It's been oh-so-quiet...

It's amazing how quickly you can get out of the habit of doing something that previously seemed second nature.  Like, weighing yourself every week.  Keeping a check of your bank balance (casts guilty look at Husband working away at the other end of the table).  Or writing regular blog posts.

I have an excuse, of course I do - my parents have been visiting and I've been busy showing off my current home town to them - but they left today and now... Well, now it's back to reality.  So I plan on posting for Tara's Gallery tomorrow and then having something more interesting (than this, at any rate) to write about shortly after that...

Or - or, it may just end up being the normal drivel.  Yes, that'll probably be it.

Shape: The Gallery

I love the summer. Contrary to my expectations, Moscow in the summer is a very green city. Sure, it has it's dustbowls and waste-lands of unfortunate soviet-style architecture, but there are also plenty of parks, and in between the buildings, shaded playgrounds and walks for the locals to make the most of when the weather is warm enough.

However, it's in the winter, when the leaves have been stripped from the trees that you can see their true shape. (See what I did there?) And this photo was taken in the woods near our home where I will shortly be slipping and sliding along on my cross country skis, trying to get into shape...

OK -I know it's a tenuous link for this week's theme of 'Shape' at Tara's Gallery, but I like the photo. Live with it...

The Gallery Wk 36: Black & White

OK, I'm late with this - but better late than never, which is where I've been on the last few of Tara's Gallery prompts.

This week she's requested that our photo's be themed 'Black & White', and whilst I would love to be able to use a suitably moody shot I'd taken in black and white, I'm not that organised, and in fact, I don't think it's necessary when I have the one below. Admittedly, the photo I've chosen to use here has already appeared once on this blog - only a couple of days back, in fact - but I think it works. The colours are - more or less - black and white, but the black and white of nature at this time of year rather than the black or white of a photograph...

The Gallery #15: Motherhood

Week 15 of Tara's Gallery, and the theme is 'Motherhood'. I deliberated for a long time on which photograph to use here; should I go for gritty reality (breakfast dishes left unwashed on the table, rain-coats scattered over the hall floor, calpol stains on my best white skirt), sweet imagery (shoes lined up in order of size, a small hand placed trustingly in a larger, more calloused one), or should I just bite the bullet and use the photo that I first thought of?

Bearing in mind that this week's Gallery offers the chance to win prizes, I caved and went for the last one. You can even - gasp - sort of see my children's faces, probably not well enough to pcik them out in a line-up, but still, one step further than I've gone on-line before. However, since Photobox - who, by the way, are ideal for filling that present gap also known as 'what the hell can I give the grandmother who has everything, for Christmas?' (answer; a yearly photographic summary of her grandchildrens' highlights in a hardbacked printed photo album) - are awarding the winners printed copies of the winning pictures, I asked myself one thing.

Based on the very remote possibility that I might actually win, what would I prefer to have on the wall; a picture of dirty dishes, or a picture of me and the Boys on holiday a couple of years ago?

So here it is. My take on Motherhood - as it sometimes is.

Of washing-up bowls, 'Joy' and The Gallery...

So, it's Wednesday again, and time for Tara's Gallery.

The prompt this week was 'Joy'. I did consider taking a photo of my new washing up bowl, but decided to spare you the mundane-ness of that image. (I mention this because it's discovery in a local supermarket yesterday was a joyous occasion for me; for some reason such things aren't ten-a-penny over here, and it's taken me 3 months to find one. I know, a washing up bowl is ridiculous object to covet, but having one makes life just that little bit simpler and I'm all for that right now...) Then I thought about showing you one of the hundreds of photo's of my children showing absolute joy, but sadly, that brings me up against my self-imposed rule of not showing their faces.

So instead, again, I've had to make do with using a back-shot taken on a beach in Queensland a couple of years ago. I hope that you'll believe me when I tell you that the next photo in the series, of Boys #1 and #2 facing the camera, shows all the joy that you could ever hope to see on the faces of your children...

Somewhere between 30 and 50...

- or countless, depending on how you look at it. And no, I'm not talking about my age; I'm participating in Tara's Gallery again.

I took this photo on Sunday, mainly because I've been amazed by the size of the snowflakes here. Having grown up in the UK the only snowflakes I normally see are wet and soppy just-about-to-melt affairs. In Russia, however, sometimes they're so large you can actually see their shape with the naked eye, so I thought I'ld photograh a few to record that.