Oh what a fun session this was! I’ve known Mom for forever. Really, I started feeling a bit old once I realized how many marathons ago we had met! I have to brag on Mom for a bit: she’s truly the most active person in Pearland. If there’s a run or a bike or a triathlon–she’s doing it! You know you’re into multisport events when you say something like: “I just need to lose enough baby weight to fit back into my wetsuit”. So she can relay an Ironman event. Yes, she’s the bomb!

I got to try out some fabulous new fabrics and hair pretties that I got while raiding a prop destash from the fabulous Aimee Fuller Photography.  One of the things I like so much about working with newborn girls is I get to play dress-up. With two boys, dress-up involves more swords and superhero-muscle-costumes than bows and headbands!

So I won’t make you wait any longer: here’s the good stuff!

When Mom came in and Miss E was awake she was worried because she thought we would only be getting sleepy shots. Nope! I truly LOVE seeing these babies’ eyes open!

Sweet, sleepy baby!

I saw these toes and immediately loved them! Mom says they are her Daddy’s toes!

This precious hat was created by a wonderful high school friend: Momma’s Creations

I think she looks like a Victorian doll!

She gave up some sweet, sweet smiles for us during the session!!

Just love those sweet lips!

Again, I just love an awake baby! (quiet, alert wakefulness, especially! lol!)

A crown for the little princess she truly is!

And dreaming of the angels! What a sweetie!

Thanks again, Mom, for coming in and sharing your darling with me!

Love day has come and gone. It was fun.  And Pinterest-filled for all except for this slacker mom. My kids survived. Sheesh.

This week and month’s theme both are {LOVE}. Two birds; one stone. I’m all for multitasking these days.

Here’s my image:

I could post so many things with the theme of love. My family. My life as a Christian. My new camera bag.  But this really touched my heart and I knew it had to be this. My big guy was so excited last week to show me how to make a heart with your hands (he learned it at school). I made the “love” wallpaper/overlay as part of the “trying something new” that I’m wanting to get out of this year of challenges. Was pretty okay with how it turned out!

So go take a look-see over at Misty Seltzer | Lubbock, TX Family Photographer to get her take on {LOVE} for the Bloom Forum’s PROJECT 52.

And check out these links for the PROJECT 12 over at Newborn Goodness:

If you just want to see some pics of my boys frantically tearing into their V-Day gifts, enjoy here.

There’s a challenge when you become a photographer to find your niche. Not just your style. But what you love to do. Who you love to work with. It takes some time and potentially some really not-your-favorite sessions to start to develop where you fit in (and where you don’t!). Lately, I’ve really felt that my calling as a photographer is to walk with families as they grow, taking pictures along the way.

This session was a great example of that for me.  I was blessed to be able to take engagement portraits of this couple a few years ago and now am documenting another big step in their lives together–a new baby! It means the world to me to be able to work with families over the years and grow with them. It’s incredibly meaningful and special to me!

But enough about me. . .let’s enjoy this sweet, totally loving couple as they eagerly await their sweet little girl.

A little light reading. ..

Can’t you just feel their excitement? Such a loving couple. Little girl is very lucky, indeed!

Mom made this adorable pillow a la Pinterest for the session.

I think this one is my favorite from the session. Top three, at least.

I love when I ask a couple to get close and sweet and they are so truly in love and adore each other so much. These two are the most loving couple. Big pink puffy heart love!!

She’s such a pretty little mamacita!

Love this one, too!

Love!

Thanks, you guys, for sharing this moment with your growing family! I cannot wait to meet miss C!!!!

I never know if it’s “Valentine’s” or “Valentines’ “. I should know this–I did major in English, right?

Anyway. . .just thought I’d share some of my sweeties on this day of love.

Herding cats, I tell you!

Everything is better with candy.

Nom nom!

This is his James Bond face, for sure!

I hope you all are enjoying your V-Day! Personally, all I asked for was a day without cooking! And maybe some chocolate!

(or something like that–I was a Spanish teacher, remember!)

It’s Mardi Gras time! Time to enjoy King Cakes. Collect some beads without doing anything that would make your grandma blush.  Enjoy some music, food, and adult beverages!

