Pregnancy Month by Month

Like every good first-time mama/Pinterest user I decided to take regular photos of my baby bump as it grew. And grew and grew. 

God bless my husband for being so patient and taking so many for me!
We took weekly and monthly photos.
We took them in the baby room so that we could watch the room progress, and I took them in the same dress so that I could watch my belly grow.
And now, with my daughter at a whopping 10 weeks old, I'm finally sharing them :)

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Maternity Photos

When I realized that I was going to be super pregnant in the middle of the winter, I was excited.
Warm maternity clothes, internal furnace [baby] through the coldest months of the year, and the possibility of winter maternity photos!
I love a nice sunny winter day in Grande Prairie.
Snow-covered floors, hoarfrost on all the tree branches, peaks of sunlight.
 I'm usually reaching for warm tea instead of standing outside in the frosty cold weather without a coat, but what better setting could you ask for!
This is as good as winter maternity photos get :) 

My lovely friend Ashley, who blogs over at Delightfully Domestic, agreed to take some photos for us. and we lucky picked the perfect day in December!

Here are a few of our favourites (too many to choose from!):

Now I just have to narrow down my favourites for the scrapbook and the nursery!

{xoxo}

Oh... maybe we need a kid :)

Due January 11th, 2014 :) 

And just so all the Albertans understand what we're trying to say.... 

{xoxo}

Post-Wedding Photo Album

Our photo album came!!! 

Our photographers - Beauchamp Creative (who were UH-mazing!), made us a wedding photo album as part of our wedding package deal. 

It's been sitting on our coffee table, and every chance I get, I browse through it again... and again... and again. Do brides get sick of reminiscing about their wedding day?? I haven't yet! 

Pop by anytime you want to browse through the album. 

It looks very professional. 

I was + + + happy (read: extra happy) with the results! 

Also... for those counting, I've been a newlywed for 207 days :) 

{love}

Photography Class

Since I wasn't busy enough... I decided to enrol myself into a short photography class this year! It was given at the Grande Prairie Regional College. It was a tad more on the technical side than I was hoping for, but I gained lots of good tips and tricks from the course. The main objective in taking the class was to have some understanding on what aperture, ISO, shutter speed, etc. all mean. Aaaand I do mean "some" because before this class, my understanding was at a zero, on a scale from one to ten. Even now, I'm maybe at a 2. Tops. Putting your camera on "Auto" and taking pictures without really thinking is easy, but learning how to play with all the settings, and how changing the ISO will change the quality, and how to adjust your aperture to compensate for your shutter speed... that stuff is all a little bit more complicated. 

Why do I want to do this you ask?!?! Good question... even now I wonder... but truly, sometimes when my digital SLR camera is on "auto" or "program", I just can't get the picture I want! I know there should be a way on this fan-dangled fancy camera to get a better picture, but I can't... that is mostly why I'm learning. 

Anyway... here are some pictures to show some things I'm learning... These first pictures show changes that I made to aperture to let more or less light in (exactly the same picture though... ). 

And this is just a cool lens that the camera will automatically adjust to... who knew?!?

Then we learned about trying to capture motion. I learned that if I pan the camera keeping focused on one thing that I can get that one object clear (even though it's in motion) and the background will looked blurred. Assuming you have the correct shutter speed.... So I tried....

And tried....

And tried again..... 

And then I gave up. Cause I was doing something wrong. 

BUT! Then I went back to class and asked my teacher why it wasn't working.. and he said to pan in the same plain as my subject... so I tried again on a walk, and it sort of worked! See in the pic below... Russ was my subject, and his torso is pretty clear, but daisy is blurry, and the background is blurry! Ta-da! Obviously I still need a lot more practice with this, but it's a start! 

I also took a couple shots of Russ that day to try and use different lighting settings. The one below was suppose to have the sunlight on the side of his face so that you can really see the definition of his facial features. Kind of worked I think. Definitely doesn't look flat like many of the "sun-directly-behind-us" photos we normally take! 

That's all for now. Maybe I will share some more of my expertise with you another day.
If you're lucky ;)

Before and After Wedding Inspiration

I was reviewing some of my wedding photos the other day, thinking about all the lovely details and how they all came together perfectly. 

It got me thinking about all of the planning and preparations that went into that day, which made me pulled up my Wedding Inspiration Board. I had made this inspiration board within the first month of preparations! Before I actually had any real plans - I had these ideas. 

Here it is:

Looking at this board, I can't believe how many of the details and ideas from my wedding day started here!

Here are just a few of the ideas that stayed the same:
- Wooden slats and mason jars for centrepieces
- Orange bridesmaid dresses
- Tags with buttons on them for the wedding favours
- Bold & bright flowers
- Burlap decorative pieces
- Etched wooden Mr. and Mrs. signs
- Burlap banners for pictures and decorations
- NO seat covers (hate them!)
- Brown pocketfold invitations
- Cute, subtle owl theme
- more rustic elements

Here are how the details came across with the flare of my husband & I:

1. Wood and mason jars for centre pieces

2. Orange bridesmaid dresses

3. Tags with buttons on them for wedding favors 

4. Bold & bright flowers

5. Burlap decorative pieces

6. Mr. & Mrs. etched in wood

7. Burlap Banners

8. No seat covers

9. Pocketfold invitation

10. Cute, subtle owl theme

Other Rustic Elements:

Obviously it all worked out perfectly! BEST WEDDING EVER! (In my humble opinion... lol). 

HUGE thanks to my husband for putting many hours into the many wooden decorative pieces you see above. And a HUGE thanks to our photographers, Beauchamp Photography, for taking such amazing pictures of all of my details :)   If you're looking for a photographer in Grande Prairie, I highly recommend them!