My niece and nephew, Shanna and Jason, are expecting a baby boy!!! Isn’t my niece just so gorgeous and literally glowing?! We are so excited of them and cannot wait for their first baby girl, HattieMae, to be a big sister! I love how she will tell her mommy that she’s ready for baby brother to come out and how she loves on her momma’s belly. She adores him already! We can’t wait you sweet boy!!
Happy birthday to my beautiful niece, Kynzi!!! A few weeks ago her momma, Kristi, and I went to my backyard with a bucket and some watermelon for a milk bath session and cake smash!
Kynzi was so-so about the milk bath! :) It was warm but, I’m sure it was a strange texture for her with the grainy watermelon. She still gave us some sweet smiles like she always does. Oh, she is the sweetest baby! She is so, so good and always happy! And, check out those curls she is getting!! She is just now really starting to get hair and it’s so pretty!
I love her big open mouth smiles and how her bottom teeth show through. Just melts my heart! My sister-in-law, said she is getting her top teeth in too! I love this little girl so much and her brother and sisters too! I’m so thankful we get to see each other so often and that our babies get to have fun and have a great cousin bond! I cannot wait for the day she calls me her “aunt Holly!” I love you guys!!!
Happy first birthday Kynzi Jane!!!
Oh, my family! The first family is my nephew Jason and my niece, his girlfriend, Shanna and their baby girl HaddieMae! They are such a precious family! It turns our during their session HaddieMae had an ear infection. Poor baby, we could tell something wasn’t quite right that day but had no idea it was an ear infection. We got a few smiles from her! Although her parents had to work extra hard for those by jumping around, singing, tickling her!! You name it, these guys did it!! They both get gold stars because they had to be exhausted after this!! :)
The next family is my brother and sister-in-law, Wes and Kristi, with their beautiful children, Karli, Kendyl, Kayson and Kynzi. I cannot believe how big and grown up their babes have gotten! They are all beautiful inside and out!
My GOODNESS!!! Our sweet Rocco Koi, your smile and “silly” laugh bring us so much joy!
Yesterday, after working on my spring mini session props, I ran to the back yard and set them all up, threw this outfit (and black socks, lol) on Rocco - ALL this in 20 minutes, just before we needed to take the kids to AWANA! WHOA!! I was sweating! I’m so glad I did it though!
Silas, is our newest pet! Olivia got him for her 7th birthday but, we are ALL in love with him. He is only ten weeks old and he WAS really, really fluffy. He started molting last week - like, so much molting has happened that homeboy has a bald spot on the back of his head! So, this quick little session with Rocco was also very much for Silas to make sure he didn’t look like a whacked out bunny in my sweet little client’s photography sessions in two weeks! HA! He passed the test! And, so do those props! Aren’t they so fun?!
I won’t be hosting these sessions in our back yard this year, it’s just not ready yet, but I was so happy to know that if I need to do a quick little session for our babes, it’s possible. Moving to this little half acre, city lot, that was a concern of mine, not having a pretty spot for photographs! My brain is just trained to look for the good light, where does the sun rise and set, what are the reflective surfaces that I’m dealing with, what’s in the background. . .and so on. One day we will be blessed with land again! I just know it!
Today marks owning our new home for eight days! We’ve had so much great progress and learned so much about our 110 year old home. We had to make the decision to gut it. That was so hard for me. We didn’t have any intention of doing that and that most certainly wasn’t in our completion time line or budget either. Once we got to peeling back layers, I was very happy with this decision. The hardest part about this was the trim! Every single window had different trim around it. I loved that! It was similar but not the same. We are trying to decide if we will recreate that aspect of the house.
As you will notice, as you look through the photographs, all of the exposed wood. The house appears to have been built out of old barn wood. The braces that hold up the corners are very unique too. It’s so interesting seeing how they built this place. There are NO headers over any door or window. It’s as if the structure above is so solid there was no need for them because we haven’t found any sagging anywhere. We do plan on having this checked out to confirm before we keep on trucking! After uncovering the walls, you will see they are covered in old boards of every kind. They weren’t picky at all. It’s as if they just used what they could find.
Other fun things we’ve found:
- knob and tube wiring that was still being used
- electrical problems galore! The house should have burned to the ground!
- no insulation in the exterior walls
- rotten windows
- rotten front porch
- news paper articles
- so much wallpaper
The MOST exciting thing about gutting the house, we will now have ELEVEN foot ceilings! Whoa! We were told that back in the day, houses had really high ceilings and they dropped them to 8’ or 9’ foot to cut back on the expense of their heating and air bills. We plan on restoring that feature in every room!
We’ve also found two door ways that were covered up. A fifth fireplace that was covered up and unfortunately partially removed. Also, the front door windows were covered up for some reason. We plan on restoring the front door sidelights! It’s going to bring in so much extra natural light.
We’ve had lots of progress in the yard too! My nephew and father-in-law stopped by to help us pull up the nandinas that had gotten out of control and all the overgrown shrubs are gone too. We can finally see all of the house! We also had an arborist take control of the trees! It was so sad, but one of the trees, a pecan, was growing right up against the house. It was so beautiful but was so unsafe and had to go.
I had to give our sweet new home a name. . .it’s so perfect too!
I created an Instagram account to document our progress. You can find it here if you would like to follow along.
