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Shawni says

You’re work is so incredibly beautiful, both visually and literarily (is that a word?)! How’d ya get that way? Did you go to school to learn how to take such stunning pictures? Did you learn to write or are these just natural talents? The keyboard and cameras just do your bidding?

First of all, thank you for such a kind compliment!

I am pleased to know that not only is literarily a word, it’s the BEST word! I want to keep saying it, it sounds so lovely and rolly (<this isn’t a word but it SHOULD be!).

To your main question – I did not go to school to learn photography nor have I taken classes to learn to write (unless you count middle school?).

I don’t think of myself as a particularly great writer but I do try to flow with a certain cadence to my text; so that it comes out as I hope I would say it in person (in reality I talk too fast and never express myself quite so succinctly).

Likewise, I don’t think I am a sensational photographer – but I do know I can capture things or record them as I see them and I think people are always at their most beautiful when doing things with their own style. I am just really lucky that my parents have always fostered creativity and uniqueness so I’ve never felt I have to write like someone else or take pictures that are ‘in style’.

Claire asks
What is the one childhood memory you hope your children carry with them?

The feeling of being loved.

Favourite movie ever?

Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain

And finally, I love ALL the music you use for your films, so this might be hard…
- What is the one song that best connects to who you are as a person, right now?

This is a great question Claire and one I’ve really struggled to find the ‘right’ answer to. ONE song!? Ah.

I could not pick this so I went to itunes and found my top played song.

I figured it would be a good reflection of where I am at lately given I obviously keep listening to it.

I love song, Lykke Li makes my heart rush!

My little sister Bene asks

Top 5 favourite actresses? Top 5 favourite musicians? top 1 sibling?

Actresses:
Shirley Temple
Drew Barrymore
Audrey Tautou
Ellen Page
Megan Follows

Musicians:
Ennio Morricone
Lykke Li
David Gray
Kimbra
Yann Tiersen

Sibling:
Um? My favourite younger sibling is… YOU!

 Hi Georgia! My question is: what does “gregarious peach” mean for you?

Gregarious Peach has always been my online alias or ‘handle’ if you will. It is a play on my name and the fact that I am quite gregarious

Did you had some idea of what you wanted to do in the future when you were a child?

Yes, I very much wanted to a be a school teacher. I was in love with two of my school teachers and had thoroughly romanticized the notion of keeping classroom having read Anne of Green Gables and the ‘Christie’ series one too many times. This dream did carry through till I was an adult - I actually met Errol at university studying Education.

Have you ever had some penpal?

Yes, I did. She was from Germany, her name was Nathalie, she sent me postcards. My mum was paranoid she was actually a middle aged man. We exchanged little letters and presents from each others country. I sent her gum leaves and I received postcards from her holidays at the sea. I eventually forgot to write back to her :/

Besides photography, do you have some other passion, hobbie or frequent pastime?

Yes! I love sewing. LOVE it. It is something I never feel I have enough time to do and could definitely waste an entire week stitching this or that. I actually spent an entire YEAR off school and creating little dresses, quilts and outfits for my niece when I was 15. What a good year that was!

If I had more time to sew I would. It makes me feel unusually happy. Sewing requires lots of patience and focus and attention to detail NONE of which I exercise well so I am always surprised when I start a project and I just feel so content. I haven’t had much time to sew since the kids but here are a few of my projects.

Peach’s ‘family tree’ rug. Errol’s family intertwined with mine creating a tree. This came to me like a brainwave one night and while I was very passionate about it doesn’t exactly look like how I imagined it – haha.

Theo’s baby rug – one thing I was grateful for every month of his pregnancy.

Positive pregnancy text, his heart starting to beat, naps with Peach, growing, our new family of four, our new home, still being able to see my toes, nesting and A BABY!

I have made a few little outfits for Peach but this was my favourite:

A yellow summer romper.

I designed it myself (I never sew with patterns!) and was pleased as punch when it actually worked out because I was expecting it to fail big time.

