rowe timson photography » rowe timson photography ~ commercial photographer and family portraits. sydney, brisbane, gold coast.

{please note : all the photos in this post are taken with my iphone, then edited in camera+ or my new favourite app… afterglow}

it seems like all ive been posting the last couple of months are my 10 on 10 posts! ive been planning to do a post about our recent move to bali but it just hasnt happened… i decided this might be the perfect time for it! im sharing photos taken today and some taken over the last few weeks or so to tell our bali story!

1. fresh fruit from the school warung (also know as a tuckshop or canteen) | 2. welcome pebbles at uluwatu | 3. teaching us all bahasa | 4. i adore outdoor showers and morning sunlight | 5. monkey | 6. me by the pool today

first the why… both danny and i own our own businesses, which is great because it means one of us is always around to take audrey to school, to pick her up, to take her to piano, choir, her aerial or gymnastics class… she never comes home to an empty house which i love and she always has one of us to talk to or play with or just be with!

the downside is, our work days are long and i feel like im in the circus constantly trying to juggle everything without dropping the ball! sadly… we do drop the ball more often than we would like and there are times when audrey is literally talking to the side of my head because i have a gallery to get up, a portrait clients order to edit or a commercial job deadline fast approaching… we both work till midnight most nights and there are regular times when that stretches to 1am or 2am just so we can get on top of things… my time off is mostly spent running errands, cooking dinner, cleaning the house and wishing i had more free time to do yoga, watch a movie or hang out with family and friends!

then there is the taking turns aspect… we have this unspoken rule where whomever has the most work on can keep working while the other parent hangs out with audrey!  it means sometimes family time is not all 3 of us… its just 2 of us and im not ok with that! dont get me wrong… we make an effort to do something fun every weekend! all 3 of us might go rollerskating or ride our bikes or go to the beach or do a day trip to byron bay and we always go out for a couple of meals because i love not eating out {or perhaps its i hate cleaning}! we are lucky enough to go away often too and at those times, we do no work or if we do, its very little in comparison to our regular schedule… no matter how many trips away we manage or how much time we spend together it still just doesnt feel like enough… i always wish there was more time!

we spent christmas in bali in 2011 with dear friends and that was when it happened… the last 2 days i started talking about moving here! i started asking all the locals about the cost of things. i started looking at villas online… the idea was born and there was no going back! even once we were home and weeks had passed, i found myself dreaming of a life in bali… its all i could think about! when i kept talking about it and showing danny villas, it suddenly dawned on him that this was something i really wanted… one day he said ‘are we actually moving to bali’… my response was ‘i think we are!’.

we decided we would go for a year and live a quiet, more simple life.  we would do very little… just be together and enjoy one another. sleep more and lay in the sun. read more books. watch more movies… cook more meals and just. slow. down!

arriving in the peak of the wet season is not ideal as there were thousands of mosquitos… the villa we were renting was the balinese style we had always loved on our visits before, with everything being open except the bedroom so its essentially an outdoor kitchen and living area with just the roof above but no walls. so lovely but in reality it meant we often found ourselves huddled on the bed in the main bedroom under the mosquito net trying our hardest not to get bitten (insert newly arrived, irrational expats who were scared to death of getting dengue fever)!

then we had a problem with the water which meant we could rarely have showers when we wanted to and then when we did have water and we we jumped in, it was very likely it would stop right in the middle and i may or may not have gone out a couple of times with shampoo or conditioner still in my hair?

school was so much further than we would have liked and the drive was just horrid with so much congestion and extremely insanely narrow windy dirt roads for a good portion of it, you have no idea what a pot holes really is till you have seen a balinese one and there were more than one could count…

4 weeks in and 100 villas later it felt like we were never going to find somewhere to live either because nothing was right…

the worse thing by far was audrey got extremely sick 9 days in and we ended up in hospital really wondering if we had done the right thing moving here… needless to say she is fine and in fact, if we had not arrived so recently, im pretty sure the doctor would not have sent us to the hospital. they were just being super cautious which i am extremely thankful for {it ended up just being a really bad case of bali belly}! although it wasnt ideal timing and i would have preferred it if danny or i had been sick, it was in the end a positive experience because my worst fear about living here was realised and audrey didnt die like she told me she thought she might that very first day she was sick… we all survived and in actual fact, the hospital experience was a good one! it was clean and we were really well cared for and everyone spoke excellent english!

are you still reading? if so, it must be time for a few more instagram photos!

