You might remember when I did a little poll asking for help deciding on nursery colors.  I was so happy to finally pick a gray ,peach and pink palette but had NO idea that it would be virtually IMPOSSIBLE to find anything in peach for a baby room!  Who would have thought!  Anyway with some creativity, the help of crafty friends and just plain stubborn determination to have a peach and pink room, I was finally able to pull it off and…at the moment it is definitely my favorite room of the house:)

Possibly the most painstaking labor of love was this DIY chandelier for over the dresser/changing table.  I may or may not have cleared both Home Depot and Walmart out of peach and pink paint swatches (shhhhh…).  The walls are painted in Behr Silver Drop and I could not be happier with the color!  It is so peaceful!

Previously raspberry pink lanterns were repainted in a ballet slipper pink.  Peach sheets were painstakingly procured from an obscure online retailer…seriously, I bet this year peach baby bedding will be all the rage…I am just too ahead of the trend I guess.haha

With the help of a friend, we came up with a fun design for some custom canvas art for over Vera’s crib.  TIP: If you are looking for a small amount of paint in a very specific color, just pick out the exact shade in a paint swatch at Home Depot and pay $2.95 for them to mix you a paint sample canister in that color!  We had plenty of paint for the large canvas and I was able to pick the exact color I wanted for cheap!  Way easier than trying to find or mix an acrylic paint for the job!

Almost all of the furniture is from Ikea with the exception of Chloe’s toddler bed (Craig’s list baby!) The trick was that I wanted to sell her old dark cherry nursery set and buy all new white furniture without spending any money. (Clearly that was the only way that I could convince my husband to let me re-do the entire nursery including getting rid of our still new cherry nursery set).  Success!  Not only was I able to make the swap for no extra money but the less bulky Ikea furniture opened up the room which now has to be shared by two little princesses!

It is hard to tell from this picture but this little collection of canvases was salvaged from the old room.  My mom and I had painstakingly freehand painted three designs in Chloe’s old room’s colors so instead of totally ditching or painting over them, I traced the old designs  with puff paint and then when it dried, I painted over it in the new peach shade making them new texturized versions of the old work!

Sweet little pink birdies from Target’s Valentine’s day collection and a hand made polka-dot garland that was created as a decoration for Vera’s baby shower recently!

I remember how special I felt when my mom bought me a mesh “princess” drape for over my bed as a girl and I could not resist Chloe having one as well.  There is just nothing sweeter…except maybe for Chloe’s “friends” that she sleeps with every night…”bunny” (a gift from my mom), “donkey” and “piggy” (gifts from her great uncle Steve) and “puppy” (a gift from her great grand-nanna).  Don’t you love the creativity of the names!? haha

And I could not help but share the adorable and perfectly matching baby shower invitations that Ashlee Proffitt designed for Vera’s shower…I have the best friends ever!

For this session I had the pleasure of spending half of the day with Sonal! A budding photographer in the Hyde Park area.  Sonal has a true creative eye and such a sweet personality.  She did a fabulous job working with our model Kortni (another local photog!) and I cannot wait to see where her business takes her this year! We spent the shoot portion of her mentor session talking about finding the right type of lighting to look for when doing an on location shoot.  I shared with her one of the lighting “equations” that I look for while out on a shoot (clean dark background, even light on the subject and a natural/neutral reflector bouncing light into the subjects face) as seen in the parking deck images.  Just lovely:)  Here are a few of my favs…

Thank you so much Kortni for your fabulous style, modeling skills and patience!

If you are interested in finding out more about SCP mentor sessions you can check them out here on the workshop website!

Also, I am looking for a “model” for another mentor session next week (Wed Feb 8th from 11:00-12:30) in the Tampa area.  Shoot me an e-mail at info@shaycochrane.com if you want to get in on the fun:)

My practical advice for photographers is to know where you stand and how you feel about “modifying” your client’s images, especially if you are in the early stages of beginning your business when you are especially prone to wanting to do whatever you can to make everyone happy. I am not just talking about the the moral dilemma that it presents (what are we as photographers saying about what constitutes as beauty?) but even just practically speaking…is your bride under the impression that you are going to remove her wedding day acne out of 700 wedding images? Is mom hoping that you will take a few inches off of her in her family portraits – all 50 of them? If you do some of these more in depth edits to the “sneak peak” images that your client sees on your blog, will he/she be disappointed when she sees the rest of the images that didn’t receive that same hollywood treatment but are truer to reality? Why isn’t reality beautiful enough? Whatever options you decide to offer to your clients it is worth giving it some intentional thought and then educating your clients in a way that builds realistic expectations while helping them to see the beauty that you see in them. Learn to do the “hard work” up front of making your clients feel beautiful during the shoot which goes such a long way to getting beautiful natural images.  In addition,your compliments, coaching, outfit suggestions, lighting and posing can often do just as much as photoshop can.

On a separate note, as a mom blessed with the task of raising girls in today’s society (scary!) I want to make sure that my daughters understand the reality behind the message in this video and that they are constantly reminded of what biblical beauty looks like:

“Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Prov 31:30

“I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, and my soul knows it very well.” Psalm 139:14

Fotoshop by Adobé from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

So here were are 10 days into the new year and I have entirely given up on the whole “2011 recap” blog post…and the whole “2012-big-things-ahead” post for that matter. haha  At the moment the only  big thing around here is my growing belly! But  the truth of the matter is that when I look ahead at the coming year I feel like I am in that moment at the top of the roller coaster, holding my breath about to take the plunge, not exactly sure what to expect,  both scared and excited at the same time. Ready. Set…

In just a few weeks (Lord willing) I will become “mommy” to a second little girl.  Two and a half years now into being a mommy to Chloe I more fully understand the weight of that task and the mere thought of the “bigness” of it is so overwhelming that it literally takes my breath away.  There just is nothing as {hard.amazing.challenging.exhausting.overwhelming.wonderful} as being a mom.  One resolve that I have for this year is that I am not going to attempt to “balance” everything.  It can’t be done.  You have to choose your priorities and the scale will and should tip in that direction.  Practically speaking for me that means there are a few changes that I am making for the coming year as it relates to photography.

