She's crafty!

Earlier in the month I saw a posting on Facebook from my dear friend, Megan Turnas about a craft exchange she was organizing for the month of March. Being the overachiever that I am I jumped right in, feet first. Not thinking, do you have time for this? Or most importantly, are you crafty? Nah, I just signed up. She used this super cute site called Elfster, which describes inself as a virtual Secret Santa. Names were drawn and anonymous questions were asked and a woman names Sarah was chosen for me. She lives in London and has two children and loves to sew, cook, travel, hike, and do oil paintings. My mind was racing and with great help from the real 'Martha's' in my life, I had come up with a few ideas. We thought about luggage tags, a journal, note cards, and magnets. Immediately I was hot on on luggage tags and even paid and downloaded a pattern off Etsy which are these super cute, advertised as EASY ones that of course required a sewing machine. Ugh. I don't have one and I don't even know how to use one. Also, the pattern is a three page PDF. Talk about overwhelming. Then I thought about easier luggage tags. I was hot on this remember. Still most involved sewing or were super cheesy.

Back to plan B, but what was plan B?

I emailed a few of my Martha's and one of them came up with an idea for glass marble magnets. I read the description online. (This website, not martha — to make: marble magnets, does an awesome way of explaining how to make them, so, just got there to get the directions.)

And I fell in love.

That night my daughter and I ran out to Michaels to find our supplies.

I rolled up my sleeves the next day and created these little wonders.

I'm so impressed with myself. How cute are they? I have so much fun creating these for Sarah.

I even designed a little robin egg blue box to accompany it.

I plan to ship them off today. I'm really thankful for all my friends and their awesome ideas. I wouldn't have been able to do it without them. So, maybe I'm not a crafting guru, but I was able to channel some thing creative in me to make these little gems. I hope she loves them as much as I do.

I love my BOY! Liam, 10-months-old

Here are a few photos of Liam for his 10-month pictures. Yeah, I'm mom of the year, totally missing his 9 month shots. I have no excuse, geez, I mean, I have my camera out every day anyway.

These are my two favorites! I can't believe he will be one in two short months. YIKES!

Maxton is ONE!

For some crazy idea I decided to go visit my family in Louisville, Ky. It right after my nephew Silas was born.

I don't know what this Florida girl was thinking.

Me in the Ville in February! Are you kidding me?

But I really wanted to meet him and also my sister-in-law (SIL) wanted me to shoot his newborn photos. (You can see some below.)

Anyway, once word got out that I was coming up, I started to book some jobs. But the weather was awful. It was cold, snowing, yuck! My very good friend, Robert Burge, well, I call him Bobby, has an amazing studio space, so, I begged to borrow it for an afternoon. And he said ok!

I had not been in a studio for well over 10 years. I was a bit out of my element. I hope you can't tell, but here are some photos of the Spink family. Their son Maxton just turned one! What a doll. He was so excited to be running around and showing off his new skills. I'm thankful for my SIL's help in keeping him happy and sort of still to capture a few adorable photos.

Here are a few of my favorites!

Lesley had a great idea to make this jumbo cupcake to let Maxton dive into. And dive into he did. He really enjoyed the sweets and it made for such a cute one-year-old photo shoot.

They are such a gorgeous family.

He wasn't like the studio at first, so, I decided to chase him around a bit in the office and you know how babies love stairs!

Bob Silah, Marquette Alumni Magazine

I was recently hired by Marquette University's alumni magazine to get an environmental portrait of, Bob Silah, an alum and a retired Naval officer who started a program for veteran's families at the James A. Haley Veterans' Hospital here in Tampa. It was a challenging shoot trying to find a nice space to take Bob's photo. It's the busiest veteran's hospital in the country and the parking lot proved that. He was very kind and patient driving me around the grounds until I found some flags that I thought would be a nice backdrop. Here is the page out of the magazine!