Back in December when Matilda Jane announced their yearly Photo Love contest I just *knew* even then it was something I was supposed to see. Instantly a picture flashed into my head that you guys now know and even more important who I would take as my +1 on the trip. See, I have had this amazing best friend since I was 15 years old. I am an only child and she is the sister I never had. Her name is Francis and she’s one of the most special people I have ever known. On October 27th, 2009 Francis was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Then she was diagnosed with spinal tumors up and down her spinal bones. And then 18 tumors attached to her thyroid. And then renal kidney failure. So completely unfair

So you see this was a contest so much more than me. Yeah I’d be lying to say I didn’t want to win it. But I really really REALLY wanted to win it for Frannie. To be able to give her this absolutely amazing girls trip. Really, how often do those sorts of opportunities come along? I was totally meant to see that contest that day And more fate, the collection was named You & Me.

As soon as we touched down in Colorado, we saw the MJC girls and Jamie and it was like seeing long lost girlfriends. I mean, who else could you have a pajama karoke party with on the very first day you’ve known them??

That’s Sam and Kelly, MJC girls who were the stars of the show that night! But let it be known, Frannie and I did a real mean Beyonce “Single Ladies”

We spent lots of time caravaning

Colorado was amazingly beautiful!

Saw adorable places like this

And had car problems…

When Frannie saved the day (I told ya she was amazing!)

We did a little shopping

And there were surprises

Of adorable bunny ears

But most important, this was a trip about friends. Life long friends that will always be dear to me.

I wish I took my camera out more to capture the pow wows in Jamie’s room lying all over the place talking about anything and everything, the amazing food Jamie cooked for us, our final dinner, the silly moments we had, the eyelashes! As Francis and I sat at the airport waiting to board the plane to go home, she shared a fb message she sent to Sam the night before. Francis has two adorable boys so she had never really been exposed to Matilda Jane other than seeing the cute stuff I would put on my kids. She talked of feeling alive and being useful. She said she found a bit of herself in finding Matilda Jane.

She found a bit of herself.

I still can’t say that without crying.

I am so incredibly thankful to have had this experience and to have these amazing people in my life. White Lily you will always have a piece of my heart <3

You & Me is an absolutely amazing collection! I petted them the entire time I was there, it is truly so beautiful! I am not quite sure how Denise and Sam do it. Really, they are so talented! This so far is my favorite collection and that’s really saying a lot. Gosh, I can’t wait for everyone to see how darling it is I will be hosting a virtual show and more information will be on my business page if you don’t have a trunk keeper and would like to order something.

It has been so fun seeing the pictures, here’s Jamie, me and Val. Love you girls!

Until next time…

Things got a little crazy after my last blog post. I won the Matilda Jane photo love!! So insane and still hard for me to really believe. You know when you want something really really bad and then you get it? It’s surreal! I just can’t wrap my head around me winning with over 1,ooo photographers entering the contest. And everything went nuts afterwards. My personal email got hundreds of emails alone. Yeah… insane! THANK YOU to everyone for your votes and support. I wish I could show ya’ll my heart and see how grateful I am.

My BFF Francis and I board a plane on Wednesday to fly out to the Matilda Jane fall photo shoot in Colorado. And I have totally been fretting over what to wear What do you wear to something with such a fabulous little girl’s clothing designer? I have some Matilda Jane for me, is it too cheesy to wear that? Neither of us have ever really spent much time in Colorado so we are really excited to check it out. I can only imagine how beautiful it will all be! And then there is the flying part. I am not a very good flyer. At all. The last time I flew was when we came back to live in the states after being in Japan for 3 years. You would think with all the flying I did when I was younger it wouldn’t bother me. But it does. The take offs, the landings, and don’t even get me started on the turbulence. Thank goodness Frannie will be there with me!

I wish I wasn’t such a weenie.

This month is going to be a fun one! It starts off with a shoot today that is going to be super cute! I am so excited to shoot it and share it with everyone. It will be a beach session like you have never seen before Then there’s the Colorado trip and then another trip down to the Lake City area to shoot an up and coming country band that is about to go national. And also several more client shoots that are going to be fabulous! I have some great things to share, but it will probably have to wait till I get back from Colorado.

And so a blog post isn’t much without some pictures! I hope you love this little love story as much as I do.

These were taken a couple weeks back with my little girl Katie and Francis’s little boy Brock. There are 3 parts to the shoot, this was just the first one. Katie’s outfit is Matilda Jane and her headband, as well as the flower lapel/clippie on Brock’s shirt are from Sweetly Fallen. The rest of the shoot is darling, kites and sunshine

Once upon a time, Katie was doing girly and twirly things

When it suddenly hit her. “I have no flowers”, she said sadly

So she came up with a plan! If she posed…

And pranced!

