Some more new toys…

One of the drawbacks of being sick and pretty much bed ridden for most of last week, was that I had a LOT more time on my hands to surf the internet than usual…
Usual being no time whatsoever I might add
– which meant that a few days solid of surfing was pretty dangerous territory!!

So… on that note…
You know how yesterday I casually mentioned how pleased I was at my self control, because all I bought in 2 hours walking around Capel festival was a drink of water?!
Well this is kind of the real reason I had so much self control… my money was already spent on these…

Quite a lot of mail arrived for me today, courtesy of that week spent sick surfing the internet.
It doesn’t look very exciting all stacked up in boxes granted,
So what does it all contain?

Well – the box on the very bottom contains my new bike trailer which I told you about last week. I have assembled it mostly, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to install the brakes. So I think we might be waiting until Neil gets home to actually use it. And I will post an “action shot” of it and my new bike then as requested.

The other 3 boxes were the ones I was most excited about!

Do you remember a few months back and I made myself a home made photo light box/tent? Well, I am LOVING it and use it often. But the trouble I keep running into is that it just is not big enough for what I need. The things I really want it for are my children’s apparel photos, and unfortunately it is just not big enough to use for that.

So I splashed out;
What do you think of my new amateur studio set up…

Eeeek, Pretty cool huh!

I haven’t really had a proper chance to try it out yet since it just arrived this afternoon, but so far I’m in love with it. It was easy to set up, easy to use, effective… etc…

Want the deets? Because you know you’re going to get them anyway right 😉

This is a studio on the cheap. It was not expensive for what it is – well at least I don’t think it was. I guess everyone has different ideas.
I got the back drop stands, 6 different colours of back drops, the umbrellas, light bulbs, light stands & also a reflector umbrella all for $170 AU delivered. That is about $170 US or 107 pounds.
I got it from here if you are interested, although I notice they don’t have the particular one I bought any more.

I decided to go for a “hot lighting” set up, which basically means that the lights are constant, not run by a strobe and flash. For what I do I think it will be much easier for me to cope with – especially as the learning curve for working with a flash system would have been more steep.

So to set them up is so fast & easy. And the best part – it all very quickly and effortlessly packs down into this little case here:

That’s obviously a very miniature shopping trolley in the top left corner, not a full scale one or I might be in trouble lifting that thing… 😉

So I had a brief play tonight but most of my shots are very boring, the kids were around and it was heading on 5pm. Need I say any more to describe the tetchy hour to you? Not a good time to play!

But I did get this one of my kids which I think is quite funny…

I think that dress of Abbie’s should more appropriately read “diva” – because that’s kind of what she turns into at that time of day. This was just before she started to lose it.
And this was the one and only outfit I tried to get her to model as well!

So there you have it – my retail therapy and a lovely Mummy & Abbie morning this morning have cheered me up from yesterday’s grim immensely. – Nothing like some new toys to take your mind off bad experiences!
Speaking of which, thank you so much for all the lovely things you wrote yesterday!! I will reply soon – I’m just trying to catch up with work & then I’ll get to my overflowing inbox 🙂