life lately: the last 10 photos on my phone

As always with the summer: things have been busy, and it's flying by! Why does that happen so much more than with less favorite seasons? (Ahem, winter...). So, a fun little summer life update by way of the last 10 photos on my phone seems in order.

1. After our 40-mile cycling race on Saturday. Peter and I had so much fun! And were actually feeling like we could have done a bunch more miles - hence the big smiles.

2. I made a strawberry pie for Father's Day. It is June, after all!

3. Fell in love with some out-of-budget calacatta marble when looking for kitchen counter options - of course. Good thing I also love the more budget-friendly carrara marble too...

4. Waging the battle against accumulating piles and piles of Hendrik's artwork (and balancing it with my love of the cuteness and his love of keeping all. the. things.) by snapping photos to make an album.

5. He pretty much refuses to nap these days, so when he finally does succumb to the summer fun exhaustion, I usually find him in funny/adorable positions.

6. Family Bean selfie fail in Chicago from our super fun weekend.

7. Screenshot proof of my Queen of the Mountain fastest rider status on a Strava (cycling app) segment.

8. Packing considerations for my work trip to Dubai (stay tuned for more on that!).

9. Mirror selfie I had to snap and send to my best friend as a "see how cool and trendy I am!" photo before we headed to the Avett Brothers concert. First public appearance with my new hair curling skills...

10. Pure joy on the Frog Hopper with Uncle Dirk and Miss Hillary. I think our day in a theme park week was seriously the most fun Hendrik has ever had in his life.


What have you been up to lately?

mini me Monday: Hendrik at three

Continuing our tradition of capturing a phase of our family's life along with a favorite part of our town at the same time, around Hendrik's 3rd birthday we had a little photo session at a lakeside park where we spend a lot of time walking and playing on the playground. The results are bittersweet... they turned out so great, but he looks way too old and grown up. (Never mind the ones that he was totally cheese-balling.)

A photo session with our threenager involved a lot of cajoling and bribery, kind of to the point of frustration, but I clearly should have just relaxed and trusted that our photographer would work her magic. The results totally show the sweetness, silliness (and yes, stubbornness) of our little mister.

And a few years in to this whole family photo thing, I feel like I've got the outfit selections down without having to put too much thought into it (especially thanks to the duh move of not having Hendrik try on the new sweater I was intending for him to wear, finding out it is still way too big, and thus having to come up with backup outfits for him and Peter 10 minutes before the session). Pretty happy with our coordinated but not overly matchy variations on navy. Shop the outfits of my mini and me...

the last 10 photos on my phone

I kind of love how blogs let us all indulge our inner busybody and get nosy looks into people's routines, homes, and closets. Some of my favorite kinds of posts to read are house tours, "day in the life", and "what's in my bag" ones - so when I saw Kait do a "last 10 photos on my phone" post I loved it as another fun way to get a behind-the-scenes look at life. So here's a little more about mine, as snapped by my iPhone recently.

1. great little side table I'm eyeing at West Elm
2. birthday dinner at The Winchester: Korean truck nachos and Moroccan spiced chicken wings (YUM)
3. swim snack break with daddy
4. lovely Saturday morning farmers market and walk by the lake
5. cottage packing pile (as seen here)
6. Of Monsters and Men outdoor concert - so fun
7. updated our landscaping and removed the (falling apart) porch rail - had to snap a photo to share the results with my mom, who recommended the great landscaper
8. if the outside of my birthday cake looked to lovely to cut into, this is to show that it's totally worth it - that's 2 layers of Oreo mousse, people!
9. Gigi and Hendrik watching baby Hendrik iphone videos on the cottage porch
10. bathtime bubble shenanigans 

I loooove having a camera always at the ready thanks to my iPhone. There tends to be a lot of Hendrik on my phone, along with yummy food that I can't help but photograph, as well as random things I photograph in order to remember for later or to text to Peter/my mom/my friend.

I do have to admit that this isn't exactly the last 10 photos, since if I did that it would really be about 8 of one Hendrik moment, trying to get him holding still or actually smiling for me, and then 2 of something else, but you get the idea... what's the latest on your camera roll?

around the world: Insta-memory book + giveaway

Since I haven't yet managed to make a photo album of Hendrik's last year, let alone his baby book, you better believe I don't have any made up of our travels from the last few years. Recently I was introduced to the new FavePix app from Shutterfly, an iPhone app that enables you to create photo books from your Instagram photos, and I knew this would be the perfect theme.

I had so much fun using this app to pick out my favorite travel shots from my Instagram feed. It only took a couple of minutes from app download to book ordering, and the result is a great little book that encapsulates the last several years of trips, complete with location listings and dates pulled straight from my account.