Someone would surely be charmed by her cuteness and would have flowers for her!

A dashing young fellow showed up

Why, it was Brock!

And he had a surprise for Katie…

So he mustered up some courage and walked up to her.

And proudly handed them over!

“Do you like them Katie”????

And she did!!

It made Brock beam from ear to ear

The end!

This was for Matilda Jane Clothing’s Photo Love contest. Over 1,000 photographers entered and they chose 50 to update their photographer links page on their website. And we also were sent the same outfit to photograph. Way cool and I felt incredibly honored to have been chosen! Then came time for them to pick the top 10 and I got this email

Tori-
You’re gonna have a great weekend cuz your photo is getting ready to be voted upon next week.
Congrats you made the Top 10.
May the force be with you….Spread the word…votes count!
Denise and Sam

So cool, right??? Geez, that was sent on Friday and that email still gives me goosebumps when I read it

So I need tons of help and lots of votes! The rules are only one vote per person, not household. If you could take the time to vote for me, I would really really appreciate it! The winner of this contest flies out to their fall clothing shoot in May!

My entry is called Happily Ever After

Voting link <—– click there to vote!

Thank you!!!

And how funny their personalities stayed the same from then

Charlie still doesn’t like to walk! He is a lounger and loves to sleep in. In fact, he thinks he is a lap dog…

That is my mom and her poor lap about 5 years ago

Vets get onto us about Charlie and his size (he is about 140 lbs). Do you know how hard it is to get a lounging, stubborn dog who loooooves food to loose weight? He is a scavenger and finds things the kids leave behind. He isn’t very slick though because we know where his hiding spot is. Right outside of the doggie door has all the evidence

The white fluffy stuff in the pictures? Diaper fluff from the kid’s night pull ups. He snatched those out of the bathroom trash cans. Yeah, we don’t put them in there anymore. Gross! The other day, I saw Charlie walking down the hallway with one of the kid’s frostys from Wendys. No doubt that Wendy’s cup was another frosty he managed to snag. He is such a mess!

This week Charlie had to go to the emergency vet because he refused to stand up and wasn’t eating. Now you know something is wrong with him when he won’t touch some turkey He stayed over night and had a fever. They did some labs on him but the results haven’t come back yet. If you get a moment, please say a prayer for our sweet Charlie. We really adore the big guy!

Things have slowly been changing over the last couple of months for her though. She really adores her brother who is only 17 months older than her. And he really likes to have his pictures taken! So when she sees him hamming it up for me she’ll say My turn! but then would do everything but look at me. So frustrating!

I am not sure what happened the other day, but she came to me asking to play photoshoot Well, I ran all over the house to quickly throw a set up together before she changed her mind. She’s been really loving “ponies” (pony tails) in her hair and it really tickled her when I made her some pony rolls in her hair. I am not sure if it was the pony rolls or what, but whatever it was I will take it!

Looking at these makes me all teary. To finally have some pictures of her is so pricelss to me

Well, obviously not really. I am just way behind in getting these up here!

This past 4th of july my family went camping with my aunt and her family. My aunt is only 3 years older than me and she was always more of a cousin to the rest of us cousins. And being an only child, my cousins are the closet thing I will ever have to siblings and I love them a ton!  Our trip was great and it was fab to see everyone.  I had it in my head to do an Americana themed shoot and thankfully they went along with it. My cousin Monica and another aunt, Sam, came down for the day and brought her kids. So all off the little cousins were together! We took 15 minutes before dinner and I am pretty happy with what we got

Here are all of the little girls!  From left there is Morgan, Dylan, and then my Katie.  I have more I need to edit from this set up- they were being so cheeky with each other!

Isn’t Dylan a beauty? She *loved* having her picture taken which didn’t surprise me at all. I swear you will be seeing this face in big things one day! She is extremely theatrical in the most adorable way

And this is Dylan’s brother Braden. He is about to start kindergarten which makes me feel super old! I loved this soulful look he gave me

Them together <3

Here is Braden with my David. They get along super well! As far as boys go, they are pretty calm and they both *love* cars!

This is one of my favorites of the day!

