Sippy Cups & Coffee, Books & Blocks

This morning Jude and I went over to my good friend Mauria's house, and Jude and Rowen played together while we mom's had coffee. :) Jude loves his buddy Rowen, and says his name several times a day, so he was pretty excited when I told him we were going over to Rowen's house. It's pretty sweet.

One thing the boys always do when we're over there is unload a bag of these adorable wooden blocks that I think look so "storybook"... so I had to take a picture of the blocks. :) And here are some pictures I snapped as they played by the window light.

Beauty of Simplicity

Jude loves to pick up leaves when we are going to, or from, the house to the car and this was one he brought in the other day. I thought it was really pretty.

. excited over simple things .

This has been one fun week of getting mail! The very large mantle print arrived of the family portrait (2 blog posts down) and it turned out beautiful! Some great h.s. senior shots and a leather portfolio arrived for a client. And today I got some new photoshop things to play with.
This shot of Jude I posted here is kind of my first attempt at messing around with any of my new photoshop stuff, and it was a very brief attempt... so, I'm pretty sure that I'll look at this next week after learning some things - like how to actually use textures and such - and go, "man, why did I post that? It's so dorky and overdone!" ...and at that point, this blog post may disappear! :)
Oh, one other neat that happened today was that I found a very cool, vintage item that I'm going to use in a newborn photoshoot next month and I'm so excited about it (*squeal*)! You'll have to wait and see...
On a sad note, poor Josh broke one of my camera lenses today - and it just happened to be the one I use the most! I felt bad for him because all he was doing was helping me clean up the living room and it accidentally was put down too hard on just the right angle and it went ka-put.

Jude's Expressions...

...crack me up at times. He has very expressive eyes or maybe it's his eyebrows, but ever since he was a tiny baby he's had "lots of faces". My favorite shot of these is #4 because he totally reminds me of one of my baby pictures at this age. In #3 he's drinking from his sippy cup and in this first shot, he's wearing my hat.

Beautiful Family

Today I ordered a large print of this photo for a client/friend who is going to have it framed to hang over their mantle, and I realized I'd never blogged their photo shoot (done last November). So I thought I'd share their beautiful faces with you. :) I'll try to post more from their shoot tomorrow.

The wonderful thing about this family (3 siblings with spouses and children in photo) is that we met them/their parents 3 years ago at our church and their parents happen to live on the street behind us! They are so much fun to be around and always make us feel right at home! We sure are grateful to be near to them.

Craft Time!

(click on picture to see larger version)

So, in the midst of all my resting these past few weeks, I've been peeking at a lot of cute blogs; mostly of photographers and "crafters". I feel like I got a good look at a whole little sub-culture out there as I clicked from one person's craft blog to another! There are SO many creative and fun people out there!

I got all inspired to "get crafty" and I put together some baby things for friends who have little ones on the way and for our own sweet baby girl coming in April. I attached a gazillion pictures for you to see. :) My friend Jana taught me how to sew spit-up cloths last year, so I made a bunch of those, and I also ironed some little fabric tags on white onesies that I thought had cute sayings.

P.s. Did anyone see that beautiful Oregon sunshine we had yesterday before that storm? Oh! It was sooooo wonderful to get a little vitamin from the sun! Sure got me excited for spring!

"Noah!"

Ah, it felt soooo good to take some pictures today! :) I have so much pent up creativity since I haven't been doing photo sessions for the past 4 weeks that I loved getting to snap some pictures of Jude this morning.

Josh was so sweet and let me sleep in again today (he's such an amazing husband!) and he and Jude went on a walk with our neighbor Pete and his daughter, Daphne. When they got home Jude's cheeks were all rosy from the cold air and I thought it was so cute how Josh had dressed him! So I took him back outside in our front yard to get a couple pictures. Jude was just running around saying, "Noah!" (our cat's name) over and over. :) I love this age! Jude is 21 months old.

BTW, we made it through the December month safe and sound and this pregnancy is still going really well. Thank you Lord! Our little girl is quite active and we are so excited to meet her, end of April! I'm going to continue resting for the month of January, but I am super excited to do some photo shoots in February and March, so email me or call in the next weeks if you'd like to book a session.