We’ve spent years going to Universal back before they built the land of Harry Potter. Back then it was the Adventure land or something of that sort. Not too exciting, to be honest. I remember going to Universal and seeing them build bits and pieces of the Hogwarts castle, sectioning off some areas to add Hogsmeade village. Soon we were able to see the snow covered peaks of the houses there.

I remember being super excited about it openning in 2010, so much that my girlfriends and I took numerous jumping pictures in front of the mere sign announcing the openning of the new land.
{don’t mind my retarded face here}

Then I remember the day it opened. Some of my Orlando friends actually went there that day, which is a suicide and I remember them telling me how mind blowing the new ride in Hogwarts castle is.

A few weeks later we went there for the only reason of seeing this new HP land.

Now I have to say I LOOOOVED HP books – every single one of them, read them the day each one of them came out, was absolutely ecstatic about the movies, watched and re-watched them a million times. So needless to say this was a special trip to Universal, not like any other one out of about 20-30 trips we’ve taken ( we live 3 hours away and often come for 1-2 days and stay at Disney resorts).

So here’s a little tour, for those who haven’t had the chance to experience it just yet {some of the photos are from different trips there}:

?

When you walk in, you get greeted by the Hogwarts Express train:

The Hogsmeade village would be so realistic if it wasn’t for millions of touristy looking people walking the streets

The Butterbeer stand is the first thing you see:

I was super excited to try it. I’m not a fan of overly sweet drinks, but this was something: it was worth every single calorie and toothache. The lines to buy Butterbeer are usually a mile long. Not that day

I wasn’t as impressed with the candy and trick shops. But the clothing stores were amazing: all that Hogwarts goodness, especially scarfs for each of the houses.

One of the best places to eat was Three Broomsticks. Now, to be honest, Universal SUCKS at food. I’m used to Disney themed restaurants and relatively healthy food in street shops. About 4-5 years ago under new management Disney changed all their menus/vendors or something, because the food quality definitely went up, Universal, however, never got hit by the clue bus and continues to think that burgers, hot dogs, turkey legs and fries is an acceptable and only food form. Broomsticks luckily has a few items that a more healthy eater can enjoy, but it’s not great: garden salad, corn, potato leek soup, fish and chips ( bad version of British fish’n'chips) and a few other items that I can’t eat  seemed relatively acceptable (beef pie, chicken, etc). So needless to say, we only stop at Broomsticks now whenever we go to Islands of Adventure ( before we had to go to City Walk to eat).

So after lunch, everyone heads out to Hogwarts, the main attraction of Harry Potter land.

 

The castle itself is, of course, absolutely stunning. It’s too bad we’re not early risers, because it’d be great to take a picture of it without the back lighting, against blue sky for once. The wait usually doesn’t exceed 30-40 minutes, however there were a couple times I saw 50-60 on that board. The ride itself is continuous, so the lines move MUCH faster than in most attractions.

Besides, who minds standing in line, where there’s SO much fun stuff to see around. I don’t have a SINGLE picture of the inside of the castle, since you have to check your bags, and to be fair, you’re just so amazed by the intricacy of the inside of the castle that photography is the last thing on your mind: moving pictures on the wall, Dumbledore in his study, Ron, Hermione and Harry hiding under the invisibility cloak in the classroom, screaming newspapers, and much much more.

 

The ride itself is great! I would even say “the best ride evah” if it wasn’t for the fact that Universal decided to go the IMAX-type screen route rather than 3D route for this one. If you ever rode Spiderman, it’s very similar except for the 3D effects, which are replaced here by a massive screen that makes you sort of feel you’re there, but not as well as 3D would ( kind of like Soarin’ at Epcot).

There’s a lot of real sets with dementors, which scare the crap out of you ( if you’re planning on going, seat the most squeamish person on the last seat on your right). I sat in the right spot the first time and a Dementor almost freaking swallowed me. There are massive snakes, and human-sized spiders, that tree from the movie that likes to rape innocent boys and cars, there’s Quidditch, moooore dementors and everything a fan would want.

