Abi (age 7) wrote a prayer for Haiti. It made me feel rather tearful to think my little girl has such a big heart and cares so much about the people she’s seen on the TV so far away. Whether or not you believe in God, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s very touching.
Dear Lord
Please help the people in Haiti and send people to help them and give them as much food and water as they need. Help them to build their houses again and look in the crashed down houses and look for the people.
Amen
It’s very very cold – cold enough to make strange icy formations on low hanging branches and twigs in the nearby stream. And it’s very snowy and has been for some time. The children were due to go back to school after Christmas on Tuesday, but still haven’t made it back – school has been shut for 4 days now.
More of my snowy photos are on Flickr or on Facebook
There, I said it – I’m not ashamed. I love snow.
I love the way it carpets the ground, transforming sharp edges into softness, making everything look pure and clean and fresh. I love the way it brings out people’s childish side, and fills you with that childlike excitement when you look out of the window and discover a world of whiteness. I love the way the children rush into their wellies and warm coats and plunge out into the white, thrilled with the way the world looks. I love building snowmen, rolling giant snowballs, walking in the snow, just looking at it. I love the way it slows us down and stops us from rushing around not noticing the world around us. I love that it’s something that doesn’t happen every day.
I love the way snowflakes sparkle when you take flash photos when it’s snowing! 
Ok, so there are aspects of snow that aren’t so nice – it can be dangerous, it can be inconvenient, but as long as my family and I are safe, I’ll enjoy it and embrace it with all its wonderful transforming power!
As Edward Monkton says: “May the HAPPINESS of the Happy Snowman never melt in the WARM and LOVELY garden of your HEART”. 
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
—Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Today was Wear it Pink day, and I was wearing a pink feather boa, among other things. A quick close-up snap just to demonstrate how my camera can do good macro shots and this is what I got. I love it!
See my photos taken with this camera on Flickr
Buy the Samsung ST550 on Amazon
This is a great camera with lots of really useful features. It’s fun to use and the pictures I’ve taken look good. The camera looks cool too – it’s slim and sleek and I love the purple colour choice The back screen is big and fab, and being a touch screen is easy and fun to use. The front screen, though a little gimmicky, is actually really useful for self portraits, and group photos with yourself in the shot, although I found that sometimes it was hard to activate it by tapping and took a few taps.
The camera is really easy to use and is very intuitive. All the settings can be found using the touch screen and if you’re not sure what each of them are you can hold your finger on them and an explanation appears. The user manual comes on a CD and is a useful reference, but not needed that much as it’s so easy to use. I went from getting it out of the box to taking pictures very quickly and I appreciated the fact that the battery didn’t need to be charged up before I could have a play with it.
I enjoyed playing with the features such as the face recognition and the way it can automatically take a photo when the person smiles. Great fun! Other fun things are the photo editing you can do on the camera such as making pictures black & white, adding snow (!), and cropping. Usefully when you do edit photos it saves them as a new photo so you get to keep the original as well.
I’ve tried some close up photography using the scene selector set to close up, and found great results with that. The square that is green when in focus or red when not is a clear guide to whether you’re getting it right or not. I’ve also taken landscape photos and portraits and all look good. The zoom is also a really useful function. I’m not an expert photographer, just a snapper, but my photos have come out looking great.
The camera comes with Intelli-studio which is used when you plug the camera into your PC. This is a useful tool and includes mechanisms for uploading your photos to Flickr. I have had some difficulty in uploading multiple photos to Flickr though – it only seems to upload the first one. I did find it a little strange that this software appears to be on the camera itself and is not installed on my PC. So if you don’t have the camera plugged in you can use the software to look at the photos you’ve transferred onto your PC.
It comes with an A/V cable which I haven’t yet tried, a USB cable (quite short, but fine) and a charging plug which the USB cable plugs into. It doesn’t come with a micro SD card (which it uses) which I found a little disappointing as I had to get one before I could take more than a few pictures.
Overall, I am really happy with the camera and any negatives I’ve mentioned are far outweighed by the positives – hence the 5 stars
