You Can't Catch Me... I'm the Gingerbread Man!

This past Monday, I was over at my sister's house making hand-print ornaments like these for our boys' grandparents. (I promise a post on this next week!)  While Jackson and I were over there, my sister wanted to make some gingerbread cookies and play a little game that her oldest son had played at school the week before. (He's in Kindergarten.)

She didn't really know all the details of the game, but Landon had told her that they made gingerbread men cookies at school and one popped out of the oven and left clues for them to find him. He said he wanted to make some gingerbread cookies at home and see if one of them popped out of the oven, Ha!

So my sister and I helped him make some gingerbread shaped sugar cookies when he got home from school that day. My sister came up with some clues and hid them around the house while he was decorating one of his cookies. Once the clues and a gingerbread man were hidden, she told him that one of the cookies were missing and that he had left a clue for him to read.

She read the first clue to him and after three more clues, he finally found the gingerbread man hiding in the Christmas tree! It was so fun and so cute! He LOVED it!

Here are some pictures I took of our fun little cookie-making/scavenger hunt!

These were the clues that she came up with. We didn't know what clues they had used at school, but we just kind of rolled with it and came up with some of our own. She just cut these into strips and hid them for him to find.

Here he is looking in the last spot...

...and here's the gingerbread man hidden in the tree before he finds him.

And here he is with the found gingerbread man!

After that, we helped our little boys decorate a gingerbread man for themselves. They loved this!

You'll have to excuse my "no make-up" face! I wasn't really planning on having any pictures of myself taken that day, but I knew I wanted pictures of Jackson eating his cookie and if that meant me being in them with no make-up on, well then so be it!

My sister helping Mason decorate and eat his cookie.

We had such a fun day on Monday making ornaments and baking! We really need to have more days like that!

I'm linking up here:

A Storybook Photography Family Photo Session

Earlier this week, I posted some of my favorite photos from a recent photo session of Jake's oldest brother's family. If you missed it, you can find them here. The same day I took those photos, I also took some photos for Jake's middle brother's family.  I thought I'd share some of my favorites from that session as well. ☺

This is one of my favorite photos from the whole day.

I love how the kids are all holding hands in this one! So sweet.

This is another one of my favorites from their session. My 5 year old niece Bella is so photogenic. I could have taken pictures of her all day!

See what I mean!

My 8 year old nephew, Jack!

My 7 year old nephew, Ethan.

I'm linking up here: 

Insta+Lately

I'm linking up here, for Insta+Lately.

Starting with the most recent picture...

1. The super cute frame I got from Kohls to put Jackson's Santa picture in this year.

2. Jackson and I snuggling Monday evening.

3. Jackson checking out our Christmas Tree.

4. Jackson and his cousin Mason, dancing in their diapers.

5. Jackson and his cousin Sophia, watching The Grinch.

6. Jackson touching an ornament on my Mom's tree.

7. All 4 of my blonde haired children. ☺

8. Jackson fell asleep watching tv on his Mickey Mouse couch in the living room this evening.

9-12. I took Jackson on a wagon ride to the park this day. We had so much fun.

13. Our cat stormy, playing in a laundry basket.

14. Jake having a beer on his Birthday. 

15. Jackson and his buddy, Max, looking out the front door. ♥

16. A foggy day in downtown. The view is from my work window.

So what have you been instagramming lately? If you don't follow me already, you can follow along here.

Our 2012 Christmas Tree

We went to the tree farm this past Saturday and picked out our 2012 Smith Family Noble Fir. Its been a tradition of ours to go to this same little family owned tree stand, right down the street from our house. Its a really cute stand. The trees are pre-cut, but its not on a parking lot in the middle of town. Its just right outside of town at a little farm and they always have beautiful trees. 

We started going there the first year we were married and have now went back every year since 2007. This year we were able to take Jackson. (Last year he was only a couple months old and I just didn't want him out in the cold.) I was excited to see how he would react to all the trees. He loved running in between them. What he didn't love, was that Santa was there. He was scared of Santa this time around for some reason. I let Santa hold him for a picture and this was what happened...

He didn't care for Santa very much. :-( 

But he was fine once Santa passed him back to me. :-)

We spent a little more time there picking out our tree.

Once we had our tree picked out, we took a few pictures with it.

