A sweet family. Perfect Boulder night. Mac (the baby) was not so happy but I think we got him smiling enough.

Things are ok here. Getting a little bit better day by day. 60 mg of prednizone. So yeah, fun but no fun. Update tomorrow, hopefully I am feeling super well by then…

Well, I *need* start with happy news again bc things are not so easy right now. I have been doing all of these incredible, beautiful, photography sessions ever since Ms. Barb Uil came into town and taught me everything she knows. I am so inspired to use light, and love, and just LIFE to express who my families are. I am a good portrait photographer. Meaning, if you want a perfect photo of your kids close up, or far away, or a family picture where everyone is happy, then I am your go-to girl. But I want to be more creative, and make things more fun, and that is what I did with this shoot.

So the not happy news is that they looked into my belly today and found only really bad things:( My dad has’ crohn’s both my sisters have it, and both my brother’s have it. I have always been the one with “mild” chron’s, and now it is severe. Stupid old woman evil witch disease.

Happy news again? I have like 50 shoots planned in the next two months. LOVE photographing, no matter what. I have outsourced everything else, so no stress there. Just taking beautiful photos of beautiful families. Love it!

xoxo stacey

News first-I booked up all my Boulder mini photography sessions so I have opened up October 5th, October 12, and October 22nd. Email me asap if you want to book a session, you can read all the info here. Some will be at Wonderland Lake in north Boulder, one will be at Chautauqua in south Boulder. Either way, we will get beautiful, amazing photographs!

Barb Uil (aka Jinky Art) is just magic. She is my most favoritist photographer, blah, blah, blah, I have said this 8 million times on my photography blog. But really, these photos are beautiful and stunning and sweet and magical. I love them. I can’t wait to move in to our new home so I can put up beautiful big canvases. I still am in awe that she photographed my family. And really captured who we are. For sure.  I strive to be half as good of a photographer as her. As always Barb, I love you! Thank you!

So, news on the being-sick-thing. I am definitely surrounded by loving, supportive people who want me to heal and get better from this chron’s (autoimmune). I called my mom crying yesterday and she jumped on the first flight out there. That is a GOOD mom, right? I have a procedure tomorrow and hopefully we will find out what is going on. I saw a naturpath today and and plugging away with my awesome acupuncturist, Kate, but I am up to 40 mg of predizone (steroids) and ug, that SUCKS. Send me some good healing-belly-energy if you have some to spare.

xoxo stacey

ps. happy jinky art photos of my family are really helping me feel better:) Nothing like beautiful photography of your own family from your favorite photographer to make you happy.

pps. Thank you mom, Luanne, Natasha, Kate, Kellie, Adam, Rich, and Arturo for being such a solid community of support for me. It means everything to me to be supported.

Yeah, well I have not been blogging because my HARDRIVE CRASHED. Yeah, that is like the most devastating thing a photographer can say. I *know* all my photos are backed up, but I don’t KNOW it yet bc I can’t see them yet. So I am in an uneasy in between place right now. I just want my computer back. So sad.

And I have been sick, sick, sick. Yeah, I have crohn’s disease. Such an ugly name. I wish it was Sunshine Disease or something more happy. But a crohn is an old woman-evil-witch, right? So I have old woman-evil-witch disease, and it sucks. I have so many emotions around it, but mostly I am sad and mad. Sad, that I can’t love my babies in the way they deserve right now, and mad bc it is a stupid disease that they don’t know anything about and they can’t cure it and it is just stupid. And it hurts. And I can’t smoke pot to help it like they suggest bc I don’t like mj. It makes me feel weird and paranoid. But, on the upside, I DID gain 55 pounds when I was pregnant with Amelia, and I have lost the last 15lbs in 4 weeks. So I am looking good. I am thin now. I am trying to eat lots a fat though to not lose any more. So now you know my life. It is what it is.

I have about 30 mini sessions booked. It is nuts. I am opening up a few more days if anyone else wants to book a mini session. I am SO looking forward to just going out in nature and photographing loving families. That is a good day, to me.

xoxo stacey

ps, Amelia’s stomach bug is gone but I *hope* i have it and it is not my evil old woman disease.

pps. Christian, my computer guy, just told me at 8:30pm that my computer looks good. There is some program that has to run and then it will be fine. Give me some good energy for it to run again!

pps. do you LOVE this picture? So sweet.

ppps. I just want to let you know that I let my acupuncturist filled my belly button with salt and lit it on fire today. AND-I feel much better. So go-fire-belly-salt. Fire belly salt rocks. Thanks Kate. I love you.

This was a beautiful Boulder night, but kept sprinkling on us. The sun peeked in and out throughout the session, and the rain kept starting and stopping. At this point, we just wanted to get a few last family photos but the rain was coming down to hard. I tried clicking away-not sure what the final image would look like with all the rain in the way, and I ended up just *loving* this photo. One of my new favorites, for sure.

