The Laudate Family

Despite a little mist and rain, this adventurous family and I toughed it out at beautiful Douglas State Park in Massachusetts.  Such vibrant autumn colors this year!  Definitely a nice location for family portraits.  Mom and I had gone to college together so I was greatly looking forward to this session and meeting her gorgeous family! 

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and just for fun...

Update: The problem where the webpage was giving false hues to some of my black and whites and sepia tones has been fixed.  Thus the pictures have been updated to better reflect the variety of styles I want to share.    

Violet~Part2

After a bit of a hiatus what with my computer broken and no access to Lightroom, now I can finally catch up and post Part 2 of this newborn session.  I just love how some of these came out.  Here's another look at some of the adorable shots of baby Violet and her big sister...

  

Catching up...

This September was full of lovely fall days and gorgeous weather.  But it was also pretty crazy and hectic and full of projects and researching and planning little man's 2nd birthday party (whilst washing, scraping, sanding, caulking, priming, and painting our home's exterior), so it has just been utter chaos.  The blog didn't make the priority list but so much has happened that I must touch on some of the accomplishments and setbacks *sigh*...that have filled the past 2 months.

September~
1-My baby boy turned 2!! Despite having a lack of time to prepare and plan for the party, I was able to get the majority of all the crafts and cooking done. His little smash cake came out adorable. Will try and post a 2nd birthday party blog and pictures when I have some free time (ha!).

2-I got my local trade name certificate for my town and can officially conduct business as a sole proprietor. Took longer than it should have which was a bit frustrating but at least I have it now. The big reveal will be coming soon as I am still in the works of creating a logo and planning a bit of a makeover for the blog, possibly even a new website.

3-My computer completely crapped out on me and I was unable to finish editing a handful of photos I had been working on as well as implementing some new techniques and making some very useful presets that will help streamline some of my workflow.

4-Painting delayed until October when we have access to a paint sprayer and more experienced help :-)

And then October came and went in a flash, more chaos, a very busy schedule and a 'two' year old, lol.

October~
1-My nephew was born, only a day late.  So tiny looking, hard to believe my little munchkin was a pound and a half or so smaller.

2-Attempted a newborn shoot for my sister-in-law's new baby but it just wasn't in the cards that day. Kind of a shame too because the weather was still decent then.  Our schedules have yet to allow for a second attempt but we are hoping maybe this upcoming weekend to try again.  He is almost a month old already, I can't believe it.  It will be trickier to get the posed shots at this age but I am positive it will all work out.

3-Broke a mirror.  Yup.  Now, I'm not very superstitious (although I strongly dislike the number 13 and it has never brought me any good, in fact quite the opposite, lol) but I gotta say, there has been an unusual amount of bad luck around here, not digging it one bit.  

4-Had a fall photo shoot planned and while on route, it began to rain. ;-( We decided to grin and bear it, making the most of the unexpected weather and cold (it was supposed to be somewhat warm and partly cloudy, so much for trusting the weatherman).  Prior to leaving, my contracts wouldn't print because my printer ran out of ink..  And then once we were there, we made a pile of leaves for the kiddos and when we walked away from it, a dog came and peed all over it....

5-My father-in-law visited for a week and we finished painting our house.  I love it.  Definitely gave some new life to the place.  I will have to dig around for a 'before' picture so I can show off a side by side comparison.

6-Fixed the computer, although it still needs a stick of RAM which is ready and waiting (but I gotta get the hubby to do that).  Was able to re-install Lightroom easily enough, and was able to retrieve (by some amazing stroke of good luck among the bad) my old catalog of pictures.  This was such a relief (I had everything backed up, but losing your catalog is another story because then you can't go back to an old picture and tweak it, you have to start all over from scratch).

7-Didn't get to do the things I wanted to do while my husband was on vacation, which mostly involved fun little adventures for my son and Halloween themed activities.  My husband threw his back out or could have a slipped disk or something, so he was ultimately laid up on the couch most of his vacation :-(  We also had the costly misfortune of suddenly being carless for a few days... (I blame the mirror.)

8-Finally got our butts out the door to go pumpkin picking and we get there and it's windy and freezing.  It was high up on a hill.  The large corn maze was 7 miles long mostly uphill....?!! And supposedly takes 3 hours to do.  The small maze, which I figured was more our thing, was an hour long.  It was just too cold for that.  There was no 'patch', just 2 big areas of tables and displays of pumpkins of various sizes.  So it was pretty much the entire opposite of the vision I had of our pumpkin picking experience.  But at least my little guy was super excited regardless, he kept running around saying 'pumpkin' over and over again and trying to pick them all up. :-)  It was insanely cute but I couldn't even get his attention for a second to get a picture of him looking at the camera.

So now that my computer is fixed, I am trying to catch up and get things in order so I can concentrate on the building blocks of my business.  There are still many things I want to accomplish, and many plans that I need to execute to help my goals become a reality..  Lots of work ahead, looking forward to all the possibilities (despite the impending 7 years of doom, maybe I should do myself a favor and remove all the other mirrors from my house).   :-P    

Sweet Baby Haley~Part 2

So excited to post these.  My friend's daughter just had her baptism and was just beautiful in her gown.  In celebration of her birth and baptism here is a detailed look at little Haley's newborn session.  Cannot wait to be doing this full-time, it is such a joy to capture these images! <3