There's a lot that goes without saying in this post. Like the fact that we're terrible bloggers. Or that life's crazy and we don't get enough sleep. Or that Van's been giving us a run for our money lately (we always knew he had it in him :). But what you may not know is that in spite of the fireball 'tude he was born with, Van often surprises us with some very sweet moments that let us see he actually has a little tenderness in him. Moments that just make us want to squeeze him forever and eat him up daily—even enough to make up for the other moments that we may or may not want to drop kick him out the back door. Not that we would...
This was one of those moments, and Jon fabulously caught it on film. It melts us instantly every time we watch it!! I will love this forever. And we will understand if you also want to squeeze his cheeks and eat up his juicy lips like we do by the end of the video. He looks like his cheeks are full of marshmallows when he sings and it's the cutest thing ever. (You may have to turn up your volume.)
*We think he may have been a little thrown off or overwhelmed by the version of the song on Mormon Messages that he was singing too, he can nail it pretty good with a keyboard. :)
6/20/11
3/17/11
green never really was our color...
...but it sure is easy to celebrate a holiday when all you have to do is wear one color to be festive. Which is exactly why we chose to make a St. Patrick's Day party an annual thing in our house—because it's ridiculously easy to be ridiculously festive with just one color. We donned our greens, set up the photo booth, boiled the usual slew of corned beef and cabbage heads, hired the oh-so-incredibly-talented Lindi of Love the Day to do the decorating, and hosted our 3rd annual Green Day Party. As usual, it was every bit as Irish as we could have hoped for, and the party-goers did not disappoint, showing up in creative green get-ups. Lindi's designs this year made the decor AWESOME and much more seamless than our usual scattered attempts :). Check out her post here.
There are a lot of photos in this post, but we don't blog much, so I feel justified. :) I guess this what happens when you turn into holiday bloggers. See you on Easter, then?
Happy St Patrick's Day from the Smiths!
There are a lot of photos in this post, but we don't blog much, so I feel justified. :) I guess this what happens when you turn into holiday bloggers. See you on Easter, then?
Happy St Patrick's Day from the Smiths!
2/14/11
p.s. happy valentine's day from our little love bugs
We're just oozing with love around here.
Well Jon and I are. And Lila is. And Van has his moments. :) Luckily, this was one of his lovey moments, and we were fortunate enough to document it—a hint of our attempt to regularly take out the camera at home again. It's about time! These two aren't getting any smaller! Lila's little big-eyes, tight-lipped, drooly-chin face cracks me up. So does Van's cheeser smile with squinty eyes. We could eat them right up!!
happy love day!
Well Jon and I are. And Lila is. And Van has his moments. :) Luckily, this was one of his lovey moments, and we were fortunate enough to document it—a hint of our attempt to regularly take out the camera at home again. It's about time! These two aren't getting any smaller! Lila's little big-eyes, tight-lipped, drooly-chin face cracks me up. So does Van's cheeser smile with squinty eyes. We could eat them right up!!
happy love day!
for the love
A lovely friend of ours, Jenny Reeder, was diagnosed with leukemia in November, and we wanted to join the throng of people supporting her with an auction today. We're donating a photography session!! We may not have a business we're actively running anymore, but we still have our cameras! :) 100% of the proceeds from the auction go to helping Jenny. We're so happy to help her out!
Head over here if you're interested!
Item: 1-Hour Jon and Melissa Photography Session
Starting Bid: $133
Head over here if you're interested!
73rd Item: 1-Hour Jon and Melissa Photography Session
Description: Jon and Melissa are natural lighting, candid, lifestyle photographers with a clean, contemporary, creative, and fine-art style of photography. Session valid for engagements, couple, family, children, or high school senior (no weddings or maternity/newborn photos). Includes high resolution disc with 50 images of your choice from the session.
Suggested Retail Value: $400Location Restrictions: Must be used in the Washington, DC metropolitan area by April 30, 2011.
Starting Bid: $133
1/10/11
quite possibly the greatest santa photos. ever.
