Sigh…will write more tomorrow and give lots of props and links to this photographer. Had to post it now though, I love it SO much! That is me and my beautiful little, sweet, wonderful family.

Yeah, does it get any better than this? I CAN NOT WAIT to show you all the photos from this session. It was my first “concept” session since I did the awesome Jinky Art workshops last week. We did so many cute things that involved plato, vw bugs, love. BUT-obviously, the cutest thing was Elijah. Happy two year birthday baby! I am so glad to have photographed you every six months since you were just a wee week old newborn. You are a beauty.

More to come.

xoxo stacey

ps. total side note. Cutest thing ever tonight with amelia. She was *really* REALLY upset at bedtime bc she left her shoes at our neighbor’s house. Instead of indulging her and getting the shoes, we helped her calm down and work through it.  It is 10:03pm and she has been sleeping for hours and I just got into bed (so I am writing from my laptop laying down.) Amelia woke up and was so serious “SHOES, shoes, SHOEEEEEES!” Not sure how my super hot wonderful husband anticipated this, but he had brought up her new pink shoes. He gave them to her, hugged her up, and she fell fast asleep in his arms gripping those pink shoes. Perfection. Excuse the blurry nighttime macbook photo. Nite all.

Oh my goodness. For those clients of mine who have met Reg before and LOVED her, you will be so happy to see all the photos I am about to explode onto the blog of her and her family. Btw, if you have not met Reg, she is my lovely sales manager and helps my clients with ordering. She has four beautiful little boys-4 and under. This is sweet little Jett. We did this super quick shoot in a tiny little yard in my neighborhood with 15 other photographers clicking away-and Jett was a pretty good sport about it. Lot’s more fun ones of this family coming soon!

So, it seems like everything is falling into place for me, and I sometimes wonder why I am so lucky and blessed and why so many good things are happening. It just seems unreal. Since Jinky gave me the wonderful wisdom of moving my photography into a direction that uses MY truest self to express the love and connection between the families I shoot and create art-rather than just taking good portraits-I have been thinking a lot about how to go about doing that. How DO you suddenly find your creative self? How do you know what that is? Well, I did go to Naropa, so I did spend three years figuring out who I am. So I guess at least I have a head start there. But how to now bring that into my art?

Today I decided to drive around to antique stores and resale shops to look for some good new props. On the way, I saw this AMAZING camper. This camper was the personification of my whole being. A work of art in and of itself. It was bright and painted so beautifully and had the most beautifull words written on it. So, I did a u-turn and pulled over, knocked, and spent an hour talking to it’s owner. He is this amazing man who is starting a movement to bring people back to their highest truths in a really simple way-by cultivating one sentence-you create it, and really making that part of your being and daily experience. AND he created this awesome memory game that, instead of the kids just finding the same two matching pictures-makes them talk about what the pictures are about when they find a match. For example, one card says “Togetherness” and it is a sweet picture of a family snuggling on the couch reading a book together. So then, the child would have to say something about what togetherness means to them. Perfect! Such a meaningful way to play a simple game with your children. So of course I bought one, and we already love it! Here’s the website.

Anyways, life is just pulling me to all these wonderful people and opportunities now that I am opening myself up a bit more.

Sooooo….who wants to do their family shoot in the Gardening of Love Camper? I SO wish I had my camera on me to take a photo to show you-but I did not so you will have to trust that this is the coolest, funnest, brightest camper in the world. If I had met this man a week ago, I would have definitely used it in my own family shoot with Jinky. But now one of ya’ll gets to use it. So give me a call/email if you want to set up a session.

More to come, of course!

xoxo stacey

ps. i never did get to the antique/resale shops. Amelia and Elijah danced around the camper, and played with this man’s little boy in the parking lot of the Boulder Dinner Theater, and then we were too tired and excited to shop.

pps. if you read my post from yesterday, adam actually came home ONE hour later to give me the teething baby. So that blissful, giddy, wonderful day to myself? Never happened. Apparently, it was a “misunderstanding”. Yeah.

ppps. the 5 tiered aquaponics system was INDEED moved to my bedroom this afternoon (see last blog post). Whatever.

