{Jackson, TN child photography, family photography}

I couldn’t believe it when Micah asked me to take his picture with his sisters before church on Sunday. I couldn’t believe it when Hannah willingly sat down with her brother and sister and had her picture taken. I couldn’t believe that everyone got along, had a great time and actually enjoyed a quick mini photo shoot before church. It was SO cute because Hannah would sit down next to them, I’d take a few pictures and then she came over and looked over my shoulder to see the image on my screen. She gets it. I know that she gets more than I give her credit for but its just fun to see what she gets. She would then go and sit down someplace else, thus all the different arrangements of the kids. I took a bunch of photos in a span of 5 minutes and got some great snapshots. It was pretty dark so I had to use the flash! So don’t judge. Really would love to invest in a lens that would allow me to NOT use my flash! Are these BEAUTIFUL portraits that will win me accolades? By no means. Are these portraits that will grace the covers of magazines? Not a chance. Are these snapshots of my kids at this point in our life that I will treasure forever. ABSOLUTELY. Here are a few of my favorites…and then some pretty good outtakes after the good ones!

LOVE this one. Hannah’s like, who are you people!

I told them to squeeze close together…not exactly what I meant!

Make sure to take pictures of your kids when the moment strikes.

They may be grainy, have flash shadows, and not prize winning portraits. But they will be cherished and treasured for YEARS to come!

{Jackson, TN child photographer}

When I saw the theme at i heart faces this week I knew exactly which photo I was going to use. This is from my session with Sara Grace. This sweet little girls LOVES books and we made sure to include some books as props in her session. She really enjoyed reading about horses while I was snapping away. I love that my kids feel the same way about books…it’s an incredible blessing. I can’t wait until they can read by themselves so they can learn many many new things.

TV.  If kids are entertained by two letters, imagine the fun they’ll have with twenty-six.
Open your child’s imagination.  Open a book.  ~Author Unknown

Go check out some more by the book submissions

First of all I wanted to say Happy Birthday to my mom! She’s all the way over in Hong Kong and I miss her terribly…but we are so fortunate that they have chosen to do mission work during the age of technology. We get to skype with them quite often and it’s like they’re right here…they even got to watch a Packer football game on skype from Greg’s computer on Sunday. Happy Birthday mom! Love you so much and we can’t wait for you to come back to America so we can see your face without the pixels or blurriness!!! LOVE YOU!!

These photos are from 2009 and the first photo is the reason we used to call Micah “pirahna boy”

Onto the handmade Christmas presents…

I first saw this idea for clothespin people on pinterest…then followed it to the etsy store of whomever was pinned. I loved that the clothespins she made we bright and colorful and looked cute. I wanted to take it a step further and personalize the clothespin people. I had posted something about them during our 12 crafts of Christmas over at The Trendy Treehouse and Tracey from Alaska contacted me about making one for her family. I was very excited to do so. She told me a little bit about her family and we talked about what everyone should wear but mostly she just gave me creative liscense to create this for her. I was happy with how it turned out and I think Tracey liked it too. I then made another one just because I was on a roll and wanted to make one for our friends family…the one that the dresses and tie shirts were for, the one with seven children…yeah, that one. I really enjoyed painting these clothepin people and adding the details and making it personal. I’d love to make one for your family…or as a gift to give. I’ve got them listed in my etsy store.




I have more handmade gifts to share but it will have to wait for Monday! I am going to spend the weekend with my family and away from the computer!

Have a blessed weekend! Hug your loved ones and cherish each moment that you have with them, even the hard to tolerate moments, just think, this too shall pass. And I’ll try and take my own advice

I have always wanted to try my hand at making a doll for my girls. Well, this Christmas I was brave enough to give it a go. While they turned out okay, there are many things I learned and things I will do differently next time. I made the doll for Kiley to match the dress that I also made for her. I made Hannah’s doll with a different dress in case Hannah and Kiley ever both bring their dolls to grandmas house, then we’ll easily know which dolls belongs to which girl. I also loved this pink, green and gray fabric when I saw it and cannot wait to make a dress for Hannah with it! I loosely followed the Black Apple Doll from Martha Stewart but basically just looked at it to get an idea of how to put a doll together, then I did my own thing. The big kids helped me stuff the arms and legs and it was a fun project for us all to work on. Now, I’ve been requested to make a doll for Naomi. Here are the dolls on Christmas Eve.

