The past few months have been quite amazing for me. I’ve never really been one to have “down time” and during this self-imposed “down time” I’ve done much reflecting and dreaming. Mostly about this precious Pobke baby inside me, but also about life in general. One might say I was on the verge of an existential crisis of sorts. I spent many an afternoon on my insanely comfortable nursing chair, napping and day dreaming the day away, thinking about how special it is that I get to do something this amazing. Like grow a human inside me. Even typing it makes me get goosebumps all over. And this little life that we created is simply an extension of me and my love: how insane is that? I could really go on and on about the thoughts that arose from the deep recesses of my brain but I won’t bore you. :) Beyond the ‘thinking,’ this period of my life has also made me aware of this sudden urge to make, build, create, clean, connect, keep busy. I did sewing classes; learned about candle making; created my own soaps and chapsticks; cleaned the house from top to bottom, inside out; wrote letters; started a blog; set up a new business (which will be launched shortly); went for weekly massages; practiced my Korean (over many many many text messages with my mother); read books upon books upon books; and baked like it was going out of style. And I spent some sleepless nights writing letters to our little one… And it was wonderful and so incredibly special to be able to document my feelings and thoughts on my pregnancy blog… I’m so glad I did it.

So there you have it. What I’ve been up these past eight weeks of maternity leave! Oh and have I mentioned I’ve been getting the nursery all ready to go? :) That was a feat in and of itself, I tell ya. Especially since we live in a small three bedroom home, where space is constantly an issue. Our Pobke baby will be sleeping in a bassinet in our room for the time being (that blanket in the below picture was handmade by my lovely friend El – can you believe that?!), and then move to the nursery when she’s good and ready… so at the moment the nursery is really a nursery / office. :) Poor Pobke baby, she’s gonna have to share the room with my big fat computer desk and all my cameras! (She may as well start getting used to the cameras though…) :) I thought I’d share some images of how the nursery has been set up so far. I was inspired after seeing my gorgeous friend (and fellow pregnant mama!) Kerianne’s post about her nursery (although be warned: her nursery is RIDICULOUSLY adorable and all kinds of gorgeous. And makes me want to start mine all over again. With her help.). :)

Many of the things you see in the nursery were gifted to me by lovely + generous friends, who threw me a surprise baby shower a few weeks back. The video can be seen here! :)

Some of the other things you see around the nursery can be sourced/found here:

Cot: Groyears (bought second hand)
Change table: Stokke (bought second hand)
Lovely nursing chair: Tango and James (designed by the ever so talented Lisa!)
Lampshade: purchased from Tiny’s Green Shed recycling tip on Mugga Lane! (It’s not really so tiny at all.) :)
Fabric wall decals: Love Mae, Charmed I’m Sure
Birdcage: Stitched by me! :)
Pink print of rabbits: Schmooks (an amazing local designer here in Canberra!)
Muslin wraps: Aden + Anais

So all that’s needed is one Pobke Baby. Hurry up, little one! I am awaaaaaaiting! :)

First up is Diana and Tim, featured in May’s issue of Cosmo Bride magazine:

And Kirsty and Matt, featured in one of my favourite wedding blogs, Green Wedding Shoes:

And finally, Siobhan and Pete grace the pages of the beautiful e-magazine, Mag Rouge:

I’m so honoured to be published amongst my friends and industry colleagues who I look up to very much. It’s such a beautiful way to end the 2011/2012 wedding season for me before I go on maternity leave! :) I’ll continue posting sessions and weddings and couples portraits on my blog here, as well as on my personal blog, Dear Pobke Baby, so no need to think I’m going away! :)

Have a beautiful weekend, and happy Friday!!

My heart palpitates thinking about it but I feel prepared and ready for the big event! :) I’ll be speaking twice (once on Sunday, 5 February from 11-12:30pm and again on Monday from 1:30-3pm). Wish me loads of luck and hope that I don’t fall off the stage or do anything mortifying… :)

If you’re in Brisbane, please do stop by! I hope to see you there friends!!

