There are times when I feel like our feet don't touch the ground. This week Rich and I have been like ships that pass in the night, working out who is on what pick and drop off duties and even resorting to having a breakfast "meeting" just to be free of all distractions at home so we can make plans for the week ahead and talk tea. (I'm a little quiet about our tea company on the blog but Rich is doing great things.)
In one week, our lives have taken us to Devon overnight, London overnight, and this week I will be heading to Edinburgh and Cardiff, enjoying hotel beds and doing what I love.
And the little ones we love the most have been exceptional. Uniform is clean, packed lunches are the same (Even if there's not a second to photograph them!), Sammy's performance in the school assembly was outstanding. I missed it, on account of working in London yesterday and when I crawled into bed at just gone midnight last night, on account of the A303 being shut, full of cold and feeling exhausted, a little voice said "Hello Mama, come under the covers with me and I'll cuddle you to make you better!"
February looked like this.
Rich's birthday at the races with my brother who flew back from America for the weekend especially! There were tens of Valentines cards, a sea of wrapping paper and lots of love. Normally I'd take hundreds of photos but the house became struck down with a sick bug so it was all about cuddles on the sofa, playing silly card games from our childhood and just being together, with no pressure to do anything other than sit.
So there was no perfect picture of us this month. The best we could do was a quick selfie in the car as we dropped the boys to school. Sometimes I have to say to myself that it's ok to have given the boys a fun filled month and not have one to frame. I was almost tempted to take a last minute one this morning, but I am currently surrounded by a mountain of tissues, feeling full of a horrid head cold. If it's possible I look even more tired than in our selfie!
I have to confess I can't stand the February weather. I am desperate for less grey skies, for the house to be flooded with sunlight more than once a week and for the garden to come back to life. The boys made a den this week and came in covered in mud! I long for a little warmth on my face, to wear flip flops again!
I think once a Summer baby, always a Summer baby! March is going to be a month to take a little more care of myself. Eat better, dig out my running shoes again and start looking after my skin. My sister is right, the baby wipe routine has got to go!
My trip to London on Thursday was a fabulous whirlwind. Working with BritMums, Gorkana and meeting the extraordinarily talented Judith Blacklock.
I've come away with a new friend and bursting with ideas. My time in the big smoke ended with smoke, quite literally. A stunning afternoon tea at The Ampersand Hotel with the Mark Warner Ambassador team! I will share more on my crazy 30 hours next week but for now, I am officially starting the countdown to our holiday with Mark Warner!
Can you guess which resort we picked to go to?! Which would you have picked...?
Head over to Fritha's beautiful blog to see what her sweet family have been up to this month. I love Fritha's ability to just capture the moment with such warmth and colour.
Join in and share your family photo this month. Don't forget each month everyone who joins in will automatically be entered to win a gorgeous personalised gift from Photobox! There was an incredible amount of wonderful posts linked up last month, I am still working my way through them, thank you so much for joining in x
What a bold and beautiful week. Love was hanging in the air after Valentine's Day and all the colours of love filling our feeds!
This was my week...
And the #capturingcolour gallery was bursting with vibrant, romantic, crimsons, scarlets, rusty, brick and every other shade of red you can imagine.
Here were a few favourites.
But the one that just captured my heart was this soulful image by Murdering Time. Beautiful composition, stunning light. Perfect props!
Come and join in the new week of SILVER. We want to find all you magpies and embrace the silvery greys, textured metals and shiny shimmers!
#capturingcolour is a weekly theme on Instagram. Tag your silver photos this week. Favourites will be featured next Monday :)
One thing I can't say enough about is learning to edit your photos.
Sometimes I take a photo and it's perfect, I don't want to tweak it or slightly brighten it, or nudge the contrast, but those times are rare!!!!
Editing is not cheating. It doesn't make your photos worth less. It doesn't mean you don't know your camera. Editing is a completely normal part of the photography process.
I love colour but I also love the power a black and white photo can create.
So I wanted to share my favourite Black and White actions that I use. Actions are amazing! Preset edits that with one click of a button can subtly transform a photo. I use Photoshop to edit my photos and love the ease of actions. I tend to shy away from the very heavy effects but have a set of favourites that are my go to saviours of what I might consider an average photo. (I am my harshest critic and I have a lot to thank these lovely actions for sometimes.)
Let me introduce you to Florabella.
I don't take a huge amount of portraits and although the focus of the examples on this site are with beautiful children, they work so well with any subject. I feel like these actions are dreamy, they cast a magical light over your image and work really well for Spring and Summer photos. They really enhance the highlights in a subject.
Sarah Gardner's actions are just as beautiful and have such contrast.
The black and white action presets create completely different atmospheres and whilst I still favour the more traditional black and white effects I want to challenge myself and experiment with the colour options within the overall pallete.
The brown tones evoke a more vintage feel without stripping out the detail of the photo.
I have been a long term fan of the sister blogging force A Beautiful Mess and when they added an action set to their shop I was so happy! I love the pops of colour the more natural filters they use on their blog photos. And their black and white options are just as exciting as their full colour options.
What strikes me about Elsie and Emma's actions are the ability to create that matt quality. The Willow and Lola actions strip out the shine and evoke a much more wintry and textured effect, whereas the Audrey and Boston filters pick out detail and depth.
Actions are a great way to enhance your photos with ease. They don't fix everything, but they can add subtle layers to your image they will add contrast, highlight, shadow and light.
I use Aperture as my photo library and the Black and White options are great too. Built into the program and have that little something extra on top of a straight black and white.
Are you a Photoshop fan or do you use a different program to edit your photos?
ps. There's another brilliant company Paint the Moon who specialise in stunning action sets. If you take a lot of portraits check them out!