Kirsty Base Photography

A little break in the norm for my photo posts, this one is a bit more word dominant but does have some pretty neat photos tagged on the end

For those of you who aren’t aware (firstly, what planet are you on?) I am a huge Hanson fan. Massive.
I have a large collection of memorabilia, and I show my appreciation for the band, apart from the t-shirts & the hoodies (currently wearing my nice far too big for me green walk man hoodie, perfect for wrapping up warm for winter!) by wearing my symbol necklace, the original MOE one I’ll have you know, and my symbol ring for all to see.
This band has been a part of my life since 1997 when MMMBop was released. I was just 14 years old, and remember the moment clearly. I was on the way to school when it came on the radio and I loved it, asking my mum if she could pick me up the single on cassette. The music has been there through a lot of tough times over the years. And this year especially I am finding I need it the most.

I didn’t get to the free concert earlier this year, nor could I get to the 5 of 5 in London in which they played an album of theirs each night. But when I heard of a show in Birmingham in November, there wasn’t going to be anything to stop me.

It was a struggle but this is another good thing about Hanson: they have the best fans. I know numerous girls through the Hanson message boards & are friends through Facebook, and they are a FAB bunch! For a start one of them was coming down my way before they went up to Birmingham, completely coming out of their way for another fan and offered to take me too. Chrissy, you are the best!

Then as both Chrissy and Kerry had Meet & Greets to meet the band and were going off to the pub together, I arranged to meet Maiyu who I met during our M&G 4 years ago. I still can’t believe it has been that long.

Luckily for me, the two of us went for a wander after I had received my number for the show, and could not believe our luck when, as I was facing Maiyu chatting away, she goes: “He’s coming!” We had heard Isaac had popped out to the pub, and here he was on his way back! We asked for photos and he happily obliged.

I cannot begin to describe this to you, if you don’t understand. It’s an odd feeling meeting your idols, hence why 4 years ago I managed to make a complete… what’s the nicest way of putting this…. Ah yes, TIT, of myself. To be honest seeing them in person is sort of like bumping into an old friend you haven’t seen in years. I handed Isaac Gareth’s camera as the Hubster has a spiffy new point and shoot (well my poor cybershot is so old now it makes a humming noise) and to be honest I hadn’t actually looked at the sodding thing as I was instructed to guard it with my life hence why I was wearing it in the case under my coat. So I joked to Isaac that I didn’t have a clue how to work it. Which at that point was technically true, I hadn’t even seen how to view photos back yet, but that was soon to be remedied! He continued on through the gates and on to the tour bus.
It wasn’t until after that I realised I was shaking when Maiyu said she was too, though to be fair, it’s November in England. It might be warmer than average for this time of year, but it was still too cold to be queing up outside. And I couldn’t afford to come down with pneumonia and be in hospital again!

Luckily for me I had plenty of time in the queue to fiddle around with Gareth’s Lumix camera and get to grips with the settings though I wouldn’t actually be able to do much more til the concert had started. I love my Nikon SLR to death, but taking it to a concert isn’t the easiest of things and Point and Shoots are not awful in the slightest. In fact apart from the camera on my phone, I carry my cybershot around with me in my bag everywhere I go normally.

Meiko was the opener and she was just fab! I hoped to buy her album but the queue on the way out was diabolical so I counted my lucky stars that I bought Strong Enough to Break on DVD before I went in. Though I was also rather bummed that I didn’t get a cute I heart Hanson t-shirt because they are much more lush in person.

So I shall leave you all with just a few shots from the Birmingham Show on Sunday, without a doubt THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR.
Thank you Hanson for making my awful year much better! (P.S: Isaac, see I got the hang of the camera )

If you are looking for my regular crafty/scrapbooking every day blog go here: journal.kirstybase.com

To make up for lack of nice Nikon photos, thought it’d be a good idea to snap things around me (t’is the reason I am a scrapbooker & life story teller after all!) and share those photos on my photography blog. Just because it’s not taken with a fancy DSLR camera, doesn’t mean it’s still not photography, right?

So I use both Instagram & Hipstamatic. They are both equally my favourites for their own individual reasons, but I do enjoy the Instagram social networking side of things, but then at the same time I enjoy the taking photos & not having to share them if I don’t want to side of Hipstamatic.