If not the greatest, probably the funniest Santa photos I've ever seen. Kids are supposed to cry when they sit on his lap, and Van did that perfectly. He was absolutely terrified. But I've never seen a Santa performing synchronized screaming with the crying kid. Or laughing a very large eyes-shut-tight Santa belly laugh, or whatever it is he was doing. Nor have I seen Santa asleep in his photo, but Lila does have that lulling effect on all of us, so I can't really blame the man. We totally had no idea Santa was doing that when they were taking the pictures, we laughed so hard when we opened these up!
(taken Dec. 20, 2010 @ Santa's Workshop in front of the National Christmas Tree)
*we love Lila's stylish white hammer pants hanging out under her sweater. Most people dress their kids up for Santa...we put them in pjs and stick regular clothes on top because it was FREEZING!
(taken Dec. 20, 2010 @ Santa's Workshop in front of the National Christmas Tree)
*we love Lila's stylish white hammer pants hanging out under her sweater. Most people dress their kids up for Santa...we put them in pjs and stick regular clothes on top because it was FREEZING!
1/5/11
the big breakup
We have this polarizing relationship with our photography business. We love it. It's crazy exciting, it's natural, and it's super easy to imagine it becoming a career for both of us together. At the same time, we often feel pretty overwhelmed too. We've had so many conversations about what it would take to have Jon taper out of his day job and make photography work as a full-time job. We've asked every question, played over every possibility, dreamed every photographer's dream, and mixed and matched all the pieces so many times to make it fit.
About six weeks ago, when we were on the verge of making serious changes to move forward with Operation Full-Time Photography, one statement of concern and frustration led to an entire evening of discussion and a DTR with photography. There were tears, we laughed at ourselves, and we went home that night having decided to make a clean break. We broke up. There were thousands of reasons for this and believe me, we went over ALL our options. We needed to be able to focus on what is most important to us in life, and for whatever reason, photography was keeping us from those things.
We finally finished tying up all the loose ends just a couple days ago, ending with getting photos out for the beautiful wedding of a beautiful couple and leaving me feeling all warm and fuzzy about our experience with photography.
Since we decided to quit it's been strange and a little surreal, like it's all just been a wild dream. Strange because it was only 10 months but we feel like we've aged a decade. Strange because we loved it—and invested SO MUCH of ourselves into it—and left it. Strange because when we started the business we only saw two possible outcomes: it flops and we chalk it up to our 'life experiences' pile, or it flies and we move forward to make it a full-time job. Never did we foresee the third option: it's miraculously successful and we quit. Strange because I think we'll always miss it and be a little sad to not have it be such a big part of our lives anymore (we joke that we'll always be recovering professional photography addicts). Strange because I feel like there's so much more that went into this decision than I could ever say. It's so personal to us and so contingent upon our personal needs as a family that it doesn't even make sense when our reasoning comes out of our mouths trying to explain it to someone else. Especially because for some families, going forward with their big idea is completely right and what their family needs. We had to make the choice for what our family needs, and let everything else go.
It's been just as crazy of a year as we'd expected it to be, but we feel really good about it.
We threw ourselves into it one hundred percent, and even if it did mean a lot of sleep deprivation, late dinners, ridiculously large dirty dish pile-ups for days and laundry bins overflowing for weeks, we wouldn't undo anything we've done. We learned so much about photography and business, so much about our camera and extra equipment, so much about people and their real beauty, and so much about our limits, our priorities, and ourselves. That said, we will welcome the change to live life more wholeheartedly at home again and not spread ourselves so thin to so many people and responsibilities.
One thing's for sure, Jon and I are happy to focus more fully our two little crazies. We'll still be taking lots of photos, they'll just be at home of our family again, which is what we got our camera for in the first place. Maybe we'll even blog the photos (gasp!). No promises, but either way, I've got a feeling 2011's gonna be a breath of fresh air for the Smith family.
(the photos are a very small taste of catching up. They're long overdue since according to our blog photos Lila is 3 weeks old. She's actually 5 months...not a bad case of the second child syndrome, just a child born to parents with a crazy side business.)
About six weeks ago, when we were on the verge of making serious changes to move forward with Operation Full-Time Photography, one statement of concern and frustration led to an entire evening of discussion and a DTR with photography. There were tears, we laughed at ourselves, and we went home that night having decided to make a clean break. We broke up. There were thousands of reasons for this and believe me, we went over ALL our options. We needed to be able to focus on what is most important to us in life, and for whatever reason, photography was keeping us from those things.
