New Do.

It wasn't just the website that got a new 'do' this week. I went out to the hairdressers and had a colour for the first time since I was pregnant with my four year old.

You forget how long it takes. To begin with I'm sitting there thinking I'd be in there for about an hour, which when you have 5 kids is a long time anyway but it ended up taking about 2 hours. Time is a precious commodity to a mother, especially once your children go to school. All of a sudden your year is broken into terms; your days are broken into 6 hour blocks. I know it seems like you would have a lot of spare time when your children are at school if you are a stay at home mum but there isn't a single day when I don't look at the clock in dismay at about 1pm and realize that once again I've not acheived nearly as much as I had hoped. Of course, I do still have one child at home full time (my 19 month old) and my four year old only goes to Kindy 3 days a week but it's still a juggling act.

It's so easy to blink and realize that your baby is now at school or - as I am doing with my 11 year old - that your little school girl is nearly finished primary school!

This is one reason why for me photos are so important. They freeze a moment in time. Whenever people talk about what they would save in a house fire almost all the time after family and pets people say they would save their photographs. Digital cameras have really helped us 'capture' more. Film was less fool proof. Digital has allowed us to shoot with more abandon, discard shots that are blurry, have caught a blink or someone pulling a funny face and continue until we get a decent shot. I can't tell you how many times my grandmother has cut off someone's head with her film camera. It ended up becoming a running joke, that Nanna would cut off part of our heads. But I do think digital has meant that fewer people see the 'point' in getting professional shots taken. You can keep shooting until you get something decent and even print it out yourself if you want to. I use to take photos of my kids a few years back that I thought were pretty damn good. I remember even setting up my newborn son on a blanket and 'posing' him. The things I didn't notice might be that I chopped off his feet, that the colour on his face was very red or that the shot was underexposed. A photographer would instantly know these things and a good photographer wouldn't do them. Likewise a good camera does not a good photographer make.

Go and have a look through your friends Facebook or your snapshots and look at how many photos are blurry, a little dark, have red eye, have chopped heads or limbs, major shadows on faces, something in the shot that shouldn't be there. Snapshots are awesome because we can't have a pro photographer follow us 24-7 but if you want an amazing shot, a piece of custom art of your loved ones, an investment then you hire a photographer.

Of course, there are going to be times when even the outtakes are keepers. You can almost see the thought bubble above her head saying, "Ugg, little siblings are soooo trying."