Christmastime

What a great time of year! I feel so blessed that I got to enjoy the holiday with family and friends. It truly was wonderful to celebrate our Savior's birth and do so with so many wonderful people.

Girls Crochet Headbands

This company has great stuff! Their prices are very affordable and everything is super cute. The quality is great too! Check out their site. http://www.girlscrochetheadbands.com/

I first heard about them before my daughter was born. She's now 14 months old. I wanted to get some of those cute headbands and hats with the over-sized flowers so I could take equally cute pictures of my new daughter. So, I did a search for flower headbands and GCH was one of the first sites to come up. I couldn't believe their prices! Here are some of the pictures I've taken of her in their products.

Her Halloween costume this year was their Bumblebee romper (these are professional pictures).

Here's one of her in the Kufi hat in the Regular size with a turquoise flower (professional picture).

For the Fourth of July I got the Patriotic flower.

Here are some of the newborn pictures I took of my daughter with their stuff on.

This is the size small Kufi hat (I wanted it to last longer). She can still wear the size small but it is a little small. 

Sunday Snapshot {I'm Thankful For...}

Well, with Thanksgiving approaching I wanted to take some time to share what I'm thankful for. The last few years haven't been the best for us financially. As a result of everything that was happening in the country in 2009, Zac and I had to move back to our home state of Michigan from Colorado shortly after we got married. We loved Colorado and still hope to move back there some day. Thanks to my in-laws, we had a place to move to from Colorado (without having to move "in" with either of our parents). So, first, I'm thankful for the generosity of my in-laws and for that of my parents as well. They've all been a great support system as my husband and I continue to try to find good paying, full-time jobs.

  Here are my parents with Rommey when we went to get Rommey's pumpkin this year.

Here are my in-laws with Rommey when we saw them in April for spring break.

I'm also thankful for my wonderful husband who is super supportive of everything most things I want to do and always encourages me to be the best I can be at what ever I am doing. He challenges me and loves me like no one else. He is my soul mate.

One of the biggest things I'm thankful for is my amazing daughter. She is absolutely perfect and has brought so much joy to our lives. We weren't sure I'd be able to have kids (I had a miscarriage 6 months before we found out we were expecting her) and God has truly blessed us with the most incredible little girl we could have ever imagined. I'm looking forward to her second Thanksgiving and her second Christmas.

I finally got some good pictures of her (with a blurred background, like I like) today. I was so excited!

This is from the other day. My first attempt at 2 pigtails. She was a bit fussy and not too cooperative but still super cute!

Finally, I'm thankful for the good health of my friends and family, the fact that I have the opportunity to substitute teach around the area as I continue to look for a full-time teaching job (elementary) throughout the country and the fact that my husband is so "handy" and great at fixing things around the house as well as my car (most of the time) when something goes wrong with it.

I just feel so blessed and thankful.

Sunday Snapshot {Fall in Northern Michigan}

I'm still really struggling with getting the pictures I want when I take pictures. I rarely end up with what I imagined.

Anyhoo... Fall in Northern Michigan is such a great time of year... the leaves are changing, the air is crisper and there's a certain feeling of excitement. This fall has been very exciting because it's my daughters first "real" fall. Last year she was only a few weeks old but this year she's been able to walk around and explore everything that is so wonderful about fall.

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This first picture I obviously played with in Photoshop in order to get the blurred background. It's the right idea for the pictures I want to take but I want to get that effect without using Photoshop (I don't have an SLR camera though).

For the next two pictures I used a Nikon CoolPix L18 camera in auto mode.

Pictures from today... playing with the camera Scene settings.

The majority of these pictures were taken with my Fuji FinePix 2550HD camera. I used the SR setting and then chose different scene settings so I don't have the "numbers" per-se for you but I hope you still enjoyed my pictures.

Sunday Snapshot {Rommey's First Birthday}

On Saturday we celebrated Rommey's first birthday. I can't believe that our little girl is already 1 year old! Time sure does fly by. We celebrated with a small gathering of family (and one friend).

Here's our sweet baby girl the day she was born.

Her beaver cake, made especially by daddy.

Cake face (taken by our friend with her phone).

In her birthday outfit.

Our little walker.

All smiles

Checking out the rocking Yak that was given to me on my first birthday and is now hers.

Trying out her balance bike (with some help from grandma), before daddy adjusted it to the right size (now she can ALMOST touch the ground).

Most of these pictures were taken with my Fuji FinePix S2550HD camera (not an SLR). I also just kept it at the auto setting or the scene selection setting. I could really use an SLR camera but Zac says that I have to figure out how to use this camera (and all it's settings) before I can have an SLR camera. :-) I want to figure out how to take pictures with a blurry background (it's a hit or miss when I try it with flowers) because I love how that looks in shots. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my pictures.