I can't tell you how amazing my family are, there are certain times when I get bogged down by business and then have motherly/wifely guilt that I'm neglecting them all, of course my business is 1 of the most important things in my life but nothing comes above my kids and hubby because without them none of the business or life in general would even be possible.  Sometimes when business  and life brings challenges they are the only people who get it hear it all, the only people you trust for advice so going away together doing our favourite things really is the biggest stress relief of all time.

On Sunday morning at 6am we all clambered into the car to go on an overnight trip to Blackpool, regular readers of my blog will know how much we Charltons love the thrill of a white knuckle ride so in the winter we get a little upset when the Theme parks close down, I think our last trip was in October when we went to Alton Towers, Drayton Manor and Gullivers Kingdom at Matlock Bath.

I have a new camera to add to my collection, I've been looking for one I can take to theme parks for ages but it had to be tiny and also give great image quality, as you can imagine this is a formidable request so I'm delighted to be the owner of a Canon Ixus 100IS, it really is a little wonder of a camera, it even has the same image processor as it's big daddy, my 40D!

Here's a few highlights of our days together, all taken with the Ixus -

 



 
This fountain is part of the new sculpture garden at the entrance of Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

 
Hubs took this one of Iain and Looby while Abigail and I were riding on the Steeplechase.

 
This time we were lucky because Looby was old enough to go on most of the rollercoasters and Abigail is now big enough to go on all of them.

 
I was so pleased that Iain came along, he had a brilliant time with us all and none of the kids killed each other which was nice!

 
Inside the river caves, I love this ride because just like the Tardis it's bigger on the inside!!

 



 



 
Thank you my awesome family for keeping me sane and making life the most fun it could possibly ever be!

Even the Worst Days....

Have some good things in when you're a Charlton, today these are my good things!! Taken in the whole 15 mins of good light we had today and then fiddled about in with photoshop CS2, today I played with the channel mixer, curves and a little desaturation

Just watching!

Another Looby photo today, I was playing with my 70-300mm, not much else I can do as it's freezing cold outside though not enough snow to do anything with and Abigail has ulcerated tonsilitus and Scarlet Fever, my doctor hadn't seen Scarlet Fever for years and I've had to inform school so they can send letters out to everyone seeing as it's very contagious, not a nice thing to have so I'm hoping that we don't all end up with it.

Anyway back to the photo, as I was testing out my lens I managed to get a few without Looby even noticing, my favourite sort of photography, it was shot at 800iso as it's so dark indoors today, after taking it in raw I processed it in photoshop, first applying a sepia filter, then adding a layer of gaussian blur, then using the channel mixer to turn to black and white and finally adjusting the opacity of the top layer to around 50% to get a really soft muted sepia ish photo which I think adds to the dreamy feel of the photo. What do you think, I would love to hear!