58/365

Home sweet (messy) home

57/365

Prepping for football training.

56/365

Berlin zoo today. Everyone enjoyed the hippos.

55/365

Orla in the park. Only -2 degrees today. I draw the line at -5 degrees.

54/365

Self-portrait at home in the filth of the kitchen.

53/365

Somedays I just don't take any photos. Then it's a scrabble around at night to find something to take photos of. Hence.... the IKEA lamp. Strangely though, this little collage seems to have been looked at quite a lot on my Flickr stream. Odd.

52/365

I found my (I think) first Playmobil set in amongst a boxful that my mum had given the kids. It must be about 30 years old. I am not sure whether it is missing a wheelchair and a patient. Perhaps that was a separate set.

51/365

Finished -ish paintings!

50/365

A lovely sunny, cold, day spent in Prenzlauerberg. Just a typical example of a grafitti-ed building.

49/365

One hour old shoes. Stevie did warn me I should get Hamish the black ones...

48/365

47/365

Part of the paintbrush wall in Idee, my favourite art supply shop. I decided to stock up on some more small canvases to get some work done for the etsy shop I plan to open and I bought a few more things as well because I couldn't resist. I saw a beautiful brush but when I checked how much it was I decided that 46 Euros was a little too much.

46/365

I've discovered that I really like taking photos of flowers. A surprise to me as I am not an overly floral person. But there you go. I just like it.

45/365

44/365

Daddy's Valentine Cake. What starts out as a loveheart turns into a stramash, spookily mirroring our relationship : )

44/365

A trip to see the dinosaurs also included some stuffed animals. "It's like being at the zoo, except they're not moving!" said Orla.

43/365

5 points if you spot the Lady Gaga lookalike and the daschund on the party train to Prenzlauerberg. No points if you get them mixed up.

42/365

Another flower photo. I'm in the process of painting them, but it's not going well. So I might as well photograph them.

41/365

Hamish chose these today. I said I wanted to buy some flowers to paint. He took them up to the counter and gave the man the money, and then he laughed all the way home because he thought it was funny that he'd been pretending to be a grown-up. I wonder if the funny part was that despite his size he thinks he pulled it off.

40/365

The Gedachtniskirche (with traffic). It's a crummy photo but I have hardly been anywhere today and I decided to take a photo of it at night (after book group) when it is lit up (slightly poorly). I like the stained glass at night; during the day it really is quite ugly. Should you visit, you'll see that you can get one of Berlin's finest Bratwurst or Currywurst from a little garden shed outside. (ok, I'm going to stop with the brackets now)

39/365

No inspiration. I've been busy working and have no time for doing any painting which is what I'd like to be doing.

38/365

Back at the KaDeWe. I took the kids to get their hair cut and afterwards they were desperate to play in the creche. I went back up to the 6th floor and this time partook in some extraordinarily expensive strawberries. I'm keeping it a secret. That's how expensive they were. A fortnight in Spain! (That's what you could get for the same money!)

37/365

Cake-making with the kids, the German way - from a box. Photo taken courtesy of my dying Canon.

36/365

It's a zebra in the street. The kids wanted a photo taken with it. Personally I would have stood in front of it, and not gone under it, and I might also have arranged my face into something resembling more of a smile.

35/365

Another exciting day for us. We were going to be nice and early for Kita and then I was going to be bang on time for German class for once, probably the first time this year. Then Hamish ran into the edge of one of the doors downstairs and we ended up spending the morning at A&E. No stitches, just glue. And me peering at him every 2 seconds afterwards wondering if he was concussed or just sleeping.

34/365

I've been a bit lax with uploading my photos. In fact I've been finding it a struggle just to find things to photograph and that's when I remember my camera. Anyway, I went to the KaDeWe and stuck the kids into the creche and took myself up to the 6th floor for an expensive piece of cake and an expensive coffee out of a machine. I resent paying a lot for coffee out of a machine that you could just as easily find in an office in an industrial estate. I'm rambling, but you know what I mean. YThe cake was good though.