Things I love about utilizing this app to make an Instagram photo book:
1. Really so quick and easy. The thing that has been holding me back from making photo albums of our trips (or Hendrik's baby book, for that matter!) is how long I know it will take for me to select photos, upload them, pick a book format, lay out the pages, decide on captions... but really with this app it's a 5-minute process. You can make it by selecting your favorite Instagram shots, or even easier and quicker, you can let the app put the book together by gathering photos by hashtags or letting it choose your most popular photos.

2. Free shipping! Plus it arrived within 10 days, which I thought was pretty good for a photo book.

3. The cool bamboo stand it comes with for display. What a great way to have your favorite photos as part of your decor and get to enjoy looking at them more often.

Things that I might like to be a little different before I make another one:
1. Ability to change captions. I must admit, sometimes when I post an Instagram photo I get writer's block on coming up with something clever to caption it with... and I wished that I could remedy that for my photo book rather than having the only text option be pulling directly from my Instagram feed. To fix it, I went back to Instagram and edited some of my captions/hashtags from on my posts before making the book.

2. Ability to change fonts. I like that it's simple - I need limited options in terms of layout, colors, fonts to get me to produce a book quickly - but it might have been nice to pick a different one for the cover to make it a little more my personal style.

Overall, I love it - such a cute little book, and so fun to display as part of the little arrangement on our sofa table - and would definitely recommend downloading the FavePix app to make your own. For just $19.99, you get a 6x6 hardcover photo book, a bamboo stand, and free shipping. Or... you can win one! Enter below for a chance to try out the app and get one book for free:

a Rafflecopter giveaway


I was provided with a free photo book and code to give away a free book to one reader from Shutterfly, but all opinions are my own.

make it Monday: Instagram memory books

I'm still really into Gretchen Rubin's Happier podcast, and recently I was thinking about one of the regular discussion features as it applies to my own life: happiness stumbling blocks. These are little things that seem like they should be minor, but they really have a negative effect on happiness. One of my motherhood happiness stumbling blocks: that I've never made Hendrik's baby photo album. (And now he's two, so I'm an additional year behind beyond just the baby book!) The fact that it's out there, unmade, occurs to me from time to time and just makes me feel bad. And it's become even more saddening every time I see how excited he is to look at photos of himself, and of the family.

Somehow the idea of selecting the photos out of the zillions I have on my computer, uploading them, and then actually making the album just seems WAY too daunting. But I did at least make one step in the right direction right around when he turned one: I had an album printed with all the Instagram photos from his first year (and there were many). Through Shutterfly, a few of the daunting barriers were removed, because the site will directly import all of your photos right from Instagram, and the 8x8 book options are relatively inexpensive and have plenty of layout options that work really well for square photos. And since they're "just" Instagram photos, I didn't feel the pressure to make the book perfect, but just to stick some photos on some pages and have something in hand!

It was actually kind of fun to arrange the photos by theme and come up with hashtag captions for each page that described the phase or the season. So given Hendrik's love of looking through it, and my slowness to have any other albums printed, I took advantage of a Valentine's Day sale and made a new 2015 Instagram book for the family. I love it! And now I really need to get on that actual album... someday.

How do you print/share/display your family photos? I've heard of lots of other great and easy ways to print Instagram photos in particular that would be even faster to do right from your phone like Chatbooks and Artifact Uprising, and I've also done some other fun projects with Instagram photos, like Stickygram magnets, a memory game, and a big framed display.

p.s. not a sponsored post - just a happy customer!

family photos

Now that Hendrik is two, I thought it was time for another official photographer photo session to capture his current toddler essence. Bonus: doing a photo shoot at around his birthday is perfect timing for capturing a Christmas card family photo! Here are some of my favorites:

As in the past, we found it was not so easy to capture shots in which the whole family was actually looking at the camera and smiling, but all you need are a couple of good ones, right? Mostly the photographer let Hendrik just do his thing, and I love how she was able to capture his two-year-old boyness that way, from the serious to the silly looks and from the sticks to the stubbornness.

For our past family photo shoots, we had fun choosing different locations of Cincinnati that were special to us (maternity photos in Mariemont, 6 month photos in our home and area of Madeira, 1 year photos on the Ohio River overlooking downtown), and it'll be fun to continue that tradition with our new home. For this batch, we started with a couple of shots on our front step, and then we walked down the block to the big park that we walk through often (and where Peter and I had our prom photo shoots in high school together, fun fact!), wrapping up with a few on the steps of the church two doors down from our house that we've been attending. Loved capturing our new neighborhood along with Hendrik at this age!

Photos by Janelle Coffey.