Chrissy Downunder

I live on amazing lush green property surrounded by trees and filled with flowers, ferns and native bird life with my partner Peter in Melbourne Australia.

All of the photos of the garden and flowers are from our very own 'Garden of Paradise' (as we call it). Peter and I are nature lovers and tree huggers. We go bush walking regularly and love being outdoors.

We both work from home, which is simply the best way to work :)

Peter and I also enjoy dining out in a variety of restaurants in and around Melbourne. We love seeing live bands particularly blues. We love to get out and about ... dancing, drinking, mixing with friends generally raging the night away at one of our great little clubs, taverns, hideouts or Live Blues venues. 

'Jimi Hocking' is one of our absolutely favorite blues performer, we would even consider ourselves to be groupies  :)  ... love his music and have been seeing him and his band 'The Blue Machine' play in Melbourne regularly (at least once a month) for the last 3 years. If you love blues .. you will adore Jimi's music, he is a great act!

He not only rocks you with his music, he will have you raging out on the dance floor, he tells some funny lead in stories to his songs which will have you laughing. Sometimes when the mood takes him he plays the guitar behind his back and even does the splits while playing.  He a very entertaining artist and it's always a fun night out.

Check out his gig guide here.

I will be adding some reviews to cool places to eat .. drink and rage out at soon.

Photography is my current passion which started around 18 months ago. My Dad has a Canon EOS 400D Digital which I have used a few times and one of those is now on my wish list.

Currently I am happy clicking away with my Ricoh Caplio R40.

It has been a great little point and shoot for me to learn with.

I create lots of different things with my large collection of photos. Last count I had over 8.000 (it's the hoarder in me - what can I say :) and have been playing around with graphics for many years.

I was introduced to Paint Shop Pro 7.4 10 yrs ago and became a PSP addict and hooked forever. I now use Ulead's Photo Impact X3 and it's fantastic, I have just tried out the trial version and love it. Some of the features and functions are disabled in the demo, but it gives you a good taste of what you can do with the full working version.

Most use and recommend Adobe Photoshop, and after many agonizing months of working through and studying online tutorials I just can’t seem to get my head around it. I have a full working copy too. PSP is my preferred graphics program and seems far more user friendly than Photoshop. I find I gain the same results as well.

With many years of searching online for the best web sites, tutorials, downloads, forums and communities I have finally found some really good ones and you will find the links in my list of recommendations and favorites.

I have taught myself many things such as photography, gardening, cooking, web site design, graphics, photo journalism and writing just to name a few. I hope you too will find these sites to be extremely user-friendly, informative and helpful too.

The best thing is - THEY ARE ALL FREE! :)

There are links to some of my favorite social communities where I hang out and have met some wonderful friends. People from all walks of life, different countries and cultures. Be sure to check them out on my list of BLOGS and PHOTO SITES. The links will take you to my page within the communities that I am a member of.

I’m Learning Lots - Having Fun - Happy to Share

I hope you all enjoy looking at my world through my eyes.

Cheers .. Chrissy

   Downunder