Photography - Learning manual mode

Last year, somewhere in January I finally bought a decent camera Panasonic Lumix DMC-G3, kit lens. (Now here I would show you a picture but it's quite hard to get a picture from a camera if that's the only one you have)
It has been my friend on a journey to Germany and Poland, and to Japan. I shot pictures on parties, from the birthday party of my 90 year old grandfather to the christening of the daughter of my cousin.
...
...
...
all in Automatic / Program mode...
Shame on me I know, but in my defense, manual mode seemed very very hard.
Until yesterday! When I stumbled upon the blog 'Click it up a notch'.
Courtney posted a 'how to shoot in Manual Mode - The Basics' document.
A very clear explanation of Aparture, Shutter speed and ISO.
Now, I knew what those were but I didn't really knew how to use them...
Her post was very easy to read.
So after reading the whole thing, I charged my battery and went to the park at noon to shoot
my first pictures in Manual Mode!
And here's the result!

f/3.5, 1/125, ISO 160, 14 mm

f/3.5, 1/125, ISO 160, 14mm

In the last picture you can see that I didn't get the acorn as a focus point. That's wasn't my intention... I wanted to acorn to be sharp and the rest unsharp but my camera didn't really want to take it as a focal point! *Learn how to use 'focal point' better added to the list*

Now I liked using manual mode! I can't wait to actually test it out on moving things!  I will post pictures once a week or more. You can always check out my instagram where I'll also post them! 

Have a nice day!

~ Riechan