I would love, love, LOVE to make Peach another of these rompers for this summer but I can’t justify buying any more fabric (We’re budgeting and being very strict about it! Sigh)

Unless someone here wants to buy the fabric and I will make one for your daughter too… anyone, anyone? haha.

Here is P looking very pleased in her romper with my cousin Minti in the ‘Mini Minti Mod’ dress I sewed her for her third birthday.

Sometime over the next year I magically want to find time to make a quilt for our bed and a single bed quilt for each of the children (they don’t yet have beds but I’d like to start now and be done in time for them to leave home )

I can’t find the photos of the final product but here is a photo of the squares from a quilt I made for our best friends wedding present – I’d really like to make something similar for our bed. But where would I find the months it took me to make the last one? Oh my poor sewing career, you are so bitterly neglected!

Phew! That is almost ALL of my questions answered – only one more set to go so I apologise for the interruption to things around here!

Anna asked a bunch of lovely questions and here are my answers

With all the beautiful pictures you’ve taken, which ones are on display in your house? (Er… old house?) If any are blown up/over-sized, are they more significant to you personally or just … prettier? Why did you choose those specific pictures?

I need to make two terrible confessions before answering this first question.

1) I have never, ever, EVER printed a single photo I have taken for ourselves.

2) I have NO pictures up in my house at all at the moment as we are living with my in-laws.

Those confessions aside I have several photos that my sister Hailey took and printed & mounted for us that used to hang in our home. Hailey asked me which ones I’d like printed and I chose a few that she had taken for us.  I chose some from our wedding (to remind me of the fact that the best guy I’ve ever met chose ME!), one of each of the children’s births (to remind me of the fact that the terror running down the hallway with a roll of toilet paper was actually once that beautiful brand new creature) and a photo of Errol and I holding hands with Priya still in my belly (to remind me of that beautiful adventure we began when starting this family).

(I think this is my favourite photo ever).

When we have our own place again I will print some more photos for our walls and my priority will be photos that make my heart happy, so photos that are meaningful – like Theo’s first smile – over photos that are ‘pretty’ like a million photos I have of the kids on the beach.

-When you think of yourself as a person, does the word wife or mother come to mind first?

Neither!?

But if I had to pick out of those I would always be a mother first and foremost.

Plus I was technically a mother before I was a wife

-Before you had kids, if you could have picked one trait for your kids to have (sociable, beautiful, intelligent, etc,) what would it have been?

Um? I need to be really honest right now. This is embarrassing – I’d like to say I would have wanted loving, kind-hearted children but the reality is while I was pregnant with Peach I spent a long time hoping my baby would be cute.

It’s not that I didn’t want a sociable or intelligent child it’s just that pregnancy adversely affected my brain function and instead of investing time into productive research and planning for our new baby I wafted about sewing little things and eyeing off other peoples kids thinking “I hope mine is as cute as that!”.

Oh, shame, how I wish this wasn’t true!

What song(s) has been your go-to for singing your kids to sleep?

I don’t know how it  came about but I’ve been singing ‘Down to the River to Pray’ from O’Brother Where Art Thou since they were tiny. Peach even requests it in times of distress.

Favourite books?

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery – these novels (in particular the first four) are truly the loveliest things I have ever read. I have read them time after time and would love nothing more than to live within their pages forever. If you have not read them you simply MUST!

All of Oscar Wildes plays but definitely not his novel ‘A picture of Dorian Gray’ (which I read last month and found very disturbing).

Stones From The River by Ursula Heigi

I’ll Love You Forever by Robert Munsch

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

 Why did you choose to name your daughter Priya? By the way, that’s a very beautiful name.

I first heard the name when I was living in a small apartment on my own.

Being lonely, I introduced myself to the neighbour, a friendly Indian man named Jayaprakash (who said  I could call him ‘Jay’ –  much to my relief).

We somehow became fast friends and found ourselves at Sizzlers laughing at our unfortunate neighbour and his antics. He told me he would soon be heading home to his beloved in India, Priya. He said the name in his thick Indian accent and I immediately loved it.

