Maternity Session Downtown

Today I had the pleasure of photographing Kelly for her maternity portraits. She is 31 weeks along and looks as beautiful as ever. Now, you know, I appreciate a pretty pregnant girl, because, sad to say it, pregnancy is just NOT becoming of me. Yes, you heard it hear first, PREGNANCY MADE ME A BEAST!!

Enough blabber from me, take a look at a few of my favorite shots from today of Miss Kelly:)













And look at her mama! She looks so young!






















Don't forget to visit me @ jenmurphyphotography.com
I pay 10% cash payout for all referals of PAID sessions:)

Bubby Ethan's 1st Hair Cut! (yes, bubby)!

My son was growing a mullet that any of the camaro driving deep south country boys out in my city would envy. I mean, this little guy had a full on mullet, and while I love the mullets, I must admit, it was less than appealing on my 11 month old.

So with that, I figured I'd take him in today for his first haircut, That and I plan to take his birthday photos out doors just like I did his big sister's, by the old cabin.

Here's my little sugar, this picture was my favorite right after the cut, he got to have a lolli pop (oh bad mommy me all you want, ya only live once!).

Before the cut:






Yeah, my son is huge, he's def. one of the tallest 11 month olds I ever seen,

And more proof that kids grow fast?

Well, it seems like just yesterday I was a 21 year old, finding out I was pregnant for the first time, scared, anxious, overwhelmed, and uncertain, and on the 10th my daughter turned 5. FIVE?! Really?! Where does time go? And again, just yesterday I remember coming home from my job in real estate, and posting belly photos in March 2005 birth club with the other ladies..

It's crazy how fast the children grow. It really is.

The rest of life? Well, let's just say it's getting better, one day at a time.

The bug

I am recovering from the nastiest virus I have had in years!

Yesterday I was puking non stop. MiMi had it this past Friday, Ethan caught it the following day, and me? Well it waited until Tuesday at 1 am to wake me up in a fit of the pukies. ugh!

Thankfully, Doug took off work and tended to the children and other duties so I could attempt to rest and recover.

Somehow my legs and tail bone had a case of the moves and wouldn't let me sleep (my luck) so I just laid around in agony all day.

Thankfully it was only at 24 hour bug and today I am feeling back to normal.

So is it me, or does anyone else after recovering from the nasties go "THANK GOD" and feel SO MUCH BETTER to be healthy afterwards? Like, you know? want to do things you normally don't because you feel better?

Yeah, it's probably just me, I am just happy to be better this morning:)

The perfect blue/bedroom make over

Once upon a time, I bought my first house with the love of my life.

It was 2004, and I had an itch to paint. If you had seen the hunter green and salmon colored walls of the 65 rancher when we first purchased her, you would also.

That being said, I didn't know much about picking colors and went with something I thought looked nice on the card, the end result was this HIDEOUS neon electric blue (behr paints, riverside blue):





I ended up being stuck with it for almost 6 years, until last week, I used a portion of the tax return Doug gave me and browsed wal mart, eyeballing and on the look out for the perfect shade of blue/gray/aqua.



I found it in no time at all and $13 later a gallon of it was in my possesion.

I couldn't wait. No, no, infact, I got home, put on my ugly scrubs and got to painting. No primer needed, colorplace paint from wal mart covered up this hideous blue in just TWO coats!!! i was tickled pink.
Before:



And hello to my cool, calm, relaxing shade of neutral blue:



And yes, it photographed EXACTLY how it looks in person!! I couldn't be happier!
It went on white and i was scared at first, but later dried to the exact shade on the colorplace paint swatch I had.


And if you are wondering, yes the closet doors are new, I am slowly but surely remodeling my 65 rancher home and she will be everything I ever wanted:)


And, I would take a picture of my whole room, but trust me, when I say 65 rancher, ROOMS built in those houses are SMALL, therefore I had to smush all the furniture and belongs in the middle of the room. Pretty much, if I had taken an entire photo, you would think I belonged on an episode of hoarders:) and, well, that would be bad.

I promise, no dead cats;) And the farmhouse bed? She's coming along wonderfully as well, the measurements for the plan are off but we made a few changes and she'll be done in no time, Just have to sand and paint her now then put her in our room! I am tickled pink!!





