Entering the smart phone world

Goodbye Nokia and hello LG! I have entered the smartphone world and for the first time my cell phone isn't a Nokia phone. Their smart phone was far too expensive, so now I had to change brand. I had a simple and very reliable phone that really was just for calling and nothing else and now I have a mini computer! Learning to use it and it's fun!
Sofia played with it and made this for me for Valentine:

After a huge fight after school because of her extremely bad teenagery moods where both me and her father loosed our patience (her father even more than me), I managed to take her to her riding lesson (I didn't ride today, because I had a fever the night before and wasn't feeling energietc enough), bought some Valentine's chocolate to the whole family and helped the girls with their home work and when Daniele and Armando came home from Daniele's football we went to have a pizza to celebrate Valentine's day. I got these messages from the girls, so despite their bad moods, they can be really sweet <3.

Ten on the tenth

As I said I have been surfing around searching for blogs with photo challenges to get inspiration from. I'm behind with the photo challenges I was supposed to follow. Anyway I saw another one where you have to take ten photos on the tenth of every month. I don't know if I'll be doing it every month, but here's my Ten on the tenth for the month of Frebruary. Lots of them taken with my point and shoot camera, which is good when I don't want to carry around with the big one.
It was Friday and the schools in Rome were closed again because the weather forcast had predicted snowfall. We didn't get any snow during the day, though, only rain. In the morning the weather was good and we had our riding lesson. When we were ready and on the horse back it started raining. We continued for half an hour, until it rained too much and we had to stop. One of Sofia's riding friends slept over at our house on Thursday and also Daniele had his best friend sleeping over. I tried to work while they played games and did other things and Carlotta watched TV or coloured. In the evening we went out for our Friday evening pizza. We often go out with a friend of mine and her girls. When we came out from the restaurant it had started snowing and, of course, the children hoped that it would continue all night and everything would be white the next morning. Unfortunately it had started raining instead. Sofia's friend slept at our house one more night and Daniele went to his friend's house.

Week 5 and snow

Last week it started to get really cold here in Rome and after the rest of Rome already got some snow on Friday, here where we live, close to the sea, it arrived a bit later, during the night between Friday and Saturday. So we woke up seeing a white layer of snow everywhere! The schools in Rome were closed on Friday because the weather forecast had forseen snow and they stayed closed also on Monday and Tuesday. Where we live it really wasn't necessary, as most of the snow had disappeared already on Sunday and the streets weren't more slippery than on other winter days, but I guess the situation was worse in other parts of Rome.

I partecipated in the 52 weeks project with this photo. Throwing snow balls at the beach is something you can't do very often here.

Carlotta and Daniele both slept over at their friends´ houses, but I went out in the garden with Carlotta so she could play with the snow before it melted.

Then we went to see the snow at the beach of Ostia with all thre children and our friends.

So strange to see snow on the streets here!

Week-end trip to Barcelona

We found cheap flights to Barcelona and went there for a week-end with our friends. We only stayed one night because the flight tickets were cheap only on those days, but it was so easy to get from the airport to the centre of Barcelona and our hotel was on walking distance from the end stop, so we had time to see quite a lot anyway. And it's a good thing to go on a city holiday together with a family with other children so they can have fun together and complain much less about having to walk a lot.
Our apartment was next to the Ramblas and we found our favourite restaurang just under our apartment. They had good simple spanish food for a good price. On the first morning the football fans, Armando and Daniele went to see the football stadium and the rest of us went shopping. We strolled around in the Barrio Gotico and then met up there and had lunch. Then we went to the Picasso museum.
Next day we walked along the Passeig de Gracias where you can see Gaudìs houses Casa Battllò and Casa Milà and from there we went to the Sagrada Familia. There was a long queue, so we didn't go inside. Our friends wanted to take the taxi to the Park Guell, but we had metro tickets, so we met up there. Then the others wanted to eat paella and we had got an adress to a place nearby. But as we were looking for it every one had got really hungry and when we asked people, it didn't appear to bee so close. Se we decided to follow a taxi driver's tip about another restaurang near the Ramblas. Our friends managed to get a taxi, but no one would take our family as we were 5 persons, so we had to take the metro again and meet up at the restaurant, which proved to be too expensive for us. We went to another one, but the paella was nothing special and we had to wait a really long time for our food. Anyway, after that we were tired and ready to get to the bus that took us to the airport.

A lay-out with a few of the pictures I took in Barcelona.

Inspiration and photo challenges

Lately I have been surfing around in very inspiring photo blogs. I love the idea of a photo book of the year where I would have a whole year documentet, but have never done it. The 365 photos project is just too much for me and even if I have done a few digital weekly lay-outs last year, I think I will never complete the whole year. So I decided to try a 52 weeks project and have found several blogs with these, some with a weekly theme, some without. I really would like to improve my photo skills this year and I also would like to give myself more time to be creative and not just read blogs about other creative people, so now I have decided to start at least two projects on my blog. This way I hope I will also start to update my blog a bit more often. I decided to follow the project 52 photo challenge I found on the blog 3 boy barbarians. Then I will also do the Italian 52 weeks project started by Simona where the theme is free and for that one I will do a photo collage about something that has happened during the week or with my best photos of the week. I saw that approach on the blog Kristy Klaassen photography that has really beautiful photo collages.

So one two three off we go with the photo challenges and a more creative life! I have always found it very hard to follow and interpret a particular theme when I take photos, so it should be a good excercise for me! I'm late for the first weeks' themes, but I will search some suitable photos among those that I have already taken, although that's not the idea with the photo challenges where you should acutally think about the theme while you are taking the photos.

Anyway, week one's theme was Resolution. This photo was taken on the first day of the year and one resolution could be to do more things together with my children - they are getting big!

Week 2 Made with Love. I didn't take many photos on week 2, so I chose one taken on week 3 on our week-end trip to Barcelona. My children are made with love of course, and there's also a heart on Sofia's sweatshirt, so I chose this one. I dont't get too many photos with all three quarrelling children on the same photo.

Week 3 I Dreamed a Dream. Carlotta in front of a bakery in Barcelona and her dream would be to taste all these lovely pastries, I guess.

I want to put another photo, too for I Dreamed a Dream, although it's taken on week 4. I love this photo of Sofia and her favourite pony, Gamberetta. I can imagine her dreaming in this photo of Gamberetta being her own pony.

Week 4 was Self Portrait and that's difficult, because my self portraits always get so stupid. I took this one in the car with Carlotta on our way to my riding lesson. This time Sofia had lots of home work to do and couldn't join us, but Carlotta almost always has to come with us to the riding school even if it isn't her riding lesson, because I can't leave her alone at home.

So in this way I have made a concrete start for the challenge and next time I will join it for real posting my link to the 3 BoyBarbarians blog. The theme is shadows. Not so easy!

Christmas photo collage

I used a template I found in this site to make a collage of our Christmas photos. It's very nice and I think I will use it also to make monthly collages.

Happy 2012

We got a white new year's eve after all! We spent the first part of the evening at my sister's daughters house eating good new years food, chatting, lighting sparklers, shooting fireworks and melting tin. Then we went home and at midnight we went out to see the fireworks. The children were really happy when they saw there was a white snow layer outside!