My baby boy?

Everything is changing and I'm NOT liking it.  Rees has always been called baby Rees, but all the sudden I get the reply "I'm not a baby, I'm Rees "e" I don't know why he calls himself Reese, but he does. It's like he crossed over from my baby to a big boy overnight. He is so independent and his vocabulary is growing so fast. I find myself debating with him daily and then I sit and wonder how we got here so quick. Anyways *sigh* I begged him to help me get setup for a shoot I had this evening, which by the way went super good! and this is what I got...

Isn't he a handsome little devil!

Too cute not to share

Just another quick post as I am editing these gorgeous pictures of baby X I fell in love with this one and I just had to share it. Look at his beautiful eyes. He's not even two weeks old yet, he's so alert and beautiful.

It doesn't get any better than this...

We welcomed a new baby into our family (Rees' newest cousin) and I got to take pictures of him!!! Baby Xander is so adorable and his personality is wonderful too. His mommy let me do whatever I wanted to with him so I had a blast! Thanks Denise! I gotta admit I got a little baby fever playing with him all day. Here is one out of the hundred pictures I took of him today.

Isn't he precious!

Another flower picture

I can't help myself. I am addicted to taking pictures of my flowers right. Spring is the best time of year. It perks me up and pulls me out of the winter blues when the flowers start blooming. So here is a picture of a perfect lilac from my gigantic bush **tree** behind my house.

Hidden treasure

So I woke up this morning with photography on my brain. I had a busy day planned so I had to get little man up and moving quickly to get it all accomplished. So I get a cute outfit together, bath Rees, fix his hair, go find a GREAT location which happens to be in my back yard and I didn't even know it!!! Then I hike up to the old barn with Rees, my camera and a few props and by this time I am already whipped! Then I get my camera geared up and my precious little son says to me "momma Rees wanna go home" What? No say it ain't so. He's had enough before we even began. I beg an beg him to just look at the camera and nothing! I was really excited about how beautiful the spot was that I had found but I didn't really get the "perfect" shot that I was hoping for but I was happy with this one. I'm going to try again when daddy is home to help! 

Day 37 - Really?

So, as I have previously complained about my dear son being very hard for me to photograph (especially in the studio)  this is yet another example of his absolute disgust of me taking his picture. I can promise him the world and it makes NO difference he does everything imaginable to NOT take a good picture. Anyone have any good tricks? It's really starting to get me down I need a good picture for his B-day invites. I already have them designed now I just need a good picture to put in them.

Beautiful Miss B

I had the opportunity to photograph Miss B at three weeks old and she was such a doll. Check her out...

Isn't she precious? She slept most of the time so I got to play around and pose her a variety of different ways.

Does it get any sweeter than this? Well maybe it does check the next picture out.

This one stole my heart. Her daddy was so wonderful with her and father daughter relationships are like no other. It was so precious to see how he could calm her down so quickly effortlessly.

So thanks so much for giving me the opportunity to photograph your family!

Sneak Peak

I took some family pictures for my friend/neighbor last week and they turned out so well I thought I would share one of my favorites. I am not done with all of them but so far I am loving this one ( I wish Mat and I had some like this) It's really pretty in color but I am in love with the black and white version. They had a family of 5 and three full grown mastiff's. Needless to say I'm gonna post some of the pics with the doggies too! They are so pretty and so HUGE. Okay I better keep working on them I'm sure their anxious to see them.

personalization makes me so happy

ANYTHING that has my name on it is awesome in my book! I adore anything that's personalized and I try to always personalize gifts. My sister is hands down the best sister in the whole wide universe. Her and I have such a wonderful, amazing, forgiving untouchable love and respect for each other that I feel she makes me a better person. Her and I did not get along until I moved out of the house and to this day I regret the horrible way that I treated her while we lived together. There is just too many years between the two of us and that made it hard to relate to each other while we where in our "formative" years but now that we're both grown ups we are best buddies, so with that said I wanted to get her something special for helping out with Rees this summer. She is such a wonderful person that I always put a lot of time and thought into her gifts and these turned out so cute I wanted to share some pictures. I found THIS cool site that would allow me design a mouse pad (with my digi scrapbook elements) and upload MY design and they printed it. I didn't really like the designs they had to offer but the capability to upload your own designs is great. So I designed a matching set which included A tote bag, a coffee mug (for her hot chocolate) bookmarks for her class, a mouse pad, stickers to go inside her books that say This book belongs to Ms. Rees and a notebook that I hand made with a cool template from Sweet Shoppe Designs that you simple edit in photoshop and then print, apply some modge podge to the cover of the comp book front and back then put a book on it to weight it down for an hour and tada you have a great inexpensive PERSONALIZED gift! Take a look....

You can click on the image to enlarge is you want to see more detail.

The H family

I took some family pics for The H family this weekend and their two little cuties are just adorable. Look at Little miss P's eyes, aren't they gorgeous! And baby E will be One soon and he is such a handsome little man, he was so easy and cooperative it was a great session. Here is a little sampling of the session...

My idea of beautiful

Back in the pre-child days I loved to garden and and grow beautiful flowers that I babied along all summer but times have changed and priorities are different now. My perennials are the only things that are still in bloom my poor annuals have been neglected to the point of embarrassment. So I took some pictures through out the summer of different things in my gardens and I have a lot of nice ones but this picture is one that I am absolutely in love with. I just love the "perspective" of it and the story that it tells. I am not an art collector nor would I know good art if it bit me in the butt I just know that this single picture makes me so happy and draws my eyes in everything I look at it.

