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Clementine

birthday, Blog, Clementine, Fall, st. louis

Clementine is Two!


I’m not quite sure how it’s possible but last week (October 4th) we celebrated Clementine’s 2nd birthday. It’s hard to believe that she is already 2 years old! Those of you who have been around since her birth may remember the sweet baby girl with dark hair, chubby cheeks, and the most perfect eyebrows I have ever seen on a newborn. She’s grown up so much over the past couple of years and it has been such a joy to watch her grow!

I was so excited to do a fun little photoshoot with Clementine for her birthday. With 2 year olds, you just never know if they’re going to even cooperate. But I knew I had to at least try. I ran to the store and bought a bunch of balloons (70+!) and got to work, blowing them up to different sizes. I used some packing tape to stick them to the wall and to each other. If I was wanting to keep them up longer than a quick photoshoot, I would have used better tape. But they did manage to stay up until the next morning when Primrose started to destroy them haha.

As you can see, she had so much fun with the photoshoot! Clementine is a major girly girl and was so excited to put on the pink tutu dress and crown (from Little Blue Olive.) She’s very opinionated when it comes to her outfits. So when she’s happy about what she’s wearing, it makes all the difference. The balloon backdrop was also a huge hit with her.

She has an obsession with “Baby Shark” and “Daddy Finger” that may drive us to insanity. But she also loves to sing the ABCs and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star with the sweetest little voice in the world. She loves to dance, make silly faces, and has the most contagious laugh in the world. Her favorite thing to do is pretty much anything Desmond is doing–which is not Desmond’s favorite thing for her to do haha. She’s perfectly sweet and equally sassy. And I’m so thankful to be her mom.

On Clementine’s birthday, we decided to go to one of her favorite places–the St. Louis Zoo! They had their fall/Halloween decorations out which made it a little more fun.

Like I already mentioned, Clementine is very opinionated with her outfit and she insisted on wearing her crown to the Zoo. Everyone kept telling her she looked like a little princess. It was so sweet!

We’re in the process of letting Evangeline’s bangs grow out. Obviously the hairspray didn’t hold them to the side very well but I loved this picture of her.

One of our favorite places in the Zoo is in the sea lion tunnel. It started to rain right as we walked in so we hid in there for a little while until the rain passed. It was Primrose’s first time to notice the sea lions. It was so fun to watch her expressions.

Watching them line up like this is one of the best parts about the zoo. It won’t be too much longer before Primrose will be lined up right next to them!

Liam was very set on getting a picture with Clementine in front of the flamingos. Obviously she didn’t have the same enthusiasm as him haha.

I have a memory card full of pictures like this. But I’ll spare you and only post one haha. Everyone always wants a turn as each character so we always spend a good chunk of time at these cutouts anytime the kids spot one.

We just learned about bears in Science so it was neat for the kids to get a close up look. It was also encouraging to hear them list some facts about bears that they had learned. It helps me to know that they’re at least retaining a few things 😉

Clementine was so excited to watch the “dino” swim by her over and over.

When you look over and see your 5 year old planking haha. It just made me think of that episode of The Office. Anyone know what I’m talking about??

I usually try to get a group shot at the beginning of our outings. But people kept walking in the background of our shots. So we waited until we were walking back to the van and everyone was crabby haha. But getting (mostly) everyone in the shot always makes me happy and we managed to get a few shots with no one looking too crabby.

We came home to an unexpected little package. This tray of cupcakes was sent to Clementine from our friends at cuddle+kind. I honestly could not get over how kind and thoughtful it was for them to not only remember her birthday, but to send a treat to her with a little birthday note. I know I often talk about my love for this company. But my love runs deeper than just for their dolls and their mission, the people who make up the company are just so special to us as well. They certainly made the day a little more special.

The past 2 years with Clementine have been so much fun. I’m so excited to continue to watch her grow!

You can read her birth story HERE and see her 1st birthday photos HERE.

October 9, 2018
Blog, Clementine, instagram, iphone

How I Take and Edit an Instagram Photo


I’m wrapping up my little 3 part “Instagram series” with this behind the scenes look at how I take an Instagram picture and edit it. You can find Part One (where I shared how I became an influencer) right HERE and Part Two (where I shared tips on how you can improve and grow your own feed) HERE.

I love behind the scenes stuff so I thought this post would be fun! I wanted to answer a few questions I get about my pictures (what camera I use, how I get pictures of Clementine sleeping, how I edit, etc.) So hopefully this post is helpful!

I could take this post a lot of different directions (phone vs. dslr, group shot vs. individual, etc.) But since I do get so many questions specifically about the sleeping Clementine pictures, I thought that would be a great example to use. And I always use my phone to get these shots so keep that in mind.