After picking out our tree and getting it all tied up and in the truck, we took one last picture by the tree farm sign, and then headed home. 

We let the tree sit in a bucket of water in the garage for the rest of the day and night and then decorated the next evening. :-)

Here's our tree in the house, waiting to be decorated.

And here it is all decorated.

I had big plans for Jackson to help decorate the tree this year. I had invited my nieces, Alexis and Sophia, over to help as well. However, Jackson was really tired and crabby Sunday evening, so I put him to bed before we could even start decorating it. :-( Oh well, there's always next year. He'll probably be a lot more into it next year anyways. 

So thats our tree this year. I'll post later about some of my favorite ornaments and the rest of my Christmas decorations.


I'm linking up here:

and here:

Monday Funday!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend!

I'm off work today! I work 9 hour days during the week so that I can have a day off every other week. My day off is every other Monday, which happens to be today! Yay! I love this schedule. Having a day off is great for getting things done that I don't often have time for during the busy weekend. 

Today, Jackson and I are going over to my sister's house to make these cute ornaments that I found on Pinterest. We are making them as gifts to give to our boys' grandparents. :-) I hope they are as easy as they look and turn out cute. I'll post about how it goes later this week. 

via

We also got our Christmas Tree over the weekend. :-) I know we're a little late, as it seems most people have had their trees up for a couple weeks now. Oh well, better late than never. ☺ I loved that Jackson got to go with us this year to pick out our annual Smith Family Noble Fir. Its a tradition of ours that we started the year we got married. We go to the same little family owned Christmas Tree Farm right down the road from us and pick out a Noble Fir. They smell sooooo good! ☺ I'll have a more detailed post on our Christmas tree and decorations later this week as well.

These are our past trees.

And lastly, I wanted to share some photos I took for my Brother-in-Law and Sister-in-Law last weekend. ☺

I love my nephews "kissy face" in this photo. Too funny!

My very handsome and "way too old" nephew Brandon. I feel way too young to have an almost 16 year old nephew.

My beautiful niece Alexis. She's growing up to be such a kind and caring young lady.

My very pretty and "getting way too old" niece Kyleigh.

My sweet and funny nephew Larry IV.

My sweet niece Sophia. I could have taken pictures of her all day.

Storybook Photography

Recently, I've had a couple of people ask me what my photography business would be called if I ever had one. I answered, "I have no idea" and wasn't even really considering a business... but it kind of got me thinking about it. 

A photography business would be a dream, but at this point I still have so much to learn. Thankfully, my sweet friends and family are willing to let me learn and grow as photographer by letting me take family photos for them. Its really a win win for all of us. They get free photos and I get lots of experience. ☺

So I decided this week to start a Facebook page for all the photos I've taken for friends and family... like an online portfolio I guess. I had to come up with a name and thought it would be cool if it could sort of be similar to my blog name. I started playing around with the word story because I feel like photos tell the story of our lives... and thats when I came up with "Storybook Photography". ☺

Once I thought of a name, I needed some sort of a logo. I played around with some fonts and a "storybook feeling" silhouette image I had, and came up with this.

And here are just a few photos with the watermark I made.  I took these photos for my parents this past weekend. ☺

 

I'm really excited about the start of something that could potentially turn into a fabulous side business and something I can call mine and be proud of. :-)  I love this wonderful hobby and can't wait to learn so much more about it. 

Embrace the Camera

I'm linking up with Emily at The Anderson Crew

Embrace the Camera is where you'll take a picture of YOU with your kids, spouse, friends, etc. The point of embrace the camera is to get in front of the camera and to document a bit of yourself.

This past weekend, we took some family pictures for my Mother in Law for Christmas. Jake has 2 older brothers, so I took some family pictures for each of them and then I took some individual pictures of each of the kids. I also took a group picture of all the kids and I even set up the camera on the tripod, and we took one big, full family picture of all of us for her. I can't wait until Christmas to give them to her. They are a surprise and I just know she will be so excited to get them.

Jake and I had just taken family pictures a few weeks ago, so I knew I didn't really need to take any of us, however, I saw this photo on pinterest and thought it was so cute. So I had my sister in law snap a couple of pictures of us in this pose while I still had the camera on the tripod. They turned out really cute I think. ☺ I am still editing all of the other photos, so I will post them as soon as I get them all done. ☺