I have had this vision for years now, but just never been able to afford it until now:) Well, thanks to Ana'a plans at knockoffwood:) And cheap wal mart paint:) Seriously, you could spent a ton at sherwin williams, and spent like 1/3 at wal mart for paint JUST as wonderful. Did I mention, NO PRIMER was needed to cover that hideous blue??:D

MiMi's Birthday, etc

So, yesterday my youngest turned 5. FIVE. Crap, already? This is the part where I realize I started my pregnancy at 21, I had an emergency c section after a miserable failed labor at 22, then 5 years flew by and now I'm closer to 30.

Crap, where does it go? It goes everywhere. The time is spent enjoying motherhood, and watching the kids grow. Motherhood is a journey you start out young and when it's all said and done you're a very old soul:) But it's the best journey, even the trying times. Life teaches you lessons, and watching your children grow up is the best lesson I have learned to date.

(besides the one time I got caught being a sticky fingers as a child,oooh that was a bad lesson..my dad tore me a new one).

Anyway, here are some photos from her big day.

((I won't share the ones from her classroom party b/c I am sure the parents of her class mates wouldn't be too thrilled with me sharing them here with out consent)).

This is the cake I made MiMi:





This is the cupcake cake we bought at food lion for her classroom thing *yep, I used the rings and figure for the cake I made her, b/c i LOVE to recycle, kidding*:




This is my sweetheart blowing out her candles:




captions?? Who needs captions, the rest is self explainitory:
















With one of her american girl dolls (just like you) from her grandparents (Dougs folks):



Here's the bitty baby from american girl that bubby and I got her, she LOOOVES it, verdict? totally worth the 115 bucks, she was playing with it all night and had a hard time putting it down for school this morning haha:



Okaaaaaay, found ONE pic with out her classmates in it that I can post, here's bubby trying to steal some cupcake haha:







She had a wonderful birthday, we only had my parents out (I always dread spending a good amount of money for a birthday party and no one shows, because it HAS happened before) lol!!



In other news? My gorgeous sister is now 22 weeks pregnant, GOSH, I only WISH I looked this cute when I was pregnant.


I take that back, I wish I looked that cute NOW lol. I was the pregnant chick with the nose that turned into a record setting swollen meatball on my face, oh yes, pregnancy and pre eclampsia was NOT my friend.

And here is a 4d clip of her baby at 22 weeks, MAN! I remember at 20 weeks with my daughter she was a skeletal alien, my sister's baby looks GOOD for only 22 weeks!:



Oh how I do adore babies! Good thing my sister is in Cali so I don't catch baby fever. But I do desperatley wish she was still in NC with me:( I miss her to pieces!!

I also printed some photos up from MiMi's birthday session that I took and they printed great! and I put some of bubby's on his shelf in my living room:

((ignore the quality of photo of a photo, it's sooo crystal clear in person):




I have got to say, the photos i took replaced the JC Penney photos I paid for and my photos look TONS better. My camera was the best birthday present I ever got 4 years ago I have saved SO much money doing photos on my own. HUNDREDS, possibly thousands!

Weekend

It's just Saturday but feels like the weekend has come to an end already.

Things have been going well. THANK GOD! I never imagined things could go from hell to wonderful in a matter of a week or so. I needed this and he knew this and so I am very thankful and greatful for that.

Today I took the family to cracker barrel and then I decided I'd splurge a bit and bought myself two Yankee Candles. Then I felt guilty. I always feel guilty if I spend money on myself and not my children.

I rarely by myself ANYTHING. haha.

After that we drove to the botanical gardens to pay our entrance fee, only to learn HALF the sites I used in the past for beautiful backdrops were destroyed by some construction they have going on:( nooo! The lake is completely drained:( I hope it comes back soon. It looks horrible right now, it left me with few choices, but I did manage to get in a few good shots, my daughter has blue eyes like me, and so the sun makes us both squint because of our light colored eyes.