A lot of people want to know how I’m able to get well lit pictures of her sleeping so I’ll just show you the current (crammed) setup of her crib in our room.

As you can see, the light is flooding in directly by her bed. She’s been sleeping right here since she was itty bitty and she’s always been used to sleeping with the blinds open. So the light does not bother her while she’s napping. And as far as noise goes, we always use a fan at naptime and bedtime and since she is in our room, we are in and out of there a lot while she’s sleeping. So I feel like at this point, she can sleep through quite a bit.

Anyway, when I am planning to get a sleeping picture of her, I usually just lay her down with her little lovey that she won’t sleep without (from Stella and Lu) and leave the room until she falls asleep. And in case you’re wondering–yes, I do plan these pictures out in my head ahead of time. Sometimes I do it to display a product collaboration and sometimes it’s because I think it’s adorable. But I’m pretty sure all her naptime photos are planned before she even goes to sleep.

I check back in on her about 10 minutes later and 99.9% of the time, she’s sleeping. This is the point I take a picture because she’s in a deeper sleep and won’t startle awake as easily. However, whatever position she’s laying in when I walk in to check on her (on her back, belly, or side) I just have to work with because there’s no way I’m risking flipping her over just for a picture. So for the example I’m going to use, when I walked into our room, I found sweet Clementine napping like this…

I was excited that she was on her back because that’s the vision I had in my mind. But she was sleeping at an angle so I had to gently scoot her over to the center. Usually I don’t adjust that much but I had a very particular setup in my mind this time so I took the risk and moved her over.

I wanted to get a picture of Clementine sleeping with all of the Cuddle and Kind dolls we have. Evangeline and Kingston had the opportunity to be in a video shoot for them recently and they each got a doll in return. So after adding those 2 dolls to the 4 dolls we already had, I knew I wanted to get a picture of all of them together. **A little side note–This company does amazing things by donating meals to children in need. This weekend they are doubling their impact. Each doll sold= 20 meals donated! (No coupon required.) And you can get free shipping by using the code GIVETHANKS. This post isn’t sponsored by them but I always love to share about this company!

Anyway, this is one of the first pictures I took (it’s completely unedited.) I always start out with some test shots before I move anything around so I can get a better idea of what I want for the picture.

After I see the first shots, I start to make adjustments. I didn’t like how crammed it looked with all 6 dolls and I also didn’t like the repetition of the two unicorns so I took the smaller one away. I also didn’t like the way her legs looked so I tried to adjust those a bit. Sometimes she moves how I want her to, sometimes she doesn’t. After I felt like I had everything else adjusted, I took out her pacifier and started taking pictures. And here’s a dorky shot that I had Don take to show what I look like when I’m trying to get a picture. Whatever it takes to get “the shot.”

Because her legs were looking weird to me, I grabbed a blanket to cover them up. I kept making small adjustments until I liked the way everything was lined up. I ended up with the shot below. This was the last picture I took (after taking a ton.) P.S. that arm around the mermaid was actually something she did on her own and I love it!

So here it is unedited…

And here’s the edited version…

(Editing to add a disclaimer! When I posted this photo to Instagram, I felt that it still looked a little dull so I deleted it and then bumped up the brightness, highlights, and contrast through the Instagram editing.)

As you can see, I brightened it up quite a bit. The thing about editing is that everybody has a different style. And that’s okay! That’s what makes photography more interesting! My husband and I have opposite taste in editing. I like light and airy, he likes dark and contrasted. If this editing style is not your thing, that’s fine!

However, if you’d like to know how I got this final result, I actually made a video to share my editing from start to finish. Unfortunately, when I uploaded to youtube, it didn’t upload the audio. I was actually talking throughout and explaining each part but the audio didn’t carry over for some reason. Hopefully I can get that issue resolved if I do another video like this. But this time I guess you can just be thankful that you didn’t have to listen to my nasal-y voice.

To quickly summarize, I start with Snapseed to brighten, fix any discoloration, and “heal” out imperfections (like the stuff that didn’t get vacuumed up beforehand 😉 ) Then I usually run my pictures through A Color Story to put a filter on it (Punch from the Blush pack is my current favorite) and use the curves until I like the finished result. And then I do my final adjustments in Instagram (like changing perspective and straightening the picture.) I’m still working on my editing skills because I really never feel like that’s my specialty. But I know I have seen improvement at some point in the past few years.

Anyway, here is the video for you to see how I got the final picture! If you have any questions or think you’d like more examples, please let me know! Have a great weekend!

November 25, 2017