Memories, Dreams and Reflections

1. Me!

On a night out in London. I guess I have always been happy and pretty confident but I am more so this year so that's probably what I'm most proud of. 

2. I Love You

 

More than words can say Baby Boy.

3.  Still Laughing

 

This plastic green dragon was one of Minty's Christmas presents. He absolutely shredded it to pieces within 10 minutes of getting it!

4. Winter Wonderland

Frost on the leaves, there was no snow when I took this.

5. Birthday

I celebrated with my university friends a week before my birthday. Being a Christmas baby, the two celebrations always merge a bit!

6. Friends

All that was left of the bottle of brandy after adding it to mulled wine.

7. I Was Inspired

To try Christmas tree bokeh after seeing other bloggers' photos. Then I spotted this little reindeer and thought I'd add him!

8. Spring Fever

Pretty spring light!

9. Travel or Vacation

My Mum and Dad on a bench in Central Park this summer.

10. Summer Days

Me and some old school friends at the beach near our house. I'm in the middle, Titanic anyone?

11. A Day in My Life

Training to be a dietitian, I spend a lot of time talking about food! We had to wear these hideous T-shirts when I was working at the hospital in the summer. They show the correct portion size of different fruits and vegetables. At the top is says, "Eat More Fruit and Veg". Sexy huh?

12. All Smiles

He always makes me smile!

13. Autumn Harvest

Horse chesnuts.

14. Family

With a corny heart shape of course!

15. Celebrate!

Baby opening his presents on Christmas morning. He actually does open them, we just have to give him a hand with the selotape!

16. Let's Do It Again

We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC in the summer but one day did not even touch the surface. It was an incredible museum, I want to see more of it.


17. I Miss You

Still on the New York theme, I do love this city and I miss it.

18. Beautiful

How can that face not make you melt? "Ok you can have another biscuit, sweetheart!"

19. Dress Up

At a Christmas party, Lil' Elf!

20. Macro

Frosty. 

21. Holidays

He got this blanket as one of his Christmas presents. He loves to be wrapped up in a blanket and won't settle down unless he's cosy in the evenings. He didn't look to impressed when I took this picture, maybe because I called him a Grandma?

22. My Favourite

 I'm a sucker for red berries in the snow. That's not a typo, favourite is spelt with a "u" in the UK.

23. Don't Ever Change

This boy loves his cuddles, I hope that never changes!

24. Just Because . . . So There!

Thought this one was quite fun. The purple blur is my Mum walking in the woods.

25. Hopes and Dreams

Minty makes little barking noises in his sleep and his legs move as if he's running. I wonder what he dreams about? My personal hope for 2011 is to complete my 365 project, let's see how it goes!

Wow that is the most time it has ever taken me to make a post! Check out all the other entries at Ramblings and Photos.

Photo Freak: Sepia Contest

I took this photo outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the summer. It is a good example of a photo which really benefits from being converted to sepia. It looks more retro than the original version. Pretzels on street corners - to me, that's the classic smell of New York, mmm I could eat one right now!

Have a look at all the great Sepia entries over at Photo Freak

Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

On our last night in New York, we ate in an Italian restaurant and I had my first ever cannoli for dessert. Despite the famous Godfather quote in the title, I didn't actually know what this dessert was. For those who don't know, cannoli originated in Sicily and are tube-shaped shells of fried pastry dough filled with a sweet creamy filling.

They were originally made for Carnevale, a festival that occurs before lent as a celebration before fasting begins. I am very familiar with this festival as I studied Italian at school and each year we would produce a play and dress up in traditional Carnevale costumes. The masks are very intricate:

Cannoli are now very popular in Italian American cuisine. Some contain ricotta but others contain a simple custard filling of sugar, milk and cornstarch, which I think is what I had. The traditional Sicilian filling is made with mascarpone. The waitress said you could buy the filling ready made and she loved to eat it straight out the tube!

In Italian, the word cannoli is actually plural so one is a cannolo. As a student dietitian, I naturally tot up the calories of different foods. Not in an obsessive way - I decided to be a dietitian beacuse I love food and am also interested in health science. But we are taught to estimate the nutritional content of a wide range of foods so that we can estimate the intake for our patients.

