If we lived in Adelaide today, we might have had breakfast with one of two wonderful Mums. If we were in country Victoria, another mother and her mother would be waiting for us with open arms. Instead, like many chicks who’ve flown the nest, we are hundreds of kilometres away. Instead, the mums are opening the mail and catching the little bit of love we wrapped up and posted off. I really wanted to stick pasta onto a piece of paper and cover it with glitter glue, but I didn’t. That’s the thing about Mums – you can pick them a bunch of sour sobs and it still means you love them.

Instead, we went out to breakfast with friends, sans roadside bunches of chrysanthemums. We battled every person in the suburb and their Mum for a table, drank the froth off our coffees before the wind could blow it away and then looked for an afternoon adventure for our own little family. Simon wanted fishing, Banjo wanted off-leash anything and I was keen just to take some photos of my boys – best buds those two. Winning on all accounts and less than an hour from home, a lonely section of the Werribee River became our destination and the setting for our explorations.

If you look at them in the right way, prickles and weeds and rock-hopping can be just as lovely as overpriced flowers and house-hopping. You don’t even need to be a Mum to appreciate that.

How did you spend Mother’s Day?

[Read about other weeks and weekends with Em & Co. at The Beetle Shack]

Simon and I have been married for nearly 3 months and so far I’ve managed not to do much at all with our wedding photos. As a wedding photographer, this is pretty bad form. I do now understand though that after all the craziness of wedding planning and then the actual day, the follow-up is not nearly as motivating as the pre-party.

I’m making albums for other people and ours is at the bottom of the list. It will be EPIC when I do get to it – my photos from the lead-up, Tim’s photos from the day and Jeremy’s antics with my Grandfather’s TLR camera. Plus lots of scans and text and treasures to make it a real time capsule. Eventually.

We haven’t had a honeymoon yet (August, maybe) – being self-employed put a hold on that. Instead, I got right back into photographing other people’s weddings and haven’t really had a chance to debrief about the whole day and everything else that happened that week. So I’m going to write about it, to share it and relive it a little. It really was the day I never wanted to end but the day that did, blink-and-you-miss-it style.

All 120+ guests were special to us, but a special mention goes to the girls who came all the way from Sweden and made me cry at the airport. Friends from my uni exchange days in France, Rebecca and Amanda saved up and flew around the world and became pseudo-bridesmaids while staying at my parent’s house for the week. It was beyond awesome having them come all that way for us and I’m already hoping one of them gets married soon so I don’t have to wait another three and a half years to see them again.

As far as family is concerned, the blending of the two had commenced long ago but I was pretty keen to inherit my first nephews and niece. They took to the pool the way my cousins and I did as kids and our two fathers sat back, cigars in hand, like long-lost friends. I think there’s a joke about them… “A priest and an atheist walk into a bar…”

To have Simon’s family over to my family home and our closest friends in the form of our bridal party all in one spot for a BBQ was definitely a favourite pre-wedding event.

Even getting up at 4am to visit the wholesale flower market on Friday morning made me giddy. Without so much as a plan to guide flower selection, the girls and I wandered around just picking what felt right on the day, returning home with buckets of native blooms and foliage and a few colourful bundles for good measure. The other key ingredient was wheat – because Simon and I met at the Wheatsheaf Hotel – but that was to be picked later that night from the side of the road.

We stayed at Penny’s Hill the night before the wedding – just the six of us and the chickens. We ate dinner on the lawn that would become our ceremony location the next day, and watched as lightning tore through the sky in the distance. The forecast thunderstorms looked imminent but the rain seemed to be holding back. Stay tuned for what happened next…

A steaming cup of tea and a bucket of chaff for the goats. That’s how I started my Saturday, about 100km north of home on a farm outside of Heathcote, Victoria.

There are four goats at Tuppenny Farm – or three and a unicorn, depending how you classify Ruffy. Give him a little scratch behind his horn and he’s yours. I took the opportunity to practise a bit of painting with Ruffy as my muse – the poor thing ended up with a larger-than-life head but at least the colours were about right.

Banjo made sure there was plenty of space between him, us and the Suffolks. Too bad he couldn’t manage the same with the goats – he copped a headbutt twice for getting too close. The alpacas kept their distance but were inquisitive all the same.

It’s decidedly tricky to manage a pup, farm animals, buckets of food and a camera all at the same time… so the camera was mostly left behind in favour of two hands for exploring or throwing sticks. We did squeeze in a litte farm portrait or two on Sunday, however. We reckon the lifestyle suits Banjo and maybe us, too. With my in-laws considering a move to nearby Kyneton, we may be seeing a little more of the area very soon. Good thing too – it’s an absolute GOLDMINE for great letterboxes.





   
  

How was your weekend?

[Read about other weekends with Em & Co. at The Beetle Shack]

Easter weekend in Sorrento. Lucky for us, we had a ferocious guard dog to keep watch over the shack.

You know those people who have a baby and then every single post on Facebook or Instagram is of their baby? It’s like the rest of their lives ceased to exist and it’s ALL ABOUT THE BABY.

That happened to me. Except we got a puppy. He literally grows before our eyes and I can’t stop taking photos of him. We’ve had him for about 7 weeks and he’s twice, if not thrice the size we met him at. I decided a little video of the first few weeks of Banjo would be an appropriate way to introduce him, with his tornado of energy and little white socks. The production values aren’t high, but that’s what home movies are all about, right?

Hello Banjo from Kate Dyer (Urban Safari) on Vimeo.

The backing track is Road Kill 1 (WTF?) by Steve Barden, available from the Vimeo Music Store.

Why do dogs love doing this? Simon think it’s so they can get high on oxygen. More likely carbon monoxide, but whatever the reason, it didn’t take Banjo long to work out how fun it was.

Does your dog do it?

Our family grew 50% in members a few weeks ago. His name is Banjo, and between him and getting married I think I might be renewing my interest in telling the whole interwebs about our adventures. Seriously – who wouldn’t want to meet this guy? He’s already got 85 followers on Instagram and he’s only 10 weeks old.

Do you want to see more?

If I had to sum up 2012 in a few words, it would be ‘playing catch-up’. For most of year I felt like I was struggling to keep up with my own life, and just get things done each day. I stopped full-time work to focus on my business and then Simon started his and I was all over the admin. I added all sorts of disgusting acronyms to my to-do list (GST and BAS, PAYG, MYOB to name a few), and they now make an appearance either monthly or quarterly and threaten to ruin my day. We have our first employee starting in a couple of weeks which will add to the mix, I’m sure.

I was a pretty forgetful person in 2012. If I didn’t put it in my diary I forgot about it, which caused a few embarrassments. This year, I feel much more on top of things already and so far haven’t missed a client meeting or appointment or forgotten a birthday. Sure, we are only 3 weeks into the year but it feels better already!

We are in the midst of moving house, and I think settling into the new place will feel good. It already feels good, just the idea of it. I have never really felt settled in our apartment, always that it was ‘just for now’ until we knew what we were doing. We still don’t know what we’re doing, but at least we now have somewhere nice to do it.

Just quietly, I think 2013 is going to be huge.

Last Thursday I went and played with The Stones. It was an ordinary Thursday, except that the kids knew I was coming to take photos. Mum Mel (of Milk Photography) is always running off to take photos of other people – me included – so it was a special thing to be returning the favour with all FOUR kids on board!

I’m going to post some images on my business website, but for now I wanted to share this video of our evening at the beach. It’s pretty hard to beat fish ‘n’ chips as the sun goes down…

Moving Portraits: Stone Family from Urban Safari Productions