Photos — Page 4

Celebrate Mom: Win the perfect gift! The Forever Moments Giveaway!

“A man’s work is from sun to sun, but a mother’s work is never done.” – Author Unknown

Every mom deserves something special this Mother’s Day – and what’s more meaningful then a personalized piece of art featuring photos that capture those favorite family moments? We all love the look of a handmade scrapbook page, but we don’t all have the time or talent to make it happen, right?

Perfect Busy Mom Solution!

The Forever Moments makes it super simple to create a showstopper for anyone’s family photo wall! Learn more about how to make your own custom scrapbook page in just minutes – and enter to WIN your favorite design too, just in time to surprise the special mom in your life. Remember – Mother’s Day is coming up May 13th!

Want to create a design today? Use online coupon code SUNSHINE to save 25% off your entire purchase at The Forever Moments until March 30th!

Enter to Win!

Use the easy peasy Rafflecopter form to get your entries in! There is NO mandatory entry – Just fill in as many, or as few, boxes as you like – the more entries, the better your chances of winning. And you can come back each day too, for the bonus Tweet entry! Feelin’ lucky? Check out that big list of giveaways in my sidebar too!!

Have Fun & Good Luck!

{Disclaimer: I received a complimentary design from The Forever Moments, so that I could go through the selection and order process, and check out the quality of their work. All opinions, photos, and overuse of exclamation points are 100% my own :)}

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Posted by Meagan Paullin on March 16, 2012 Filed Under: Giveaways | 34 Comments

Celebrate Motherhood with the Forever Moments….

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.” – Rajneesh

That is my favorite quote of all time. It describes how I feel about becoming a mother – so simple, and so perfectly. My life changed dramatically the day Abby was born, and she is the total sunshine of my life. I had never planned to have children, and was overwhelmed by what a beautiful experience it was when I unexpectedly became a mother a year and a half ago. I’ve cherished every single moment since then – Through the sleepless nights and endless diapers, to the new toddler tantrums and catastrophes. It’s a hard job, but the benefits package kind of rocks.

“I love my mother as the trees love water and sunshine – she helps me grow, prosper, and reach great heights.” – Terri Guillemets

Want to celebrate YOUR favorite mom moments? The Forever Moments has an amazing way to help you do so – They get your favorite photos out of a box, and into premade scrapbook pages that are as unique and beautiful as your family! Each piece is handmade just for you, with perfectly detailed embellishments, and your own personalized names and dates. You can purchase them with or without a frame, and there are so many layouts, colors, and designs that you are guaranteed to find the perfect fit for your favorite moment.

“Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” – Linda Wooten

This is my favorite photo of my little family… It was taken very late in the fall, and there was actually some snow on the ground already! But the totally amazing Amber Miller found one spot that was still bright with colorful fall leaves, and was able to capture the three of us sharing a fun moment. A super special picture needs an equally special presentation – and I just love the design of this Family Portrait design. {Tip: This design is able to fully customized with your family name. Long story, but Mike, Abby, and I all have different last names right now – we’re in the process of changing his. So I just had it printed with a basic message of “Our Family” instead.} It’s surprising how hard it is to get a really great picture, of a picture – But trust me, this looks even more beautiful in person. The details are all made from such high-quality paper, with gorgeous texture. It’s the perfect addition to our family photo wall, there is a perfect design choice just waiting to be created for your own photo wall – and this would make a perfect gift for a special mom in your life for Mother’s Day!

“Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends – but only one mother in the whole world.” – Kate Douglas Wiggin

Celebrate the special mother in your life this year with a gorgeous, handmade, and totally unique piece of art from The Forever Moments! Check out the amazing selection of Mommy Moment design choices, or browse any of the other great categories too – like family, celebrations, sports, baby & more! And since it’ll be super hard to choose just one – I’ve got a special coupon code just for my readers!

Use code SUNSHINE to save 25% off your whole purchase, until March 30th, so that you can stock up on additional gifts, and create the perfect piece for yourself, too!