5. butter cake shop (where one purchases the best iced cinnamon scrolls ever… how i wish i had never discovered them!) | 6. going home

well this week marks 2 months since we arrived and things have changed… a few weeks ago we moved into our very own villa which we like a lot! we found a full time driver which means that we can now just sit and relax on a very manageable 30 minute journey to school (there is lots of chit chat on that drive which i love!). a week after we moved in we had 6 boxes arrive from australia that my mum so brilliantly packed for us over a very long skype session in the week hours of the morning {thanks mum}… they included the things i realised we just couldnt live without… things that would make it feel more like home (eg. organic sheets and the perfect pillow, juicer, blender, all my ceramic pots and pans and lots of other kitchen stuff. loads of remedies in case of any illnesses. natural products like shampoo, conditioner, suncream and laundry powder. audreys favourite things. the wii console etc, etc…). i cant tell you what a difference it makes being surrounded by things that are familiar… when those boxes arrived everyone seemed so much happier and a sense of calm washed over the house!

if you asked us last month if we were happy here and if we thought we would last the year, i just may have said no! if you ask me now id say we will last the year and perhaps a little longer because everyday we feel just a little more settled! we still have tough days where i just miss my gorgeous cat tilly beyond words… or i just want to go to my favourite cafe or prepare one of our favourite meals… where i just want to hang out with an old friend who makes me laugh like no new friend can but i just remind myself its only early days!

in the very beginning its easy to only see the negative, all the obstacles that are in your way! sometimes there are so many that it leaves very little room for seeing the good stuff… as time goes on and you find a little rhythm and you stop expecting things to be as they always were, you start to see the beauty in this new life! actually, danny and i were driving somewhere and i commented on how beautiful the landscape out the window was… he said all her saw was the rubbish! to that i said ‘but look up. just look up a little, above the rubbish… how beautiful is it!’. i just said it without thinking but after i thought… sometimes we have to look a little harder to see the beauty. it is always there but you need to be open and ready to see it!

well thats it. we are here. we are together. we are happy {most of the time}. what more could we ask for? i think when we are older, we will be pleased we were brave enough to embark on such a huge adventure and these moments are the ones we will cherish…

here are some photos of our day today {all taken on my iphone and edited on there too} ~ a peek at our little villa!

if you made it to the bottom of the page… im impressed! i didnt realise i had so much to say till i started writing! this is possibly the longest post ive ever written… thanks for taking the time to stay and read it!

actually, if you are new here and you find yourself wanting more {perhaps you want to see photos from my real camera?}… my february 10 on 10 was photographed one day last month in singapore or if you are keen to see more of bali, see my january post which was photographed just a few days after we arrived! in december i shared images taken while we were on holidays in new zealand.

now go visit marie manco’s to take a peek at her day and be sure to keep following the links till you come back to me! you will see some beautiful images from some amazingly talented girls from all over the place! i love my 10 on 10 circle of friends…

happy sunday friends, rowe x

its honestly been crazy since the last time i blogged… ive packed an entire house, celebrated christmas and new year, then moved to bali for a year long family adventure! anybody who reads the blog probably knows a little about our bali plans but i have so much to say that its probably best saved for another blog post on another day!

until then, just know, i will still be shooting on a regular basis in australia! in fact my next sydney trip is scheduled for the last week in march and i may be able to squeeze in a few sessions in the byron / gold coast / brisbane area too… i promise ill blog about all of that in the next week or two, once we have a home and im all settled in here.

for now let me share another 10 on 10…

this month ill be doing something a little different… i often link to a few friends who are also doing 10 on 10 projects but this year ive been invited to join a group of amazing and inspiring photographers doing there own 10 on 10s! what does that mean? each month i will link to another photographer who links to another etc, etc, to form a little circle or loveliness!

these images are from audreys very first day at her new school! orientation day…

i think the school is all kinds of awesome and im so excited that i got to capture just a little of its magic for you to see!

8.40 am ~ our journey to school begins {on a normal day we will leave home at 7.20am}

{danny must carry audrey because she is scared of a few dogs we pass in the little lane way from our villa to the street}

8.52 am ~ the busy city

im so thankful to have a driver who knows where to go because im sure it would take forever if the driving was left up to us… so much traffic {bikes mostly} and very few street signs!

8.56 am ~ thank goodness santa got someone an ipad mini for christmas!

9.26 am ~ we reach the jungle {the last few minutes of our journey before we arrive at school}

10am ~ summer toes

11.25am ~ feeding the goats

11.48am ~ the ayung river runs through the school campus

12.29pm ~ lunch

{audrey could actually eat loads on the menu so she was so happy! how amazing are the banana leaf baskets for plates…}

2.19pm ~ home made banana chips for afternoon tea from the school warung

3.27pm ~ a chat with a new friend on our first bali play date {how kind to be invited to play at someones house on our very first day at school!}

4.32pm ~ an afternoon swim

so thats our day in a nutshell! i didnt show you as much of the school as i would have liked but there will be plenty of time to share more images in the coming months!

now you must go and check out Jackie Tyghem’s day and be sure to keep clicking so you see everyones posts before you come back to me…

thanks, rowe x