Thursday, June 23, 2011

I melt in your peace, its overwhelming.

Wow it has been a while. I am so very sorry. Things around my house have been hectic to say the least. I started taking care of two kids for two days a week, we have been building a HUGE deck in our backyard, Life group and barbeques every week, and Mikayla recently decided to embrace her inner two year old (which is still technically 2 months away). I am seriously tired ALL THE TIME.

So here is a bit of what our summer has looked like in the last month:


New deck being built, Daddy and his helper.


Fun in the sun! Isn't that little ruffled tooshie so stinkin cute?


Coloring on the floor!


Tie-Dying beach towels with Sharpies (a fun way to teach science too!)


So all of these wonderfully happy images were from before "the change." When I say "the change" I mean the change Mikayla made from being a perfectly content, loves to sleep, happy baby TO a total "no"-monster who has decided to test every limit with the cutest but conniving little smile on her face. She knows how to work it, and she so did not get that from me.....I don't care who you ask.

The past few days have been super hard for me. I have become so accustomed to having an easy child that this has totally thrown me for a loop. Jason likes to call it the "we have finally entered real parenthood" stage. It sucks. Not. Gonna. Lie. It has taken anywhere from 45min-3 hours to get her to sleep, and today is the first day I succeeded at getting her to nap. We are making progress, but it is slow.

The silver lining in all this is, I feel like I know why God blessed me with a singing voice. It's so that I can use it to soothe my sweetie. It was a fun hobby when I was younger, and its something I enjoy doing most at church, but I have never felt more thankful for a pleasant singing voice until just this week. It is the only thing that has worked, and talk about work! I sang the same song for 45 minutes STRAIGHT last night and the night before! I turned it into worship, because I was trapped at the mercy of a toddler, so why not sing praises?

As tired as I am, and how hard it has been, I am thankful for my daughters new lullaby, it has granted me peace and is as soothing to my spirit as it is to her body.

The more I seek you, the more I find you.
The more I find you, the more I love you.
I want to sit at your feet, drink from the cup in your hand,
Lay back against you and breathe, feel your heart beat.
This love is so deep, its more than I can stand.
I melt in your peace, its overwhelming.


Wednesday, June 1, 2011

First Newborn photo shoot

A couple weeks ago I had my first ever newborn photo shoot! Boy was I nervous! I did not do myself any favors by getting ideas online from google images. Do you have any idea how beautiful some newborn photos can be? It freaked me out, and at the same time, challenged me and opened my mind to the limitless possibilities there are in the world of children/newborn photography.

From the beginning of this photography adventure of mine, I knew that I wanted to TAKE great pictures, not edit great pictures. I don't want to rely on the editing to make the photo great, I want the camera to do most of the work for me. Also, I don't have $800+ to spend on photoshop, so I really need to have my skills be with the camera, not the editing.

Here are some before and after shots. I am showing you all this as my "I need to expose my success and failures" journey. I am learning a lot about exposure, and the light changed so much on this specific day, so I had some trouble:

BEFORE: (obviously way overexposed)

AFTER: The only way I liked this photo was to make it a black and white. This was the most editing I have done on any picture)

BEFORE: My favorite of the whole day

AFTER: Not much change! I did it all with the camera!

BEFORE:

AFTER:


I hope this will inspire fellow beginning photographers that you can have good photos without photoshop!