A New Year deserves a New Look!

...Gotta love the new Blogger templates!

Well, I had a little time over Christmas to assess what I wanted to do with this 'ere blog. Over recent months where time and inspiration have been prohibitive in equal measures, I have used the blog as a portal only, to view links from the blogs I've been following.

But this amateur eye is not yet ready to close, ohhhh no! Instead, I want to take a more refined look at the things that genuinely catch my eye and post only the photos I deem worthy from my own collection. I'm also hoping to run another blog in tandem, focusing on the things for which I'm thankful (very much inspired by Lindsey at a GreatFull day and Nikki and her girls' Month of Gratitude on WhiMSyLove. These blogs particularly inspired me to take stock of the everyday things I take for granted when I'm too busy griping about public transport and feeling neglected to realise that I'm lucky to have a job to travel to, and that I have friends in the first place. And so on.

So A Year of Thanks will hopefully run alongside Amateur Eye, and feature on here as well in part.

The weekly (manageable?) "agenda" for Amateur Eye will look like this:

Tuesday: Top 10... (could be the Top 10 of anything in my weird little mind -- songs listened to in August, typefaces, actors of the 1990s, websites... anything!)
Thursday: Thanks Day Thursday -- a direct link to A Year of Thanks
Friday: Photo Day -- either featuring a photo I admire by a fellow blogger or Flickr-er (!) or one of mine

Let's see how it goes...

A White Christmas!

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.

-- 'Twas the Night Before Christmas/A Visit from St. Nicholas (Clement C Moore)

Blush.

Yeah, it's been a while since I posted on here. A long while, dogged with a dying PC and too many photos to sift through (don't ya just hate it when that happens? ;-)!)

But … trying to get back on track with a fully functioning PC so please do come back soon!

qb xx

Not going to get preachy on ya but …

This is how I've been feeling lately (evidently mixed in with shedloads of self-pity, natch):

Image from the notebook doodles

This quote, paraphrased from my vicar's sermon on Trinity Sunday, struck a chord with me, too:

"We each feel lonely when someone in whom we had invested hope of love deserts us or lets us down. Loneliness comes from the gaps in our lives that people don’t seem to be able to fill.

Listen though to these words from an obscure mystic quoted by Henri Nouwen

Don’t surrender your loneliness so quickly

Let it cut more deep. Let it ferment and season you,

As few human or divine ingredients can,

Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes soft. My voice so tender.

It has made my need for God absolutely clear  (Shams al din Hafiz)"

This has little to do with photography or anything strictly amateur-eye-ish; it's just something that has been preying on my mind lately, and I thought maybe sharing it here would help me to get over it! Fr. Andrew also spoke about putting people on pedestals, which also helped me make a big decision that I'm now glad I made. A little cryptic, I know, but to cut a long story short, I nearly contacted someone I don't know (on Farcebook/Fakebook), on the basis of having spent my adolescence (and some adulthood!) misguidedly idolising them, or at least the person I thought they were.

Anyhoo. I'll be back soon… been editing wedding photos from my first-ever (maybe last-ever, who knows?) wedding! 830+ … It's taken some time!

qb xxx

Yesterday I Received...

... my very own postcard from Jill @ Today I Saw! It's fantastic! I won't give too much away as to which p/c it was for personal security reasons but it cheered me up, nonetheless. ;-) I've been following this blog for a while now and jumped at the chance to receive one of Jill's hand-drawn, unique postcards. It's currently sitting atop my bureau, waiting to be framed as I want to embark on a huge framing project, at some point, and upgrade my chintzy frames to smart, black frames.

But for now ... thank you, Jill, it has arrived and I am really pleased and proud to be a recipient!

qb

Come Dine With qb

One of my latest obsessions (which has overridden the obsession with How Clean is Your House on a Sunday afternoon) is Come Dine With Me, the Channel 4 series that profiles four or five individuals as they attempt to cook and host a meal for the other competitors on the show... Not sure I've described this very well so check out this site for more deets.

I am a recent convert of the programme, anyway, and as with most fans the biggest draw is the very funny, sarcastic voice-over-man, Dave Lamb. Barbed genius. Aaaaaanyway. I decided to attempt a new recipe just for myself last week and ... here are the visuals. Pork and red pepper spaghetti bolognese from Sainsbury's -- I was dang proud of the outcome. Tasted magnificent. ...Vegetarians: look away, NOW.

Springtime and blossom in Kensington

For anyone who doubts my sanity in favouring early mornings ... here's a good reason!