This is Morgan, one of the toughest little girls I have ever known. She gets herself so banged up and just goes right about right business like nothing ever happened! She is a firecracker and super sweet! And adorable too

Here is my Peyton who is getting older much faster than I ever dreamed would be possible She got the brilliant idea that grooming eyebrows must mean shaving them and lopped off the sides of each brow. Nice, right?? Thank goodness a month later they are looking so much better! Peyton is getting braces shortly and can’t wait! She wants to sport colored bands, orange and blue for her of course, to all of the home games this season

And my baby Katie She is looking like a hot mess here! This was taken at the very end of the shoot after they had played ring around the rosey a gazillion times. Once she saw Dylan hamming it up for me, she decided she would sit and have her picture taken. After I fixed her hair, she was over it!

Here they are when they started playing ring around the rosie.  Katie was being a sour puss and didn’t want to join in.

When she started to see how much fun they were having she finally decided to join in

Taking the group shot was not very fun. Katie didn’t want to participate (see the recurring theme here?), there were fights over pinwheels, pinwheels fell apart, fights over flags, lots of talk about how to share flags, and finally something halfway decent.  Anyway, Happy Birthday America

And here are 2 snapshots I have to share with everyone from our trip that weekend…

Morgan and the cutest wedgie I think I have ever seen

Katie, super happy to score a water gun

Hope your 4th was fab!

This past weekend we saw a waterfall over at Falling Waters State Park.  We were camping there this weekend and even though it rained the entire.freaking.time, we still had some fun family time!  Now I am not a huge nature picture taking fan, but I always get a little giddy when I get the opportunity to play with slow shutter speed objects.  You should see me at the fair…  a total kid in a candy store!   I completely embarrassed my family at the fair last year playing with my camera. Yes, if you were at the Panama City fair I was the weirdo sitting on the ground with my tripod taking pictures of the ferris wheel while my husband had to guard me from being trampled by the crowds. 

Well, before we had left the house I didn’t even think to pack my tripod so I had to hand hold my camera for these.  Talk about some major breath holding going on! Next time I am definitely bringing the tripod.

And my heart stopped!

I didn’t know who it belonged to, only knew that someone more than likely had some jacked up hair

And it wasn’t long till I knew who that was

Nice, right???  And he was actually proud of his new haircup (David’s haircut)

And of course the only fix for completely lopping off your entire bangs is to get a buzz cut

Guess 4 year pictures will have to wait a little bit!

Still am

My dad is a super special person. Growing up, my dad was in the military and so there were many TDYs and even a remote for a year to Korea. I was 5 when he went on that remote. He would always send me care packages with stuffed animals and those adorable silk chinese pajamas (gosh I loved those things!). But the most awesome thing he would send home were audio tapes of him reading bedtime stories to me and he’d always include the books. I remember listening to those tapes over and over again!

The military brought us some really cool experiences, including an officer exchange program in Australia. I have so many wonderful childhood memories from there. During the summer my dad and I would take bike trips around the air strip and it was always surrounded by so many kangaroos. Very cool stuff when you are 10!   Heck, that is very cool stuff now    We took a trip to the Outback in an empty C-130 (a big cargo plane with red seatbelt type nets for seats) and my dad took me up to the cockpit while we were in the air. Then we moved to Japan and one of my best memories ever is climbing Mt. Fuji with my dad. It was so nasty out and was super windy so we didn’t get very far. I still have my climbing stick from that day and will treasure it always!  And I have a t-shirt that marks every place my dad has ever been LOL  Aside from the cool places we lived, I just always remember my dad taking the time for me. If I needed help with homework he’d help me for hours if needed. He’d pretend he was a pilot in the car when we were driving places to make the drive more enjoyable for me. I have so many pictures of me completely passed out on my dad while we were sitting in that brown corduroy lay-z-boy recliner. 

My dad is the type of guy who never forgets your birthday or special occaision. If you have been special to him in his life at one point, you will surely get a birthday card from him. He’s the type of guy that always takes care of people, often before they realize the help is needed. He’s the type of guy who will support you regardless just because he loves you.

My dad is a super special person.

Whenever I meet one of his past colleagues for the first time, always in the first sentence after introducing themselves is, “Your dad is such a special guy“.  He really is.  I have often felt like I hit the dad jackpot

Thank you Father for always loving me and always being my biggest cheerleader. Thank you for always working so hard. Thank you for always being so thoughtful. Thank you for always being you.

My dad lives in the Middle East right now and we all miss him terribly and can’t wait for the big announcement he is coming home for good! I took some pictures of my kids and their Poppy when he was here the last time. Katie has PCS bad (photographer’s child syndrome) and will not co-operate as soon as she sees a camera. This was as good as it got with her that day

David and his Poppy

And Peyton and Poppy

Happy Father’s Day Father!  Thank you for being YOU