I said things seldom end up the way I plan, right? Here’s a third incarnation for Elvie Kate’s nursery.
It all began with considering a yellow chair. Then I found that tapestry. And I got it. So then everything had to be rethought.
I said things seldom end up the way I plan, right? Here’s a third incarnation for Elvie Kate’s nursery.
It all began with considering a yellow chair. Then I found that tapestry. And I got it. So then everything had to be rethought.
I first intentionally picked up my DSLR after my oldest son was born. Over the next four-and-a-half years, I cut my photography teeth on chasing around one, then two, then three little boys. I am not a fan of posed pictures. This is good, since it’s fairly difficult to get a newborn to smile for the camera, or to get a two-year-old to say “cheese”.
Children can have an uncanny way of making picture-taking extremely difficult, don’t they? I still remember the day my oldest learned to turn his back on my camera. He was barely two years old, and I was trying to get a picture of him in front of the Christmas tree. I’d lean around him to try and see his face, and he’d keep scooting so that he was facing away from me! He’s a come a long way since then, but then again, so have I.
Being at home with my littles gives me lots of chances to capture their childhood in photos, and especially if I’m having a rough day, there’s nothing I love so much as to be able to photograph my children. Here is a rundown of how I make it happen–even when they’re not exactly feeling it.
Alternate title: Another One Bites the Dust.
I said in my post about repainting our sitting room that I had no plans for repainting any other rooms in the house.
…I lied.
Or I didn’t lie, exactly, because I didn’t really know what the next couple of days held. In the words of three-year-old Clive, “I was only pretending!” I can’t be held responsible. Because paint I did.
Let’s start at the very beginning, shall we? Here’s the master bedroom when we bought the house:
Earlier this week, I ruined my light-and-airy (or as airy as possible) sitting room with a can of Gladden French Grey that I bought on a whim for $18.
This was my sitting room in the spring of 2013. I had just repainted it a few months previously (and gotten rid of the superfluous table and chairs). To my dismay, however, I accidentally rendered the room somewhat monochromatic; this meant that in addition to making it light and bright I also made it (in my taste) pretty boring. I know some people like this sort of look, but I don’t. But I had a barely-two-year-old and a six-or-seven-month-old and I didn’t feel like repainting it again. So I’ve just lived with it for the past three years.
I enjoyed Pisa more than I thought I would–mostly because I was completely ignorant of the other structures present in the square with the famous leaning tower. It was nice to see that iconic landmark, but the baptistry was my very favorite; hence the baptistry has the most pictures. I think it was the simplicity of the white marble and black stripes that I liked the most.
Our bus arrived at our Tyrol hotel just in time for golden hour. We rushed off, found our rooms, then rushed back outside to enjoy the breathtaking view before we were called in for dinner. Some of the girls in my group used the time to collect flowers and make crowns; I used the opportunity to take pictures of something other than tourist attractions and buildings. We only spent one night in Austria, but I would return in a heartbeat.
Our guest bathroom (which is really now “The Boys’ Bathroom”, but I can’t remember to call it that) was the very first room that was done in the house.
Here’s what it looked like when we bought the house. It was really gross.
The other bathrooms weren’t much better, and so my Mom- and Dad-in-law redid the room for us before we had to move in.
Here’s the bathroom today (no really, I just took this picture a little bit ago.) It’s been great–there’s nothing really wrong with it–except that it’s looked the same every day for the past nearly-eight-years. I’ve loved it all that time! But I am ready for something different.
About the time I repainted the boys’ room black (above the board and batten) and the dining table and Ephraim’s bed the same Poker Green, I got the itch to tackle this bathroom in the same sort of color scheme. Not black, because it’s a little room with no windows, but maybe a deep charcoal grey, and that emerald green I’m just really loving right now.
I had a whole picture in my head, how it would look, and it was FABULOUS. Probably the wainscot would go grey, and above it the walls would be the same Daydream Haze that I have wanted everywhere in the house for the past three years. I would frame some of the Waterlogue pictures I’ve done recently–the ones heavy on greens and blues–and get different colored towels for each boy in that green/blue spectrum. The whole picture was very cool, very jewel-like, and I couldn’t get it out of my head.
But then…I remembered.
Our tile.
Our tile is beige, but leans heavily toward yellow. There’s also border tile that is blue and a sort of sage green (which I could work with.) But the tile? In my head, the cooler and more jewel-like the bathroom got, the dingier the floor became.
At first I didn’t care. “Ah, it’s a neutral,” I told myself. “It’ll go with anything.” So I looked up some pins of bathrooms with beige tile and cooler colors to convince myself. And…I couldn’t really find any I liked. I did find a couple of blog posts admonishing people for mixing “clean and dirty colors” (which I think was what I was trying to do.)
