Weekend Wedding

This weekend my Father-in-Law got married. It was a wonderful, laid back event hosted at their house amidst the hills and trees of Tennessee.
So beautiful!
And the weather!!
Seriously could not have picked a better day. It was 78 degrees with no clouds.
Perfect.

I really loved how relaxed everything was. The invitation said 1 o'clock, but when 1 rolled around, the groom still needed to get dressed!

Rather than hire a photographer, the couple asked a handful of family & friends to come armed with their cameras and snap away (as if you could have stopped me!!). It also gave me a good excuse to try out my new camera lens! I took my role very seriously and started a day early at the rehearsal dinner.

I'll try and stick to photos of people you know. :)



Little decided she was Papa's girl for the evening.
 

Once family started arriving from both sides, it was decided name tags were in order. :)








You've seen this little one before, but she was quite a bit smaller back then!


I didn't photoshop her eyes. Promise!! 


I think the sun was at that magical point in the sky though, so I'm sure that helped. :)

Regardless,
WOWZER!!!!!
Those are some pretty blue eyes!!!
(I'm allowed to say that, right?)

The groom, or Papa Rob as he's known around our house.  :)


Days like that make me wish we lived out in the country instead practically down town! Well, living practically down town with kids makes me wish I lived pretty much anywhere else, but that's another story!!

Hope you're enjoying sunshine wherever you find yourself today!!!

xoxo Lori Danelle

Family Photos from Bradley Spitzer!!!

Though I am not currently employed in my dream job — my dream job is actually a craft room in my house where I can create to my heart's content & people would actually love the things I made so much that they wanted to give me money in exchange for these items — there are a few things about where I work that my dream job just can't compete with:

I am surrounded by some incredibly talented people!

(my dream job can't really compete with my paycheck & benefits package either. Just in case you were wondering. . .)

Bradley Spitzer is one such talented individual. If you've ever been by here, I'm pretty confident you've seen his name pop up. He is our resident photographer and gives me pointers, tips, and tricks to help me improve my photo taking skills.

(Please don't let my photos be any reflection on him! This is mostly done in passing and thus he is in no way responsible for what I then do with these tips, tricks & pointers. One day I'll sit still long enough to figure out what I'm doing on a technical level & then perhaps I'll be good to go! )

More exciting than any tips, however, is when he actually takes photos for me! Which, as you've noticed, he graciously does fairly often. But about two weeks ago, he even topped that. Not only did he take photos for me, he took them of my family!!!







I LOVE these photos.

They may not be the sort that show off our family in a perfectly posed, perfectly dressed sort of way, but they ooze with the girls' personalities. I'm in awe of how well he was able to capture US.



And sometimes, us is quite silly.





What's really funny about these is that everything you see was taken during the last half of our "session." Perhaps it was just too hot. Or maybe because Brad was a new person they were just a bit reserved, but whatever the reason, the first half the girls were kind of boring. They played on the playground equipment and had fun, but they didn't really shine. Nate & I were starting to feel a little bad for wasting Brad's time. But because a photo with the entire family in it AND looking at the camera is hard to come by, I asked for just a few more of all of us together.

I'm glad I did & we didn't call it quits before that!! I'm not sure what happened exactly, but Big got really, really goofy on us — and thus, we got some really great photos!!!



I especially love these because they were taken the day before Nate & my anniversary. I love that we now have this glimpse into our family as we are right now.





OK, OK. I know that's a lot, but just 2 more!!!





There are so many good ones that it's really hard to choose which ones I should share!! However, you can see the rest ( and I really think you ought to! ) by clicking on any of the above images and then you can click through the rest on my Flickr photostream.

Thanks again Brad!!!

xoxo—Lori Danelle

Thirty.

Happy Birthday to me!



Pretty flowers make turning 30 less painful, right?



Although, I've decided it's not 30 that scares me. It's 35. And 36, 37, 38, 39 & 40.



But I'm getting ahead of myself, aren't I?



I'm just going to enjoy right now & the place that I'm in: My beautiful, endearing, and always entertaining little girls, the wonderful man I'm going to grow old with, our adventures, and all the possibilities open to me.

Because really, I'm happy.
And I wouldn't trade that for 25.

xoxo—Lori

*************************************************************************************

I was greeted this morning with cupcakes!!!



The best kind, too. You know, the ones I don't have to follow with exercise!!





My girls sure know how to treat their Momma right!! :)
I could just squeeze them until they pop!! Love them so much.

Pretty Little One

As promised, a tiny bundle of cuteness to start your week!

Little Mackenzie Elise . . .or Ellie as she's being called.













Couldn't you just eat her up!? So sweet and I swear she didn't make a peep the whole time I was there! And that's with a 2 and 6 year old running around with a 100+ pound dog!

I just wish I could have taken her home!!

xoxo—Lori

Photo session with Frogs and Faeries Photography

Just saw the sneak peek of our photo session from last weekend! So amazing!!! Can not wait to see all of them. Check them out at Frogs & Faeries Blog. What's extra special about this shoot is that my husband went to high school with Heather the photographer. Extra fun!!

!!!!!!!
Don't know how I'm ever going to chose!

xoxo—Lori

Gearing up for the weekend!

I've been able to cut out patterns to my little heart's content over the couple of days. . .which means this weekend, hopefully, I'll be spending some time at my sewing machine!

Wanted to share with you some of the pictures I took last weekend of the girls on Mother's Day. I think I got a few that turned out quite nice! Just wish I had gotten some of the girls together. Unfortunately, Charlie was a little too interested in feeding the ducks to be bothered with taking pictures with her sister. Maybe next time?









Hope you all have a great weekend! I'm hoping for a trip to the zoo!

Went to lunch and a photo shoot broke out!

I am in the marketing department of the company I work for and we have a photographer on staff. He likes to take his camera with him whenever possible. So when three of us went to lunch, an abandoned car wash next door was just a little too enticing to be left alone.

These are pretty silly, but we had a lot of fun! (and yes, they were meant to be laughed at when it came to the posing—think olan mills photos, senior pictures, band photos, etc)







We even took some of just me! (Anyone notice my new profile picture?) I felt like I was 18 again taking my senior pictures!






Definitely check out Bradley Spitzer's website. Lots of very cool photography! (I've even made it on his page now)

Pictures of Zoe!!!

I can't wait to share some of these, so here's a few! I haven't edited them or anything, but wanted to get them out for you to catch a glimpse of the adorably sweet little Zoe Mckenna.

She was such a sweet little dear through all of these, and if I just knew how to better use my camera, could be very tempted to take pictures of babies all day!











Why, oh why do they have to get big!!!