33/365

America: summed up by the Ka De We. Junk, junk, and more junk.

32/365

Sleep. I stayed up late the night before and then was kept up by Hamish and his cough, and need for drinks, and then wetting the bed, and cuddles, and so on, and so on. The next day all I wanted to do was sleep. Nothing else.

31/365

Desperate times. Once again I left it until the last minute to take a photo and I had just wandered into Hamish's room and turned around and realised that I had forgotten that I'd put his bunting up - especially as now he's started sleeping in the spare room.

30/365

Party food as prepared by Orla for one of her many never-ending parties. Good for those on a diet.

29/365

We went to Potsdam on Saturday. It was really lovely, but very cold. We will return when it's warmer and greener, and I imagine that the gardens round Sansoucci Palace will be beautiful.

28/365

An afternoon nap perched on the end of the sofa. Precariously.

27/365

Which school of architecture is this then? I'm struggling with why someone would want to create a building that looks like an ugly part of a municipal swimming pool. I've walked past this building a lot in the 7 months I've been here, and weirdly, it's growing on me. I'm quite taken by the angled windows on the side, and at night you can see in the windows and some of the apartments look pretty nice.

26/365

I saw this run down hotel on the way to the doctors today to pick up my prescription. It's just off the Ku'damm and had that lovely run down neon signage and door details from decades past.

25/365

The beauty of U-Bahn stations. A delightful palette of acid yellow and orange.

24/365

Visual response to being told you can only have yoghurt after dinner when what you've asked for is ice-cream.

23/365

Post-dinner happiness (for once)

22/365

I ran out of time and inspiration yesterday for my 365. I went out with Stevie and the kids and we had some late afternoon drinks in the top floor bar in the KaDeWe while the kids had a play in the creche, and it was lovely, and lit really nicely and we were sat right at the central atrium where you could look down and see all 6 floors and look across and see the people going up and down in the glass lifts. Lots of opportunities for some nice photos, but I forgot my camera.

I only remembered I hadn't taken a photo at around 10:30pm, and had no inspiration. Stevie suggested I photograph my bookshelves which are "always interesting". I am sure there are some other ways of describing them, but thankfully he was too tired.

21/365

I'm getting back into my illustration groove. It's long overdue and I'd forgotten how relaxing I find it - as long as there aren't constant 2-minutely interruptions from the kids.

20/365

Portrait of the photographer as a commuter. That's me in the white jacket. I only noticed these screens the other day and wondered whether it would be possible to catch myself on them. Ta da!

19/365

I have a use for one of my 'pieces' (if you will) from my pottery class. It's now being used as a toothpaste holder. Perfect.

18/365

I really like this building. It's 1960's social housing and it's really run down but there are lots of interesting aspects to it.

17/365

Saw some postcards outside an old shop today. They looked like they had been on sale since before the Wall came down.

16/365

Dinner time. Casual dress required. Especially if you keep spilling your food and have to keep removing clothes.

15/365

Yesterday I did nothing. And it was really nice. I read next months book group book pretty much in one long session. 'The Kite Runner' - it's great. Didn't even have time to post. Lovely!

14/365

Before bed. after bed. It's still not a perfect tidy up.

13/365

Fehrbelliner Platz U-Bahn station. Sneaking photos of moving people.

12/365

I ran out of time yesterday to upload, but here it is: my unhappy boy at Kita, waiting on his sister.

11/365

This could be the last shot from my Canon A95. I really liked that camera but something has gone wrong since yesterday. Every photo I took today has either bled (like the portion with the number 33 in it) or the colour has gone a bit funny (the doors are grey, not purpley violet). Schade!

10/365

First day back at German school, it wasn't as horrific as I thought it would be. I really love the railings around the escalators in Fehrbelliner Platz u-bahn, even if they are covered in a million coats of funny green paint.