Christiana Childers Photography Blog

I realize that I talk about yummy babies a lot on this blog. I’m sorry.  I just can’t help it. I just want to eat them up!  I’m mean, will you look at this one?!See!!  Yummy!  And he giggles like the recording of a perfect baby giggle when you chew on his cheeks.  I’m salivating again.  His mom said he’s addictive.  I agree!

And his sister is personality with a capital ‘P’!

No girl should be without a skirt to twirl in.  I still remember my favorite twirly skirt.  My mom made it for me for just that purpose.

And here are a few more of my favorites from the day-See what I mean?!  Y U M M Y!!

I went for a walk on Alki Beach today with Blue.  Despite being freezing cold, I had a rather good time.  But what put a smile on my face was when I went to Alki Bakery for a quick coffee to warm me up, I saw the cup of crayons and the paper for the kids and decided to have my coffee to stay.  I drew my picture of a tree and then decided, “What the heck!  I’m hanging it up with the kids pictures.”  I decided Mia had a bit too much real estate with her butterflies!  

Move over Mia….here comes Christiana…

Now for the shot you’d expect from your photographer -

Sure it’s all dark and interesting.  But it didn’t make me giggle like the drawing of the tree did!

I like to cook.  A lot.  I love the menu planning, the prep, the presentation and, of course, eating it.  One of my favorite things I do is cook for my homegroup a few times a year.  We had a Valentine’s Dinner last weekend and I wanted to show you what we did.  So fun!

First, I was inspired by my trip to NY where a lot of the window displays and store decorations where made out of old books.  So I bought this book at “the Boutique”  (that’s my code word for Value Village!).  I love old books and I kind of hate to tear them apart especially when someone like Vern J Cole has written in it claiming it as his own in that cool old fashionedy writing..

Ah well!  So I made invitations by tea-staining an old sheet I had.  I then printed out the invite on an iron-on transfer to the fabric and sewed it to one of the book pages.

For decorations, Lora and I made paper flowers out of tissue paper and some more pages.

We also made some lanterns out of sewing book pages together -

Now onto the food!!  Well, at least the soup.  I forgot to take photos of the rest of the food but the soup was my favorite!  Here’s some photos of the beet soup in progress (note: you might die from saturated color! Did anyone else hear me channeling Sue Shoop just then?  One day my mom will read my blog and see all these references to herself…)

I made a second soup – a pea soup and then we put them side by side.  Ben made it look pretty (he’s way better at that than me!) -

Kari took couples photos of everyone.  Here’s ours

And one last photo that I couldn’t resist posting…

Can it really have been since the 2nd that I posted anything on my blog?!  Wow!  I hope to remedy that in the next couple of days!

Anyway, thought I’d share a few pictures from a photo walk I took on Tuesday at my favorite park – Juanita Bay Park in Kirkland.  I never ever get sick of going there and Tuesday was no exception.  I was taken with the fact that even though it is winter, color still abounds!  And it is fun to see the birth of Spring!

Look at the color of just these branches!

Ode to Ansel

I thought it was fun to see this recently cut tree and the life already creeping over it…

The moss was bright green and everywhere!

Take your camera to the park!  I recommend it!

You might recognize my friends from a previous posts (Baby W) and my website.  I thought I’d show you some photos I took of them for their Christmas card.

See what I mean?!  NOT ugly!

Here’s Baby W.  He’s grown so much since his birth day!

And I had to show you the many faces of A!

Thank you guys for a fun day with you all and a small baby fix!  Love you!

Ben surprised me for my birthday with a trip to NYC!  I’ve been dying to go ever since my cousin,  Sweet Miriam (of a Mississippi Wedding post) moved there. We had a fabulous time!  We’re big foodies so we made that a big focus but it was just so great to be there on so many levels besides just the food…the glorious food!  We went with our long time friends Scott and Mary (of the Apple Press post!). Mary goes to NY several times a year on business so between Mir and Mare we felt like we weren’t tourists but living in city which is how I love to visit a city!  Here are some shots from our trip -

Scott and Mary.  Isn’t that cool with the train going by in the background.  Love it!

I like to do little hip-shots sometimes.  Occasionally I’m surprised at the result.  I thought this one was kind of cool.

I didn’t Photoshop the “Ring Bell” in there but doesn’t look like it?

I’ve always wanted to do one of those shots with a slow shutter speed of Grand Central.  Ben and I got off the train there so I could do that!  Isn’t my husband patient?!

Ben took this of me and Mir in Brooklyn!

I wish I could tell and show you much more because this barely scratches the surface but I’m afraid this post would be just miles too long.  Sigh.  It was a big time in the Big Apple!

Meet C.  Nearly cobalt blue eyes, throw on an every-ready smile and then add dimples!  Well!   She is a wee charmer for sure.  Her parents are in trouble with a capital T!

We met at Lincoln Park in West Seattle on a day that even in the morning the forecast was saying it was going to rain all day or at least be cloudy but as you can see we had glorious sun for this family session.  But you could have thrown this one in a dirt pile during a down pour and the pictures wouldn’t have suffered!  She that cute, people.

Sweet, isn’t she?!

Thank you guys for showing me a new spot!

