C and I went hiking on our Thankful Thursday right after music class last week. I had been telling him that we were going to take photos. He has this little plastic one-time-use style camera in the toybox at his Agi’s house and is always chasing us around beckoning “Say Cheese!” I loved photography class in college and had a great teacher, Baldwin Lee. This was real 35mm film photography, developing my own photos in a darkroom, I remember a high grain Illford film being a favorite. I loaded up the old Pentax K1000 with some film that I found, who knows if it is any good {or really where to even get it developed?} We set out and I taught him how to advance the film after each shot. He struggled a little with the weight of this metal beast, but was thrilled with the sound of the shutter. I am thinking of getting him one of these Diana Minis for his birthday. Digital cameras are great, I love the technology, but there is still something special about a limited number of frames and waiting to see the image.

Now for the professional side of photography, my dear friend Julie Afflerbaugh, who has taken photos of C since he was just sitting up, is launching seasonal mini-sessions starting this weekend, email her and get professional shots of your little one at a great price. Check it out:

Cullin’s favorite color, hands down, is YELLOW. After the request to play Ring-the-Gack, I thought about other old-fashioned fun for birthday parties and came up with a Bean Bag Toss, Clothespin Drop, and of course, Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey, which I found at Bake it Pretty while buying cupcake liners, then made the rest of the games myself, using paint, cardboard, glue & a little creativity with things we had here around the house. The kids won tickets for points earned playing the games and then got to visit the prize booth for penny candy, bubbles, balloons, sidewalk chalk, noisemakers & more.

The making of the desired jellybean cupcakes was fairly simple, I used a triple-citrus recipe for the cake, yummy cream cheese icing, because it’s my favorite and multiple flavors of yellow Jelly Bellys to top them off. Typically, I’m not much of a baker, but I enjoyed it so much that I made Lemon Meringue  Cupcakes, complete with Lemon Curd, for the adults – mmm! So the rest of the food had to be yellow, too: we had macaroni & cheese, pineapple, bananas, popcorn and lemonade!

There were probably 25 kids there in all. It was a little hectic and a load of fun. I was so busy, I wouldn’t have all of the beautiful photographs of this party if I hadn’t been so smart to invite my wonderful friend, Julie Afflerbaugh, to come and shoot. She has been photographing my little guy since he was 5 months old – I am so lucky to have this visual documentation!

My sweet Granny Lou even flew out for the party. She stayed up super late with me for three days helping me craft party hats, cupcake flags, fabric flag banners and finishing touches. I had a blast with every detail, integrating the wishes of my 3-year-old wonderboy, and letting my own little imagination run wild. The greatest reward of all was when Cullin arrived with a bursting smile and said, “I’m so exciting!”

{oh, and that’s not all, stay tuned for more!}

Julia Vandenoever delivers again! I am in love with both sets of photos from our recent sessions in front of the camera. The first, shown a couple of weeks ago at the studio with Siler {THE bird dog} and now revealing a few favorites from the second, on location at the Lyons Farmette. These chickens are telepathic I tell you, they were just as well behaved as Siler and I’ve spent years training her {plus, I think they really liked my stationery}. One word : Thrilled. Tell us what you think!