After googling, it seems one large cannolo is about 375 calories which is about what I predicted. Pretty high but oh so worth it! Now I just need to find some in the UK!

The Mets suck, ok? You wanna see the Yankees.

No, not the Mets, the MET, singular!

Oh yes, I did walk around New York quoting Friends episodes. So we arrived at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I must admit, art museums are not usually on the top of my list but this museum has such a large and varied collection, there is something for everyone, even if you're not "into" art.

There were 2 exhibitions I had in mind that I wanted to see. The first was Big Bambú by twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn. It is a monumental bamboo structure built on the roof of the museum. It was constructed through spring, summer and fall by artists and rock climbers. It is simply stunning with the backdrop of Central Park and the city. It is meant to depict the complexity and energy of an ever-changing living organism.

You can actually climb the strucuture but this has to be booked in advance. Definitely not for those with acrophbia. 

It was fun to see the park from a different angle. We were really amongst the tree tops. If you look over the edge, you can't see anything but greenery.

The second exhibition I wanted to see was "Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein's New York Photographs, 1950–1980." He was an unheralded master of street photography and is best known for his candid and unsentimental black-and-white figure studies made in New York City neighborhoods from Times Square and the Lower East Side to Coney Island. I didn't take any photos but here are some of my favourites from the Met website:

54th Street

 Elderly man walking with crane

 

 Two young men on street, one wearing stars and stripes outfit

 Couple kissing on building steps

Young woman in dress and overcoat

"Levinstein's graphic virtuosity—seen in raw, expressive gestures and seemingly monumental bodies—is balanced by his unusual compassion for his offbeat subjects from the demimonde." Levinstein was quoted in Photography Annual 1955: "In my photographs I want to look at life—at the commonplace things as if I just turned a corner and ran into them for the first time."

I think he's achieved that, don't you?

NYC, what is it about you?

They say there's no other city like it and I don't think there is. We went to New York for our family holiday this year. It was the 5th time I had been and for me it just gets better. I first went when I was 10 years old, for my Dad's 40th, when we stayed in the Waldorf Astoria. It was exciting but I think I was honestly too young to appreciate the real New York.

Nearly 12 years later, we realise there is so much more to the city than the tourist traps. We usually spend a ridiculous amount of time in Macy's so this year we decided to allocate time to do a few different things. We wanted to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and see more of Central Park. So one morning we walked through central park up to the Met and stumbled across some pretty statues along the way.

First we came across the Delacorte clock which sits atop a three-tiered tower and features a band of animals: two bronze monkeys banging hammers against a bell; a penguin on drum; a hippo on violin; a bear and his tambourine; a concertina-playing elephant; a goat with pipes; and a kangaroo on horn. It chimes every half an hour and we happened to be walking past at this time. Just magical:

Next was the Alice in Wonderland statue. Also comissioned by George Delacorte, the sculpture was constructed in honor of Delacorte’s late wife Margarita. Atypical of most sculptures, children are invited to climb all over Alice and her friends. Through the decades, thousands of hands and feet have literally polished parts of the statue’s patina surface smooth. Here I am aboard a mushroom:

The light was incredible, what with all the trees, I was wishing I had a DSLR already. Because my Ricoh is awful in harsh light I started taking black and white pictures and a few came out pretty ok:

The best thing about our walk had to be all the dogs. Because we were up early due to jet lag, there were very few tourists around and all the native New Yorkers were out walking their dogs. It appeared to be quite a social occasion for people to meet and walk through the park together. I could not get over how well behaved the dogs were. There were groups of about 20 playing together. All I could think about was how rowdy it would have been if I had added Minty to the mix!

Plaques are on most of the park benches but this was the only one I saw specifically for a man and his dog. I've tried "googling" to see who Lord Randall was but to no avail.

And then this appeared through the trees:

We had arrived at the Met. It was quite a walk since we started at the southern-most entrance to the park so first stop was the cafe for a coffee and doughnut. More about the museum in the next post.