So I played around with it today and added some cool texture effects and what not so I think I am going to order this in a canvas to hang on the wall. Rees pictures are taking over my house I figured I might through one in of a different subject matter to change things up a bit. To the point of my story things that you least expect to make you happy can! The hussle and bussle of everyday life is just overwhelming sometimes, I'm sure everyone can relate to that. So go snap some pics of something that doesn't have legs and just sit back and admire the simple beauty behind it. I have some of clouds that just make me crazy happy too! These are inexpensive things that are easy to obtain and have provided me so much peace and happiness. Do I sound crazy? Just take my word one day when things are quiet and you have a minute to yourself (when you should be cleaning house or something) go snap some pictures and enjoy them!!!!

Little Cutie

Lilee is turning 3 this month so her mommy brought her over to have her birthday pics taken and here is how they turned out

Miss L is a diva to say the least, isn't she a cutie!

Baby J

I had the One year shoot with Jackson on Thursday and he did stupendous! I had a lot of fun. I have taken his pictures quite a few times but he is such a little man now!







We handed him this pretty blue lollipop to hold and as soon as Brandi let go he dropped it LOL,

We had a a sick little man

Sunday Rees was super cuddly, he wouldn't let us putting him down he justed wanted to hang out on our laps which has never happened before. Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed it but I know something wasn't right. So Monday morning at 4 am he woke up burning hot. I took his temp and it was 102.3 so I gave him a bath along with Tylenol and put him in bed with us. After the bath he thought it was time to start the day so he was jumping around in bed and wanting to chit chat he didn't really act sick but he was burning up. He was chilling too and that was heart breaking, I hate to see that! After a couple hours we all went to sleep and then we got up at 9 and went to the Dr. I felt so silly. The doctor said I'm not sure what's wrong he acts fine. Which he was being pleasant but still not being "Rees". So the Dr. sent me home with nothing! But, throughout the day he got to feeling better and by late evening we went outside and just bummed around...obviously he was feeling better.



Then to relax after he went to bed I scrapped! I am still only up to my April pictures, I just can't believe I'm this behind. Here are a few that I did.





This is a real fish that I went and got just to do these pictures. I love how they turned out. I made a 10x20 collage and put it in his room. and at one point he caught the fish and had it in his hand outside the bowl!

TGIF

It's finally here. I love Fridays they always end up being short work days and Rees and I always get into something fun, today was swimming with my neighbor (Gretchen) We went to the pool and swam for a couple hours it was really fun. I love just doing nothing it doesn't happen very often but when it does it really relaxes me. I have to work in the restaurant in the morning, then Rees has a b-day party at the tumbling place, then I have a client coming to proof her order so tomorrow looks a little hectic but at least it's Saturday! (I really don't know why that makes me so happy even though Mat and I are both working I'm still okay with it just because it's Saturday??)

Some here a pics from my session with the sweetie pie from Wednesday, it was his first birthday Here's Cash (such a cool name)

Oh, I wanted to share one of the birthday cards that I designed for Cash's 1st b-day (this one is my fav)

A great resource

Does anyone want to learn how to make scrapbook pages, picture collages, enhance your photos or anything else that you can dream up? Photoshop Elements is the program you need. This is the "baby" version of Photoshop and it costs like $139 compared to $800 for the full version. Which is on my DREAM list (I'm likely never going to own it) but elements works so well that I'm content with it. It is difficult to learn at first but once you gain the basic knowledge of how the platform works it's like building blocks. There is still a lot I don't know but it's fun to play around and figure new things out as I go. This is the program I use to edit all my pictures and I build my collages and scrapbook pages with it too. You can download it for free right HERE. I think it's well worth the effort to at least download the free version and try it out. I use it to design my blog headers and paper for the sides it's so useful! I have found so many fabulous resources that I have learned so much from that I thought I would share a few. So first go dl the program then check out these websites.

1. Misty Cato...lots of beginner stuff to get you started.
2. Digi Photography for moms... lots of tutorials for actions (you'll learn that a little later on)
3. Of course good ol' Youtube for vidoe tutorials
4. Coffee Shop One of my very favorite websites that I visit everyday.

So I hope this gets someone started to understanding the program and taking advantage of all the useful things you can do with it. I get asked a lot about how I do things and this program is the backbone of everything that I create so if anyone has any interest in tutorials or free actions, etc. let me know and I would be happy to share!

Brotherly love

Last week I spent the evening with the Roe family taking pictures as BE. I brought Rees in hopes I would get a couple good shots of him but turns out that 3 boys together creates some chaos and they seem to fuel each others fire if ya know what I mean! But all in all I think it went really well. I got some great family shots for them here are a couple

I think they turned out cute, I added some vintage effects to some and this is just a small sample, I ended up with 300 on my card when I got home! I love to take pictures!!!! I am on the lookout for a set of railroad tracks in a country setting if anyone knows of any please let me know I have got some great ideas for them. I am really enjoying shooting pictures outside with natural light I am learning so much about my camera settings. I think I enjoy outdoor more than studio shooting, maybe because I haven't got to use my studio for a while. Don has taken it over to use a bidding room since Trimat is bidding on a lot of work this month. Good thing it's nice outside I would have withdraws not using my camera for that long.