I managed to blog Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and planned on blogging another shoot on Friday. But here I am sitting in front of my computer at 9:30 on Thursday night and I haven’t even begun to prepare a blog post. And if you are a blogger, you know that it takes some time  

Today I felt accomplished. I haven’t stopped since I got up this morning and it felt good… I cleaned, I did laundry, I organized a few cabinets and drawers I had been meaning to get around too, Kennedy and I made a construction paper chain of hearts for Valentines Day, I made a phone call I had been putting off because I knew it would be one of those annoying stay-on-hold-listening-to-boring-music calls, and it was – I stayed on the phone for 37 minutes and was talking to an actual person about 6 minutes of that time. Anyway, back to the point, I managed to get a lot done today, but blogging did not make the cut. And even though I cleaned a good part of the day, my house looks like this right now:

Thanks to two little girls  

I’ll be back blogging next week, unless I can squeeze it in tomorrow, I have a full day, but we’ll see      Till then I’ll leave you with a few pictures of Bristol…

Oh yes… she melts my heart! (and clings to my legs, but that is beside the point)

Jane is sweet, she is beautiful, and she has this smile that takes over her whole face… seriously, this little girl is just precious! She turned two back in the fall, and I was so happy to be there documenting her birthday again this year! (I was there for her first birthday as well, so it was great getting to see her and how much she has changed and grown in the past year) I got there a few minutes before the party started in order to capture a few pictures of just Jane, these are some of my favorites:

A few party details…

I love this next one… something about the movement, the bright, blown-out spots, the pink balloon, I just love it!

Totally love this one too!

A few party shots:

This is one of Jane’s sweet cousins… there are 3 of them, all boys, and they are so incredibly sweet (not to mention cute)!

Thank you Lynn and Brian for asking me to be there at her Birthday and capture it all for you. I had so much fun!

Seriously, I have said it before, but I’ll say it again, I love Bridal and Day After sessions!  I get to shoot a girl looking gorgeous in her wedding gown without the stress and hurry of the wedding day. LOVE IT!

My sister got married back in October and we got together for a Day After session a couple of weeks after her wedding. A Day After session can be done shortly after the wedding, or it can be years later. The idea is to get that dress out of the back of the closet, put it back on and have some fun. You get gorgeous pictures of you in your dress and while you may have great pictures from your wedding day, a girl can never have too many pictures! Plus, when doing a Day After shoot you can just relax and have fun. Generally the wedding day is a bit more exciting and you are doing a whole lot more than just taking pretty pictures!

Also, a Day After session generally includes the groom. But, Brides often get pictures of just themselves too… that shoot is commonly called “Trash the Dress” (even if you don’t actually trash the dress) Either way, Holly and Jonathan opted to do this together, and we had SO much fun.  Holly did not try to ‘copy’ the same look she had on her wedding day, and opted to wear her hair down. (She wore it up on her wedding day… you can see a few pictures here, and more here)

Okay, enough talk… now on to the pictures

Jonathan just had to have a little fun…

Laughter… I love it!

Jonathan having some more fun!

I’ll end with these two because they make me happy…

I almost forgot to mention… my sister recently started a blog called Chic & Lovely and you can find it HERE.

Have a wonderful day … and thanks for stopping by!

Gini is a senior this year… so we got together for a few “Senior” shots. These are some of my favorites….

These next four are very similar, but I liked each one for different reasons, so I just posted them all

Gini asked for this shot, and I love it!

While Gini changed outfits I snapped a few of little brother Jared…

Gini – love ya girl

Meet Levi and Naomi … a new baby sister, only a couple of weeks old at the time these pictures were taken, and a proud big brother:

Ah… sweet! And it only lasted about a minute, then two-year-old Levi had bigger better things to do. Like climb all over his tractors (one of his favorite things in the world right now!) And he was not too sure about my camera…

But we managed to get some adorable shots anyway!

Love this one of him rubbing his eye, it feels like I captured some of that sweet-little-boy-innocence that seems to pass by all too quickly in our babies!

Speaking of sweet and innocent… isn’t she precious?!

 Cassie, thanks so much for asking me to capture these for you!

I am ready for spring. Yep, I know we are right smack in the middle of winter, but this is when I crave spring the most it seems. I am ready for little bare feet running outside in warm sunshine, shorts and no jackets… Ahhhhh, soon!

Going through my folders I found these pictures that I took earlier this month on a day that was warm enough to go without jackets… Kennedy and Tori driving around in Tori’s jeep:

In other random news this weekend, I tried to be crafty by doing this little project.  Lets just say I am not that great at being patient and crafty. This project is time-consuming! (Notice I said “is” not “was”? Uh, yeah… I didn’t exactly finish yet!)

Happy Monday

I hope your weekend is full of it

And yes, I am posting another ‘quickie’ instead of a shoot, but I will post more shoots next week! Till then, have yourself a great one!

I was lucky enough to have two shoots back to back with families that both had adorable/handsome boys. I say adorable for the younger boy in this shoot, and handsome for his older brother. Because I am pretty sure he does not want to be called adorable!

Meet Jacque, Andy, Drew and Luke:

See what I mean? This kid is handsome!

And this one… he is adorable!

Love this one:

Andy, Jacque, Drew and Luke- Thanks for asking me to take your family pictures… I had so much fun! And I am glad we were able to include your 4-legged family member and manage to schedule so that the boys could still make it to the football game, score! 

Wow. Where do I start? (talking about the Giveaway here)… I started out thinking wouldn’t it be awesome to get 50 comments?  While that would be awesome, I just hoped I got at least 10 or 20!  But One Hundred and one?! Seriously ya’ll, THANK YOU!

I saw the comments coming in via email, but I didn’t actually go to the blog and keep up with the total number, till last night. And seeing the number, well, I was blown away. And excited. And humbled. Let me say it again, Thank you all!

I know it is going to sound cliché, but I am going to say it anyway, I wish I could give each and every person that commented on my Giveaway post a free photoshoot. And if I had to choose a winner myself, it would have been tough. Very tough. That is where random.org helped me out. I simply put in the number of comments and let it pick the winner.

Thank you for not only participating, but for also sharing your stories as some of you did. I loved reading each and every comment.    And can I just say that you guys sure know how to make a girl with her camera feel good?! Thanks for that too

So, on to the winner now…. (drum-roll please!)

#100

Lisa said: I would love to win a free photoshoot to get some family portraits made! Pick me!

Congrats! You will be getting an email from me shortly!

And that is it for today’s post… I am not posting pictures or anything else because I am trying to get this up as quickly as I can.

Happy Monday