For Tomorrow We Diet, On Pretty Plates

Steve and I have been doing a bit of spending lately. Like a new fridge - ours was about 25 years old, slowly conking out and way too small, so it's been rather fun having a new one. We bought a big Westinghouse fridge, with a skinny freezer attached alongside. I didn't think we'd need more freezer space as we have a deep freeze, but I stand corrected - it's FABULOUS having all this extra freezer and fridge room. And things are COLD!!

But rather than bore you with a photo of a rectangular white box that is chilly, I thought you might like to see our new dinner set instead - it's way prettier. We've been using the same crockery we've had for over 25 years.... a white dinner setting that was a freebie - a piece every time we did our grocery shopping at Woolworths all those eons ago. Fancy that eh. I'm not into spending a fortune on things that can break, but I do like pretty plates, and we both liked this 4 piece setting which was just under $60 at Big W. And what I was most impressed with is that the setting has 4 mugs in it, instead of cups and saucers that we never use. Noice huh.

Whenever Steve and I decided we need to shed a few kilos the only way we can do it properly and successfully is by calorie counting and writing down everything that goes into our mouth. It's a commitment for a good few months and we find it a great way to think more about eating, rather than just shovelling stuff in and trying to kid ourselves. So, over the last 10 years (which is when the weight starting creeping on) we've done this three times, so we have quite a collection of exercise books full of what we ate, what the calories added up to, what we weighed and so on. They are very handy to review. We are sensible, we don't starve ourselves and we eat regularly, basically just cutting down portion sizes a bit and cutting out as much fat as possible. And it starts TOMORROW

There's a bit of everything in this post! I took this photo at the Albany Wind Farm. It's an amazing place and impresses me no end - Albany is a large regional town in the south of Western Australia and has a population of around 30 000, and this Wind Farm produces about 70% of Albany's power needs - isn't that great! I really like this photo, it was a very cloudy day and I like the misty effect of the white wind turbines against the clouds... looks kinda spooky

I've been playing with macro photography today, testing the limitations of my camera. This photo is of a flower called Alyssum which is tiny weeny, and that ant that looks like a monster is a normal little black ant, who kindly posed for the shot. The actual photo is much larger than this, this is a tiny little crop out of the main shot, and I'm pretty pleased that the focus has stayed reasonably ok, soft but ok.

And for those who enjoy a bit of mystery, here is a macro mystery for you. What is it? When you think you've figured it out.... or if you have been driven insane and just have to know, the answer is HERE.

Macro Mysteries Revealed

Ok, I'll put you out of your misery - hope you all enjoyed the Macro Mystery. :-)
The full size photos are HERE, with the solutions.

And the winner was Lindi. She is the only person to get 7 out of 7 - go to the top of the class Lindi!

Scatterday Week 15

Letter M is the star this week in Scatterday.

For the category of Weapon my thoughts moved to the regular sound of gunfire in this house, courtesy of Steve and his X-Box 360. I took a photo of the covers of his favourite games, and here we have a natty MACHINE GUN from Halo 3, and a shiny, smokin' MAGSEC 4 from Perfect Dark, which I believe is some sort of you-beaut pistol.

For Hobby I have used MACRAME. This is a rope jug I made many years ago, following the instructions from my Macrame book. This style of macrame is supposed to be something like that done by Native Americans I believe, it's called a Hopi style jug. I'm rather fond of it actually.

Now for the third category, Texture, I'm going to do something a bit different this week. I figured with texture it could go one of two ways - to photograph a texture beginning with M or to photograph the texture of something beginning with M. I've gone for the latter but I've decided to turn it into a little competition by doing them in macro and cropping them.

So, the following 7 photos are macro shots of the texture of everyday things beginning with M. If you feel like playing, see if you can guess what they are and email me with your answers to randomappliqueathotmaildotcom and the first person with the right answers will win a small prize. I'll post the answers one day next week.

Number One

Number Two

Number Three

Number Four

Number Five

Number Six

Number Seven

I'll be interested to see if people find these hard or easy to identify. Have fun!

Edit:
I'm thrilled at how popular this little game is, I've had some hilarious emails. When I get my new camera for Xmas I'm going to do this sort of thing more regularly - I had the pleasure of using my daughter's fantabulous camera to take these shots - I luvvvvv taking macro photos.

So far there is one clever clogs with 6 right. Number 4 and Number 6 are proving to be the trickiest. I adore number 6 - you wait til you find out what it is! Now, I'm giving a clue for number 3 as it's a bit obscure the way I've photographed it. Most people are giving me the answer 'metal' which is true, but I want what the object IS - and the clue is KITCHEN. I'll post the solutions on Tuesday I think - don't explode your brain waiting! :-)

And for Scatterday next week, the letter is tricky K, with the categories of Dangerous, Blue, and In My Neighbourhood. Oh boy!