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Family Portraits 2010: Fall Love

Oct 252010

I shared the fire specific family photos with you on Friday. I adore them and will likely buy them all.

Of course, we needed our regular family photo too. I took the advice of various photo-bloggers, fashion bloggers and friends and didn’t go for the full on matchy-matchy clothing choices. Don’t get me wrong: I like matching. I do. We’re never going to be wearing random outfits in an official family portrait. But I went a different route than in years past.

I actually went shopping with a color palette in mind. I wanted grays and burgundy with appropriate accent colors. I accidentally found myself in the Gymboree outlet store and we ended up with a color palette on the other end of the spectrum: browns, oranges and khakis with some light blue thrown in for good measure. Not at all what I was expecting. But it turned out well.

See that photo? See my kids looking at the camera? And my hair being curly? And my husband playing along for good measure? Yep. That’s what I wanted.

Gymboree is nice for planning a non-matchy-match but still complementary color palette for the kiddos. I happened to hit the outlet during a big sale to boot. I saved lots of money. I suggest going that route as regular Gymboree prices, however cute, make me twitchy. I found my top and pants (Lee, no gap waistband, omgwonderful) at the Vanity Fair outlet. FireDad’s shirt came from the Old Navy outlet. Yay outlets!

Also, I may have bribed my children to look at the camera. BigBrother, having put up with me for almost five years, is a pro when it comes to looking at the camera and smiling. LittleBrother, being almost three, is in a, “I AM LOOKING,” but he’s not really looking at the camera phase. Knowing that, I hit up Big Lots and grabbed a Wii game for $10. I didn’t tell them what the game was, so I’m sure they were expecting the new Toy Story 3 game, but they were happy with the (older) Cars Mater-National game. But, yes, bribery worked.

And, of course, I wanted a good photo of the two of us lovebirds. I was not disappointed.

I’m now currently trying to decide which sizes to buy, what ones are a definite must have and which ones to buy for various family members. I don’t mind shelling out money for family portraits though some people do. That’s the photographer in me. Photos mean so much to me, and I’m thankful my husband understands that (even though he really doesn’t like getting his picture taken).

But even he has to admit, this memory was worth the wearing of khaki pants on a Sunday afternoon.

Thank you, Heather.

Our Family Portraits: My Firefighters

Family, fire life, Photography 9 Responses »

Oct 222010

We normally get our family photos taken in August. You may remember last year’s debacle where the pseudo-photographer “lost” our files. I was still feeling the sting when my friend Heather Durdil offered to waive her mileage fee and take our family portraits this year. I adore Heather and her photography and fall, so we combined the lot in Salt Fork State Park — also one of our favorites — earlier this month.

I’ll show you the “official” family photo on Monday. Instead, I want to get all sappy up in this piece.

While reading A Widow’s Walk last month, the author wrote of treasuring a photo she had of her husband with her son. I realized that while I have many snapshots that I’ve taken, many of which are of great quality, we don’t have a father-and-sons “official portrait.” That seemed wrong. And so, my wheels began turning. That caused smoke to start pouring out of my ears. And this concept was born in the depths of my brain fire.

It is exactly what I imagined. That photo. Right there. That’s it. And then I was rewarded with some amazing “extras.”

When you ask me “which one” I’ll be buying, I have to stifle a laugh. There is no choice involved. This is a “must purchase them all” type scenario. Those are my firefighters, my men. They look so flipping cute tough that I can hardly contain my pride.

But, wait, it gets better. Heather asked me to step into a photo.

She showed me that last one, the only one she let me see that day, and said, simply, “FireMom and her men.”

Yes, I got kind of weepy. I also got weepy when she sent me that one as my first preview. And I flat out cried when she sent me the link to all of the photos yesterday evening. We are a lucky little fire family, aren’t we?

More on our family photos on Monday. For now, I think we all need to give kudos to FireDad for going along with my request. I didn’t tell him he had to do the turnout gear photo. I asked. Nicely. I gave him the option to say no. He did say yes, obviously, though he may have been pushed into that by his friend Boogie. Whatever the case, I am eternally grateful.

I cannot wait to hang these on our wall. Walls. Plural.

[Families in Ohio: Heather is awesome. She's up Cleveland way. And she's on Facebook. Disclosure: I paid for these photos, but I'm obviously pleased with the results and will tout her work for free.]