Hard times today. Nanny left for school a week and half ago, I am super behind on emailing and calling, the babies are sick, Amelia is not taking naps and waking up WAY too early, the house is a wreck, and I am just plain TIRED. My neighbor and I spent TWO full days interviewing new nannies, and then my husband told me today that he ONLY wants a nanny that is fluent in Spanish. Seriously? Can we just get someone that will love my baby and do light housekeeping? We found some great candidates and now I have to do the process ALL over again. Bc Adam wants a nanny that speaks Spanish. All over again. I have to do interviewing all over again. Sigh.

xoxo stacey

Okay, you remember Victor from this sweet photo with his mamma a few days ago. I had to post more and tell the story of how this session came to be. You all know, that is, *if* you read my blog. Do you???  I think people do, they stop me out in public bc they recognize my kids from the blog, they ask my about how the closing on my house is going (not well), etc… So, anyways, hosted 30 photographers from all of the country and world a week or two ago and at the VERY end, Yuliya, from Yuka Photo Art approached me to do a session with her and her family while they were in town. They were gong to be in town for like twelve more hours. That’s no problem, right? It was 3pm and I had to drive Jinky and Heidi (her gorgeous assistant) back to the airport but I said “yes!” anyways.

It is a huge honor to be asked by another photographer to photograph their family, but even more so bc there were loads of other amazing photographers in town for the workshops. So that is me bragging. So there. I can be proud, right? I told her I could do a mini session rather than a full bc I was EXHAUSTED at that point from a week of running around organizing the workshops, and knew that was all I had in me.

I jumped in my car and drove Jinky and Heidi to the airport, and then I (gasp) took the kazillion dollar toll road home to try to make it in time to actually make a photo session happen for Yuliya. The toll road, btw, sent us a bill for $989 one time for late fees accrued off of like $17 dollars worth of tolls. So we try to boycott it. We never paid it, it was ridiculous, and they promised they would drop the charges if we signed up for x y and z of their programs, and my husband threatened them, and they dropped the extra $972 in fines. So don’t take that stupid toll road unless you absolutely have to.

Getting way off subject here. So I rushed home on the tollway and the weather was beautiful and bright with big cumulus clouds in the sky and then as I drove into Boulder the wind and rain HIT me. It was hard to walk from my car to my house without being blown over. Sadly, I called Yuliya and told her the photo shoot was probably not going to happen, but you never know with Boulder weather so I would call her back in a half hour. And guess what? In a half hour, things were calm and bright again! So we jumped in our cars and ran to Wonderland Lake and the wind picked up a TON, but it did not rain and we still got some beautiful photos of her family during their visit to Boulder.

Yeah, that dress is not meant to poof out that much-but I think it is kind of cute and I LOVE that dress so much I hardly notice the poofy wind underneath. And Yuliya’s hair is really a lot calmer, but I like how funky the crazy wind makes it look. It goes with her style. And then you can’t *really* tell that Victor’s mohawk is whipping from side to side. And thank goodness for dad’s haircut:)

So that’s the story. Thank you Yuliya for letting me photograph your beautiful family and being so relaxed about the whole thing! I had a great time meeting you and would love to see you guys again. You are the cutest family ever!

Did an *awesome* concept shoot last night with a four year old boy, bugs, frogs, mud, and fishing. Sadly, he was afraid of the frog. The frog my husband went out last minute to Petsmart to buy for the shoot (don’t call Peta, he was treated very well). So if any of my clients have little boys that love frogs and want to set up a session before we give this frog away (we need NO more pets in this house), contact me asap. I think if we had spent time warming him up to the frog a little it would have gone a bit better, so that is what I will do next time.

Amazing concept shoot tonight, too! I am loving all these wonderful ideas I am pulling together with my clients to create portrait sessions that express THEIR families and I can not wait to start posting all these amazing photos!

xoxo stacey

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.

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

Seriously? Do I need to say how cute this little boy is? Don’t you want to eat him up? Every photo of him and his family was great, again, I wish I could share more on the blog!

Just back from Breckenridge. We had a ridiculously wonderful weekend up there. We swam, went for walks, ate lots of good food, watched tv in the condo (we don’t have cable at home), went to a farmer’s market, art fair, and the fun park up there. Yeah, it is great to be able to take a mini vacation so close to home. I was going to plan a big trip this summer-but we are buying our new home instead.

So I am sick.  I have crohn’s disease-which I have shared on the blog before. It is basically an autoimmunie disorder, where my immune system eats up my intestines and MAN it is a pain in the butt to have. Painful sometimes, but just really draining. I have lost 5 lbs since Thursday. Which, really, that is the perk to the illness-I never have to worry about keeping extra weight on for too long. A build in weight lose system that makes you skinny in just weeks. If I could only bottle that part of it-with no pain or bad medications-I would be rich!  So, this just means that I am tired and a little out of it. I am getting treated with acupuncture, but I think I am going to have to cave and go on predizone (steroids) later today. It is a nice excuse to use the time I have my nanny here to take a bath, read a book, watch some movies. Last time I was sick was during my San Francisco sessions a few months back. Once I go on the steroids, though, I have crazy amount of energy. I clean, declutter, and can work on photos well into the night. So, some good things, some bad.

Good news, though, is that we are closing on our new house tomorrow! If we can get one last piece of documentation in on time. I can’t wait to move in-I am already shopping  a ton for new furniture. It will be beautiful. Best part? It is already painted inside mostly yellow-and I love living in yellow rooms. I have ordered a bunch of canvases and float wraps, too, since we will have a lot more wall space and I have A LOT of photos to display.

And some pictures for you too… Linnea and Julianna are super sweet together. The baby’s eyes are just gorgeous!

xoxo stacey