MYC 2013

I have a tendency to post often for a short while, then my blog will remain quiet for a few months. Sometimes I post about my thoughts on something interesting, most of the time I just post bunches of photos with minimal text from a past event in my life for memories' sake. I'm not good at expressing myself very well and am often scared of posting my thoughts on something deep, spiritual or personal on here.
But any way, I went on a conference at Mt. Tambourine with my family two weeks ago. MYC. It was mainly for the uni students involved in Student Life, and as my Dad works full time with this organisation he had to go to train the people. But the rest of us went as well since there was child minding for the my younger siblings and a youth program organised for my two sisters, myself and the other youth of the Student Life staff. I was a little sceptical of what us teenagers would be doing all week. Let's just say I wasn't hugely looking forward to going on this conference.
The first day or two were good, I was able to spend time with my friend and sisters, but there were also new youth there and some I hadn't seen in a long time. It was hard at first and awkward at times, but we eventually became comfortable around each other and made friends with the new people.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the conference was the fact that we got to join the uni students for a lot of the time. We went to the talks in the morning by an amazing speaker, John North and had worship in the big auditorium. After, we'd sit on the grass in the beautiful sunshine, soaking its warmth on the cold day and spend alone time with God, pondering what we had learnt from the session. Once morning tea was over, we would have fun hanging out together playing drama games, stacks of card games, talking and laughing, trips into town and even trivia quizzes. After lunch was usually free time where there would be activities like sport, bush walks, shopping expeditions and even a bush dance. Then special 'electives' by many different SL staff were on up until dinner and I had the opportunity to go to one elective on authentic Thai cooking...it was amazing and I have recipes for two delicious Thai dishes now to try out.
Our two youth leaders, Will and Leisa were great. I didn't quite connect with them at first, but as the days went by, we talked more about so many things, hung out and played games and they were considered awesome in my book by the end of the week.
The most amazing, inspiring experience I had on the conference was the outreach on Sunday afternoon. Almost all the students and staff were paired off, mostly with mixed sexes and a more experienced partner working with someone of lesser experience. Then we were all sent off (in buses/cars) to four different communities/areas on the Gold Coast to door knock for four churches, one in each area we were outreaching in. I was outreaching with Emily, a woman who works for my Dad in the Catalytic part of Student Life ( and recently got married and moved to Toowoomba!).
We went to a certain area and door knocked on a couple streets in this neighbourhood. We had some interesting and fun conversations with some of the people there. Unfortunately, many of the doors has 'no door knocking/no sales person' on them, so our door knocking was reduced somewhat. But it was all so completely worth it in the end. Our last door knock and conversation was with a lady and it lasted over half an hour. Emily did most of the talking, but it was a real, deep spiritual conversation and by the end of it Emily had given the lady (Louise) a Knowing God Personally booklet and her contact details. It was such an encouraging, surreal and amazing experience. I felt just so inspired to go and tell everyone about Jesus. Emily was such a blessing to Louise in that conversation, the Holy Spirit was really guiding her to say the right things to the woman. After we finally said goodbye and had to return to Mt. Tambourine the two of us were beaming and praising God so much for the awesome opportunity we had had. Emily's face was full of so much joy, it was a pleasure to just watch her and talk all the way home in the car.
The last full day of conference was so good. John North's second last talk impacted me so much as a person. The topic for the conference was all of Him in all of me for all of them and this particular talk was all of me. Our speaker talked of how we need to give Jesus all of me, as a person and how absolutely nothing can be in the way. It was so powerful and convicting. And something I truly hope to remember for the rest of my days. That night after a John North's last talk, everyone had a crazy, huge dance party in the auditorium. It was a heap of fun and we all danced ourselves dead (and our voices too!).
The very last day, we had a good wrap up as a youth and took a couple of photos (unfortunately, two of the guys had to leave a couple days earlier, so they weren't there) together. Then it was time to say goodbye and go back home to our normal lives.
An awesome conference, MYC was over...I had experienced an inspiring, wonderful and different week that I'll never forget. People are amazing. God is so, so good.