We don’t actually do anything for Mardi Gras, but this year I ran the Galveston Mardi Gras marathon. It was wet, cold, windy, and made for a great story! Thank goodness I have no desire to run 26.2 miles again for a very, very long time! And my very generous brother-in-law gave my kiddos a really impressive pile of beads to play with. So combined with one of my favorite backdrop colors and a willing child (oh, and a kid’s meal from Burger King for the hat–yes, I am confessing to feeding my children fast food this week!) and working with an online studio-lighting workshop through Clickin Moms with the fantabulous Jessica Gwozdz photography–voila!

(I could not convince my model to wear anything other than his camo pajama pants. Oh my)

Let those good times roll!!!

I’m not a perfectionist.  I would say {perfect} is just something I’m not good at. My husband might amend that statement to say it’s not that I’m not good at it, I’m just lazy about it. And I’ll agree. I’m too tired to try for {perfect}. So this week’s theme {letting go of perfect} just made me feel a bit more apathetic than usual. I’m not striving for perfect so what does the letting go of my bare minimum standards looks like? I could post pictures of my dirty house. My cluttered office. My sandbox-crusted kids. Dishes in the sink. My rarely-used but much-loved Chi. I really had no idea where to start. I mean, brushing my hair in the morning is a big step up for me. (A little TMI? You wonder why I’m rocking that ponytail 364 days a year!!!) So there’s not a whole lot of perfect going on to let go of.

Or maybe I’m just being hard on myself. I’m admitting to being in a bit of a funk. I think I need just a little more sleep!

Anyway. . .yesterday this happened and I was somewhat thankful to my toddler for giving me a little reason to {let go of perfect}

Yes, it is a bit macabre.

But, honestly, I was not all that upset. I’m not a big collector. This was a gift many years ago and I don’t remember the occasion or the originator.

I think last week I mentioned that we don’t have a lot of “nice” stuff in our house because of two wild and crazy boys.

Make that one less nice thing.

Oh well. Just letting it go.

Okay, now go check out what Jack and Janie Photography | Katy Photographer has in store here

Misty Seltzer | Lubbock, TX Family Photographer has in store in her {letting go of perfect}

And 16 days early! Imagine my surprise when one night I was sending out a message to momma-to-be with some last-minute preparations for our session coming up in a few weeks (first babies are never early, right?) and the very next morning I saw a Facebook post that this pretty princess had made her arrival!

I think this is my new favorite girlie blanket! Some days I just can’t get enough of PINK!

What a sweet little snug-bug! She was truly my easiest newborn yet! So content to sleep and then have some quiet alert time where we got to see those big gorgeous eyes!

I always like to incorporate sentimental items into the session– a friend had made this little knit hat for this sweet baby girl.

She has miles of eyelashes. So gorgeous! And she was so sweet to model this bonnet for me! I heart it!

Prin-cess. Definitely.

I think grey and lavender are my new favorite color combo.

Now I love images like this. . .when Mom and Dad look and say something like: “Oh! She always has her hand up like this!” Or “She was always doing that during the ulatrasounds!”. I love when we capture the babies’ earliest personalities and preferences to remember forever.

Hello, gorgeous.

See those lashes? Thank goodness Daddy is already prepared to deal with suitors!

Sweet, sweet, sweet.

If you’re wondering if I just kept her in this position and put every hair-pretty I own on her then you are wondering correctly! To quote a fabulous newborn photographer: “Sometimes I get a little crazy with the girls”.  She was so compliant to just chill out while I got to play dress-up with headbands and hats!

This sweet little Aggie with a handmade chair from her Grandpa.

Beautiful family.

Pretty Mama.

Proud Papa. I love how tiny she is in his arms!

Again, gorgeous family. Thank you so much for sharing your family with me and having me in to your home to document your sweet little angel!

Thank goodness for that truism! After about 6 years of not being on a bike–at all!–I managed to keep myself and my gear upright on two wheels for this session! It was not graceful, but it was functional enough!

I met Mom last summer at our kids’ activities. It’s strange to think that our preschoolers have “activities” but, yet, they did (and still do!) and we met and struck up a friendship.

When we started thinking about this session I was thrilled when Mom didn’t think I was nuts for wanting to incorporate something they do all the time–ride bikes–into the session. I was thrilled with how things turned out.

We followed their usual route. First to the local school to play around in the empty parking lot and do some tricks, then on to a bridge where they often stop and look for critters.

I’m just going to point out that this wee little man is barely three and rides with no training wheels or assistance. Very impressive!

