Joanna : Kansas City Newborn Photographer

Meet sweet Joanna. How fabulous is all of her hair? I'm seriously so jealous. I think hairy babies are just the cutest thing - even when they have hair on their little backs. Joanna's head full of hair was perfection. And I'm pretty sure she only cried once during our shoot, and it was for just a couple seconds. So basically? I wanted to steal her. Too bad I'm a mom and I know that a) I could never steal another mom's baby and b) I'd want to give her right back once she hit about 2 to 2.5 years anyway. But I'm off topic. Joanna was also a surprise for Gina & Doug - in that they didn't find out what she was until she was born. How much fun is that?

Katie : Kansas City Senior Photographer

Maybe you all remember Katie? She had some gorgeous headshots last year for a pageant. And I'm pretty sure that this year's session topped those few I shared last year. This was like a combination of pageant photos & her senior pictures. SO much fun. It was so hard to narrow down pictures for this post, because so many of them came out fabulous. Also, a big thanks to Katie for trusting me on the location. I don't know if a lot of people would have been up for it when I said it was an abandoned house that had signs saying it was unfit for human use/living :)

Carly : Kansas City Pageant Headshots

Seriously, how gorgeous is Carly? I wish my eyes were more like hers instead of the plain old brown. We had a quick session to get some headshots for her pageant. Gotta love working with pageant girls. They're all SO gorgeous!

Andrea + Brandon : Kansas City Wedding Photographer

Well, here we have another wedding that was 5 months ago. Back when the grass was green & the trees had leaves & people got sweaty when they went outside. Remember that? I miss it. But that's not the point of this post. The point is Brandon & Andrea's wedding. Remember Brandon & Andrea? They had a perfect engagement session with lots of cute details. And guess what? Their wedding had lots of cute details too. It was such a fun day to work. It was especially fun since I'd been to Andrea's bachelorette party in May & had gotten to know the bridal party a little better. This was one of those weddings that was so fun, I think they should do it all over again. How's that sound guys? Yes? Ok, good.
(Also, yes. Yes that is me breaking it down on the dance floor. Sorry I'm so white. I can't really help it.)

Sonia + Alex : Kansas City Wedding Photographer

I'm sitting here not knowing where to start. Maybe it's because I like Sonia & Alex so much that I don't know what all to say about their wedding. Maybe it's because I've been such a horrible blogger that I've forgotten how to do it. Or maybe it's because their wedding was almost 6 months ago. Probably a combination of all 3 of these things. I had a lot more pictures I wanted to post, but apparently when I was sorting them I forgot about a few things that I have set up in Photoshop & I basically picked a ton of the wrong sizes of pictures. And since there were so many to go back through, I just shortened the post. It's my blog, I can do what I want. Let's just recap about their wedding: it was a gorgeous day. It was a gorgeous ceremony. We got to shoot inside our old high school (since 99% of the wedding party went to Miege. That statistic might be slightly off but I refuse to do math right now). I loved the reception. I love Sonia & Alex. I'm sorry it took me about 6 months to blog this, but better late than never, right?

Lots of Changes

Ok. So I've debated writing this post for a while. If you're one of my friends who stalks my blog (that has provided little to NO stalking material lately and you've mentioned to me that I need to update) you'll already know this. If you're my friend on facebook (not just a business fan but have stalked me or let me stalk you and we've added each other as friends), then you may have noticed a name change. That's the first change. Jake and I are separated. I don't feel like going into details & writing out the whole story, partly because there is not enough wine in my house to get me through that, and partly because if you just ask me I'll tell you and it doesn't need to be out on this interwebz thing. It's actually a really boring story, so don't think it involves someone sweeping me off my feet and running me off to Italy for six months and bringing me back to a home where nobody feeds me pasta and gelato every day while walking through beautiful ancient cities. And yes, I'm allowed to make jokes about it, because like I said, there isn't enough wine to get me through it without jokes, and also because it's my life and I can make jokes about it if I want to. So there's me wimping out of getting too personal about all of that. Like I said, if you have any questions or require some sort of clarification, just ask me.

Change number 2 (or 3, if you count my name and the separation separately. I think they're linked, but you can count them however you want): the business name will be changing. I'm shooting for January/February to have all of the changes made, but we'll see since a lot will be changing in January anyway. Get excited about this one, because I am. Although I'm kind of secretly terrified that you all will hate the name, but I guess I'll just have to deal with that when it happens.

Change number 3: I am moving to Manhattan, KS in January to go back to school. I will be finishing up a degree in kinesiology (exercise science, if you like less sciencey names). This doesn't mean I'll stop shooting in Kansas City. It just means that I'll be trying to figure out a giant balancing act and that you'll have to be patient with me yet again.

I don't think there's a change number 4. Unless you count me looking to find the perfect bangs for a heart-shaped face (I just recently found out my face is heart shaped, and I'm very excited about this for some reason). When I find them change number 4 will be my hair. Until then, I think those 3 changes are pretty big ones, so I'll just deal with them for a while. I have some blogs coming up (I'm scheduling at least one tonight, hopefully I'll get 2 ready and start working on catching you up on what I did all summer).

Thank you, seriously, for being patient with me through this whole blogging/photography hiatus thing. I haven't worked nearly as much on my own business as I should have this summer, but a lot has been going on and I just lost this part of myself for a while. I'm planning on 2012 being a fabulous year!

And just because I can't post without a picture: this is a typical Saturday morning with the little man. Spongebob pj's, dry nasty cereal that was probably a little stale (I don't know, I didn't try it. It's Peanut Butter Captain Crunch that Jake left at my house and I don't like peanut butter flavored anything. Except peanut butter). Don't you love his fake smile? That's why you don't tell kids to say cheese :)

Andrea + Brandon : Kansas City Engagement Photographer

Um, it's been 4 months (5?) since I updated my blog. Naughty naughty naughty. And a bit embarrassing. Thank goodness there's no Blog Protective Services that can come after me for this. Anyway, we'll jump back in with Andrea + Brandon's engagement pictures from a gorgeous December day. Andrea came COMPLETELY prepared with lots of props & pose ideas. And they were all perfect. We had fun wandering around in Bonner Springs & Basehor (Linwood?). And just in case you can't figure it out with their cute little props in a few of the pictures, Brandon is a firefighter & Andrea is a teacher. OH. Also, excuse the lack of exciting layout & the mixed up order of the photos. With the ones I wanted to blog there really wasn't an in-order way to arrange them, so they're mixed up & I'm having to deal with it (I'm a little picky. I like them in order from the session). Fun fact: their wedding is exactly one month from today!

This last one is my fave :)