A month or so on I emailed him asking how his time in India was going and how his fiance, Priya was. I paused a moment before typing the name out, thinking how it might be spelt. I typed how I thought it sounded and out it came… ‘Priya’. I thought I’d do a quick google just to be safe and was pleasantly surprised to find this and many refrences to Indian women named Priya.

A year later I found myself pregnant and in long discussion with Errol over names

g: Ruby?
e: Sounds like an old lady
g: Moses?
e: Sounds like an old man… a really old man
e: Xerxes?
g: You’re joking right?
e: um…
g: NO!
g: I want a name with a nice meaning
e: Love?
g: Okay

When Jay came to visit us later in the year he brought his new wife with him.

Priya was gorgeous and incredibly witty and sharp. As she was showing me their honeymoon snaps I found a photo of them cheekily posed outside ‘kondom kingdom’ to which she grinned, said “What do you expect us to be doing? We are on our honeymoon” and shot me a knowing glance. I loved her immediately. Later I asked her what Priya meant and she said “Love, Beloved” and I knew right away that would be our name for a girl.

Now, I can’t imagine anything suiting our Peach quite so well. She is our beloved and I love how the name sounds every time I say it!

On a side note, – it’s surprising to me how many people mispronounce Priya’s name.

I had thought it was quite easy to pronounce, I certainly didn’t want to give Priya a name that caused her much confusion later in life. It’s pronounced “Pree-yah” which I thought was quite easy. Except that nearly everyone who reads the name first pronounces it “Pry-a” like “Prior” which does NOT sound pretty at all. And then those people who hear it first invariably write it as “Prea”.

Jay and Priya continue to be a part of our Peach’s life and I am so happy that these people we admire so greatly are the source of our daughters name.

Asked on formspring were two questions

‘do you have any regrets?’ and ‘what is your biggest regret?’. 

For the most part, I try to live regret free.

“I never regret anything. Because every little detail of your life is what made you into who you are in the end”.

- Drew Barrymore. 

I try and embrace my mistakes, they have helped me grow and I am grateful for my lessons learnt.

That being said, there is something that weighs heavy on my heart which I truly do wish I could go back and change. The following entry is taken from my personal journal. It is decidedly un-delightful so stop reading now if you’d like to keep happy!

A couple of years ago I was hanging out with some friends and people got to talking about their regrets. Of course a number of foolish decisions I’ve made came to mind but by the time the conversation got around to me I surprised myself by blurting out something completely different that had obviously been buried in my mind, just waiting for the chance to get out. It’s the story of a girl named Renee.

When I was in grade four I met Renee who had severe epilepsy. My first memory of her is kneeling on the ground, cupping her head while she had one of her violent fits and thinking “How am I going to get this vomit off?”. Renee had learning difficulties and although she was in our grade, I think they only placed her there to make her feel normal and amongst people her own age. I remember our teacher always instructed the class on their lesson and then turned and quietly said “now, Renee, you can…” and provided Renee with suitable activities she could do.

Renee needed help to write so we were surprised in grade five when she proudly stood by the door as the class filed out at the end of the day – handing out carefully written little notes with her name and phone number. As each student took one she said in her very childlike speech “I hope you can invite me over”.

A little bit about me in year five: I desperately wanted to be cool (I think this might be the case with all year five students). My best friend Brittany had recently started hanging out with Nicole and Jessica more than me and my world revolved around trying to win her back.

I was thinking about what Brittany would do as I took Renee’s little slip of paper and stared at the ground as she smiled and said “Georgia, I hope you can invite me over to play”. I glanced up and smiled back before dashing out of the classroom as fast a could. I overheard her tell the student behind me “My mum showed me how to write them”. I remember the long bus ride home that afternoon as I toyed with the carefully penned note she had handed me. Of course when I recount this, the enormity of this tragicness makes me feel so heartbroken. I knew at the time it was a heartrending situation and away from Brittany I made the decision I would invite Renee over for a play. Of course I wouldn’t tell Brittany, but I would do it.

