Family Photos

A few months ago, our neighbor who is a photographer braved the heat and humidity with us alongside thousands of flying gnats that were in a nearby field. It was truly a miserable evening to be outside, let alone expect cooperation for family photos.

Somehow we still managed to walk away with the shots that were important to us.

And a few crazy ones too.

I have photos hanging in our bedroom with each of my babies and me. It was important that I captured Finn's babyhood in the same way. 

It's a good thing Finn looks younger than he is because I didn't manage to fit in our photo session until he was two days shy of turning one.

Aside from the family Christmas card photo and a shot with my baby and me, my only other request was for individuals of each boy. Their faces now hang larger than life on four square canvases in our stairwell.

Oh, and I had to take a silly headshot too for work. I remembered why I prefer being on the other side of the camera.

Family photos can be really stressful, especially when you have extreme weather conditions and young children involved. But in my book, they are always, always worth it.

Web Design

As a web designer, I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of people from all over the world. I have designed sites for clients from all walks of life, including authors, artists, veterinarians, teachers and hairstylists. I don't talk about it very often, but I love my work so much. It constantly challenges me and gives me a creative outlet that I don't find elsewhere. I look forward to opening up my laptop every night when the boys are in bed. Designing graphics, discovering new fonts and learning new web code thrills me to no end.

In the shuffle of the last couple of months, I didn't get to posting about the new site that our design team relaunched. It was in the works for many months and we were all so excited when it went live in August.

I was asked to do the photography for the new site. I don't consider myself a professional photographer by any means but I was flattered by the vote of confidence. The owner of our company and I started collaborating on ideas back in the spring and we met up several times over the course of many months to get the images just right.

Shooting still objects was so different than capturing small children which is my usual schtick. Even though the objects didn't move or complain, getting the placement and lighting and background just right proved to be a challenge. I ended up building a seamless white lightbox during our third attempt which was the ticket to success.

This project was a labor of love but it was also so much fun. And well worth the effort for a new design we are all proud of.

Three of the local designers from our growing international team came over for a training last weekend and I was reminded once again what a blessing this "work" is. 99% of our job is done via email communication, so it was refreshing to get together in person to collaborate and talk about HTML coding tricks.

My husband constantly teases me for becoming such a "coding nerd." But he is also my number one supporter, even if means that I have to take off occasionally on evenings or Saturdays to get some undisturbed work done. Working on my laptop at night also happens to be the perfect way to simultaneously snuggle up my baby while feeling somewhat productive. Win win all around.

Brand New

Keep Me Awake

These lyrics kept running through my mind the other night as Finn was sleeping soundly in my arms; his tiny chest rising and falling, his cool breath on my neck, his curled up legs snug against me. I felt a sense of urgency to capture this exact moment in time. Oh how I wish I could bottle it up. There is nothing better in the entire world than a newborn baby.

Christmas Card Outtakes

Taking pictures for our Christmas cards was kind of an afterthought. We came home from Disneyland in mid October and I panicked when I realized we had approximately two weeks of decent weather left before it would be too late. I wouldn't have even worried about pictures this year, but I have shots with my other two babies and me framed and hanging on the wall, and if I waited until spring to get a shot with Crew, he'd already be one. Since I needed a photo with Crew, I figured we might as well capture the whole family as well.

We crammed in a quick photoshoot on November 2nd in some crazy wind that was not kind to my hair. But we made it just a few days before the snow came. Phew.