This was my first official photo session of 2013 and I must say, I think we kicked this year off just right. This little guy was a complete angel and watching how easily he has fit into his family was such a blessing. Truthfully, I didn’t want to leave that morning. He was so snuggly and adorable! And the bubble chair? TDF. I definitely need one of those in my house STAT! [My personal fav from this session HERE].

Her vision for their engagement pictures was perfectly clear to me…we were speaking the same language. And it was as if the sun and the light and the beautiful weather spoke it, too.

She turned four on Monday. Four. Just one year from five. Wasn’t she just three? And now she’s four. She has such a strong personality and still so very girlie. We have many more fights than ever before…strangely enough, they’re usually over brushing her hair (she doesn’t want to cut it, but she doesn’t want me to brush it either) and the outfits she puts together. She actually has excellent taste and I quite enjoy watching how deliberate she is in everything she does. She’s playing more pretend now (my boys never really did that) and it’s nice when I get the opportunity to sit back and quietly spy on her imagination in action. She LOVES to talk about her boyfriendS (oh, dear me) and she is really good at keeping up with her brothers. That girl can match them in a fight any day–she’s cute, but she’s tough as nails when it comes to that. She still snuggles with her pink “dat” and she still sucks her thumb, though she is desperately trying to break that habit. She could read stories all day long and I wish I had more time to do that with her every day. But I do still tuck her in every night and every night, she manages to sneak into bed with us or her brothers. I love that she was born in November and right around Thanksgiving…I will always be so very thankful for her.

Every year, we do a birthday photo shoot adding a balloon. I’m hoping to continue this tradition until she’s 10, if she’ll let me. We had big plans of going into downtown Austin for this year’s image, but with the holiday season in FULL swing for me, I didn’t think that was going to happen until after Christmas. Thanks to the encouragement of my mom (who is in town helping me with the holiday minis this weekend), we managed to pull off a quick, but perfect little photo session tonight. Everything just came together and we didn’t even have to drive downtown. Thank you, Mom! I’ll have to share a pic of the birthday canvases on my wall 1-4 when year 4 comes in.

[P.S. This dress was made by my photog friend, Chantal, with Whimsy and Style Clothing. Her daughter wore this same kind of dress to their session earlier this year and I fell in love it with. Thank you, Chantal, for this beautiful, perfect creation!!!]

I am SO excited to have partnered up with Gro Boutique to bring back the 2nd Annual Pinkle Toes Holiday Mini Sessions! This year’s theme is Candy Land and I’ve been working day and night to pull together this magical, sweet set. The *only* way to score one of these FREE exclusive kids-only mini sessions is by booking a full session for 2013. I just announced these a few days ago and the openings are already more than half full, so don’t wait around.  And yes, if you bring in an unwrapped toy/gift to your mini, you’ll receive a special surprise ;-0. Please contact me ASAP to get the full details.

Finally, finally, finally, I can show you the rest of the Halloween images from this session I was telling you about. These two are characters, I tell ya. When Mr. Wolf leaned ever-so-casually up against the tree like that, I thought his mommy and I would pass out! And the candy sharing…priceless…absolutely priceless!

With all of the excitement and running around from last week (and someday, I promise to do a big ol’ post about that), my body just finally gave out. I’ve literally been in bed all day trying to get better and get some energy back and I *really* did not want to do Halloween tonight. But, Halloween doesn’t stop for sick mommies, so we went out for a short Trick-or-treat session tonight. After a few pics, of course, because I’ve taken pictures of them *every* Halloween and it would be sad not to continue the tradition. Fortunately for me, the kids were very good and very quick for the pics, and even faster at Trick-or-treating. What a great age! What nice weather for a change (usually the kids are too hot in their costumes). Hope you all had a very happy and safe Halloween!

But…if you want to be among the first to know, be sure to pick one of these treats up at the Gro Boutique Grand Opening THIS Saturday!!!!!!!! Until then, my lips are sealed…

..finished up a gallery for one of my long-time and most favoritest clients today and realized that I can’t actually blog any of them yet lest we spoil the AWESOME Halloween cards she is getting ready to send out. As you may remember, she does Halloween cards every year and every year, I get to live vicariously through her creative Halloween genius. Well, okay, you twisted my arm: one small, ghoulish taste HERE.

However, that being said, while digging up all of our old blog posts (2009 and 2010a and 2010b), I noticed that hadn’t yet blogged 2011! Thought this was a pretty good excuse to do so now:

Last year was amazing, I’ll give you that, but I promise, I absolutely cannot wait to show you Halloween 2012 😉

So you know he’s gotta be all things hip and cool. And he is. Just like his parents and his big sis.

Two more favs HERE and HERE.

One thing that I try to stress over and over again in my professional photography workshops is to have a plan, but be willing to accept it when that plan has to totally go out the window. For this session, we had an amazing plan and Linsey, oh, Linsey worked so hard coming up with most ADORABLE campfire and s’more set up. The weather was perfection, the light was stunning, the outfits she put together were bright and happy, but when we first got together that night, I didn’t think anything would end up bright and happy. You can read all of the details in Linsey’s perfectly written blog post, but I’ll sum it up for you in four words: kids will be kids.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: in my heart of hearts, I honestly did not think we were going to pull this session off. Bless them, they drove all the way in from the Houston area and Linsey was trying so hard to keep everyone happy and cheerful. We were getting desperate. Some lovely stranger at the park even ran to her car to get us a band-aid for the little guy when he fell. I think everyone at the park took pity on us that evening. When it was clear that it was hopeless, I finally took Linsey aside so we could re-evaluate our situation. I said, “We have to come up with a Plan B in case we can’t pull it together before the sun goes down. What are the three most important things to you that you want me to capture in this session?” She looked at me with her big beautiful eyes and said with complete and heartfelt conviction, “I need to look pretty. I need the kids to smile. I need our family interacting together.” Not too much to ask at all. We can do this. I know we can do this!

And wouldn’t you know it that as soon as we had decided to call it a night, miraculously, the kids rallied and we accomplished our goals for the evening: 1) Linsey looked BEAUTIFUL, even when she was surrounded by tears and chaos, 2) the kids DID smile, and 3) everyone came together and looked like they were having the time of their lives. Whew!!!! Thank you so much, Linsey, for hanging in there that evening and for not giving up on me ;-). I hope you can look back on these images and maybe have a little giggle to remember what we went through to get this. And in case you can’t remember:

P.S. You can check out Linsey’s beautiful photography HERE!