The rain today is hardly bothering me.  I’m still enjoying the glow from spending my weekend in the “Palm Springs of Washington”.  That’s right, my hometown – Yakima, Washington.  I haven’t been to Yak for many years now because my parents moved away my Senior year of High School so I didn’t have the pull back to my hometown like I would have if they’d stayed.  But we have some dear friends, the Erickson’s, that still live there and, before kids, we got to visit them quite a bit with Scott and Mary (our friends, their daughter/son-in-law!).  Well, it’s been far too long since we’ve made the trek.  My youngest hasn’t even been to Yakima before!  Shame on me!  I was rolling in nostalgia this weekend like never before because I was watching my kids do the same things at our friend’s home that I used to do at their house when I was a kid.  I realized that there isn’t a place like that other than the Erickson’s house for me because my parents no longer live in the home I grew up in.  What a treat to watch them play on swings, playing in the leaves and help with the cider making process!  The cider was a big reason why we went over this weekend, btw.  Here are some shots of the cider press and process (the very one I threw apples into as a kid!)  –

Kids at play making mud pies, playing in the leaves….just like I did!

I’m sure this is the very tricycle I rode! (Is this getting old for anyone yet?  Well, I don’t care! I’m enjoying myself!).

The kids thought it’d be fun to roast apples and it turned out to be a big hit.  A new tradition started, I think.

Aunt Pat has a fabulous antique/garden shop out of the Carriage House called Country Garden Antiques.  She specializes in things for the garden but has something for everyone in her shop.  I always come away with a few treasures.   I picked up some of my favorite pottery (Emma Bridgewater) for myself  and a couple gifts.  Here’s some shots of the shop.  If you are ever in the area, I’d recommend a drop-by.

I haven’t yet mentioned that my husband also grew up coming to the Erickson’s for Apple Press so this place also has a special place in his heart AND it is where we had our wedding reception!

The older boys, being boys, thought it’d be fun to bash apples.  We decided that men, instead of having a combined IQ when together their IQ actually goes down.  I mean this with the greatest respect.  I was laughing just as hard as the rest of them!  Here is a shot of Ben apple bashing…right before it sprayed all over me!

And a group shot!  Thank you Pat and Fred, Scott and Mary and Robbin and Maria for a most fabulous and restful weekend!

Lastly – the house I grew up in…on Memory Lane (just joking!).  Isn’t it cute!

I finally get to post about my photo shoot with the family I shot for Trading Graces.  Let me first fill you in a little about Trading Graces and say that this is going to be a two part post.  The first part will be to show you the portraits and the second to show you the project.

Trading Graces is the brainstorm of my BFF Lora.  The two of us used to love watching Trading Spaces.  Remember that show?  Where neighbors would swap houses and redo a room in the others house under the direction of a designer for $1000?  Lora is a fantastic designer (I can’t even hang a picture without checking with Lora! She’s good.) and she came up with the idea of doing that as a service project through her church.  They pick someone in their church who gives more than they take and needs a new kitchen or whatever (although I think every single one has been a kitchen or more) and just love all over them by blessing them with a new space.  So Trading Graces was born.  I don’t know what it is like at their other service projects since I only help out with this one but the people at Northshore Baptist get so into Trading Graces!  You would not believe the amount of volunteers who do everything from bringing meals to major contract work to cleaning the bathrooms.  I makes you feel all warm being around all that Love.

So this particular project was for a dear family who needed help with their house.  The description “dear family” is the best way to describe them.  They are so “dear” and loved by their community.  And I felt very fortunate to get to take their photos for this project.  They have three kids and two of their kids have special needs.  The oldest and the youngest.  They were a challenge to shoot because I couldn’t really get them to look at me.  They are both legally blind so I’m sure someone who they don’t know pointing a black shiny thing at them and calling their name isn’t really the best situation.  So I quickly gave up having them look at the camera which is so fine with me because I like getting shots of kids playing anyway.  I’d rather just be an observer.

C was in constant motion.  She dances and prances and hugs.  This is the shot I got of her that we used for the photo wall.

I love it because it looks like she is sitting still but her hair betrays that fact that it is really more of a very quick pause.   And then I got one of her hugging her mom.  I used this one for the photo wall too.  We did all the photos in B&W for the wall but I actually prefer this one in color because I think C is color.

And one last one which I love again because I think it captures C.  I’m calling this one “Drinking Sunshine”.

Then there was T.  He brought a truck to play with.  We didn’t use this one for the wall but this is my favorite one of him.

This is the one we use for the wall only in the color version.  Can you stand it?!!

OK. Now onto J.  He brought a book about music and was buried in this well loved book pretty much the whole session.  This is the photo that we used for the wall of J.

And now for what I think is one of the best photo of my life.  I can’t seem to get this photo big enough so you can see the quote on the book but it says “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent” – Victor Hugo.  J has a hard time being understood and music is very important to him…

His mom said of this photo – “I have never seen anything that has more captured the soul of an individual in a photo.”  Sigh.  The Greatest Compliment.

The weather this Spring has been a bit much for me.  Just when you think it’s going to warm up for good, we get hit with more rain and COLD.  I’m trying to decide if the rain would bother me as much if it wasn’t so cold.  Anyway…with umbrella and grumpy attitude in hand I walked R to school this morning when I saw this!

You can almost just see the fairies collecting water beads to make their tea!  So I ran home and got my camera and starting walking around the ‘hood snapping shots of all the water collection on the leaves.  I started to feel the grumpiness peel away.

This one reminds me of the “Mustard Off Pools’ from Dr. Suess’ “Happy Birthday To You” book.  That was my favorite part of that book growing up.

And this one is for you Muggs!

This one is in my garden.  I forget what this plant is called but it usually has a pool of water saved in the center of its fan leaves.

So if you are feeling grumpy about the weather, pick up your camera to help you see the rain in a whole new way.  It certainly helped me.

Here’s one that my friend Amy shot in Dublin.  She was tired of waiting for the rain to stop to go out and shoot.  I love it!