We finally finished tying up all the loose ends just a couple days ago, ending with getting photos out for the beautiful wedding of a beautiful couple and leaving me feeling all warm and fuzzy about our experience with photography.
Since we decided to quit it's been strange and a little surreal, like it's all just been a wild dream. Strange because it was only 10 months but we feel like we've aged a decade. Strange because we loved it—and invested SO MUCH of ourselves into it—and left it. Strange because when we started the business we only saw two possible outcomes: it flops and we chalk it up to our 'life experiences' pile, or it flies and we move forward to make it a full-time job. Never did we foresee the third option: it's miraculously successful and we quit. Strange because I think we'll always miss it and be a little sad to not have it be such a big part of our lives anymore (we joke that we'll always be recovering professional photography addicts). Strange because I feel like there's so much more that went into this decision than I could ever say. It's so personal to us and so contingent upon our personal needs as a family that it doesn't even make sense when our reasoning comes out of our mouths trying to explain it to someone else. Especially because for some families, going forward with their big idea is completely right and what their family needs. We had to make the choice for what our family needs, and let everything else go.
It's been just as crazy of a year as we'd expected it to be, but we feel really good about it.
We threw ourselves into it one hundred percent, and even if it did mean a lot of sleep deprivation, late dinners, ridiculously large dirty dish pile-ups for days and laundry bins overflowing for weeks, we wouldn't undo anything we've done. We learned so much about photography and business, so much about our camera and extra equipment, so much about people and their real beauty, and so much about our limits, our priorities, and ourselves. That said, we will welcome the change to live life more wholeheartedly at home again and not spread ourselves so thin to so many people and responsibilities.
One thing's for sure, Jon and I are happy to focus more fully our two little crazies. We'll still be taking lots of photos, they'll just be at home of our family again, which is what we got our camera for in the first place. Maybe we'll even blog the photos (gasp!). No promises, but either way, I've got a feeling 2011's gonna be a breath of fresh air for the Smith family.
(the photos are a very small taste of catching up. They're long overdue since according to our blog photos Lila is 3 weeks old. She's actually 5 months...not a bad case of the second child syndrome, just a child born to parents with a crazy side business.)
8/20/10
little and lovely
{lila gwynn. newborn shoot. 6 days old.}
Jon and I obviously love taking photos of people. It's energizing, rewarding, a blast, stressful, crazy, it pushes you on every creative level in your brain, and it's beautiful. Especially when you get photos back to people and they see how beautiful they are. We. love. that.
As much as we love taking photos of other people, there's nothing that makes us more giddy than seeing good photos taken of our own family. And there's nothing more fun than being in the middle of it and seeing just how cute they really are. THIS is why we bought a good camera just less than 2 years ago. This is what motivated us to be better and still does. This is all we ever wanted in the first place. To document our family, and to love what was documented. We actually don't do newborn shoots for our business because it's a lot of work and somewhat contrary to the nature/style of our business with all the detail-oriented posing and studio-like atmosphere it entails, but with our own baby...this was so. much. fun. We couldn't stop telling each other how cute she was over and over. She was a saint for our little homestyle photo shoot, and we totally wanted to eat her up.
This is our baby girl.
lila + daddy.
behind the scenes...a camera in my hand and a ceiling fan in my head.
Jon and I obviously love taking photos of people. It's energizing, rewarding, a blast, stressful, crazy, it pushes you on every creative level in your brain, and it's beautiful. Especially when you get photos back to people and they see how beautiful they are. We. love. that.
As much as we love taking photos of other people, there's nothing that makes us more giddy than seeing good photos taken of our own family. And there's nothing more fun than being in the middle of it and seeing just how cute they really are. THIS is why we bought a good camera just less than 2 years ago. This is what motivated us to be better and still does. This is all we ever wanted in the first place. To document our family, and to love what was documented. We actually don't do newborn shoots for our business because it's a lot of work and somewhat contrary to the nature/style of our business with all the detail-oriented posing and studio-like atmosphere it entails, but with our own baby...this was so. much. fun. We couldn't stop telling each other how cute she was over and over. She was a saint for our little homestyle photo shoot, and we totally wanted to eat her up.
This is our baby girl.
lila + daddy.
behind the scenes...a camera in my hand and a ceiling fan in my head.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)