Enjoying my time away from the office whilst musing on St. Hils!

Hiya Folks!
I can't believe that the two weeks I booked as holiday is nearly over and this time next week I will again be sitting at my office desk and computer!
 I have, however, been having great fun with St. Hils creating more pages for our Advent Calendar (but you will have to wait til the 1st December to find out exactly WHAT our theme is for this year!) and, for a few days, entertained my mother in law as we brought her over to our home for a break.  Dad is now in a home with Alzheimers so Mum is now on her own so she really appreciated staying with us for a few days.
Mum is (of course!) one of St. Hils greatest fans and so, on Saturday, when Mum was not so well so we were unable to take her out, I entertained her by working on one of my Advent Calendar pages.  She watched patiently as I spent ages cutting out outfits for my "children" to wear as they were going to pose for yet another photo for the calendar.  I can tell you - trying to cut out gold crepe paper into makeshift capes and fitting them on 1/12 scale dolls is NOT easy! 
Then came the job of ensuring every doll was going to stand on the church floor surface.   Vic Newey who put the church together for us and rendered it created a wonderfully realistic church floor - SO realistic is it that the surface is quite uneven in places so it is quite difficult to get the dolls to stand up!  And then, just as you are to take the picture (I use a daylight bulb for many of my photos and put my camera, a Canon Ixus 750, on to a tripod and use the 10 second timer with macro mode) one falls over or they drop what they are holding - a veritable nightmare! 

I am currently having a bit of a fit because I rely so much on my daylight bulb in my reading light that I am worrying about the issue of the new compulsory daylight saving bulbs which may not fulfil my needs - anyone out there who has any suggestions on any new style model of bulb which does a similar job do let me know!

We, Andrew and I, took Mum to see my sister, Catherine Davies of Dollshouse Heaven (http://www.dollshouseheaven.co.uk/) on Friday night.  Catherine had worked hard on her dollshouses and room box scenes so Mum and I had a ball photographing her work.  And now I have a confession..........I borrowed Catherine's fimo seagulls which she made to include in a beach scene for one of her displays in order to include them in a St. Hils story.  You can see a photo of two of the gulls on top of St. Hils' church tower here!  Don't they look brilliant?  The great thing about St. Hilary's is..........the church is actually set along the full ceiling to floor length patio window and is, believe it or not, on the traditionally correct east/west axis so the East Window DOES face east! 

The day we took this photo the sky was so blue outside so the church really HAS got the blue sky above it - albeit through our patio window!  You can see a close up of said gulls here!

I then went a step further and created the scene below.  The dustbin contents were made for me by Catherine and do appear on St hils cleaning page ie http://www.miniaturechurch.co.uk/cleaning.html

Notice the fish and chips - yes - again by my sister, Catherine.  I took them too from her beach scene!  These three photos WILL appear on a new page before Christmas..........but I will say no more because you will have to keep visiting to find out!

Pebbles our hand reared cockatiel has been a delight as per usual as he interferes with my photo shoots.  He loves to check out the garden as per usual and land on my head.......arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Anyway all for now - I will carry on with our Advent Calendar............over half way through now..........more photo shoots to do etc........

STOP PRESS - added 3rd September!
Have no fears - I have resolved my daylight bulb situation with a new style one which does appear to work pretty well.....AND I have a new Ixus 980 which has manual control and means I can do without any extra light and still get great photos on an ISO200 so now I am a happy bunny.  I have already done some great photos with my new camera for the Advent Calendar................