But I didn’t panic. I said, “It’s OK, I can just make sure my grey is on the warmer side.” That lasted for about two minutes as, upon searching for a few, I decided I really didn’t like warm greys much at all.
I took the picture posted above to do a mock-up in Photoshop and see if it really did turn the floor into a dingy mess, and yes, it did. But I couldn’t just give up, now. I had to find a solution.
It was at this point my head began to hurt. What here has translated as a few lines of text was, for me, hours and hours of deliberating and trying to picture things and looking for solutions that would just take me too long to type here.
Why can’t you just leave things alone, I started telling myself. The bathroom is fine. Just leave it alone!
I CAN’T now! I would answer, desperately. I’ve already seen it in my head, and Jeremy’s given me permission to paint!
Well then stop obsessing about it, and go buy paint!
I went to the store today. I bought paint.
Pictures tomorrow? I’m hoping!
I first met Miss Annie Rae about nine months ago, when she was tiny and sweet and sleepy and quiet. Now she is bigger, and sweeter too–but her interests have moved on from the standard newborn fare. Now she is busy-busy, on the go, learning to walk and keeping everyone on their toes; she does, though, still make time to sit down with a good book.
You might say she really gets into it.
This was a wonderful moment in this little lady’s session, and I thought it deserved its own post. After all, who doesn’t love a little girl who loves books?
1. Two nights ago, I laid awake after waking up with Anselm–he was back asleep quickly, but I wasn’t–ten minutes, twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour passed. As I lay there, I heard a snap. Then a pop. then a few second later, a snap again. While I was still wondering what it was, Jeremy woke and went downstairs to confirm what he thought: that the remnants of the previous day’s fire had burst into life again. It was only a very small amount, and nothing really to worry about. The next day I could not get over how a fire could seem to be dead since 9 p.m. but suddenly restart at 4 a.m.
2. Last night I woke in the night hearing another snap, snap, snap sound at intervals. This time it was coming from the far corner of our room. There was certainly no fire to be seen–no glowing in the dark–so I turned the flashlight on the phone on to try and discover the source of the noise. It took only a few moments to see that the sound was coming from drops of water falling from the growing wet spot on the ceiling and falling to a growing wet spot on the carpet below.
3. I’m glad I have someone who can crawl into the attic at 3 a.m. to investigate leaks so I don’t have to.
4. Yesterday was a rainy day that led to a rainy night and a dismal morning this morning. Tonight is supposed to be bitterly cold, and I imagine all the color that is left today will likely be gone in the next couple of days.
5. Once the leaves are gone, the Christmas things may commence. I tried to listen to some carols on Saturday and it just didn’t feel right.
6. I’m sure the season will be upon us before we know it–there’s no need to rush things, right?
7. Tempus fugit.
8. There are 3.5 months or so left in Anselm’s first year, which means 3.5 months until he is weaned, which means 3.5 months until my first cup of caffeinated coffee in what will then be around 10.5 months. Not that I’m counting or anything.
9. I miss being able to get up in the morning after a rough night of sleep and think “Oh well, at least there is coffee.” Right now I drink a cup and, while I still enjoy it, I have this nagging voice in one corner of my mind that says faker, faker, faker.
10. I could probably just test and see if Anselm is still sensitive to it, but I have not forgotten those days that drove me to cut it out of my diet. I think I’ll just wait until March.
11. It just occurred to me that I’ve got to start thinking about first birthday things for him. Thankfully there will be chocolate cake at his party, so that I don’t have to botch another non-chocolate cake recipe in the name of being caffeine-free
12. It hasn’t really been that hard to be without caffeine, but I do like to play it up a little bit. Not sure why. It seemed like the thing to do.
13. This would probably all be better if you could see my face while I’m typing.
14. As much as I am thankful for social media and blogs and the like, it really is hard to interact with people when all you have are words on a screen. I’ve slowly (and sometimes quickly) been removing myself from most online forms of social interaction–chats, forums, groups.
15. I mentioned deactivating facebook the last time I did one of these, but doing so would delete my photography page, so I’m stuck at the moment.
16. I don’t really mean stuck. I just still wonder if I’d write more without it.
17. I could really use a nap. Or some caffeine.
Confession: I never know what exactly to write when I share a session here on the blog. Do I do the typical it-was-a-great-shoot-here’s-some-pics thing? Do I gush about the perfect weather (it wasn’t too shabby) or how seriously cute little Miss N is (isn’t she)? Maybe I should share some sort of poignant quote? Should I be candid, cute, sentimental?
How about awkward, instead? I sort of stalk Lauren’s Pinterest boards. I can’t help it. Her style is impeccable.
Too awkward?
Sorry.
It was a great shoot! Here’s some pics.