*shrugs*

Then we made a trip to petsmart so MiMi could see the animals. I had promised her for days we would go and something would always come up, so today we went. Afterwards I realized I needed to put in her cake order for school since her birthday is Wednesday, and we needed cupcakes so we went to the Food Lion next door and ordered the only girly cupcake cake design they had - Hello Kitty! LOL! It's so stinkin' cute! The woman in the bakery who took our order was just sweet as can be, and I was happy to see someone in this town who smiles and seems to enjoy their job, and the people, even if they maybe do not, it's so much better to deal with nice people than sour pusses.


Oh and our bed?

It's still coming along..ever so slowly:) I'll be excited when it's complete. I plan to use Ana's hyde table plans next:)

Bed Building *courtesy of knockoffwood.blogspot.com*

Are you curious what all of this lumber is for? Want to take a guess?

Months ago I stumbled onto Ana White's website:
knockoffwood


And I fell in love. hmm, in love? That's an understatement, I was floored by this woman's talent! More so? That she isn't greedy at all and SHARES her build plans, FREE.

Budgeting here is tight. We need every penny we make, we don't take any income for granted, and never in our lifes would be be able to afford ANYTHING from the pottery barn catalog.

When I saw Ana's farmhouse pottery barn bed knock off, I was smitten! I knew I had to have it!

So I set aside some of my money and set out to Lowe's this past Saturday. All they really had was white wood pine, when we bought all of our lumber and nails/screws the total was 151 bucks, however we can NOT for the life of us find any UNTREATED white wood 4 x 4 pine posts..ANYWHERE:( Nor can we find the 4 1/2 inch screws the plan calls for. One of the lowe's employees told us a 4 1/2 inch screw does not egsist.

I wonder if it's a lag bolt? Anyone know?

For now we are putting the bed together less the 4 x 4 posts, hopefully a trip to a local lumber yard will help us find the untreated posts we need, and if we get lucky we will figure out what to use in substitution for the elusive "4 1/2 inch screw".

Either way I am tickled pink, and THANK GOD my dad has a large supply of saws and tools, or I would never be able to make this (tools are sooo expensive).

I'll post some photos this weekend of where we are at so far. In the meantime go visit Ana's site! I plan on doing some bookshelves for Ethan's room and just the headboard for MiMi's bed.

Baby shopping, etc.

The other day my grandma in Jersey called, she was making mention of sending MiMi and Ethan a birthday gift, along the conversation she had mentioned that so much was happening soon, both kids birthdays, graduations, a wedding and 'the baby'.

For some reason (I blame my lack of sleep), I go "what baby, whose having a baby?"

She stopped and laughed and goes, "YOUR SISTER".

Oh, DUH of course, lol, how could I have thought she was speaking of someone else?
Mommy brain, I blame it all on mommy brain, and, that thing called NO SLEEP:)

With that reminder of sorts, I finally went on my sister's baby registry (granted she isn't due until July) and purchased her the bedding she had on there, it's really cute in person, this is what she picked out:




Ohhh, and I am so cheap, you know I saved on shipping by doing the wal mart site to store. haha, she doesn't mind, really, the last thing I sent her the same way. Word of advice to online retailers, OFFER free shipping or DISCOUNTED shipping codes, or lose A TON of business to places that do offer free shipping options.

Moving along, I also FINALLY went out and bought packaging tape to send her the baby package I put together for her. OH GOSH, let me just say I am not only compromised in my memory, I also can not tape to save my life! The packaging tape I puchased came in a fancy dispenser (I suppose for folks like me who are tape challenged) only this made things sooo much worse. When I was done the box looked like a crumped up taped all over mess.

Even the woman at the post office shot me a look peering over her glasses.

She then darted her eye to Ethan who was chubbily asleep over my shoulder. She smiled and nodded at me, as though she understood.

If only she knew.

This is what I sent my sister in her package:

my fav..omgi loooove elephants stuff for babies lol

these below are organic ..they are at babies r us too it's koala baby brand om they have the cutest stuff!

Then I found her this blanket at wal mart:

Of course I am impatient and I never got my flat rate box so with priority shipping, insurance and signature confirmation, it was 20 bucks to send that thing clear across the US to California.

And I think I am done baby shopping, well until my first neice is born, then it may just happen again:)