The Forever Moments doesn’t just make products that look good, they DO good too – Instead of more candy or gift wrap, why not encourage your school to offer these pre-made, personalized scrapbook pages for their next school fundraiser? They can help you set up a great fundraising campaign, and your school earns 30% of purchases! Another way that The Forever Moments does good is by recognizing how difficult life is for the families of America’s military. For every Military layout purchased, they donate a $1 to BlueStarFam.org, a wonderful group doing awesome things to support military families!

Love it? Then enter for a chance to WIN your favorite design – The Forever Moments Giveaway!! – Good luck!

Posted by Meagan Paullin on March 16, 2012 Filed Under: Shopping, Deals and Coupon Codes, Busy Mom Solution | 25 Comments

Click, Color, Capture Weekly Photography Challenge: Blue

THIS WEEK’S COLOR IS Blue

Welcome to Week 3 of the Color, Click, Capture photography challenge hosted by East9thStreet, A Helicopter Mom, Nap Time Is My Time and Sunshine and Sippy Cups. Each week we have a new color theme – and this week’s color is blue.

Source: weheartit.com via Dominga on Pinterest

“Use the talents you possess – for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except for the best.” – Henry Van Dyke

This week, my post to share the photography challenge is a couple of days late. And, I don’t have a photo to share, so I used a favorite photo from Pinterest. Now, this isn’t all because I’m lazy. And it’s not because I forgot. It’s because I had a major crisis this week – Sunday morning, my hard drive failed. Yep. I restarted it, and got a message saying, “Hard-disk drive failure” on a big, mean-looking black screen. That’s all it would do – nothing more. The repair guy I use was out of the shop Monday. Tuesday afternoon I brought it in. Wednesday night he called with the bad news – there was no way to retrieve the 6 years of family photos, my files, or any of the information that I had on my computer – which I did NOT have backed up. Heartbreaking, seriously.

Movin’ On…

I am incredibly behind on all of my work, due to not having a computer for most of the week. I’m overwhelmed trying to figure out how to get things together, after losing the drafts of my ebooks I’ve been working on, and all my projects, graphics, media kit, everything. And I’m still devastated over the loss of all of my precious photos. Ugh. So – I definitely didn’t have a favorite photo to share this week. And I just didn’t have time to take any new ones either. But I LOVE this weekly photo link up, and have so much fun checking out your posts each week! So – Link up if you haven’t already. And if you don’t have a good backup system in place for YOUR photos, do it today.

This week’s Photo Tip

This week’s tips come from Jen Villa, photographer, collage artist and owner of The Little Beach Gallery in Hyannis, Massachusetts. She is a trained photographer and alumni of world-renowed photography school, Brooks Institute of Photography. She has been studying art for over fifteen years and worked as a food and editorial photographer for award winning publication, The Santa Barbara Independent. Her photography and artwork have a very unique style and combine her love for the ocean and passion for travel.

Light is EVERYTHING! Lighting really makes or breaks a photograph. A lack of light will leave the subject looking flat and produce a usually boring image. I love using natural light whenever possible. It’s best if you can set your scene or subject (not always easy!) near a window and use warm light coming in from outside if you’re shooting inside. The highlights and details reflected are usually wonderful! The best time of day to shoot is early morning and late afternoon. High noon sun is very harsh and creates shadows that usually create difficulties, especially when human subjects are involved. This isn’t always an option so if your shooting your subject outside at the peak of sunlight try and get them in “open shade” and you will have a more neutrally lit image.
Learn to operate your camera. If you’re new to manual options on a digital camera, memorize your manual and EXPERIMENT! Try out all the menu options. Always remember to concentrate on getting the main subject matter in FOCUS. Without a sharp focus, you don’t have a good image.

Use these great tips to help you improve your photo skills over the few days, and be sure to come back to link up again next week, so you can learn more tips from Jen Villa. I can’t wait to see what photos you share here this time.