I share with you my lunch break from today, car booting yesterday, my renewed love affair with my mood ring which my dad bought me when I was little (complete with it’s flaw which makes me love it more!), and my view at lunch today. The last 3 were taken using Instagram and the others were taken with Hipstamatic. I did snap one of myself walking back to the office, which I may share in another post. Or I might not LOL

Me & Laurie go waaaaay back. Back to the days of visiting my Aunt and my 2 cousins (both male), I used to go & knock on Laurie’s door to see if she could come out and play with us, often including her sister as well.
So imagine my absolute joy when Laurie told me she was marrying in private and asked me to be a part of her special day! The ceremony itself was a small affair, no photos allowed, so we had preplanned to go to Rococo Gardens in Painswick. Absolutely stunning place, but Laurie wished she had taken some trainers to be able to walk around as there were steep gravel paths not particularly suitable for a bride holding up her dress wearing pretty, but high, heels LOL. They asked for a £50 donation for us to go there but we had such a giggle, and I was so excited to have been taking photos as I don’t get to do it very often these days it seems. Any excuse really, and I’m there with camera in tow LOL!

and they have such an adorable little girl called Isabelle too Her 1st birthday is coming up soon which I have been invited to, so I shall be there with my camera And I was super upset as I was also invited to her Christening but I couldn’t make it.

Such a wonderful day, and I’m so honoured that I got to be a part of such a cool secret!

Spent a little time with my nephew this afternoon. I seriously do not get to take photos enough, but after the Christening I have thought if I have the opportunity to do so, I am going to jump at it!

Yesterday was the Christening of my cousin Craig’s son, Dawson.

I stood at the back, out of the way of everyone else, and got just a few shots.

and caught a cute moment with my brother and my nephew having a cuddle. Oliver was completely fast asleep by the end

Then it was time to PARTY!

Big aunty cuddles for Dawson

Liam and Kenzie had fun collecting balloons

I got to spend a little time with my beautiful goddaughter Emily:

and got to hang out outside with her big sister Morgan

and caught Dawson’s big sister Lauren and her friends eating the sweeties!

and I managed to grab Leanne for a quick picture with her boyfriend

A couple of weeks ago, my brother rings me & my husband up to ask us a question. As it was nice & sunny, did we fancy a BBQ. Luckily they had a fire pit, so we agreed, and enjoyed a lovely evening with my brother & his family & my parents too.

I also got to play with the cutest nephew in the world too

Erin’s christening went well, getting shots as just a family member is hard though, especially when everyone is crowded all around the font and not much opportunity to snap people without someone else blocking the way, but the shots I did get I will save for another post

But afterwards we went back to my cousin’s house for food, drink and laughter, and for the kids: lots of fun playtime on the swings and slide

Cute pictures of lauren, (she had a party blower but couldn’t do it properly so was doing a tune through it… I have to get her a kazoo!)

and Morgan on the slide…

a quick snap of my nan and my cousin Sarah (who is Erin’s mum)

and the cutest puppy you ever saw… Right behind my not-so-puppy anymore Taz of course!

I will have to come back and post a few snaps I managed to get of the Christening sometime soon!

I finally got to take some pictures of Erin today It’s her Christening next week so even more photos to follow!

and I had to share this one of Emily taken by her big sister, Morgan I let Morgan use my Nikon to take a snap (she has her own camera now!)

I haven’t had the opportunity to grab my camera and take shots for a while, and I really do miss taking photos. I also have the most adorable nephew (biased? Me?) and when I got the opporunity to watch over him for an hour, I just had to pick up my camera   These images are OOC (Out of camera) so I’ve done no editing to them whatsoever.

I’m really quite pleased with how these have turned out, especially with all the cloudy and dull weather we’ve been having. I seriously love my lens!

Sadly, last Wednesday we lost our beloved Staffordshire Bull Terrier “Buster”. He was 12 years old and we all loved him to pieces and picked him out when he was just 6 days old. Our other dog “Taz” misses him loads. Taz is just 2 months older than Buster.

Luckily, I have some cute photos of Buster including some of him as a puppy on our old film camera, and I went about making my dad an awesome Fathers Day present.  He loved Buster dearly, as he was his running partner until he got too old to go for a long run anymore.

So I got on the computer and put together a storyboard of photos of our dog, took it to Asda (along with some smaller prints for my mini book of Buster) and got a frame for this:

He absolutely loved it, and I’m so pleased   It sits in the home gym (my old bedroom lol!) next to the running machine, so dad can go running and have Buster there with him.  It’s things like this, and looking over the photos to remember him… that’s what it’s all about for me.