Making Me Mommy: DIY Christmas Photo Sessions

Wanted: Tips for Being The Best Stay At Home Mom I Can Be

Being a stay at home mom is the hardest job I have ever had - yet it's by far the best. I started staying home about eleven months ago, with my then eight month old daughter. I thought I was going to have oodles of free time as she napped and we would have tons of time to play together. Little did I know naps aren't a given no matter how much you work to have a stable schedule. However making breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as doing the laundry, keeping up with my housework and all the house hold errands are a given. Yup, staying home was a bigger job then I realized and wanting the best for my daughter meant I needed to brush up on my preschool lessons as well as my ability to make a variety of meals that could provide my family with healthy options. I started adjusting to the demands and doing what I felt was a good job and really got into a nice groove right about the time my second daughter came along. Things got busier and I have been feeling my way through life as a stay at home mom. We have a schedule that works for us - and now that I live this life, I wouldn't want it any other way for me and my family. As a previous career woman I have a huge respect for both at home moms and at work moms and my goal is to share some of the things that make my life as a mommy easier - from recipes to crafts I hope what we do in our home can make it to your home and you'll enjoy it!

My daily posts include fun activties I am doing in real time with my kiddos, dinners I am making for my family, snacks, and some fun things I discover along the way. I hope they are things other moms can use as tips rather than recreating the wheel. Let me know what you think and lets share some tips because nothing is better than bragging about what you and your little ones can do together!

Monday, October 22, 2012

DIY Christmas Photo Sessions

Who doesn't love having holiday photos done of their little ones?

Who doesn't have sticker shock when you are faced with the price of the photo?

Here is a simple DIY holiday photo shoot!

This weekend was crunch time at our house, not only did we need to finish packing up our belongings before the movers come, we also needed to stage our holiday photos. Sounds early right? Well, we plan to be in temporary housing leading into Thanksgiving week then be on the move through the New Year - so if I didn't get them done it wasn't happening this year.

My oldest is 20 months, so pictures with her are a challenge, especially with a stranger behind the camera. We were able to get some great shots on our own with some easy staging, then using the link below I did some cropping and photo effects to make our holiday photos look professional. I can't share the photos of both kids... you'll have to wait for Christmas cards for that, but as you can see by the photo above this method worked wonderfully. The total cost of prints from Walmart was under ten dollars, and I burned them onto a CD - a cost which is typically $100 or so for free (I already had the CD).

Here is what I did:

For the backdrop I bought some Christmas wrapping paper and hung it from the wall. - $.98

I placed a package of shatter-proof ornaments on the paper (this also occupied the kids with something new to explore) and I plugged in a strand of white lights and turned them on. $7.94 total

My husband and I thought Christmas PJ's would be fun for our little ones this year so I dressed them up in matching jammies and slippers - and I topped the kids off with Santa's hat. We just started shooting the camera and talking with the kids casually. This led to some great photos. We didn't worry about getting close up or really anything, we just focused on the kids. After about 10 minutes we were done.

After downloading the photos to our computer I went onto the following link:
http://pixlr.com/editor/

This is a Free site for photo imaging. Just follow the directions and play around with it. It has great shading, editing, tones and much more and was very simple to use.

Here was my original photo:

Here is what I was able to do with it - I just cropped, encircled, and added some shading.

When I printed this out I was in love! I could not have been happier with the results and will be sharing this with our family this holiday season.

I hope these tips are useful for you and give you some inspiration when you decide to create your holiday photos. You CAN do, just give it a try! We couldn't have been happier if a professional had done them, and we love the savings!

Good Luck and Happy Holidays.

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Making My Path, My Road to Becoming Mommy

I guess we are all works in progress, some of us start out on a path and follow it straight, while others take many twists and turns. My life seems to be one with a few twists and turns, so far all for the better, and all leading me to who I am today. I am Jennifer, mom of two girls ages 19 months and 4 months. I always knew I wanted to be a mom, but never seemed to meet the person I was supposed to be mom with, and wondered would it ever be? Then in 2009 I met an amazing man and right away I knew he was the person I would be with forever. There was a lot of reasons people would have thought I was crazy - like the fact that he lived in California and I lived in Massachusetts but from the first night we met there was that instant spark. After dating for a couple of months he moved to Rhode Island (he is in the military and was planning the move when we met), we were engaged five months after meeting - married ten months after meeting - and moved again, this time together, fifteen months after meeting. It was a world wind, and I still can't believe how quickly time has passed. Our biggest milestone was the birth of our first daughter. She arrived shortly after we settled in to our life in Nebraska. She has been amazing and every second with her has been wonderful. I attempted to return to work three months after she was born, but it was more difficult than I expected. I made it six months as a working mom, there are days I miss it but all in all I know I am where my heart is at this point in my life. My husband was promoted and we learned another move was in our sights so this made the decision to stay home a little easier for me. All this happened just about the time I also learned we were expecting baby number two! Pregnancy came and went - although with my second it felt like it stuck around a little longer than it did the first time. I guess when you have two so close together you feel like you have been pregnant for years, basically because you have been. Now I am a mom of two. I have my days where I feel like I have conquered the world and my days where I feel like the world has conquered me (for some reason that seems to happen on the days I attempt grocery shopping with both of them before nap time - you'd think I would learn this doesn't work) but I am a work in progress. I hope someday I will be a mom of three - believe it or not, but for now I am enjoying my two little ladies. I am setting up this blog because I wanted to have a place to share some of my ideas. Some may be good and you may be able to use them, some may be bad and you may be able to laugh at them. I love to cook for my family and enjoy working on preschool activties and DIY projects and crafts around the house. I am hoping to share some of what I do with others along the way. Getting all of these ideas down is going to take time, thats what will make me mommy - hence the name, but hopefully you'll check in along the way.