We rode over to “MommyDaddyTayTayandWeWy” road (it perhaps might have an official name, but this is what they call it!) and stopped to see if there were any turtles or critters in the creek below.

This image with his foot just so really captured a moment for me:

No critters were spotted except, perhaps, for this handsome little guy.

Teenager in training. Yep. I’m getting the stink-face here.

Love. Love. Love. With big pink puffy hearts.

Mom promised that the shoes matching so perfectly was just a fortunate accident.  They’re super-awesome.

Changing perspective.

I asked them to bring a book that was special and they brought Calvin and Hobbes and read a favorite clip.

Quite possibly my favorite sibling image to date. Love this so much!

I didn’t realize how much these guys went upside down in the session until I was blogging and realized this was the second “upside down kids” image that I loved and had to post. They didn’t seem to mind too much!

Pretty much my favorite image from the session. Yup. That makes my day.

Maxin’ and relaxin’.

We wrapped up with a little bit of music. It was a little bit of awesomeness.

Two-man show.

And just in case Dad needs an album cover some day. . .

If you couldn’t tell, I had a blast with this session. And I think the family did, too! Thanks again, you guys! It was so much fun!!!

The lightning whelk is the State shell of Texas.

You know us Texans–we’re a proud bunch.

So when my husband and preschooler came home from the beach in 2010 with a gorgeous, perfectly intact lightning whelk I was over the moon. We don’t have a lot of treasures in our house. I’m no decorator. Anything {on the shelf} has to really be up out of the reach of curious fingers or at risk for destruction. So this perfect example of our state shell (honestly, I’d never seen one wash up intact) is a true artifact to be set apart from daily handling. That’s not to say that this treasure won’t be pondered and examined by my older hands one day. I just want it to survive as a reminder of a year when we were living away from family on a project. A very special year when we grew a lot as a family, both emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically (adding a family member counts for a lot!). We did love our time living out in Southeast Texas and have wonderful friends and memories from that time. But the lightning whelk is the physical reminder of that year.

Truly, I can’t believe I took about 30 pictures of a seashell. But it has been really refreshing to stop to take in the beauty of something so natural and pure.  The gracefulness of the lines and angles is very striking. So often, I’m just focusing on the eyes in a portrait. Here I had to choose which angle would be my focal point. Which angle and perspective would communicate the beauty of this trinket to others. It was a nice change to take something so often on display and overlooked and put into focus and truly examine it.

Oh, and just FYI, I moved our {on the shelf} object from it’s current resting place high up {on the shelf} in our bedroom to a window above the tub in our bathroom. (Do you like those streaks on the windows? Some wild bubble baths, let me tell you!) And I did have to rescue it during our “session” from some very curious toddler hands!

Since I’m trying to do some new things every week, I’m using some different, hazy processing. I’m not sure it feels “right” but it’s as close to the mood as I’m capable of producing right now!

I think the first and the last are my favorites.

And, honestly, there’s nothing less appealing about seashells than reading about the inhabitants like I did on Wikipedia a while ago. Eeew!

Anyway. .. check out what Misty Setzler | Lubbock,TX Family Photographer has {on the shelf} this week HERE

I have had the opportunity to work with some wonderful families over the past few months. The gift of photography is a FABULOUS gift to give to grandparents. It’s been such a blessing to capture several generations together. It’s always a fun time, for sure!

Part of this family traveled QUITE a way for the session! All the way from Minnesota! Mom and Dad are photographers there, so they had a lot of idea for the session and we had a blast putting it all together! I love when a family talks about what the currently have hanging in their home as a huge canvas and what they are looking to replace that with! Bigger is better!

So here are some sneaks from the session. I really had a ton of favorites!

I think this was the first of second image I took. These kids know how to work a camera!

It was a sunny, hazy day in Houston!

Nana and Gramps with the kiddos.

Priceless expression from Grandpa here!

Because two people fell in love…

We brought a book to read…

Expert ticklers!

I just adore this image.

Just hanging around…

This is one of my favorites in the running for that new big canvas…

…or maybe this one

I love using the phrase “adult children!”  when composing shots in generational family sessions. Brothers!

Cuties

Or maybe this is my favorite for that big canvas

Or this. . . Kind of difficult to choose, don’t you think??

Thanks, everyone for a wonderful session! I had a blast!