Made a good friend, Hannah. I now have an excuse to go to Victoria...to visit my American friend, two months older than me and living in Melbourne. Yay.

It was a good conference. Great times.

xo,
Holly

after rain comes sunshine

It was a bright and sunny day today, but throughout doing school work, reading obsessively (hello L.O.T.R!!) and just living, I felt more in a rainy day sort of mood. It didn't feel right and I kept wondering where was my energy and usual vigor.

Around three o'clock this afternoon it rained. The weather had predicted rain this morning, at lunch time and I was beginning to think it wasn't going to rain at all today, when the heavens opened and poured. In seconds my quiet room went from quiet, to anything but quiet, the rain was pounding on the roof, it was deafening. After about seven minutes, it subsided and I quickly dashed outside with the camera. I love nature just after it has been raining.
I wasn't disappointed.

And then, when I had just finished taking it all in, fully, the bright sun came out and it was like the rain and grey clouds had never come.

But it made me happy, I generally prefer sunny weather to grey and rainy. And I felt much better afterwards.


I'm off to my friend's 25th birthday party now.
Hope you all had a fantastic week, love you all, have a nice weekend and read a good book!

xoxo, h

a storm is coming

via





 

     A blue lake. Green trees sway in the breeze. Flowers of blue, pink, yellow, orange and purple, by the water on either side. The once bright sun, hidden by grey clouds, while short gusts of wind come and go. Birds call to each other, they know the signs, as they spread their wings and fly southwards. A girlish figure in the distance. The girl shivers, drawing her light woollen shawl more closely around her, the crunch of the gravel from her feet below, as she walks by the lake, the lonely road stretched out before her. Smelling the sweet perfume from the many dancing flowers, she notices a slight different scent. The smell of rain coming. The trees rustle. Teeth chattering, she stops, only to pluck a flower from one of the many clusters of colourful gems, before continuing her journey, somewhat more hurried, as the first droplets of rain touch her face. The blue, clear lake is still. Nothing is to be heard.

But not for long.

I don't write much. I don't feel the inspiration or enjoyment that so many other girls my own age do. But I have to write for school. And occasionally I write something that I actually like and feel slightly proud of. It's certainly nothing that comes naturally to me.
But a little while back, I wrote this little piece of writing/poetry (poetry? would you call it that? i don't know!) that I like to read to myself every so often. Especially with Dario Marianelli's Liz On Top of the World accompanying it. Try it if you like.


-Holly xo

flowers in august make me happy

 



 

Aren't they just fantastic, flowers? I'm not sure whether any one else has quite the obsession I have when I see pretty flowers. I have to photograph them.

It's the way I roll.

 

And my sister loves flowers almost as much as me, so we make a good team at this time of year!

 

kiss, kiss to spring...we both love you!

 

xo,

h

snap! she went

I decided to take some self portraits this afternoon. As you can probably tell, I'm not talented at all in this area. Oh well I guess I'm improving-well not really!

And I didn't even put the worst, craziest photo of me up! (believe me you don't want to see it!)                   
I guess I can't seem to take many good photos of myself. All I feel like doing is being stupid! I suppose this is what you would call the real me. I posted about a similar topic (with photos!) a long while back (any one been around that long?!) and that was when I was young and silly.
Now I'm just old and silly.
Yes...I hope you understand. I can't go around doing amazing posts, looking fantastic and write interesting stuff all the time, now can I?! Sometimes I like to show you what I'm really like. Most of the time. 
But I promise you I won't do it very often...this is like my second time. So you probably won't see a post like this for another almost two years...feeling better? I hope so.
Ok, I'm going to leave now. Next post should probably be a vlog...yes very exciting! If I can improve my vlogging skills. You shall see.
Bye <3

Holly

collaged

I've been in a collage-creative-photo-designing sort of mood at the moment. But I just haven't had much time (because of school, extra lessons, school, visits, school, designing my room and school!) to do much photography work. But I found time this afternoon to do some collage work on three subjects.

