{Sneak Peek} Beautiful Baby Girl

I'm so excited to share these sneak peek images!  Baby L was my first beautiful newborn girl. Oh, my was she gorgeous; lots of hair & oh so tiny. I currently think I am cursed with the "newborn not sleepy virus" but I'm so happy with how this set of images turned out despite the not quite so sleepy little one.

  

 

 

  

 

 

Thank you for allowing me to photograph your little girl. I will see you on Friday with the entire set. :)

Perfect Sessions {Monday Minute}

I don't know that there is such a thing as a perfect session, especially when photographing your own child. I'm sure that plenty of other photographers out there will tell you the exact same thing.

It's like an unspoken curse or maybe just a higher expectation (& lower tolerance) from your own kids to behave the way you want them to & to make  pretty faces, or follow instructions. Either way, photographing my own children is almost always 100 times harder & more exhausting than any other session, hands down.

If you see an image you like or even love, you can bet that there are at least 15 like this for every one of those:

Oh the unpredictability of childhood, it's pure bliss!

{Sneak Peek} Baby B -round 2

I think I mentioned when I blogged about the first session that baby B wasn't exactly sleepy the last time I visited. I was excited to go back & try again though & I'm so glad, I think there are some SUPER cute images from the second go-around.

 Thank you for having me out to photograph the little guy, I'll be seeing you this week for a closer look.

Time for another "New" feature {Scenic Shots}

It's another new feature, Scenic shot Tuesday.  As a photographer, I don't only photograph cute little babies, toddlers, & sweet families; I also enjoy photographing every day life & the way the world looks around me.  The 2nd Tuesday of every month I'll be posting a little of what I see.  Today I've got a special scenic feature though.

I am so blessed to live in a place where the 'country' lifestyle is still alive and well.  I had the opportunity this morning to photograph a brand new baby foal. I spent about the first 2 1/2 hours of her new life watching her interact with momma & being accustomed to her new world. I can't wait to head back out & photograph her again in the next few days.

Welcome Miss "Harley"

{Snapshots} My life this week

I know I've talked about getting the blog in order before & this is just another one of those posts. In an attempt to be more regular & scheduled, my goal is to post a look into my life every other Sunday of the month.
So here I am with the first edition of, My Life in Snaps. Random shots from the first week or so of the month of April.

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This is sort of what the typical weekend morning looks like. Grace in her crazy hair, Brody sucking down some milk, Anna pouting for who knows what.

Brody has a new fascination with the laundry cart. He WILL.NOT. leave it in the laundry room, instead we find it in every other room of the house, usually with him climbing into it, or hanging on it, sitting in it.   & a banged up nose courtesy of sisters & steps.

The girls & Daddy are on horse stall clean up duty, taking another bucket of stuff to the compost pile.

With a nice little snow storm last week we got to see Ol' Man Winter trying to steal away our spring.  It didn't last long and although it most likely damaged a lot of the fruit trees, it was very pretty on the blossoms.

Evidence of a little frost bite, kisses the blossoms now & even though the snow is far away, today, who knows what our crazy little world will look like tomorrow.

Slow Cooked Pork Carnitas {Food Friday}

Well, hello, food Friday, how I have missed posting you.  One of my favorite things to do with and for my family is to try out new recipes. It gives us all something to look forward to & we get to try familiar things in new ways.  This week was particularly full of new recipes & the one that probably wins our vote for favorite new recipe was the Slow Cooked Porked Carnitas.  I found this recipe in the most recent issue of Taste of Home (my favorite subscription).  And although I didn't document the dish with photos, let me just tell you, it was DELISH! I'll mark my changes with an * and then tell you about it at the bottom of the recipe.

For this dish you'll need:
1 boneless pork shoulder butt roast (3 to 4 pounds)*
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 bunch green onions, chopped
1-1/2 cups minced fresh cilantro
1 cup salsa
1/2 cup chicken broth*
1/2 cup tequila or additional chicken broth*
2 cans (4 ounces each) chopped green chilies*
12 flour tortillas (8 inches), warmed
Optional toppings: fresh cilantro leaves, chopped avocado and tomato*
Cut roast in half; place in a 5-qt. slow cooker. Sprinkle with garlic, oil, salt and pepper. Add the onions, cilantro, salsa, broth, tequila and chilies. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or until meat is tender.
Remove meat; cool slightly. Shred with two forks and return to the slow cooker; heat through. Spoon about 2/3 cup meat mixture onto each tortilla; serve with toppings of your choice. Yield: 12 servings.
**** I didn't use tequila, mostly because we don't have any. I also didn't use broth, but some water & a little bouillon powder. I omitted the green chiles, because my sweet little family doesn't do spicy foods (except for me). After I shredded the pork I didn't put it back into the crock, but strained the juices back into the pork because I know my kids & they wouldn't have ate it the other way. We didn't serve it with the avocado either, but only because I forgot to get them. I didn't have any limes and would have loved to squeeze a little fresh lime on them. YUM!

