© lux amoris 2012

© lux amoris 2012

© lux amoris 2012

As if the Life Story project wasn’t enough, I decided to add another once-monthly project to my plate. My New Year’s resolution this year was to focus more on personal work, so these group projects are really going to force me to keep up with it all and I’m enjoying every moment of it.

This group is a fabulous group of women I met on a photographer’s forum, and we are following a set theme each month, using our camera to describe how we view the theme.

This month is New Beginnings.

To me, every day is a new beginning. A clean slate. Waking up in the morning and knowing the entire day is waiting for you to make of it what you will. I’m charging myself this year with the responsibility of taking control of my own life. Instead of sitting back to wait and see what life delivers me, I am going to go out there and find it myself.

Check out the next photographer, Jessica Reischel, in this circle by clicking here!

© lux amoris 2012

© lux amoris 2012

It’s that time of the month again! The Life Story Series!

Ever see a photographer who starts out with a 365 day project, or even a 52 week project and never finishes? Yeah, me too. Well, I recently joined a group of a few other busy photographers who decided to commit to a 12 month project! If we fail this, we’ll be taking donations for a time management seminar. The best part is that it will be totally candid, lifestyle shots of each of our own families/lives. We don’t even have to dredge up random people or make our kids pose for us. We’re calling the series “The Story of ________” and we’ll each be filling in our own blanks. At the end of this post is a link to another photographer who participated and she’ll be linking to someone else. It’s a whole big circle of stories in pictures. Click through and enjoy!

This month, my story focuses on making cookies.

My kids, like most kids I’m sure, go nuts over making cookies. Well, not necessarily the making part (though they enjoy dumping flour into a bowl) — their true love lies in sprinkles, and making sure they coat every single surface available with said sprinkles.

I love to indulge this joy in January, when slice and bake cookies go on sale. All the leftover Christmas designs are marked down January first and the kids and I go nuts buying a ton of them and making them all week long. Some people have a ton of cookies around before Christmas, we have tons after. Slice and Bake is perfect for those grumpy days. All I have to do is pull some colored sugar out of the pantry and they immediately break into grins. And best yet, 10 minutes after they pile on the sprinkles, the cookies are ready to eat. Perfect for those little attention spans.

With Daddy helping out, aka standing guard against too much sprinkle flinging, we set to work.

The kids adapt their methods… instead of pouring the sprinkles on, they pile them in their palms to shake on. Whatever works!

When that becomes too chaotic, Daddy brings out a little cup and pours all the extra cast offs from the sides of the baking pan for reuse. More fun!

Bug’s “uh-oh” face when she realizes her hands are messy… and her solution to the problem.

Moose-man finally decides shaking from the cup is the most effective method. And then the traditional crowd-the-oven to watch.

Click here to continue the Life Story Series chain!

© lux amoris 2012

It’s tradition! Each November I do the casual Christmas card portrait. Each December I do the formal portrait. Each January I do the Christmas PJs portrait.

I’m really having to think to make each year different from previous years. I don’t even know why it’s so important to change it up. The first year that I attempted Christmas portraits, I did the formal portrait on a white backdrop. Bug had just turned one and something wasn’t right… I realized after the fact that I’m just not a white backdrop kind of person for most things (except cake smashes. I do love a plain background for a cake smash). So the second year of the formal portrait attempt, I had Bug sit on the hearth of our fireplace. Last year was two kids in front of the Christmas Tree. This year I opted for something simple and used a wrapped gift as a chair and sat them in front of the window. I was toying with the idea of running with the Christmas Lights fad and stringing white lights behind the curtain, but in the end laziness– I mean, simplicity and preferring timeless looks to fads… yeah, that’s it– won out and we used the window as-is.

As is typical of an almost 2 year old, Moose was not interested in sitting on a box for his Mama. He is more interested in standing with me and looking at the pictures on the back of the camera. He actually wants to look at HIS pictures, but he won’t give me more than a millisecond to capture the image before he’s standing next to me in a flash demanding “SEE! SEE!” Bug, on the other hand, has finally passed that stage and now enjoys posing and hamming it up for me.

This was the quickest session I think we have ever attempted. I took a total of 10 frames before both kids were gone. Four of them had either blinks or weird expressions as I caught them talking. And this is what was left.

It makes me laugh, and I’m going to be glad to have these as the years fly by. I feel like they are already growing up in the blink of an eye. How is my moose man almost two already? I feel like he was my baby burrito just yesterday.

© lux amoris 2011

© lux amoris 2011

Now that my own Christmas cards are out, I’d love to share with you our November edition of the monthly portrait project– the holiday photos.

For my Christmas cards, I usually like to take the kids out to a field or other natural environment for a casual portrait of them together. I also do formal Christmas portraits in their holiday finery (as our December portrait) and in January I do a more casual portrait of them hanging out in their Christmas PJs (gotta get one more use out of them, right?)

© lux amoris 2011

© lux amoris 2011