So, this was another quick shoot for the workshop. We found an empty porch in my neighborhood, hooked up a hammock chair, and got Melissa and baby Hazel snuggled in there. Barb really wanted to do some breastfeeding shots, which I love to do too. It is one of the sweetest moments between a mother and a baby, and it is gone so fast.

I stopped breastfeeding Amelia a few months ago, and *may* not have any more babies (still working on adam), and it was so sad to think that I might never breastfeed again, so I am glad I have some beautiful shots of Amelia and I, too. But, I do have to be totally honest here, I am SO glad that breastfeeding is over for now-she was one of those babies that just wanted to be hooked to my breast all the time but would NOT settle down or snuggle in. So it was like fighting a little monster that was attacking my boob. A monster with teeth.

So, after a full week of organizing the workshops (running around nonstop morning to night), then two full days of trying to get in touch with clients and take care of my own business, I woke up this morning and sat down with Adam to have our usual “what are we doing this weekend” meeting.

He listed off: clean out the basement, move our storage locker stuff to a bigger storage locker, move the huge aquaponics system from our kitchen to our bedroom (wtf? that is SO not going to happen-I do NOT want 80 fish and a bunch of plants in my bedroom), visit some greenhouses, and then go work on our other house where we have renters. I looked at him, stunned. Exhausted. Disbelieving that what he just said could be real. I told him that sounded lovely, and that he and BOTH kids should have a fun day doing all those things while I take a bath and pour over all my photos from the workshops.

So, that is what I am doing now. They just left the house, and I am slightly (extremely) giddy. This house, that is almost always filled with at least 10 kids, neighbors, friends, and relatives at the MINIMUM, is now TOTALLY empty. Just me and our new little kitty, Simba. Life is good.

xoxo stacey

ps, here is Hazel 1 day new

Still so exhausted catching up with it ALL. So, here is one photo for tongiht. This AMAZING photographer (link to come soon when I am not so tired and out of it) hired me to do her photos after my Jinky retreat. Will post more photos of this crazy windy quick quirky lovely beautiful shoot soon. Here is one for tonight. Most important thing when photographing a mom photographer-get a sweet picture of her and baby. It’s a must.  We NEVER get good photos of ourselves with our children. Hope you love this one, more to come!

xoxo

stacey

One week of total awesomeness. Miss Barb Uil, Jinky Art extraordinaire, came to Boulder to hold two fabulous three day workshops (at my house, no less). We did so many amazing photo shoots. Many of them involved my family, with a VW Bus. And lets say that there was also an awesome field of sunflowers involved. We photographed so many families, children, babies. It was all so sweet and I learned so much and am SO inspired by it all.

I worked with Barb on figuring out how to move my business from just doing family portraits, which are great and all, and I love doing them, and I love my clients and I LOVE my client’s kids, and I love producing beautiful images that they will cherish for the rest of their lives. BUT, I want to create stunning works of art. I want my personality-my brightness, my joy, my nurturing spirit, the passion I have for families connecting and loving each other-to be the center of my work.

So, what I am saying is yes, I am still going to be photographing families and children and doing everything I do now-I am just going to get more creative, have more fun, and let my personality shine through a bunch more in my images. You’ll just have to wait and see. Trust me, it is going to get good!

So, after saying all that, these photos were from one of the very simple shoots we did out in a field with two very sweet children. At workshops, what happens is we set up all these shoots, and then you have like 15 photographers all trying to photograph one or two kids at the same time. It is hard, because you don’t get a lot of eye contact  (the kids have no idea whose camera to look at), but it is a fun experience and I got a few sweet ones of these two.

SO many more blogs posts coming about the workshops, and SO many shoots of my own from the last month still need to be blogged. So check back often, I will *try* to blog every day. Going to try and catch up on emailing and calling back new client inquiries! I know I have been MIA this past week and I am SO sorry! If Amelia takes a nice long nap today I *might* be able to catch up. If not, I may have to call you tomorrow. Crossing my fingers for one very sleepy toddler today though.

xoxo stacey

ps. update. 2:16pm. Amelia is NOT asleep. I am ignoring her whines on the monitor and AM answering phone calls, so call away if you need to chat!

That’s all I gotta say tonight. Feet. Baby feet. Cute baby feet with lots of lovely color.  Too, too tired. More magical photo love tomorrow. I promise.

xoxo stacey