Wordy Wednesday goes Product Spotlight

In an attempt to be more organized with business stuff, crafting stuff, & just life in general I created a blog calendar mapping out specific recurring themes & posts.  I've been doing fairly well at keeping up with everything in the calendar, I did miss a post or 2 on here, but that's only because I didn't want to overwhelm you with 1000 posts in one day.

So instead of posting a long story with a couple pics for Wordy Wednesday (I'm sure if you're a blog junkie like me, you've heard of Wordless Wednesday, but I wanted to switch it up a bit for a couple posts a month & give you wordy Wednesday), I'll be doing the product spotlight post I have planned for the 3rd of every month now.

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This month I want to spotlight, Canvas Gallery Wraps.

Have you seen one of these? Held it? Felt it up close?  If not, you need to. They are amazing. They look gorgeous & are a great addition to any wall or photo display. My favorite size right now 16x20, sure that sounds HUGE, but when you get it on the wall, it's not so bad & makes a big impact & looks amazing.

These wraps are 1.5" deep and just pop off the wall. I can design the edges to match the photo or your entire photo can wrap around the edges. 

Because I love these so much & want my clients to be able to experience them in their own photo displays as well, I'm marking these down for the month of April.

April 2011 - Canvas Wrap Special --  take 30% off regular prices

16x20 Canvas Wrap : $200  -- Sale: $140*

11x14 Canvas Wrap : $160 -- Sale: $112*

10x10 Canvas Wrap: $100 -- Sale: $70*

*tax not included

Here are a couple of sample images from one of the professional labs that I use to print these gorgeous works of art.

{Sneak Peek} Miss Rylee

I must say that I am so lucky to be able to do what I love, for my work.  Yesterday was another beautiful day around here, although it wasn't completely sunny or extremely warm, it was a great spring day & I got to spend an hour doing one of my favorite things, chasing around a wee-one.  She was so sweet!!

I really love when things come together for a session. Weather was great. One of the locations was new and worked out very well. And the little miss, well she was a perfect little model.

Even when she decided to showcase some little girl attitude, she was great. Which, if you're a momma of girls, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm saving my most favorites (so far, I still have to finish editing this session) for last. This first one, is one of my all time favorite images that I've made. 

And this last one, is just one of those things I had thought out before going to the session. I stopped by one of our local florists for the balloon bouquet before meeting up for our session & I'm so glad I saved these for the 2nd location where we got a little bit of sunshine. 

Thank you so much for having me photograph your little girl. She is precious & was such a great little model. I'll be seeing you next week for your proofing session.

Sleeping Baby Boy{Minute Monday}

We got to spend a little time this week visiting relatives. Just sharing a sleeping little baby I captured while we were there. This is my cousins little boy. So sweet, asleep on Pa's bed.

{Sneak Peek} Tiny Baby "B"

Yesterday I had the privilege to take some newborn portraits for my sisters best friend. I'm so happy I got to make images of this little guy. He was so sweet & oh so tiny.

He decided that Saturday is his non-sleepy day though, so we spent lots of time trying to get him into sleepy mode. He also didn't like to be uncovered or unclothed.

I still captured some super sweet moments, including one of those oh, so precious baby smiles (that you'll have to come back to see another day).

 

Hoping to get back & get a few more shots this week or even the next. Thank you so much for having me make your babies portraits. See you on Thursday for your proofing session.

{Sneak Peek} A Promo Session

I don't know if you've seen, but I'm looking for some new faces. Specifically babies, but also toddlers & even kids. This little sweetie is one of those new faces. We had a fun, unpredictable little session out at her house.

 Where her momma & I chased her up & down the driveway, trying to semi-corral her for a couple of shots. She pretended like we didn't even exist!! So lets just say, mom & me lost. But the shoot was  a success anyways.

That's one of my favorite parts about photographing the wee-ones, they are so unpredicatable, there will never be 2 sessions the same. Some days they are on, somedays they want to be camera hams & others, well I'm pretty sure if they could talk, they would tell me to "bug off."

This next one is probably one of my most favorite shots to date.

Thank you so much for such a fun time. I'll see you this week for your proofing session.