Graduation Shoot

Here are a few more from the second day of Maddie's shoot.

Prom Dress Shoot

Here are more of Maddie's photo shoot. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!

Bridals

Here are some more bridals from the shoot I did last month. Thanks girl, you are gorgeous!

Such a fun shoot!

Here is a continuation of the pics I was showing here.

I had so much fun with this group! Adults may be easier to photograph, but I will always love photo shoots with kids best. I love being around their enthusiasm, playfulness, and love of life! With a little effort you can catch the best pictures, and I always come home after a shoot like this feeling happy (and maybe a little tired).


This picture above may be one of my favorites of all time! I love capturing kids being kids!




I asked all the boys to give me their best super hero faces, love it!

Benji

Just for fun...



Isn't he cute?

What it's all about.

The other day I got thinking a bit about life, and specifically my life. The ups and downs, and the things that keep me going. I decided to sit down and make a scrapbook page about that, life. This is what I came up with.



I like that this isn't an especially glamorous picture, and the fact that I am missing an earring only makes it better for what I was trying to say. On each of those strips of orange colored paper I wrote something that I really like about life and me. When it was finished it read:

I like that I don't have all the answers.
I like that I still laugh until my tummy hurts.
I like that I am still learning new things.
I like that I don't know everything.
I like that I am still growing up.
I like that I still have dreams.
I like that I am not perfect.
I like that I am only human.
I like that I am passionate.
I like that I make mistakes.
I like that I am me.

Pages like this are important to make. It's good for us and our family to know who we really are, and that you don't have to be this amazing individual who stands out and is perfect in every way to be important.

Scrapbooking for me is really just an extension of keeping a journal. I have always been an avid journal writer, and as I've grown older I've stopped trying to document "events" but more feelings, thoughts, and experiences. I am the same way when I scrapbook. I think the great Cathy Zielske put it best in her new book "Clean & Simple scrapbooking - the sequel."



She ends her book by saying,

"It boils down to this: scrapbooking is cool...

It's 'cool' because it's people taking the time to embrace their lives and to express creatively the stuff that matters and the stuff to remember. The real stuff of life...

In the end, we are storytellers. We are historians. We are documentarians. We get this incredibly unpredictable and unpolished script to work with: life...

I hope you never stop telling stories. I hope you never apologize for being a scrapbooker...

I hope you continue to save the bits and pieces of your amazing, ordinary, stressed out, happy, exhilarating, unique, insert-any-other-adjective-you-like-here life."

Thanks Cathy, that's what it's all about - grabbing moments of your life.