1)I am taking a few months off for maternity leave, February-May. For those of you who are not yet mothers…this can easily be misunderstood as taking some much needed vacation time to sleep in and sit around in stretchy pants smiling at your new little bundle of joy.  For those of you who are mothers…you know that maternity leave is more of a necessity than an option.  As in…for the next few moths I will be running on 2-4 hours of sleep a night.  All of my clothes will be covered in either poop, vomit or breastmilk (sorry guys) making a “professional” appearance laughable.  I will be functioning essentially as a fridge…or 24 hour buffet.  My available hours for e-mail will be between 2am-4am but I will not be able to guarantee that they will be coherent, let alone sweet.  I may or may not know where my phone is to answer your call, and if I can answer I will likely have to lock myself in the bathroom to secure any silence or privacy. Just saying.haha. And yes, there will still definitely be stretchy pants and smiling at my new little bundle of joy involved.

2) I am not taking any weddings in 2012. I am actually really excited about this. haha. I have been planning this for awhile but my pride has kept me from making it “official”. But honestly,  I need the break.  I need to give myself time to figure out what it is going to look like being a mom of two.  I need to make sure that weddings are where I want to be focusing my business.  I need to have a year free from the pressure of keeping up with the wedding industry. I need to give my business and myself some time to breath, regroup, and gain some clarity before I charge ahead.  I literally do not even know what it means to just be a mom without business related “work” that I need to get done each day.  Thankfully, I am blessed with the opportunity to even do this without my family relying on my income.  I am really excited to take the pressure off of myself and see where things go.  I also really want to pour more of my time into teaching and mentoring other photographers, which leads to me to the next new change…

3) In addition to continuing to do workshops (the next ones will likely be in the late Spring) I will be focusing my efforts on one-on-one mentor sessions for beginner professional photographers. I am REALLY excited about this and if you are interested in hearing more you can check it out here!

Well, my husband just walked into my office looking incredibly handsome and said that he is taking “his ladies” out to dinner. haha.I don’t turn down things like that, so, I am off to doll myself up…in whatever outfit I can still manage to fit into…and join my sweet husband and precious daughter to soak up every last minute of “just the three of us.”

**Photo courtesy of Sarah Sandel Photography!

I cannot believe that I only have about 10 more weeks until we get to meet sweet little Vera and welcome her into our family!!  For some reason this pregnancy has just flown by at breathtaking pace.  I think because I was so sick during the first trimester that those first few months were just a blur of mixed emotions.  It is hard to be excited about and feel connected to something that you can’t feel or see and yet is causing you to have to pull over in your car because you cant keep your breakfast/lunch/dinner/water down. ugh.  I really was completely mentally and physically MIA as a wife, mom and friend those first few months so when I finally got into my second trimester I was just so happy to be feeling like myself (and like a normal human being again!) that I went full speed ahead trying to make up for lost time!  And then I blinked and the second trimester was over and now I am moving into what Graham calls the “endurance phase” of pregnancy. haha. Your body literally feels out of control/taken over by an alien (albeit a very cute one) and you start to become glad that you can’t see past your belly b/c honestly you dont really want to be reminded of what is going on with the bottom half. haha.  All of that to say that I am BEYOND excited to bring our second daughter into the world and I feel enormously blessed and excited with every little kick in my belly.

Last weekend we overhauled Chloe’s room and fortunately she was SO excited with the changes – literally spinning around singing “thank you, thank you, thank you!!!”  (pictures of the room transformation to come!) She loves that Vera has a crib in there now and will be sleeping with her. hehe.  I think making progress on the girls room has been as good for her as it has been for me.  It is all becoming more real and I just feel so blessed that God is giving us another girl – a sister and “forever friend” (as we say to Chloe).

I am trying to transition mentally into this next season of my life as well.  Re-prioritizing, coming to terms with how things are going to have to change a bit once I have a second little one.  I might have a million blog posts that need to go up, and they just may not ever happen, and I am learning (slowly) to be ok with that and not fight against this next season of my life the way I did when I had Chloe.  I lost too much time mentally when I first had her, trying to “balance” my photography work with being a mom.  Here’s the truth…you can’t “balance” it. You have to make some choices. You have to prioritize. The scale will tilt in the direction of where your heart is and I want my heart to be in my home with my husband and my girls. I don’t want to be bitter toward my mom responsibilities or even worse, my kids, because I “didn’t get enough done” in my business today.  That is an awful feeling that it has taken me awhile to learn to recognize and shift my thinking.

I will still do photography.  I will still run a business as much as God continues to give me work to do.  But I am learning to welcome the fact that the next few years of my life will look different than the last in terms of what I will “accomplish” with my work.  And I am ok with that. More than ok…blessed to know that my business is in God’s hands and that gives me freedom to be the wife and mom that I really want to be!

(Photo courtesy of my talented and beautiful friend Sarah of Sarah Sandel Photography.)

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!