I met up with this beautiful Mom-to-be at the crack of dawn for a gorgeous session on the beach.

© jen snyder photography

I don’t have much of a green thumb. Everytime I get a houseplant that is supposedly “impossible to kill!”…. it manages to die.

However– that seems to be changing! I don’t want to jinx myself… but I’m excited. Last year, my mom helped me plant bushes and flowers in my dirt hole garden. It actually looked like a real garden! I didn’t even kill (much) of it all season. This year my lilies are bigger, my ivy is getting huge, and my bushes are flowering! Mom came back out again and helped me pick out a few more annuals to add some color. I think I’m getting less plant-fearful this year. We took another step out and also got some rosemary, basil, dill and lavender, as well as 2 tomato and 2 pepper plants! Hooray for buying less at the grocery store. (assuming I don’t kill them).

So every morning, Kaylee and I head outside to water our plants. (this is probably why they are still alive, unlike years past)

She gets SO excited when you tell her it’s time to water the plants. I use the hose (and she tries to jump into the spray) and she has her own little watering can. She waters the flowers a little, but mostly waters the concrete and her toes. She gets such a kick out of it.

As you can see, she also takes her job VERY seriously.

© jen snyder photography

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday! I know this is total Mommy-Goggles, but I wanted to share this photo of Kaylee. I’m just amazed that she’s smiling AND looking at me! I feel so lucky! She was trying to climb up my leg as I was sitting and leaning against our storm door. We had just finished looking outside (something we do several times a day, to point out the birds and cars and trees and grass and everything else a toddler finds fascinating… we do actually go outside quite often, but when we are indoors we still have to look out to make sure it’s all still there)

Stay tuned… I’ve got at least 2 more sessions to blog tonight! It’s been a busy week. (I wouldn’t have it any other way)

Toddlers crack me up. Not that long ago, you couldn’t get Kaylee to wear a hat. At least, not without her screaming bloody murder and acting like it was the end of the world.

Those times are gone! Most of the credit for this goes to her Brobee hat… that was about the time her opinions began to change. Now, everything is a hat. Blankets, socks, bowls, etc. She has one particularly favorite “hat” though– her baby doll’s diaper cover. It’s really a perfect fit for her head, so I guess I can’t really blame her. She gets really into it and puts on the doll dress, too! (When it’s unbuttoned it will fit over her head and looks a bit like a capelet on her.

Every day. Every day, she wears this dress and diaper cover. She gets pretty miffed at me when I take it off before we leave the house if we are running errands. “Hat! Hat! Hat!” She will continue to demand! And once it’s back safe and sound on her head, she declares, “I pretty!”

And what good is a story without photos?

Here she is on the couch, with her wallet, doing her other favorite thing: counting her money. (She gets super excited when she finds pennies and such, yelling “Money! Money!”, and she likes to keep her coins in this little zipper pouch)

Hanging out in the kitchen while dinner is cooking. Love the super hero cape (also known as her receiving blanket from her infant days).

All decked out and coloring.

© jen snyder photography

I know. It’s not Friday. >_>

Better late than never?

Kaylee’s new favorite thing to do is make faces. If you ask her to make a funny face, she purses her lips and then tries to stick them out as far as she can. This cracks her up Every.Time!

This is her other funny face:

Real cute, Kaylee. LOL.

As you can see, I had to resort to photographing her while she was eating because it’s the only time she’s restrained enough that she can’t get away when I take out the camera. My daughter has an extreme case of PCS– Photographer’s Child Syndrome. At 18 months, she knows what that camera means, she’s seen it enough, and she is So. Over. It.

This is what I usually get when I try to photograph her:

Yeah. That would be my daughter. Sticking her butt out at me. Thanks. Love you, too.

The best part is, she’ll slyly turn around and giggle when she’s heard me put the camera down. She’s definitely her father’s girl.

I wouldn’t have it any other way. ^_^

What do you do on a beautiful day? Run outside and play!

I can’t help myself… I can’t go out without my camera. Kaylee was REALLY enjoying playing with her Daddy today.

Take a look at how my daughter wanted to dress to play outside this afternoon.

She’s so stylish.

She is wearing: one of her favorite shirts (it’s got little birds all over it), TWO pettiskirts — a red on underneath that you can’t see very well, with a fuschia one on top (she picked up the red one saying “skirt! skirt!” so I helped her put it on then she pointed at the fuschia one “pink! pink!”), her toddler-sized gardening gloves, her butterfly fairy-princess wand, the pink ribbon necklace, the black fuzzy purse, her ladybug antennae from her Halloween costume, a pair of jeans (which was a battle to get her to wear) and her new pink sparkly tennis shoes.

I was originally going to post photos of Easter and show off her beautiful Easter dress and talk about how nice it was to see family… but really… I can’t top this outfit. Silly girl.

© jen snyder photography

Sorry for the absence of Family Friday last week (did you even notice?). I was in the wonderful Raleigh, NC at a workshop led by the amazing Wende Trew. I was surrounded by a wonderful group of photographers and had a great time all weekend!

But, enough with my excuses and back on topic! I came home from my amazing weekend to find my poor little girl with her first skinned nose. It seems that she got into a fight with the sidewalk. Poor thing.

Here she is, in all her glory, doing her favorite thing: hugging the tree in our front yard. Aww, she’s a little tree hugger. Her nose is starting to heal up.

© jen snyder photography

My daughter LOVES our cat. LOVES. Poor kitty. She has “conversations” with Izzy by meowing at him. She loves to pet him, and lay on him as if he was a pillow. She pokes at his paws, gives him hugs and kisses, and tries to pick him up. He’s kind of fat, though, so he’s too heavy for her to actually get him off the ground… but still, she tries. Every day.

He’s a good cat, though. He sits there and tolerates all her “love” aka kitty abuse. He will look at me with his big kitty eyes, begging me to rescue him, but otherwise he just sits really still and waits it out. And don’t worry, I never let her do anything that would actually hurt him. It just irritates him.

But if you could see the way her eyes light up when she finds him in a room!

Ok, I have nothing to blame this one on. I spent 3 days this week at Janie and Jack in Towsontown Center shooting some seriously adorable kids, babies, and their families, and I am up to my ears in editing so the families can view their images next week. I ended up having 33 sessions in 3 days, and I really had a blast! I hope to be able to share some of my favorite images with you next week.

So, yes, I was so “in the zone” with my editing that I completely forgot what day it was! Shame on me.

Friends are like family, are they not? Today I want to talk about my dear friend emilie. emilie and I met way back in the day when we were both Art majors at Towson University. Gosh, that was about 10 years ago! Ok, I feel old now.

Anyway, emilie is a brilliant, brilliant person. She is very into the arts and design, and is a huge supporter of local crafters. She knows a ton about the business of art, and has taught me a lot (I wouldn’t be here today without her!).

She has always wanted to have her own gallery, so her solution to that right now is Stella Design Gallery. It’s in a blog format, where she talks about different artists, crafters, designers, and others. She’s got information on new exhibits, Call for Entries for upcoming shows, interviews with artists and photographs of new pieces, current events in the art world (including events local to Baltimore), and much more. She’s got a great writing style, as well. Anyway, check her out! You won’t be disappointed.

Sorry no photos today. I should have taken a photo of emilie when she was visiting last night.