If you’ve been around here very long you know how much I love photo albums. I love for my clients to be able to take all the photos from their sessions home with them. The best way to do that is in a photo album. These albums contain your precious memories from a time gone by. My dream is that these albums will be looked through, put on coffee tables, moved from home to home, put out at graduations, taken to college, and passed on to future generations. I love to design the albums and add personal touches as well, your favorite quotes or scripture passages and even letters from you to your children. In an effort to get more of these precious memories to my clients I am offering “The Great Album Sale”. This sale won’t last long so you have to jump on it quickly. Put in your order for an album from your session by Feb. 12th and I will give you a 35% discount off the price of the book!! You may only see this sale once a year so now’s the time to order your album!!

The layflat binding in these books is amazing!!

The top book is the 5×5 size and the bottom is 8×8 size. I am more than happy to show you these albums so you can see for yourself the great quality of these albums!

I still have a few handmade Christmas gifts that I haven’t shared yet. I blogged over at The Trendy Treehouse about possibly making this gift for my husbands secretary and I was so pleased with how it turned out. I also bought some enamel paint and made a monogram mug to go with the little bag. Helen told me that she really liked the gift and planned on using the bag for her Bible (it really is the perfect size for a Bible and a notebook). I also made the same thing for my best friend Julie but it didn’t make it through the mail….ugh! bummer! I will have to make her another one and TAKE it to her personally!

We had a dinner guest last Friday. It’s been a few weeks since we’ve had anyone over for dinner. I was very excited to cook up a big meal and try some new things. I know that having guests for dinner for the first time is not the time to try new things…but I guess it’s okay when you know the “things” will work. I made our standby pork tenderloin in the crock-pot (1bottle teriyaki, 1 cup honey, 1/2 cup ketchup, 2Tbls lemon juice, 1 tsp garlic powder and onion powder, cook on low for 7-8 hours or high 4-5 hours (i recommend low and slow)). I tried a new appetizer and a new way (to me) of doing green beans and we also had baked potatoes. I also made a DELICIOUS dessert (but didn’t photograph it) if I may say so myself. So here’s a little random cooking post on my photography blog. Naomi kept saying that “the kids needed a paper to tell what they wanted”. I said “do you mean a menu?” and she said yes, so she wrote out what we were having! So sweet. And our dinner guest is the one who brought the beautiful yellow tulips from yesterdays post! so sweet. I’ll post the “recipe” for the green beans and the appetizer by the photos of them! Hope you can have a dinner party soon and make some delicious food that you only make when having company! I know I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Appetizer: Garlic bread with tomato slices, basil and mozzarella cheese. Cook the bread at 475 for 5 minutes, then add the tomatoes, basil and mozz cheese, put back in oven till the cheese melts. I cut the bread before cooking it all but you could probably cut them in half afterwards too. This was DELICIOUS and I will totally be making this again sometime…hopefully soon!
Pork Tenderloin!!

So I just cut the ends off the green beans, cut the strips of bacon in half and rolled about 6-7 green beans in half a piece of bacon. Lined them up in my baking dish and then sprinkled some brown sugar, salt and pepper over the top. I put it in a 350 degree oven for about 20minutes. Temp and time varies I guess. I just eyeballed it. These were really good too!

What delicious things have you been cooking up lately?

The shortest distance between two people is a smile.  ~Author unknown

Keep smiling – it makes people wonder what you’ve been up to.  ~Author Unknown

If you don’t have a smile, I’ll give you one of mine.  ~Author Unknown

These flowers brought a smile to my face.
Hoping I could help you smile today!

{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