Besides the Hogwarts ride, there is  some kiddie coaster, and the re-purposed Dueling Dragon coaster ( floorless coaster).
But the “magic” doesn’t stop there. Before you head out of the land to continue to Dr Suess land or Jurassic Park, there is one more thing that deserves attention: The Ollivanders Wand shop. The shop “claims” to create and experience like in the movie, where the wand picks you ( or smth like that). In reality, you stand in line for about 30 minutes…

Then they let a whole crowd into the shop that’s an exact replica of the one you see in the movie, except for it’s not as old, dusty and scary. The stacks of wands are EVERYWHERE:

They do a little presentation, showing a few magic tricks, and then let the crowd out. Very disappointing – no personalized wand picking, that’s for sure!
You do get to take a picture with Ollivander himself, though:

And then you’re free to go on into the shop and pick out a wand for yourself and I gotta tell you: if you have kids, it’s pretty special. There’re wands of all the book characters, including Voldemort ( yucky white bony wand), all the wands are EXACTLY what you see in the movies.

Gabby, my friend’s daughter, got herself a super pretty Hermione wand and every time she’d be watching a HP movie from then on, she’d pull out her wand and scream out in joy when  Hermione would use THE EXACT SAME WAND!

So there it is, the most magical Harry Potter land.

Are you, guys, Potter fans? Are you all sad the books and movies and done?

I was all ready to wimp out this week. I couldn’t get my backyard shot done. I tried, but it just didn’t happen {I blame it on my broken remote that I am yet to replace}
So tonight I was all set to write a post about how I couldn’t make it and how you all should go on and do better for this week’s theme, and I realized that it’s just not gonna cut it. Maybe it’s the overachiever in me speaking, but I just can’t let myself NOT take one.

I think the whole point of Selfie Saturdays is to feel a certain amount of “pressure” to do selfies. I mean, normal photos come easy to us- we don’t need to do our hair, put our make up on, think of a twist, suffer through countless attempts to get the focus right. But all that is why we need to do selfies- it’s about getting out of our comfort zone, it’s about getting out there and looking and feeling pretty, it’s about making it about “ME” for once, it’s about challenging ourselves as photographers and as creative directors and it’s also very much about capturing yourself in the moment for future memories.

It was so easy for me to take self-portraits when I “felt pretty“- it’s snap snap and we have a beautiful photo. But now that I’m pregnant, my skin is crap, I won’t get out of the house without a face full of make up to cover up the breakouts, my waist is double the size, so I don’t feel my body is anything to show off ( no bump yet). So selfies don’t come as easy and THAT IS WRONG.

Since you’ve seen so many pictures of my backyard:

Today you’ll get my front yard!
So I got up this morning, and instead of putting make up on and doing my hair, I decided to show what many of my mornings look like: eye mask, messy hair, Minnie cup of tea or juice, a book, my favorite Disney blanket and the chairs in our front yard.

I would also like to refine some of the Selfie Saturdays rules, now that we’re out of the learning/tutorial phase. The themes for each weeks are NOT mandatory, they’re simply a way to challenge you, give you a jolt of creativity. If you’re not digging the theme, feel free to take whatever self-portrait you want. Try to stay away from the in-mirror shots, or arm’s length shots (unless they’re really pretty, photographically speaking, or creative). There’s nothing wrong with those once in a while, but the whole point is to become more creative and also more comfortable with shooting with a tripod, remote and no view of the lens- a true self-portrait.

I realize everyone has to start somewhere, so if you’re not 100% comfortable with taking selfies and showing yourself, by all means, do what you need to do to get there- even if that means tipping your toes in the water of self-portraiture and doing an in-mirror shot – I’m sure your readers will appreciate taking another (or first) look at the person behind the words and such beautiful photography.

So you get me right?
Self-portraits – anyway, anyhow, anywhere, with ANYONE (kids, family, pets, as long as you took it)- with the ultimate goal to be as creative as possible, not always, but at times.

Tomorrow, I will give my, most likely, not very creative backyard/front yard shot. I PROMISE!

P.S.: Oh and don’t you dare think that I spent this week without any self-portraits – I take plenty on my iphone, believe me, which you can see if you add me on Instagram (girl_on_e)
P.P.S I know that after seeing this photo, you’re gonna comment saying “What are you talking about? You look gorgeous!”, I’ll tell you right now- I put make up on, did my hair and used an in phone skin smoother at that photo.

