How I Spent my Winter Vacation. By Kate Ambrose

Well, my friends, another festive season has come and gone and, as usual, I can't help but feel that I didn't make better use of my time off. Then I beat myself up for beating myself up for not making better use of my time off when I should be happy with the time I did have off. Does that make any sense at all?

Don't get me wrong; there were many super fun parts of my holidays - like when 'Liv got her new WebKinz (http://www.webkinz.com/us_en/) from my Mom for Christmas.


And then there was the day that Jenn came to visit and she willingly (in VERY insensible shoes) let me take photographs of her in my coveted purple door by Keele station! I just love the way Jenn's entire face lights up when she's having a good snicker!

Ha ha burn.

Maya met up with us for the photo shoot (in sensible winter boots) and just happened to be wearing a hat the very same colour as Jenn's!

They were even carrying similar purses - eerie!

Talking about eerie. A few nights ago, it was really really foggy outside, so I took my camera to the graveyard with the intention of playing with shutter speeds n' the light and the like, but my tripod was fighting me every step of the way, and to be honest, I quickly realized that the entire scenario was quite spooky and all I really wanted to do was go straight home. I wouldn't allow myself to leave without taking at least one picture, so I took this feeble one of the walkway - I suppose I left the shutter open a little too long on this one. Bear with me; I'm still learning!

There was also the day that the family Kirb and I went to my Sister's house to celebrate the season with family that we usually only see once a year. No one does up Christmas quite like my Sister! The buffet is always out of this world and there is food and drinks and good conversation coming at you from every angle! Not to mention, lots of fun Christmas decor, like this little fella that was just hanging out in the den with us :)

Ah, nothing nicer than a warm pub on a cold winter's day. I love all the different lighting reflected in this shot of Maya below...

Jenn was especially relieved to be indoors as her feet were pretty much soaked by this time. I begged her to buy a pair of cheap boots along the K-way, but she insisted on taking flying leaps over the puddles in little spring shoes! Of course I could've lent her my extra pair of boots when we decided to toodle through the neighbourhood the next day, but by the time we thought about it, we were already outside and it was freezing and we knew that if we turned around and went back to get them, we wouldn't want to come back out! So we trudged on.

This is our new pal, Mike. He introduced himself by buying us each a lemon drop. I passed on mine and his good buddy quickly embarrassed the heck out of him in front of us :( Luckily not before I managed to get this shot of him and Maya posin' for the camera!

Mmm... Sushi party...

Yay - good pals! And also a BIG "yay" for the black and white feature in Picasa! I used the flash for this one because I was feeling too lazy to fiddle with the ISO, so the picture turned out way too bright. I have come to hate the flash on my camera.

Kirb took me on a date to the Firkin on New Year's day. We had a lovely meal and I couldn't help but take this picture of the mic on the stage. There had obviously been karaoke there the night before and I just loved how the DJ used the tinsel to festivfy the microphone. There's also something kind of sad about this image that I can't quite put my finger on...

Best Fish n' Chips in town...

This is how Ramona chose to spent her New Year's day. She had to rest up to torture us last night/morning while we tried to sleep.

So now it's a brand new year and there are just so many things that I want to accomplish in 2009 I don't even know where to start... sounds to me like a blog for another day and time.

Happy New Year!

xo K