Cakes by Sweet Lealea

October is birthday month for our family. Jessalyn and Luke have birthday's a day apart from each other, which always makes for an interesting time of party planning and coordinating. I am not much of a party planner...so I try to go as simple as possible. Because it is Jessalyn's 10th birthday, we will be celebrating with a couple friends on the actual day..but otherwise, we had a little family gathering for Jessalyn and Luke together. This is what typically happens for them.

This year, we did make the party a bit more "special" by ordering two specially made cakes for them. A friend of mine (who happens to be the mom of Luke's best buddy from school and the sister of one of Jessalyn's best buddies from school) who makes cakes. They aren't just 'any' cakes though...they are super cool and SUPER yummy! We have now set a new standard of birthday cakes in our family! We stood around these cakes for as long as possible..admiring all the little details, dreading the moment when we were going to have to cut into them. Fortunately, once that dreaded time came, the taste of the cakes most definitely eased the pain! They taste just as great as they look.

We joked that with our family (including extended family) we could keep Sweet Lealea in business! It seems like we have a birthday every other week around here!

I'll share a few pics here..but of course I have pictures of every possible angle on the website:)


















And..definitely go to the Sweet Lealea website and order your next cake there!!!

Sara

It's hard to believe that I have known Sara since she was 11...just a year older than Jessalyn is now! Sara is now a senior, working two jobs...looking at colleges, thinking about becoming a nurse. Sara is amazing. She is a hard working, smart, BEAUTIFUL, Jesus loving young woman. She's a great babysitter and will one day be a wonderful mother.

After rescheduling a few times because of weather and work schedules we were finally able to get together for her senior photo session. We had an 'almost' perfect day with wind being our only issue. We found a bunch of cool locations and I snapped and snapped away while she smiled her beautifully photogenic smile.

After photographing most everyone else, it is easy to filter through the pictures to discard the bad ones and keep the good ones. There are usually a higher percentage of funny expressions, closed eyes and poses that just don't work for whatever reason. Not with Sara. I came back and chose over 70 pictures that came out nicely. The problem with Sara is that she doesn't take a bad picture! It made my job of filtering through them quite difficult, but overall I am confident that I chose the ones that best show her personality.

We had a fun few hours together. As usual, all 70 something photo's are on my website, but I will choose a few to share here. How will I ever decide? There are so many to choose from!





Thank you to Mrs. Oliver and her barn. The plan for this barn is to tear it down..and that will be a sad, sad day for "kristin brown studio"! :) (Thank you Mrs. Oliver!!!)













And one of Sara and Owen. Owen was glad to flash a nice smile to be in a picture with her!

Damon

Damon was great. You just never know what to expect with these senior boys! He helped me carry my step stool around and 'weeded' the area's that we chose for pictures. The step stool was absolutely necessary because Damon is over 6 feet tall. He is a basketball player, but for some reason, he couldn't seem to find a basketball anywhere! (note to self: bring my own props!) Damon also has an injured knee which made his posing options fairly limited. It ended up being fun and I think we got some great pictures!

There is this spot in Whitefield that I had in mind. I grew up in Whitefield and knew that there was a building that had some graffiti on it....that was loving placed there by my brother Matt:) It is a big spray paint of "AC/DC". Assuming he was a teenager when he did this then it must have been done at least 25 years ago! While thinking about this, I thought sure that it would have been painted over by now....but sure enough, in true Whitefield fashion, it is STILL there! It made for a GREAT place for a senior boy photo shoot!







We headed to a few other locations and then I said something to the affect of "do you know anyone with any old abandoned cars in their yard?". Damon was like "yeah...I do"...so we headed to a new location and got these pics:





The full galleries of all of the shoots can be found on my website.

McKayla

Photographing McKayla was SO much fun! She was willing to try anything...from sitting on twisted metal, to tractors, train cars and even old abandoned CREEPY houses! We had some good laughs. McKayla's boyfriend made sure everything was safe first! McKayla and her boyfriend just so happened to be celebrating their two year anniversary that day.

We got about 45 'keepers'...but I will post a few of my favorites here.











McKayla and her boyfriend (who happens to be on of my childhood best friends nephew!)


McKayla and her mom. Mom was a big help driving us all around scoping out new places for pictures!

Skye

Thirteen going on...well, I don't know? But, she is a beautiful girl for sure!

I did senior pics for her big brother so we decided to snap a few of Skye too.

Kelly Family

I had a great morning photographing one of my oldest (as in, time of friendship) friends. Emily and I have been friends since right around 4th grade. We spent much of elementary school side by side. Even after high school we were able to be in each others weddings and have remained great friends. Although our time spent together is not nearly what it was before..or even what it 'should' be now, when we DO get together it is always a fun time! Between each of our crazy lives and a little bit of a distance, we find it hard to get together often. It doesn't affect our ability to pick up right where we left off though!

I know I had fun that morning...but with a husband who doesn't exactly enjoy his picture taken and an active four year old, we tried to work quickly! I think we got some great shots in the end...I'll choose only a few of my faves from the day.

Frida

Frida is Shawn and Karen's foreign exchange student. She hasn't been here long, but seems to be adjusting quite well. I can imagine she finds herself quite overwhelmed when, what seems like, the whole world shows up at her house each week to watch football. She's catching on to the rules of the game..and the rules (save seat, seat save) of Shawn's house!

Again, a VERY quick shoot...

More catching up...

I was also able to take some family pictures of one of my best friends and her family. We only had a little bit of time before the Patriots game started so we tried to work quickly!









I like this one. There is just something about a picture when everyone is doing something besides looking at the camera that appeals to me!

I have fallen behind.

It has been a few weeks since I did a photo session with Lj, but for some reason have yet to post about it here.

Lj is someone I have known for quite a few years. She has recently been asked to do some motivational speaking engagements in order to share her testimony of life with an amputated leg as well as the recent loss of her father. Lj is awesome. She is rarely seen without a smile on her face! She needed a few pictures taken for her promotional brochures. I was happy to help her with this.

We had a fun afternoon visiting, taking pics and getting to here more of her testimony!

Here are a few pics from that afternoon...the rest are on my website.