Link Up Your Favorite Blue Photos!

Posted by Meagan Paullin on March 2, 2012 Filed Under: Blog Hops | 2 Comments

Color, Click, Capture: Fall Flowers

THIS WEEK’S COLOR IS GREEN

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu

This is another picture from my garden – this time taken in the fall. I was learning to use the Macro setting on my camera, and I love the way the picture captures the tiny prickles on the flower stems and leaves.

This Week’s Photography Tip

This week’s photography tips comes from Emily Anderson of Emily Anderson Photography. Emily has been photographing children and families in the Northeast Arkansas area for several years.

“Don’t forget the details. Include more than just one image of the overall view. A wide shot of the entire object or scene may be necessary, but you can make it more interesting by including detail shots, too. Take a close up of an interesting button on a sewing project or one corner of the cake you baked, showing the texture of the icing. It can be very tempting to snap one or two images when you are in a hurry to get them uploaded to the computer for a blog or Facebook post, but challenge yourself to take several different images. This also applies to photographing people. Think about what details tell the story – wrinkled hands, grass-stained jeans, flip-flop tan lines, etc. You may find that you can take several different images in a row before you run out of ideas. Don’t give up then. Keep shooting. That’s when you turn on your creativity.”

WANT TO JOIN THE CHALLENGE?

Want to participate in our challenge? It’s super easy! Here’s how It Works:

Take a picture the represents the color of the week.
Write a blog post that features your picture and link it up.
Visit other people’s posts and hopefully find some inspiration!
You can put the button and link code on your blog if you wish but it’s not a requirement.

Join the Party – Link up your favorite Green photo

Here is the linky code:

Posted by Meagan Paullin on February 22, 2012 Filed Under: Blog Hops | 7 Comments

Improve Photography Skills, Share Your Best Pics: Color, Click, Capture Challenge!

This Week’s Color is Yellow

Welcome to Week 3 of the Color, Click, Capture photography challenge hosted by East9thStreet, A Helicopter Mom, Nap Time Is My Time and Sunshine and Sippy Cups. This week our color is YELLOW! Yellow reminds me of sunshine – so this week is my favorite so far! The photo below is from the garden at my old house – I love the way the lighting is so incredibly bright and cheerful! I sometimes miss that garden – But we’re working on the one here at the new house, and in a couple of years it will be just as pretty as our old one.

This Weeks Photography Tip

This week’s photography tip is from Faith Massey. Faith owns and operate Images by Faith Portrait Art, a boutique studio nestled in the Lake Norman area, just outside Charlotte, NC. Her passion for art started early and she explored many different mediums but found her true love in photography after having my first child in 1994. After moving from California in 2004 she opened her studio in Huntersville. As a mother of 5 beautiful children, she is very comfortable working with babies and new parents alike. Her style has been described as natural, refined and unpretentious and she loves to highlight every sweet detail of children,using primarily natural light to capture the soft sweet beauty found in children.

When photographing small children, get out from behind the camera….

Children, particularly young children, react to your facial expressions. If they can’t see your face, they are less likely to make eye contact with the camera or have the expressions you are looking for. Try to engage with the child and move the camera up quickly, take your shot and then move it again quickly so you keep your subjects engaged.

Want to Join the Challenge?

Want to participate in our challenge? It’s super easy! Here’s how It Works:

Take a picture the represents the color of the week.
Write a blog post that features your picture and link it up.
Visit other people’s posts and hopefully find some inspiration!
You can put the button and link code on your blog if you wish but it’s not a requirement.

Our color for next week is GREEN! – So get started taking some new photos this week, so you’re ready to share your best next Wednesday!

Join the Party – Share your best Yellow photo

Linky code –

Posted by Meagan Paullin on February 16, 2012 Filed Under: Blogging Resources, Blog Hops | 3 Comments

Click, Color, Capture Photo Challenge: Week 2 – Orange

CLICK, COLOR, CAPTURE PHOTO CHALLENGE!

