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. ☺

Wordless Wednesday

Over the weekend, I took this picture of Jake and Jackson on the trampoline at our friends, Chris and Holly's house. They were throwing their sweet daughter, Olive, her first birthday party. It was such an adorable party and the weather was gorgeous. Jake decided to see how Jackson would like their trampoline. Needless to say... he loved it!

I'm linking up here,

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here,

here,

and here.

A Visit with Santa Claus!

Last night we took Jackson to the Mall to visit Santa. He did really well and sat right on his lap. He didn't seem scared, just a little unsure of what was going on. :-) We were able to get a couple cute smiles out of him and then he was ready to get down and run around. LOL.

Jackson and Santa, 2012!

And for comparison's sake, here is Jackson's Santa pictures from 2011 and 2012. I love that we had the same Santa last year and this year. :-)

Jackson's 13 Month Post

Jackson is now 13 months old (Nov. 20th). I can't believe its already been over a month since his birthday.

Jackson is eating great still. He has a bottle of milk in the morning, afternoon and then right before bed. He also has his 3 main meals as well and then an occasional snack in between. ☺ He's a great eater and that makes me very happy.

I'm not sure how much he weighs this month, but may find out when he goes back for his 2nd round of the flu shot next week.

He's saying a few more words this month. He now says doggie and Hot Dog, (as in the Hot Dog dance on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse). He's also said Maw Maw and Papa on occasion. My mom said he pointed at my nephews picture on her tree and said Landon, but he only did this once. He will also show you how he's 1 by holding his pointer finger up. He's pointing a lot now. He loves for me to pick him up in our living room and show him all of our pictures on the wall and point to each person. 

He's cutting 2 more teeth I think. They are the top 2 first molars. I can feel them right under his gums. He's chewing on everything and even drooling a little. I hope they come through with little to no pain. So far he doesn't seem to be bothered by them.

He's sleeping really great these days. He  goes to bed at around 8 or 9 and has been sleeping until around 7 or 8 the next morning! I love this schedule. Its perfect for us. He's also taking around a 3 hour nap every day, which is also nice. 

He's such a happy boy and I'm so excited about Christmas coming up with him. We are going to see Santa tonight and then we'll probably get our tree this coming weekend. :-)

I love you my sweet Jackson. You are such a joy!

Our 2012 Christmas Card!

After making several different cards, using picmonkey.com, I finally decided on this one. I really like the way it turned out and can't wait to get them printed and in the mail. ☺

I'm linking up here for the Paper Mama's 2012 Holiday Photo Challenge!