We are so overjoyed and overwhelmed and overloving this little Pobke baby already… As it’s our first pregnancy, everything is a bit bewildering and exciting. (Okay, a LOT bewildering and exciting.) :) I wanted to track everything I’ve been feeling on this very amazing journey that we are on, so have started a pregnancy blog called Dear Pobke Baby. Feel free to check in on me from time to time, and offer any words of wisdom you want to share! :)

Things may continue to be a bit quiet around the blog but not to worry – I’m a busy bee in the next coming months, with 11 more glorious weddings, five workshops, and more family sessions than I can count. I’m grateful for all of these things to occupy my time, as I’m at the stage where I’m feeling way more energetic, happy, not-so-morning-sick (which was really all-day-sick in my case), and hungry. Hungry as a hippo. :)

Well we did pretty much that. We were organised and not organised at the same time. We knew where we wanted to go, but we didn’t know for how long, or how we’d get there. We just knew we had one month to get to the cities on our list: Saigon, Nha Trang, Hoi An, Hue, Halong Bay, Sapa, the Mekong Delta, and Phu Quoc Island.

So we borrowed a pack and bought a pack and flew to Saigon in early August, he with his Lonely Planet guide, me with my two film cameras (Contax 645 and Leica M6). Together we planned to do a lot of shooting and writing, and hope that we’d both come back with enough to publish a book for all of our friends and family. And guess what? The book is being worked on as we speak. It’s an incredible thing to be able to be passionate about something, and share that passion with the one you love most in the world. As we travelled from city to city, He-Pobke furiously wrote in his Moleskin journal. Trains, planes, private cars, overnight buses, you name it. At night time, he’d read me excerpts so that I could revisit the memories we had just created as I’d drift off to sleep.

To say that Vietnam is one of those adventures we’ll never forget is an understatement. We ate our weight in food. We walked and walked and walked and walked. We met country folk who lovingly welcomed us into their homes where we shared meals and attempted to communicate with gestures and smiles and magic tricks (I impressed them with a few card tricks!). We rented a scooter and explored the countryside. We had a private tour guide take us on the back roads of Hue, where we bicycled 50k in the hot sun, and sought refuge in the homes of artists and carpenters and painters. We snorkelled (and I got viciously attacked by jellyfish) and swam and floated and kayaked. We marvelled at the beauty of ancient relics, and ingested as much history that was gifted to us. We had an adventure of a lifetime, and we are so grateful for having had the opportunity to experience such a beautiful country for four magical weeks.

I’m not sure when we’ll really soak in everything we saw, learned, heard, ate, touched, experienced. But I do know that I dream about the places we’ve been, and seeing these photos makes me remember the essence of Vietnam. I hope these give you a small inkling of what we adventured…And if you are ever planning a trip there, please do let me know – we have so many tips and advice and stories to share!! ☺

To ensure that I follow through with this commitment to myself, I had two things: a hardcore training schedule (well, as hardcore as one gets training for a measly 10K); and my supportive family and friends back in Seattle who agreed to run the distance with me. :)

Training began as any type of training would: pitifully. My first run was 2.3K, which took an embarrassing 19 minutes to run (and it was hard). But on that first run in March, I discovered something within: perhaps Christine Pobke wasn’t a “walker”… perhaps, indeed, Christine Pobke was a runner! Could it be? I thought to myself as I ran two more times that week. And as pitiful and embarrassing as the distances and times were, I’m proud that I persevered, because in June I ran my first 10K in 1:02, woot!

It was amazing to have been a part of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s Annual Shore Run/Walk. In fact, I’m so hooked that I looked for (and found) a half-marathon to run later this year. (As I type this I still can’t believe I’m going to be running a half-marathon! Who is Christine Pobke?) :)

And so, I wanted to share some photos from my recent visit back home; starting with some post-run photos of me and the family just after the race, en route to The Original Pancake House for some carbs, carbs and more carbs. :)

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This is my beautiful mama June. My mom has the world’s best green thumbs. Yup, both her thumbs are green, and I’m sure her toes are too. She talks to her plants and allegedly, they talk back (I wish I was joking). But however crazy her methods, they seem to work because no one works a garden like this woman. No one. :)

We have some lovely cousins out in Yakima, Washington, so we went to visit them and even went to a cherry farm while out there! (The adorable dog is my parent’s 10 year old chocolate lab, Mango. Yes, I named her.) :)

