I was really excited when I saw all of Shutterfly’s great options for me to use and share my photos of A and our family this year!!

First of all, there are their wonderful photo Christmas cards!  I love that many of them have the option to have several photos!  I’m debating between these two called “Glitter Glamour Joy” and “Family Wall Red”

I like the simplicity of the one on the left.  For the one on the right, I love that I can use lots of photos and show our family throughout the year.  I don’t have a good holiday photo yet to use, but I’m hoping to get one this weekend.  If I don’t get a good one of all three of us, I’ll probably go for the one on the left and use a photo of A.

I’m also considering making some calendars to show off my monthly A photo!  I’m thinking of putting her 1 month photo for January, when she’ll be a year and 1 month, 2 month photo when she’ll turn a year and 2 months, etc.  Won’t it be fun to look back and see how different she looks from a year ago?

Lastly, I realized that I never made a birth announcement for A!  I can’t believe it!  I really didn’t think about for the first 6 months, and then it seemed too late, but now that she’s turning a year, I’m regretting it, so I’m thinking I should make some, even if they are just for me and my family!  Shutterfly has some great birth announcements.  I think I have the photo I want to use but I haven’t decided on the card yet.  What do you think I should use?  I’m debating between the regular announcements, and the holiday themed/colored announcements.

Here are the holiday birth announcements I’m considering.

I think both would look nice with the photo I’m considering using:

I love this photo and have been considering it for her birth announcement since I recently decided that I needed to make one!

I’m used Shutterfly in the past for photos and photo books and have always been happy with their quality!

Are you sending holiday cards?  Did you make a birth announcement when your baby was born?

I wrote this past to participate in Shutterfly’s Christmas promotion of their 2010 Christmas Collection and will receive 50 free holiday cards

I love how their photos capture the brightness, enthusiasm, and energy of their family!

Thanks for being such great friends!  Here’s to the next 10 years of our families’ friendship!

I love incredibly crisp eyes that sparkle in the light!!

Anyway, she hasn’t seen A since she first met her when she was just 7 days old!  She loved seeing her so much older (she was 3 1/2 months at the time!) and in such a fun stage!

We decided to do a little photo shoot, so that Gretchen could get some great shots of A!

It’s surprisingly easy to set up a little photo shoot-you can do it too!

All you need is a place that gets nice light-you don’t need to have direct sunlight, just somewhere that is close to a window or a glass door that is nice and bright. For a backdrop, any dark blanket will do.  You can prop you baby up on a Boppy covered with another blanket, dark or with some nice texture or color is fun!

Then just shoot away!  If if you only have your baby in this one position, you can get some amazing shots!  You’ll be surprised at all the different expressions you get!

What fun!

See the blanket in the background draped over the edge of the bed?  It looks blue, but when you change it to black and white, it doesn’t matter.

What a cutie!

If you edit your photos afterwards, you can change it to b&w and make it look more like a studio shot like this! (Try to make sure that the blanket doesn’t have lint on it like ours!  What can I say-we had a lot to do that weekend and didn’t realize til it was too late!)

See?  You don’t need an expensive backdrop to take great shots of your baby or child!

Of course, nothing will compare with having an artist take photographs of your baby or child, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get great shots at home too!  This is a great way to spend a half hour with your baby and you’ll have some great shots to remember the day by!

Have you ever done a photo shoot with your baby?  How did your photos come out?

I am extremely excited to be embarking on this new endeavor!

So, how did this all begin?  I’ve talked about opening my own photography business for years.  Since I was young, I have been creative, doing everything from drawing and painting to photography.  With the birth of my daughter, A, I began getting back into photography in earnest, starting with a daily photo project of my baby girl.  I have loved every minute of documenting my daughter’s life.  It has been such a joyous experience to capture the memories of her young life and my moments with her!

It is so easy to race through our lives, never slowing down to enjoy the small moments.  Already, I look through photos of my daughter several months ago and am reminded of the certain way she cooed or of the way her tiny fingers wrapped around mine.  This is what I aim to capture in my photography, the small fleeting moments, whether it be in my own daughter’s life or in your family’s, and so Hope Adams Photography was born.

I want my photographs to transport you to that moment again and to relive those memories.  To me, our most important living happens not in the big, so-called milestone moments and events, though they are wonderful, but rather in the small, almost hidden moments.  These are where we are often most happy and most alive.

And yet we so often forget them.

When I look back on my daughter’s photographs what stands out to me is not the day she rolled over for the first time, though it was exciting and a tremendous step for her.

Instead, her photographs take me back to the feeling of holding her tiny body in my arms or the sense of peace as the cool breeze blew softly in from our bedroom window and I watched my daughter sleep in those first few mornings.

These are the moments I want to hold on to.  These are the moments I want to capture.

What moments do you want to remember?

Welcome to Hope Adams Photography…I hope you follow along!