Personally I like that they don’t have faces. I did that on purpose…not just to save myself a step! That way the doll can be happy, sad, mad, glad you name it. Hannah and Kiley can really role play with their dolls and make them feel anyway they want them to, the dolls are permanently happy. I think next time I’d make the arms a little shorter, although I love the idea of a little girl dragging her dolly around by the arm!


Tomorrow it’s peg people time!

I showed you these dresses yesterday, they were part of the package that I sent to our friend the Kings. They have seven children, two of them are our godchildren and since I knew I was going to be making at least one dress and one tie shirt I figured “since it’s early enough (it was october when I started) I might as well make something for all the kids” and I am actually surprised at myself that I got them done and mailed BEFORE December even started! yay me! Y’all better write down that I was early once on your calendar because it may never happen again. Anyway, I made those three dresses, then I also made dresses for my girls and one for my niece Kiley. Then when I realized that I never gave Emily her birthday present I figured I’d make her a matching skirt (she’s 13). I also made these same dresses for my other nieces but just got them in the mail to them yesterday! So, in total I made 8 dresses and one skirt with this same fabric (oh and one doll, which I’ll show you tomorrow). I think you can tell how much you like a certain fabric if you work with it over and over and don’t get sick of it. I really like this fabric but I’m ready to move on! I got some really cute fabric for a new dress for Hannah that I’ll show you tomorrow!

Here’s grandma and her girls!We tried to throw Hannah and Kiley into this huge basket for a photo, we knew it wouldn’t really work but thought we’d give it a try!!
Can’t wait to use that basket for some newborn shoots!

Here are all the cousins in their matching outfits! All the boys wore their shirts to church…it was so cute!
Silly faces!
Emily was such a trooper, I had to go buy elastic while in Indy and I purchased the wrong kind so her skirt had to be pinned! Pretty cute kids hey?!

Tomorrow I will show you the dolls I made for Hannah and Kiley!

I love to make tie shirts. It’s one craft that is simple and easy to do yet has a great impact. I know that they may go out of the crafty world soon, but I don’t care. Micah loves wearing them and I think it makes him look so handsome and dressed up while he’s still comfortable and not complaining about wearing a tie. I’ve had grown men at church tell me they would like to wear a tie shirt…well, yeah, I would too, if there was a t-shirt dress for women that still looked dressy but felt and fit like a t-shirt I’d be all over that! So, here are four of the tie shirts I made. One for Michael, Noah, Andrew and Micah.

Maybe I should have made one for grandpa too!

I also made one for my cousin who just had a baby, and one for a custom order. And these tie shirts and dresses below were for our friends family. So in total I made 10 matching tie shirts…
and I’ll share the dresses tomorrow!

I can make some custom tie shirts for your little man…just check out my etsy store or send me a convo for more info!

{Jackson, TN family photography}

Seven. Yup you counted right. Seven kids. Four boys, three girls (not including mom and dad). Two sets of twins. Age eight and under. This family knows how to have fun. They know how to play. They know how to serve. They know how to be patient and kind. They know how to love Jesus and share Him with others. They know how to have a good time. And yes, they know how to be kids, because afterall they are KIDS. I am so blessed to be able to call them great friends, godparents (to Hannah) and (two of them) godchildren. I am blessed that each time I go back to Milwaukee, Tami asks me to photograph her beautiful family. And they put up with me and all my gimmics and tricks to get kids to smile, but really I don’t have to use too many because they are well behaved children! I may have to use more tricks on one in particular but I think she’s warming up to me .  We had a great session in August and this was the photos that I thought of immediately when I saw the i heart faces challenge of the week was family fun! You can see more from their session here.

Click on the photo below to go check out more family fun.