Buddies

Tanner and Dallin have become really great friends. I often hear them in one of their bedrooms playing or talking or reading. They can be rivals too. It's a love/hate relationship, I guess. Here is a video I got through the crack in the door of Tanner singing "The Wheels on the Bus", well, trying to. He was struggling.

The boys got quiet for a while the other day and I found them in our coat closet, our very messy closet. I put away some of our books because we had too many out and they found them and read for a good half hour.

Who else hates markers? Even washable markers? Tanner and Dallin both like to draw on themselves more than paper. Tanner colored all over his face when I had gone upstairs for something. I come down and he is in the bathroom with the door locked. He never locks the door, so I knew he was in trouble. He opened it and was scrubbing black marker off his face. It didn't come off for 2 days. That was with good scrubbing and a bath.

Remember this marker incident when he was 2?

Tutus

I am not much of a tutu person myself, but I know that there are a lot of people that like them, so I thought I would make a few for props in pictures. They are super easy (tie strips of tulle onto elastic) and inexpensive; my kind of project.

I had to try them out on Ashlyn, of course. I know you are sick of seeing pictures of her. Except for grandparents, they can't get enough of their grandkids.
I love her pouty lips in this top right one.

 As you can see her smile is fading. She was happy for the first tutu, but with each one she humored me less and less.

 And she has about had enough. No more smiles. Still some cuteness though. I love how babies look like they have lip gloss on all the time because the slobber so much.

How to make the dress and bow

You can easily Google "pillowcase dress" and get a bunch of different variations. I didn't follow a specific pattern, but this site is pretty close to what I did. The only thing I might do differently with the pattern is sew the ribbon straps in place where they come out of the casing. It can be tricky tightening and tying them without pulling the ribbon out. I mean, it is doable, just a little annoying. 

I love these dresses because they can be a dress when they are little and a shirt when they are a little bigger. If I use them when Ashlyn is bigger I will just pull out the little seam that I used to hold the ribbon in place and adjust it to where I need it.

And for the flower.

 Cut square pieces of fabric or ribbon. I do about 8. These are 2 inch squares, about what I used on Ashlyn's green flower.

 Fold a square in half to make a triangle.

 Put a dot of hot glue on tip of the triangle, opposite of the fold..

 Fold the corners into the glue.

 

Turn it over. Here (below) I am holding the corner where two sides were folded down to. Put a line of glue left to right.

 Fold sides over into glue to the center.

 

Fold the sides that were just folded to the center, to the center.

 Glue closed. Towards the bottom. Make sure the point is glued closed too.

 It will look like this.

 Cut off the point. Not too much though. If it fans open a little, glue everything closed.

 

Open the petal. Repeat for all petals. Glue them together like this.

 This is what you will have. I usually do about 8 petals, it can be more or less as long as it makes a circle can close.

 I put felt on the back, or you can use a piece of the same fabric used to make the flower. You don't have to.

 And add a button or whatever on the front. I like the look of a sewn button so I just put thread through the holes and hot glued it on.

 Ta da! Just glue it on a clip/pin/headband, whatever.

I hope the steps aren't confusing. I tried to take plenty of pictures. I hope it works out for you.

Saint Patrick's day

Ashlyn didn't have anything green, so naturally I had to make her a dress. I LOVE pillowcase dresses. So easy. I made this and the bow to match in less than an hour.  I think I will switch out the ribbons for a cream color though.

 What did you do for St. Patrick's day? All we did was green eggs, shamrock pancakes, and orange juice. It was a busy day, otherwise I would have done more. Love these little holidays that provide an excuse to do something fun.

Halloween already?

My boys LOVE to dress up. These are their favorite costumes. For Tanner a transformer and Dallin, of course, Woody. It is a 12-18 month costume. He is nearly 3! We have to put it on and take it off in a very specific way for it to even fit, and he has a wedgie the whole time he is in it. And this other cutie, is one of their best buds, Mason. He is drawn to the Monkey costume, and sweats profusely when he's in it.

Tanner likes to pretend to pull on the pull string and Dallin says "Yee Ha!" I love my boys! They keep me smiling, and LOL-ing all day. I will tell you why I love my girl in another post.

A newborn photoshoot--Reese

A friend of mine, Kami, let me practice taking some newborn pictures of her little Reese. She is 2 weeks old and a doll. One thing I am learning is to be ready for anything, and be flexible. Not many of these recent photo shoots have gone as I'd planned, but all have produced decent, even some really great pictures. 

This little lady was awake most of the time, unless she was in her mom's arms. I went there wanting to try sleeping baby pictures, but it was ok, we made it work. I love her awake ones too.

See more at http://kellyspencephotography.blogspot.com/2011/03/reese.html

 Here is what Ashlyn was doing while I was taking pictures: discovering her hand.

My Kiddos

Ashlyn was doing all her own posing here, I promise. My little super model. 

Last 2 Affiliations

Nate just chose his last two clinical affiliations and we are excited about both. The first one, beginning January 2012 is here in Chubbuck about a half mile from where we live. The last one, beginning in March 2012 is at Therapeutic Associates in Medford, Oregon. So we will move everything back to Oregon at that time since he will be done after that. Graduation isn't that far off! It is pretty exciting. Therapeutic Associates is a big company that has clinics all up the west coast and in Idaho, so hopefully he can get on with them when he is done, if he likes them after his affiliations, that is.

I have a few more photo shoots coming up that I am excited about. Been practicing on my kiddos. I will post some of them soon.

Photography Blog

I've finally got my blog up and going! I am excited. My posts aren't in chronological order, but my photography from the past year and half is on there. I say on my blog that I charge $50, but if you are reading this blog you are friends and family and, I don't charge that. That is more for general public as I am starting out.

http://kellyspencephotography.blogspot.com/

Go check it out and give me any suggestions.
And go ahead, be a follower. ;)

My studio, if you can call it that

Here is what I have created as my studio. It is my dining room, which as you can see gets excellent lighting. I made the backdrop frame out of PVC pipe which cost about $10, and I use about 2 yards of fabric for my backdrops. I use a baseboard clamped to my backdrop to make a nice clean transition between my laminate flooring and backdrop. I want to get a collection of flooring and backdrops eventually.
So, it's nothing fancy, but it doesn't really need to be for what I am doing.

And this is what you get.

Matthew

This is Matthew. He just turned 1.

He has beautiful eyes.


We tried a cake smash, but he wasn't into it.
I am going to get a photography website up soon, so I will post all these there instead.

Emma & Abby

I finally built a backdrop for taking pictures in front of. I will show you what I rigged in another post. This was my first photo shoot using it. This is Abby a 3 month old and Emma who just turned 2. Emma didn't want to take pictures so I was lucky to get any of her. Another time maybe, she is to cute to not try again.

Bad dream?