Weeks went by and Renee kept asking if anyone was going to invite her over. “I gave you my number, you need more?”. I remember her mum coming to school and asking our teacher if there were any kids that she should ask in particular, anyone that seemed to get along with Renee. None. I pretended I couldn’t hear the conversation and I would get around to inviting Renee on my own time. I imagined how happy she’d look when I finally invited her over and how I’d let her climb my tree house. But I never did get around to inviting her over and finally her little note ended up lost in my belongings.

I left the school not much longer after that and didn’t think about Renee until that moment when someone asked me my biggest regret. I was blurting it out before I even realised what I was saying. Suddenly there it was in front of me, a huge gut-wrenching guilt. I remembered her face so clearly and could scarcely believe that I had forgotten it at all.

The people that I told brushed my guilt off saying “oh come on, you were TEN! We all make stupid mistakes when we were kids…” and continued on comparing who had slept with the longest list of wrong people.

I decided I had to make it up to Renee somehow and soon. I am not sure what I was planning but I wanted, needed to do something.

I searched facebook, myspace, googled for Renee, but couldn’t find her. I wasn’t surprised I could not find her. Finally I found Brittany on facebook and sent her off a message asking after Renee. The irony of how times change never ceases to amaze me, ten year old me couldn’t imagine not caring less about what Brittany thought. A week later I got a reply from Brittany saying she was really sorry to tell me that Renee had died after finishing high school from a heart attack.

I had expected not being able to find her, or her not remembering me and not wanting to meet up but I hadn’t expected to find her gone. I also hadn’t expected to be quite so devastated by her loss. I had had the chance to give Renee a friendship she deserved and I hadn’t taken it. And nothing I could do now could change that mistake, to give her what she needed. I have done things that were immeasurably wrong but this, this is the one that I regret.

It makes me think of this:

The name ‘Renee’ means ‘reborn’.

I often pray that Renee was reborn into a life much easier than the one in which we crossed paths, into a life without illness or pain and without ten year old girls who care more about their social status than the basic needs of a fellow human.

Every part of me hopes that she is living a life of love, the one that she deserves.

1) Do you still have Willow? I haven’t seen photos of your dog in a while…

We no longer have our Great Dane, Willow. We gave Willow to a lovely lady with no little people & plenty of space after it became clear to us that we did not have the time to invest into training her. This still makes us very sad because Willow was such a lovely dog and we loved her. I do feel great knowing she now has a mama who doesn’t have to share her time between two human babies and Willow and is able to just focus on our beautiful big girl!

2) Hi. I love your videos, can you tell me the end of the equation please : talent + marvellous kids + imagination + xxx (video software) = great videos So : xxx = ? Thanx ! 

Thank you! What a lovely comment and initially a mildy confusing question! The video software I use is Final Cut Pro. I hope that helps!

3) Is Errol your first boyfriend?

Errol was not my first boyfriend. I had one serious boyfriend prior to him and despite having a terrible break up we are now friends (he sometimes maintains this website for me!).

I was also not Errol’s first girlfriend.

There was a time when I felt quite uncomfortable at the thought that my beloved had ever locked lips with someone who wasn’t me but having had the experience of loving and losing I am incredibly grateful we both had time to experience relationships that were not right for us to be able to appreciate and treasure what we have now.

4) What do you value most in a relationship ? (friends-lovers-etc)

Most in a relationship? What a difficult thing to pin-point in one aspect!

I think with any relationship it differs person to person as to what I appreciate the most or what I desire from our friendship. I believe any relationship that is worthwhile is real. I want friends who I can be perfectly honest with, that I’m not trying to impress, to out-do or to hide from. I want to see them as themselves and delight in who they are. I want them to do the same for me.

5) How was your first contact with the internet?

I had a life before the internet? 0_0

I think my first internet foray was when we were expecting a French exchange student and my parents let me email back and forth with her before her arrival in Australia. I must have been 13. It was a delightful time and still to this day I get a little thrill from setting my ‘ping’ on my inbox to the same one I used when I was waiting for an email way back then. I remember telling her that our beaches were beautiful but she should watch out for sharks as we normally lost around 10 swimmers each week. Oh how eagerly I awaited her reply that week!

I can’t post without a photo so here is my favourite from Instagram this week