I just wanted to share a few pics from my commercial shoot with Ashlee Proffitt Design for her 2011 Christmas card series!  I especially loved this first set up for her tented cards!   If only you could have been there to see the reality of the situation…kids screaming and crying everywhere, kids running off with our props, kids trying to get into the frame of the pictures to “help”…such is life for us business-owner mommies:)  All of these gorgeous Christmas cards and more can be found in her Etsy shop!  Check it out!

Don’t you just love this fun take on address labels!?

***Additional photo prints, high res digital negatives as well as additional Christmas cards can all be ordered separately for those of you with lots of friends on your list!

Ok friends, I need your help!  With Chloe we didn’t choose to find out what we were having so I never actually got to have the fun of putting together a nursery specifically for a little girl.  So, of course, now that we will be welcoming sweet little baby Vera into the family and Chloe’s room will become the “girls” room I cannot wait to get to painting and decorating!!!  They will be sharing a relatively small room that doesn’t have a lot of natural light so I want to open it up with nice light colors in a palette that is airy and sweet…but I just cannot decide which palette I like better…I love them both!  Will you help me choose? You can vote at the bottom!

Palette #1: Peach, Pink and Gray

The walls would be a very light gray, almost white with white furniture and peach and pink bedding and accents.

Palette #2: Peach, Lavender and White

With this palette the walls would be a very light grayish lavender (as pictured), furniture would be white, accents would be peach.

Those of you who know my husband and I know how long it took us to pick a name for Chloe.  We just weren’t good at the whole committing-to-a-name thing and although we only had two names in the running we didn’t actually make the decision about the first name until we were on our way to the hospital (the middle name we settled on after she was born!). So it is funny to me that we knew so “early” (to us) and with so much certainty that this name was perfect for this little one due in February.   Vera Elise Cochrane (phonetically – “Varah Eleece”…Chloe’s translation – “Bera Eleece Quockrane”.  Vera is from the latin root verus and means “truth” and Elise means “consecrated to God.”  I am not much of a crier but when we were considering the name and looked into the meanings I definitely burst into tears knowing that this was the one:)

We cannot wait to meet baby Vera and finally hold her in our arms.  We are beyond excited that Chloe will have a little sister and our prayer already is that they will become the best of friends.

“Behold, how good and pleasant it is when sisters live together in unity.”   -Psalm 133:1

Meet the Winn family! We met up on Saturday evening for this family’s first (gasp!) professional portrait session! hehe.  Sweet little Meredith was instantly smiles and Riggs (who is almost my daughter’s age) did not disappoint with his dashing good looks and all-boy energy level.  We had a nice long session with time to get a little  bit of everything before the sun went down…we even had time to snap a few of just mom and dad – what a concept!  A self-described “classy but fun” family, I think these images capture both in addition to heaping piles of love:) Here is a little peak at some of my favorite images from their family session!

Last week we decided to take a last minute vacation to unplug and spend some time together as a little family of three.  Words cannot even express what a blessing it was to turn off everything and just love on each other.  The chance to spend so much unscheduled, undivided quality time  with Chloe (definitely her love language!) was just so sweet to my heart and the hours spent in quiet conversation with Graham wrapped up in blankets on the balcony overlooking the ocean with cups of hot coffee in hand were like nourishment to our – still new – marriage of 6 years.

Now that I am back home and back in the office I am holding on to the feeling of sand between my toes and the warm breeze on my face but more importantly the resolve in our hearts not to get so easily caught up in the pace of life, and to be more careful not to replace genuine connection with the constant “connection” of e-mail, internet, Facebook, Twitter, texts etc etc that via for our mental space daily.  We have resolved to make some tangible changes that will hopefully make us better parents, spouses and friends to the people that God has blessed our life with.

On an unrelated note, hop on over to the Facebook page for a little giveaway for this weekend’s workshop Happy November. Connect face to face, voice to voice, heart to heart with someone God has placed in your life today:)