These are technically my “third cousins,” or the loin fruits of my dad’s first cousin’s daughter Julie. :) The adorable big sis on the far right was my flower girl at the Pobke wedding all those years ago! How cuters are they?? I bought them all little toy cameras during my visit, and  I swear they’re all naturals… we went out to their backyard and went on a photo safari. So many good times. :)

And then my mama and I went for a girl’s day in beautiful Victoria, British Columbia. Victoria is just a short ferry ride (about three hours) from Seattle, so we got up super early on Friday morning, caught the 7am clipper, and spent the day walking around this gorgeous coastal city. We went to a tea house dedicated to the royals, walked around Chinatown, went shopping downtown, walked through alleyways and doorways, discovered delicious fish and chips, and even met some strangers! :) I really need to go back again someday… Victoria is absolutely breathtaking.

[For the fellow camera geeks, all of the above images were photographed with the Contax 645, on Portra 400 film]

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I ran into a bunch of friends, new and old. We brunched. We walked. We ate. We laughed. It’s always great to reconnect with people who you “get” and who just “get” you, don’t you think?

[Places below: Capital Hill, Tacoma, Ballard]

[Friends below: Sean, Sergio, Kristen, Julia and Yuriy, Ben.]

PS. You may have noticed that the blog has gotten a bit of a facelift! :) It’s all thanks to the talented crew at Inklab, a design studio based in Canberra. Not only are these guys supremely talented, they are seriously the epitome of NICE. Which made my whole experience with them all the more fabulous! :) All the coding is done by the lovely Kelly from Ekcetera, who was very patient with me from beginning to end. :)

Together we drove out in the Canberra cold. It was grey and windy. It started sprinkling before we even got started, but we both looked at each other, said, “Oh well,” and shivered in Narrabundah.
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And then we met Alan. We were driving in the dark, headed towards the local railway tracks when I saw something in the corner of my eye. Now, I’ve had lots of moments where I’d see something, wish I’d stopped, but kept driving for whatever reason. On this day, however, I wasn’t going to let resistance (in any manifestation of the word: excuses, reasons, insecurities) beat me. So I braked suddenly (probably making David wish he didn’t agree to let me drive), put the car in reverse, and pulled up to the front of this beautiful yard decor.

Decor is probably the wrong word for it. Historic relic? Someone’s passion? There was definitely a story to this object, and I was dying to know its history. Fortunately for me, there was a man sitting in the driveway, with hands as seemingly old as the wood he was carving. I took a deep breath, and physically pushed myself towards him. After a few moments of nervous banter, I let my guard down and just watched him. I wondered about his story, how it came to be that I happened to drive past his house on that very afternoon, and wished I had more hours in the day to get to know him. In our brief conversation, I learned that he was an artist in the true sense of the word: driven by passion to create works of art that he was never fully satisfied with.

It’s truly amazing what you can learn from someone in 20 minutes.

It was one of those inspiring moments. This stranger let another stranger come onto his property to photograph him and talk with him. Just ’cause.

For this moment, I’m forever grateful to Alan because it’s changed something within me: I’m now that person that can walk up to a total stranger and talk to them. And photograph them. And learn their story through and through.

Isn’t that insane? To learn something new about yourself?

What a revelation it was.

So this is Alan, stranger-turned-new-friend-who-is-responsible-for-a-Pobke-awakening. Doesn’t he look like the kind of person that could ignite something new in you too? I like to think so.
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In winter, I forget things. I forget how to be motivated, I forget how to keep warm, I forget what it’s like to go go go.

At the same time, I remember what winter allows me to do:

overdose on reading books, ebooks, articles, magazines;
treat my eyes to pretty, brave, ugly, strange;
spend hours in cafes to keep warm with toasty mochas, a journal, and zero internet;
sleep in and eat comfort foods and stews (thanks to my awesome cook husband).

And on the nights that I can brave the cold, I actually stay out late enough to do some experimental stuff.

As much as my skin hates winter for its coldness, my heart + brain are grateful for it.

[Photos below taken with the Fuji x100]
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