pictures really are worth a thousand words

i love a great photo. i used to get so excited when i finally captured one of my kids looking well dressed and well mannered. however, what i've come to realize as i look back on my favorites - only one out of 10 photos is really a great photo if i'm looking at composition and lighting and all the things that i thought i should be concerned with.



my favorite photos as it turns out, are the ones that were taken while sneaking up on my kids or hastily chasing after them to capture the moment. sometimes they are the photos i take after tip-toe-ing into a dark room to document the "crash" i just heard from downstairs. these are definitely my FAVORITES. these are the ones that i have crammed into their baby albums and these are the ones that really tell the story of who they are.



i will share with you some of my favorites. our daughter has always been her own little person and has brought me from the brink of screaming to all out hysterical laughter with her antics. this is who she really IS and these are the photos i live for.

silhouettes and our logo

i love our logo - i just do. and i love the company/artist that created it! it makes me smile every time i see it. if you're wondering why - i'll let you in on the secret.

take a look at the le papier studio blog, the wonderful company responsible for my logo - they are featuring it on their site today! www.lepapierstudioblog.com

Birthday wisdom

There are many envelopes in my line of baby albums for various things – keepsakes, letters to your child, report cards, pictures and more.

On my daughter’s first birthday I wanted to write a letter to her, but I just couldn’t. She had been sick with acid reflux and a milk allergy for the first year and she was almost always uncomfortable. I felt like I didn’t yet know her true personality well enough to write that letter.

So rather than chronicle a less than peaceful year or try to fake it, I decided to do something different. At our daughter's birthday party I cut up pieces of paper and gave each of our family and friends a pen.





Our daughter was born just two months after my grandpa had passed away – a man who I loved so dearly and a man who I felt had so much wisdom from growing up in an era so different than my own. I decided that I wanted our child to have a little piece of wisdom from the friends and family who could offer that.



I loved reading through those pieces of paper at the end of the night. Each had a unique sentiment or a heartfelt piece of advice that was based on years of experience, love, heartache and well, wisdom. I remember smiling as I tucked those papers away carefully into the little envelope in her baby album.

It's never too late!

Last year when I was helping my mom to clean out some closets, we came across the baby books that she kept for my sisters and brother and I. It was fun to flip through and compare how each of us grew compared to the other – we read the little stories that were jotted down and flipped through scraps of paper that documented the events in each of our lives.


I couldn’t help to notice that with each child, my mom had less and less time to fill in the blanks in these wonderful little time capsules. So I suggested that my mom and I secretly remake my little sister’s baby albums. We could take one of the fresh outtakes albums and I would do all of the scanning of photos (and harass my mom and grandma daily about their memories for inspiration).


The project was a bit of labor, but after plowing through all of the torn and tattered photo albums and the hundreds of phone calls…the result was priceless! Finally, my sister had a completed album with all of the fantastic photos documenting her every little special moment. It was a lot of fun for me to help put this together. It is never too late!
Below are some of my favorite pages (notice the awesome fashions).




month by month - so sweet


frederick and nelson - coordinating outfits of course


the only known photo of my mom preggers