Mothers Day - Sunday 18th March

Mothers day for me this year was so special as it was my very first one as a new mother.  Phil and Olivia certainly made it a very special day for me.  The day started off perfectly with my husband and daughter waking me with me a card and a cup of tea.  The of course there was the present.

For a long time now, I wanted to buy a new camera so that we could take instant pictures of Olivia especially as she's growing up so fast.  The delay on our current Sony Cybershot was so long that we couldn't ever seem to capture Olivia smiling as she moves too quickly.  We'd been on the hunt for a while now to try and find a camera but we couldn't seem to find the right one.

Phil decided to take me shopping on Saturday to choose one.  He had picked out two that he thought I would like and this is the one that I went for, the Panasonic Lumix FZ48.  We bought it from my favourite department store, John Lewis as the customer service there is always excellent.  They didn't have the memory card we wanted, but we wanted to take pictures on the Saturday as Olivia had her first birthday party to go to and we also wanted to take pictures on Mothers Day.  John Lewis were great as they agreed to give us a memory card free of charge so that we could use the camera straight away.  Phil always says if you don't ask, you don't get, and in this instance he was right.

I don't know a lot about cameras.  I know enough to get by eg: how to use the settings etc, but I'm not a photographer by any means so I didn't need a really fancy one.  This one seemed to do everything I wanted, for example it takes instant shots, has a paparazzi setting, is fully HD, allows you to video, as well as having various scene settings for different effects.

It has a 24x optical zoom which allows you to take excellent close ups from across the room.

We even bought a really sturdy Lowepro protective case for it.

The only downside that I have come across so far is that the instruction manual is on a disk which is a bit of a pain especially if you want to look something up quickly.  There is a quick guide included but for some things it is a little too brief but it's enough to get you started so you can take pictures.  Also if you are not careful, you can sometimes catch your fingers when the zoom retracks automatically without warning, but I remembering that the more I use it.

My family mean the world to me and as it was Mothers Day it was really important for us to spend time as a family and for us to see my mum and Phil's mum.

It was also Phil's sisters birthday on the 19th March so I had a busy weekend making cupcakes for both our mums as well as for his sister's birthday.  This is the first time that I have made vanilla cupcakes with a vanilla butter cream and I really enjoyed making them and I can't wait to make more.  I've recently bought some excellent cook books for baking cakes and biscuits.  I have a feeling that this might start becoming a regular event in our house.  Although the dusting of icing sugar that seemed to coat the whole kitchen might become a little frustrating after a while.

How did you celebrate Mothers Day?  I really had a wonderful day and I wouldn't change anything about it.  At least Fathers Day isn't until June so it will give me plenty of time to plan something very special for Phil.