it first appeared in my dream .. maybe not! anyway, its a sponge cupcake with a lemon syrup spooned over it once it is cooked and then finally a lemon butter cream piped on top... sounds pretty yummy!!.. which is weird considering i don't like lemon... but still!!! so i think that will be something to make very soon.. especially since I have one lonely lemon sitting in the fridge that was most likely going to sit there until it was bin worthy ... not any more though!!!


oh... and I'm thinking some form of white chocolate in these cupcakes would make them 10x better!!!!!

ohh.. and there was something else in my dream... something about having a break during the competition at which stage I went into town... the town of launceston... and it was one MASSIVE shopping center... but that's another dream!!... possibly classified in the NEVER GONNA HAPPEN file.......

my lonely lemon

my vision! (found on page three of google images..)

how long has it been?!

ok, so although I have never forgotten about my blog and am always doing things FOR my blog I seem to always forget the bloging part...
and sadly, I am not here to overload my blog with posts.. but I will be soon.. no, I am here because everything else has failed me!

I have started my LTI (Learning Through Internship) well actually, I am closer to the end tha the start now *sad moment! :(* but either way it has been great!! but more to the point, I took photos yesterday and trying to show them to my mentors is really annoying me! first my school e0mail is over the limit . . . even after cleaning it out, then my hotmail account would only let me send 6 photos at a time and then refused to even send those 6 and then facebook .. lets not even start with facebook! but any way, when all else faild, I came here!! so I present you 29 of the best 125 photos that i took . . . . . .

 and if it wasnt obvious already..

i <3 photography!