I first collaged (is that word? yar or nay?) some most recent photos of me (2012) and put them together creatively (hopefully...).

Then I put together a collage of the many photos I've taken of Sophie this year.

And lastly some favourite nature (mostly flowers) photography over this year and the last of mine.

It was quite fun and relaxing.
My advice? If you're feeling stressed and busy, make some photo collages. Guaranteed to help you.

All my love,
Holly xo

of pearl necklaces and things

So my Dad (finally) came back from the Philippines where he has been for two weeks for work. And he brought me back something special...a real pearl necklace!

All three of us girls actually received one each. We were all very pleased.

And then he got this lovely long scarf for me from somewhere in Manila and apparently it's made from these special leaves! Pretty cool : )

Ok, so I haven't been doing a lot of photography or blogging lately, but that's because it's been the first week back at school this second semester along with all the extra curricular lessons and everything else! My choir is performing quite a bit in the next few months so I've also been doing a lot of practising of songs and dances! I've also been thinking about doing a bit of decorating in my room and have decided to assemble a photo collage and a couple other bits and bobs. So I've been pretty busy...I really haven't had much time to look at all of your awesome blogs, but I'm hoping to be able to have a bit more time for that soonish.
Miss you all have a lovely week and I do apologise for taking this post up with photos of pearl necklaces, leafy scarfs and random updates!

Until next time dear Followers,
Holly xoxo

p.s. has any one noticed when they look at my blog that the blog background (down the sides) is sort of turned black with big exclamation marks on it?! because that's all i can see of my blog down the sides...just wondering if any one else can see it.

the charm of old photographs

I was at my grandparents' house over the weekend. And in the hall, they have a wall simply covered in photographs of their families, friends and childhood years from a long  time ago. The many beautiful old photographs have always had me gazing at them for ages, working out exactly who every one was. And this time I once again gazed upon them, I had a camera in  my hand and captured a few of the many old pictures of my relatives and ancestors. It was great fun and I loved it.

There is truly a charm about photographing old photographs.

xoxo,

Holly

p.s. in the mood to check out a gorgeous wedding post? hop on over here...you won't be disappointed! :)

is it possible to get any more excited than excitingly excitedly excited?!

So there's this masquerade party I'm going to. Tonight. For my friend Courtney's (you remember her and the concert she did) sixteenth birthday. And as you might imagine, I'm just a leetle bit excited!!!!

In the last week, I've been worrying what costume I was going to wear and I had come to the conclusion that I would just have to wear my formal/bridesmaid dress and a pretty modern mask.

BUT, my friends Bria and Jess both have beautiful seventeenth century/renaissance dresses that their mother made for them, and I tried on Bria's blue gown (Courtney is wearing Jessica's) and it fit perfectly, so they're letting me wear it to the party!! I couldn't be more thrilled and it is an amazing feeling when you're dressed up like that. I might even be wearing a little hoop under it to make it bigger!! Both Bria and Jess are both wearing new dresses that their mum has just finished making and all together, we're going to look like fine young ladies from the seventeenth century! (or something like that...i'm not very good with clothes and what time period they came from!)'

And I found a Venetian mask to go with my dress yesterday... so I'm pretty happy!

 There will be lots of photos taken that I'll show you all in the next couple of days, so stay tuned for that!

Holly xxxx
p.s. this is my two hundredth post!!

pouring from the spout

Tea parties with friends. You never tire of them. No matter how old I get, I always enjoy them. A beautiful tea set. Chocolate biscuits on a rose platter. The rich brown coloured tea pouring from the spout into my dainty cup. And of course the company of a friend where you and her pretend to act like proper ladies, often speaking and dressing from the nineteenth century!
So much fun...

Briahna and I decided to have a break from photographing each other that Saturday. Bri found her tea set, given to her by her grandmother that is apparently three hundred years old (don't know whether that's true or not!), we boiled the jug and set the table prettily.
It was our tea party.

xoxo,
Holly