Welcome to Week 1 of the Color, Click, Capture photography challenge hosted byEast9thStreet, A Helicopter Mom, Nap Time Is My Time and Sunshine and Sippy Cups! Our color this week is Orange – And here’s my favorite Orange photo…

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu

We moved into our new home in November of 2010 – leaving behind a beautifully landscaped home. My mother spent most afternoons at this new home working on building a new garden – She is a completely amazing Master Gardner. This is one of her beauties, taken at the end of the summer. I love the way that the light shines through the petals – Makes me feel warmer and brighter just looking at it. Oh, how I’m longing for summer to come back again!

This Week’s Photo Tip

Emily Anderson of Emily Anderson Photography has been photographing children and families in the Northeast Arkansas area for several years. She has the patience of a Saint and an impeccable ability to capture the most innocent moments.

When photographing children, have realistic expectations. If your 2 year old can’t sit still to watch his or her favorite 15-minute television show, a 40-minute session with props and specific poses is probably out of the question. (Even for a professional this can be hard to accept when it involves my own children. J ) Arrange to have another person there to chase a runaway toddler, wipe noses, and pull dresses down to cover diapers. Pick a time that the kids are usually at their best. I find that in the morning, right after breakfast is a great time for most kids. Have everything ready and easily accessible. You don’t want to have to go searching for a specific toy or book when you are 10 minutes in to their 20 minute attention span. If the kids are going to working on a project, think about what angle you will be photographing from when you set up the workspace. Take a few test shots of the area as you set up. Keep it fun, and never underestimate the power of candy or gummy fruit snacks.

Now – It’s YOUR turn to join the fun!

Each week we’ll feature a new color, and link up our favorite photos in that color. Whether your a pro at photography, or a total beginner – I’d love to have you join the fun! We’ll have a new photo tip each week, so we can all work on improving our photo skills together. So – Write up a quick blog post featuring your own favorite color, tell your readers about the Color, Click, Capture challenge, and link up with us!

Link Up Your Orange Photo for the Color, Click, Capture Photo Challenge

Posted by Meagan Paullin on February 8, 2012 Filed Under: Blog Hops | 4 Comments

Click, Color, Capture – Photography Challenge Linky – Week 1: Red

Click, Color, Capture Photo Challenge!

Welcome to Week 1 of the Color, Click, Capture photography challenge hosted byEast9thStreet, A Helicopter Mom, Nap Time Is My Time and Sunshine and Sippy Cups! Our color this week is RED.

“When life gives you lemons… just bake some lemon cupcakes.” – Unknown

I’m not a big fan of Valentine’s Day. It’s never really been a good experience for me. But – there’s nothing that a great cupcake can’t fix, right? These little beauties started with the new Fun-da-Middles mix from Betty Crocker, with a little bit of extra creativity thrown in. Recipe will be posted later today – so stay tuned!

Weekly Photography Tip

Our first photography tip comes from Rebecca Cooper who blogs at Simple As That. A professional photographer, Rebecca has written a eBook called, 40 Top Tips for Better Photos that contains easy-to-follow instructions with lots of images to guide you! Since most of want to capture images of our children, this first tip is one that is easy to apply.

No More Cheese Please. While it may seem to do the trick, asking your child to ‘say cheese’ will yeild a smile that is just that…cheesy. Try engaging your child in a conversation about something they are interested in (ie. an upcoming birthday, their favorite tv show, a recent family trip, what you’re going to do after pictures) and be ready to catch that winning smile. While it may take a little more time, that beautiful smile is always worth the wait!

Want to participate in our challenge? It’s super easy! Here’s how It Works:

Take a picture the represents the color of the week.
Write a blog post that features your picture and link it up.
Visit other people’s posts and hopefully find some inspiration!
You can put the button and link code on your blog if you wish but it’s not a requirement.