LINK UP YOUR BACKYARD PHOTOS BELOW

As I am going through my 47,000 photos in Lightroom, I keep jumping around from one year to another, depending on my mood. I find it fun actually! In the end, my goal is to edit, and sort all 47,000 photos, so what does it matter if I do this folder today and another tomorrow.

So this weekend, I felt I needed some real beauty in my life. And what’s better than spring in Florida, at Universal Studios to boot. So I went ahead working on those photos. They were taken in March, I believe and some of the brightest photos in my collection. The colors just make me happy and I hope that will translate into some happiness for you.

I’m also working on about 3000 photos of Disney and its parks and resorts that I’ve taken over the years. Most of them are already sorted, so I only have a few folders to go through and eliminate rejects. So we have that to look forward to, and Disne

linking with

OUT OF THIS WORLD

This was a selfie I took in Tortola, the most “out of this world” place I’ve been to. It’s so quiet and calm and slow, so untouched and tropical. This was such a nice little island that they didn’t need to introduce traffic lights until 2001. Josiah’s Bay was by far our favorite, with us being the only two people on the whole beach. Needless to say we took a million selfies there. This was one of them. I had this image in my head before we even arrived on the island. I knew about this particular beach from the research I had done and I wanted this exact shot. With so many things that usually go wrong with most plans, it was amazing to actually make it happen.

 

 

SPRINKLES

I thought long and hard about what image I could use for sprinkles. See, I have NEVER had ice cream with sprinkles, and therefore never took a picture of any. I’m not really a sweet tooth kind of girl ( at least not any more), so when I have ice cream, I find that it’s already way too sweet and never opt for any toppings ( at least when it comes to American ice cream. European ice cream is much better in that sense). So after a few minutes of thinking about what could use as sprinkles photo, I remembered the awesome set we took around Christmastime with my Italian/Russian bestie, Elena, in Celebration, Orlando.
As you can see, it was warm, as it normally is in Florida, and one of the biggest traditions the town of Celebration (and Disney itself) has is pouring fake snow set to music on the main streets in November and December. You should have seen us, we danced and twirled and laughed like mad women. I have a video of that and I watch it periodically to get a load of positive emotions. Maybe when I’m feeling super confident and don’t mind our embarrassing theatrics, I’ll post it here once day- with the bad focus ( hubby CANNOT manual focus the camera in video mode- it’s a disability ), classical music and our crazy swan dance.

HAT

These shots were taken in Barbados. The left one was a self-portrait, right one taken by hubby. I think hubs was getting tired of picture taking, hence the funny face

MUSIC

A piano bar on a cruise ship

CLEAR

Antiguan beaches- clear, long and wide, with perfect sand and perfect waves. Antigua is known for its 365 beaches- one for each day of the year.

Also, I’d like to mention that next week’s Selfie Saturday’s theme is BACKYARD. That simple! No need to be creative if you don’t want to be. Just show us yourself as you’d be commonly found in the backyard. It has to be a self-portrait – that’s the only rule!

Do you guys know how when you need something it’s never there and when you don’t, there seems to be plenty of it?

Well, yesterday I was all set to do the light self-portraits. I had the location in my mind: the family room that gets AMAZING golden light during sunset. I spent the whole day waiting for it, I had make up one, hair done – and sure enough, this was the day when the sunset light was non-existant.
Disappointed, I decided to wake up the next day and do a photo for my baby book on the side of the couch that get streaming morning light through the blinds, that’ll work, I thought. I woke up at 7 am and spent two hours waiting for “the light”- nothing! It was there every morning but not today. So I decided to wing it with whatever I had available. And here it is:

MORNING LIGHT

Another attempt at rescuing a reject:

And finally, I did end up taking the doppler picture. And while it doesn’t fit the theme: light, per se, it IS a self-portrait and it turned out pretty good if I do say so myself, considering my camera remote broke yesterday and I had to shoot all these on a timer (and got pretty frustrated with it-ugh!). As far as my pregnancy is concerned, if you don’t read my pregnancy blog, I am currently in my 14th week and still feeling sort of blah. Looking forward to feeling like a human again.

I have some really yummy photos ready to be posted this week for Scavenger Hunt and other posts – some of color and tropics. So see you then.

<a href="http://selfiemagic.com/category/selfiesaturdays/" target="_blank"><img src=" http://selfiemagic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/gif-banner.gif" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a><br />

For now, Link up your LIGHT selfies: