Jan 27 / 2023
As many of you know, I’m currently teaching an off-camera flash (OCF) course. While I’m a family and wedding photographer, probably about 40% of my actual income and time is spent teaching others to advance in their own photography journeys. I’m doing a quick blog post today to answer some FAQ’s I get about OCF. […]
Feb 12 / 2020
Writing has always been how I sort out my feelings and express myself, even as a little girl. But sometimes life is full of big feeling after big feeling and you can’t catch your breath. And sometimes it’s full of so many little feelings that they all tangle together inside and can’t get out. That […]
Oct 15 / 2019
This Thanksgiving weekend was hard for my Micah and, thus, hard for me. We’re in the process of having him assessed for autism, and it’s a roller coaster. One meeting I have a paediatrician that specializes in this telling me that even if I hadn’t told him a thing, he would have flagged Micah for […]
Oct 10 / 2019
When people say “marriage takes work,” or “marriage isn’t easy,” or “marriage requires sacrifice,” I don’t know about you but I imaged dramatic fights and yelling and storming out of rooms. That’s what I equivocated with “hard.” Now don’t get me wrong, our first year of marriage did have me storming out of a […]
Apr 21 / 2019
My husband asked me a question during date night the other week. He asked if I could change one thing in this season of life to make motherhood easier, what would it be. Without a hesitation I said, “Take away Micah’s SPD.” His sensory processing disorder is not the hardest thing I have to deal […]
Feb 19 / 2019
This weekend we dedicated our last baby at church and I was asked to share the story of how he got his name. If you are 1. Convinced you know exactly what you will name your children, and 2. Haven’t had a discussion with your significant other yet, then trust me, you don’t know what […]
Feb 15 / 2019
I told Nick when Micah started preschool that I was either going to be the best of school moms or the worst of school moms. I don’t do moderation well – I’m working on it. I was either going to volunteer for all the things and kick butt, or be the one sitting on the […]
Feb 13 / 2019
The first time we had a “your child has sensory issues” statement thrown my way during an assessment I was relieved. I was relieved because I knew he was different in my mama gut and I kept trying to tell friends and family to treat him a certain way that I knew would help him, […]
Feb 05 / 2019
I grew up very isolated. We lived on an acreage about 40 minutes outside of town, I was an only child, and I was home-schooled. When I did venture out into “the world” I was guarded and suspicious. I had experienced some deep hurts in my life and I was not going to let it […]
Jan 18 / 2019
Dear World, Many people have told my mom that I am such an “easy baby” or an “easy child” because I don’t get into as much mischief as other kids, but there’s a secret reason why. I have a hidden handicap called Sensory Processing Disorder (or SPD). It’s a neurodevelopment disorder the affects my brain […]
Jan 02 / 2019
I feel like I should have some deep or super inspiring thing to post here, but the truth is that I don’t! As I head into 2019 I’m not overcome with ambition to try to be more, do more, accomplish more, see more, or anything “more”. I feel like my life is super full already! […]
Dec 31 / 2018
Just a quick highlight of our last month as I’m doing a bigger blog post for the New Year that will include my top three favourite images from each month of 2018. December was filled with tiny adventures for the tiny humans. Our annual trip out to the farm to pick up our meat, a […]
Dec 02 / 2018
This is mostly a November re-cap of my favourite 365 images but I also have a few October pictures to share since I missed posting a summary of that month due to the arrival of baby Theo. I want to type something memorable and awesome here, but honestly I’ll just let the photos themselves tell […]
Nov 06 / 2018
For each of my children I’ve blogged their birth stories, the narratives that brought them into this world, both for my own memories’ sake and because people have asked about it. Theo’s story began around 3:15am on October 27th. I remember waking up from a contraction and going right back to sleep since it was […]
Sep 28 / 2018
November is usually my busiest month of the year between editing and last-minute family shoot bookings before Christmas. However, maternity leave made that month September for me this year. Couple that with a 2.5 year-old, a 1.5 year-old, a complicated pregnancy with 2-3 appointments per week on average (and one shared car), and being 8 […]
Sep 05 / 2018
I feel like “self-care” is almost a taboo word in some circles, though with more recent articles and movements it’s becoming more socially acceptable and less “selfish”. I find that I can be good at self-care with the small things in life, which keep me afloat, but I struggle with the bigger things that ultimately […]
Aug 03 / 2018
I’ve started and stopped, and then started over with this blog post both physically and mentally more than once now. I’m all for being real on social media, but how real is too real? For those of you that know me in real life, you know that I have very little filter. If you ask, […]
Jun 27 / 2018
This blog entry is a little bit of a combo post. It has my favourite photos and moments from June, but it also unpacks something that has been playing hugely on my mind and heart this past month as well, and that is how much I struggle with parenting. I feel like I can rock […]
Jun 17 / 2018
I was a blogger years before I was a photographer. Writing used to be the only way I could process things. I was the kid with the diaries and gel pens, too. I had a random blog where I posted about anything and everything which I dismantled when I transitioned over to this platform that […]
May 31 / 2018
May was a very long month and I felt like I was shooting to meet my daily quota vs. because I wanted to a lot of the time, but that’s to be expected now and again during the course of a year-long project. It’s also to be expected when you have a barely 2-year old, […]
Apr 30 / 2018
Every time I go to do a monthly highlight post I remember how thankful I am that I’m doing this project – even in the midst of the “hard”. I’m on my 4th pregnancy in 3 years and it’s taking a toll on my body and my hormones. My days are filled with lots of: […]
Mar 31 / 2018
I’m not going to lie – March was exhausting for me. I don’t know what was wrong, but it was either low iron, first-trimester tiredness to the extreme, or who knows what. But most of the month I spent on the couch, often struggling to catch my breath after walking across the room, and barely […]
Feb 28 / 2018
February is often viewed as a more dreary month and it can be a struggle to find inspiration, to find beauty in the everyday. But I think the added challenge of being cooped up indoors helped me to really be deliberate about what I wanted to capture. It helped me hone in on what makes […]
Jan 31 / 2018
This year will be my third 365 project (one photo a day for each day of the year) and hopefully my second complete one! I’m doing it with a fabulous group of women for encouragement and accountability, and some of us will be doing a blog circle together at the end of each month where […]
Dec 21 / 2017
I have to admit that I wasn’t really feeling like doing my last DITL post for the year, but having successfully kept up with one per month for the rest of 2017, it would be a shame not to finish! I chose a Sunday together for this post as we were planning on taking a […]
Nov 25 / 2017
A lot of my DITL posts have been to remember special occasions – family holidays, Thanksgiving, weekends together, etc. It has been a while since I did one that is just my every day life as a working mom of two young boys during the week. In some ways those might be considered the more […]
Nov 04 / 2017
Thanksgiving morning started very early on my way to a shoot with the most beautiful sunrise and fog spreading across the fields. I grabbed us some coffees and headed over to the river which we found was still blanketed in fog that made for some very cool photos! After the shoot was over, I headed […]
Oct 08 / 2017
I’m running a little behind on posting my personal DITL projects since we are in the heart of family photo season over here, but I thought Thanksgiving weekend seemed like the perfect time to step back from work a little bit and spend some time focusing on my own family, both in my editing and […]
Oct 06 / 2017
I was always the odd one out growing up. I would start each year in my classroom sitting in a circle with all the other kids waiting to introduce ourselves. I would scan the faces opposite me and choose who was going to be my best friend. As you can imagine, this didn’t work as […]
Sep 24 / 2017
To the overachieving, world-conquering, (possibly also holding down a job) mama, stop. You need to know something. You need to know that YOU are ENOUGH. Read that slowly. You, yes, YOU, are enough. You are doing okay. You are doing more than okay. Because it really has nothing to do with “doing”. It has to […]
Sep 19 / 2017
So here’s the deal with my family. I have two boys under 20 months and below is about as close as you’re going to get to us all looking at the camera at the same time. Good job, Levi ;). I tell my clients this and it’s true for me, also – that’s perfectly okay! […]
Sep 05 / 2017
I was raised to think of vacations as rather frivolous, but I have to admit that after all the trips we’ve taken together, the memories really are worth the money. That being said, we did upgrade our housing situation and have 2 babies less than 15 months apart in the last bit, so we won’t […]
Jul 23 / 2017
July has been nick-named “solo parenting month” because out of the 31 days, Daddy is away for approximately 17 of them between four separate trips to various camps to make promotional videos and a weekend tournament event. At the time that I’m writing this there are only two more days and one more overnight to […]
Jul 01 / 2017
Sometimes I wish I could hire myself to properly document our days. The photographer in me cringes at the mixed lighting, out-of-focus shots, and sometimes total lack of creativity that these “DITL” posts end up with. But there’s grace. I am not shooting these for everyone else. I am shooting these for me. And it […]
May 26 / 2017
My day doesn’t really “end” when I have a newborn who is up constantly all night long, but if I had to “start” Wednesday’s day-in-the-life post off at a specific time, I would start it with this sweet face. Levi has been fussy around 5:30/6:00am lately and Nick gets up with Micah at 7:00, so I […]