This was one of those sessions where I was desperate to get amazing images–her parents are one of our favorite wedding couples.  We photographed Amanda and Joe’s wedding last summer and are BIG FANS of them.   I gush a little in their wedding post about how in love they are, and they just are.   Even as sleep deprived parents they are just so cute–at the shoot Amanda said thank you to Joe for giving her that sweet baby, and there were lots of “I love you”s and silly kisses.   They are a wonderful couple and I was so excited when Amanda emailed me she’d had a little girl and they wanted me to take her newborn photos!  This is something I’ve looked forward to–getting to watch families grow from the blossom of engagement portraits to the growing of children, and I’m so excited that Amanda and Joe were our first couple to return to us with a baby to photograph!

I love the squishy nose snuggle that Amanda and Aisley are sharing!

They make such a beautiful family!

I’m so happy that this little cluster of wildflowers in our field got to make itself useful at a shoot!

You would look as smug and happy as Aisley being so loved, too!

It’s impossible to pick favorites from this shoot, but this next set is definitely at the top. Thanks so much for sharing your beautiful family with me, Amanda and Joe!  I am SO happy for all three of you! 

We took Noah inside out of the wind for a few portraits! 

I love our field of dandelions and can’t wait to get a few more shoots in it before the snow sets in again.  Which should give us like a week and a half, right? 

These next two were just begging for a wistful color treatment!

With spring arriving in the Springs I knew I wanted to recreate this shot from his newborn shoot.  Ahhh–look at that time passing, seasons changing, babies growing…

When I arrived, Shawn said that Larissa was upstairs waking up Gavin.  When I walked down the hall I saw the same scene from his newborn shoot (this time with a kitty, too)!

They are planning an eventual move, so I wanted to be sure that we had some great shots of Gavin’s first home!

I completely love this shot!

Gavin LOVES being upside down. 

Again with the upside down!

I love little details like this.

That kid is a cutie!!  Can’t wait to see him at his next shoot!

Those people who say newborn smiles are just gas?  I don’t believe it.  I didn’t believe it when Will was a baby, and I don’t believe it now that I get to photograph newborns!  They definitely smile for their mommas.  He was smiling at Sheri like this right after I arrived.

Baby Chase is just as sweet as can be, and totally fits in with his wonderful family!

We used the power of heat to get him into a blissful slumber (a nice deep sleep…right up until he peed in his own ear, which I sadly didn’t capture):

Chase was holding on to his daddy’s hand in this pose (with a powerful little grip), and it totally smooshed up my heart!

But we did have a wonderful Mother’s Day that included breakfast at The Egg and I (a hearty breakfast is one of the Turchin fam’s favorite things) and a trip to the Royal Gorge in Canon City.

After breakfast we drove and drove and drove (I wasn’t sure where we were going–it was a surprise) to the Royal Gorge.

The highlight of the trip for Will was seeing the trains. He wanted to watch the train from the bridge forever!

(I think there are only three people left in the world that don’t know about this method of album-using yet, so this post is for them. For the rest, this might be a little boring.)

About two years ago, Tara Whitney shared with the Garden Girls her method of scrapbooking. It was fantastic and I fell instantly in love. The rest of the scrapbook world had moved past “chronological scrapbooking”–scrapbooking their photos in the order they were taken. Photos were now supposed to be scrapbooked as inspiration struck and put in albums or piles haphazardly.

I just couldn’t do that because I’m obsessive. I wanted my photos to be seen in a linear fashion, so I kept an album for each year and filed my layouts accordingly. The problem came when I wanted to try 8.5×11 inch layouts, or when I didn’t know what to do with my digital layouts that I printed as 8×8 layouts (the photo paper to print a layout as a 12×12 is just too expensive to make it feasible). My solution then was to mount anything smaller than a 12×12 on black 12×12 cardstock.

When I saw the new solution, though–using 3 ring American Crafts albums to store a variety of page sizes in a variety of sizes of page protector–I was thrilled. The whole thing looked so interactive and awesome.

Here are a few shots of my 2008 album so far:

Digital layouts get printed as 8×8 (on 8.5×11 photo paper and then cropped), 8.5x11s get housed in their various page protectors (though you do have to punch an extra hole in the landscape oriented 8.5x11s to get them to go into the three ring albums), and 12x12s in theirs.

Because I’m sort of anal about keeping everything in order, I do keep an eye on my album and try to create layouts accordingly. So if I do a 12×12 of pictures in January, I’ll try to do another 12×12 of January pictures. Because otherwise you have an empty backside or a layout that is out of chronological order. But I don’t ALWAYS do that, I live with it if I haven’t (or plan to make a layout to fill that space). (In the case of the cool lace cardstock, I make a layout almost identical to the front on the back of the lace to preserve the see-through look (as shown above).

Ali Edwards recently started using this technique, and I loved her idea for making her own size of page protectors. Will painted his first picture at a neighbor’s house, and I wanted it to go straight into the album–no layout, but just that cute little picture. It was 12 inches wide and 9 inches tall. So I just snipped off the top of a 12×12 page protector to make it fit. (And stapled a little journaling block on there explaining that it was his first painting.)

I love that this method is more free and allows you to scrapbook in a more old-fashioned way–putting things in there of different sizes and shapes that aren’t even necessarily layouts. I think a lot more paintings and report cards will find their way into my albums in the coming years.

It’s a great way to deal with pictures that are too intimidating and important to scrapbook, too–just print them off as an 8×8 or 8.5×11, pop them into the page protector, and maybe add a small journaling block. That way you still get to look at it, even if you’re too scared that the layout you would make wouldn’t be perfect enough!

In many years, when the albums are less a work-in-progress and more a finished project, I plan on transfering them to post-bond albums (I’ll punch new holes in the page protectors if need be). The three ring is fine for now but I do love the way post-bond albums eliminate the center gap and look more formal. So when I’m an old lady in a nursing home, I’ll be sitting there with my hole punch, finishing off those albums.

I had an OpLove photography session at Palmer Park (one of my favorite Colorado Springs locations) on Saturday. Here are a few of my favorites:

This little girl loves her daddy so much. I love how she looks so much younger in this shot:

When I asked her to steal her daddy’s hat (after hearing that she loves to wear it), she corrected me. Apparently it is THEIR hat, not HIS hat.

He is equally popular with this little guy. I got a ton of great family pictures of everyone exploring the park.

I love portraits of a family walking. In this case, there was a lot of laughing and running.

And this is the inevitable outcome of running and being little. I told them that it was a good thing I have this photo for their lawsuit against me.

And one I made tonight from an older photo I found Will playing with (and wrinkling) this morning:

Paper is from Scenic Route with the exception of the cute embossed heart paper which is by Cloud 9 Design (I love this Valentine line from them).

Will got a 3 ft tall giraffe from my grandmother for his birthday (best present ever, Koko), and loved it so much that he brought it to bed with him.

(Layout template from Katie Pertiet’s Valentine Mini Book 2 Pack, patterned paper from her Winky, Blinky, and Nod kit, and little giraffe sticker is from the jungle gym kit at Designer Digitals.)

(A good ole paper layout. Patterned paper from Scenic Route.)

I had plans to share more, but messing with the blog ate up my morning and now I’m off to photograph a newborn. Hurray for squishy new babies!