I was planning to have a lie in for a couple of hours on Saturday, but when I woke up around 7:45am (as I always do, regardless of what time I actually went to bed or how tired I am) it was foggy outside. Last time it was foggy there were tons of amazing spider webs with stunning water droplets that I was dying to photograph, but unfortunately I was on my way to work and didn’t have my camera. So this time I was determined to get the pictures with my macro lens.

Unfortunately, the fog was already clearing and the webs didn’t have droplets on them. Sigh. But I did get some other interesting photos because it was still pretty damp outside.

Fog!

Thorn with raindrops = dragon

My one and only spider web shot

It seems impossible for me to avoid pictures of cats. I don’t even know who this cat is, it just decided to photobomb.

It is near impossible to get clear pictures with this lens – I really do need a tripod but it’s not very practical in most situations. Part of the problem is the second I think ‘Right, steady hand’, it immediately becomes impossible to keep it steady. The screen on my camera also makes it quite difficult to tell what exactly is blurry and what exactly is in focus. I think I’m improving slightly – but whilst the good pictures are pretty good, the bad ones are horrendous. More practice is required still.

It was pretty cold out, so when I came back I made a warming (and surprisingly low-calorie, if sugar-packed) breakfast of fudge hot chocolate accompanied by a banana, waffle and frozen yoghurt:

I’ve been neglecting my house recently, so I spent quite a few hours getting odd jobs sorted. I’ve left paperwork to build up over the past few months, so I went through and sorted/shredded/recycled accordingly, chucked out lots of dead plants, and sorted through all the books I had in the garage. All boring tasks that I’ve been putting off for ages…but that needed to be done! Unfortunately there’s still a lot left to do (as always). But I found a pretty good balance between chilling out (and napping, unusually!) and actually ticking a lot of stuff off.

For the first time in my life, I’m mostly just spending money on myself. And I’m really enjoying it. For the past few years I’ve given my family a huge chunk of what I’ve earned in addition to supporting Joe (including buying all his family Christmas and birthday presents, no small task considering there are at least 13 people to buy for), and whilst I don’t resent it any way, it’s nice to be able to actually buy some things for myself. I have quite a few hobbies and business-type things that have been severely limited by lack of money, and it’s great to not have to be able to work as much as well. Hopefully next year I’ll even be able to build up some savings for emergencies. This weekend, however, I went shopping and bought plenty of Lush stuff, a couple of magazines and some skincare stuff. Sometimes stress/depression has physical symptoms for me (mostly headaches and toothache) but more recently it’s massively affected my skin and I’ve been getting quite a few spots so I’m stepping my skincare routine up a bit and drinking more water.

On the depression front, I’m feeling really good at the moment. I’m a bit emotional now and then, but that’s healthy, natural emotion rather than horrible ‘I don’t know why I feel like shit but I do’ depression. I feel like I’m entering a good phase, and all the things I’ve been working on recently (balancing out the relaxation vs. tasks stuff, eating better, sleeping when I need to, reading a cognitive behavioural therapy book, little rewards for myself, setting achievable goals, and being more active) are making a huge difference. The cynic in me says that because I’ve had such a bad patch for so long that I’m statistically likely to have a good patch at some point, but for the moment I’m just concentrating on being as happy as I can.

Website progress is slow but happening. I bought some food colouring and experimented with coloured buttercream and my macro lens in order to add some new recipes, which should be up very soon. I love making things full stop, and combining photography and baking is something that I get a ridiculous amount of pleasure from, so whilst it’s not quite in keeping with the rest of Blossom, I want to make more of my recipes here and hopefully develop them into a section in their own right. Whilst I could probably make another website just for them, I think it’s best that I don’t take on yet another project just now!

I’ve also made some tweaks to a few of the menu pages and updated a couple of the fonts pages (Title Fonts and Cursive Fonts) with better preview images. I’ve got lots more to do but it’s definitely feeling more achievable and it’s going to be good to get stuck into some good content creation.