photography

Spring Europe Road Trip: Netherlands, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium

January 12, 2019

I’ve finally gotten around to blogging about our European Adventure and included links to all the places we stayed which I highly recommend! It was an amazing trip and we saw so much! Will forever remember being with my best friend and our daughters! Here is the basic itinerary for our spring European road trip. Our home base was my best friend Lindsay’s home in Breda, Netherlands.

May 1-12, 2018.

We got a lot done on this trip in a short amount of time. Using the car was the key to moving quickly. We didn’t have to wait around for public transportation and could stop wherever we wanted if we saw something neat.

I did not drive, but it didn’t seem much different than the US. In Germany there was no speed limit most of the time, so we made great time on that long leg of the trip.

We mainly visited attractions early in the morning then drove in the afternoon to the next destination. This way the girls could take a nap in the car and we could stop in a new country or city for meals. The days were LONG! I mean we were up at 7am and out until 10pm most days, which is a lot for little girls….and me! But there was so much to see that I didn’t care how tired I was.

May 1: Kansas City → Chicago → Amsterdam Airport
May 2: Amsterdam Airport → Lisse Holland → Breda, Netherlands
May 3: Breda → Cochem, Germany
May 4: Cochem, Germany→ Burg Eltz Castle → Schwangau, Germany
May 5: Neuschwanstein Castle → Liechtenstein → drive through Austria → Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland
May 6: Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland → Eguisheim, France → Colmar, France
May 7: Comar, France → Luxembourg → Breda, Netherlands
May 8: Breda → Zaanse Schans → Amsterdam → Breda
May 9: Breda → Versailles, France
May 10: Versailles, France → Giverny, France
May 11: Giverny, France → Antwerp, Belgium → Breda, Netherlands
May 12: Breda, Netherlands → Chicago → Kansas City

Road Trip Part One

For part one of the trip we were lucky to have Lindsay’s husband Ivan drive us since this was the long part of the adventure. We also had their dog Winston with us which was fun.

Breda → Cochem → Neuschwanstein → Liechtenstein → Lauterbrunnen → Eguisheim → Colmar → Luxembourg → Breda

Stop 1: Lisse, Netherlands Holland

from Amsterdam Airport right to the Tulip Fields of Lisse, Holland

Stop 2: Cochem, Germany

Stop 3: Burg Eltz Castle

We stopped at Burg Eltz Castle on the way to Neuschwanstein

Stop 4: Neuschwanstein Castle

May 4th we drove from Cochem to Schwangau to stay the night. Then spent the next day May 5th at Neuschwanstein Castle

Stop 5: Principality of Liechtenstein

May 5th after visiting Neuschwanstein we stopped in Liechtenstein for the afternoon on our way to Switzerland

Stop 6: Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland

We arrived in the evening on May 5th in Lauterbrunnen and spent the next day in Switzerland

Stop 7: Eguisheim, France

The evening of May 6th we stopped in Eguisheim to tour the little town and eat dinner

Stop 8: Colmar, France

We spent the night May 6th in Colmar and toured the town the next day

Stop 9: Luxembourg

May 7th we left stopped in Luxembourg on our way back home so we could cross another country off our list

Road Trip Part Two

This part was just us four girls, no boys or dogs, but we still had fun!

Breda → Zaanse Schans → Amsterdam → Breda

Stop 10: Zaanse Schans Netherlands

May 8th, back in The Netherlands we visited Zaanse Schans in the morning

Stop 11: Amsterdam

Afternoon on May 8th we stopped in Amsterdam for the afternoon and evening

Road Trip Part Three

For this part of the road trip it was also just us four girls.

Breda → Versailles → Giverny → Antwerp → Breda

Stop 12: Versailles, France

May 9th we left Breda in the morning and drove straight to Versailles and spent the day there

Stop 13: Giverny, France

May 10th we drove to Giverny and toured the town

Stop 14: Antwerp, Belgium

May 11th we left Giverny and spent the afternoon in Belgium on our way home. May 12th we spent the morning in Breda and flew home that afternoon.

decorate photography

Annual Pictures of the Kids around the Christmas Tree

November 16, 2017

I’ve been taking this picture with the kids around the Christmas tree since 2013, I wish I would have started sooner! If you want to take pictures of your kids like this around the tree here are a few tips and how I do it.

Lots of lights, like really a ton of them. There are at least 1,000 lights on our tree.
Classic Christmas Tree lights (NOT led). The LED lights don’t photograph as well.
Lens – I used the Canon 35mm 1.4L this year, but I’ve used the 50mm 1.2L in years past
wrapped presents under the tree
Christmas Jammies – our color scheme this year was red, green and pink

Our tree is real. We have a tradition of going and picking out a real tree as a family each year. I love all things vintage so I went on the hunt for a “Charlie Brown” Christmas tree. I found it at Soil Service Garden Center in Kansas City. After we pick out our tree we always go to Waldo Pizza which has the BEST St. Louis style pizza ever and is a great family atmosphere.

The next step is to order canvas prints of my pictures. I switch out canvas at my house A LOT! I like to change them with the seasons, kids birthday months, and of course when we have a new family member. So I don’t like to spend a lot of money on the fancy canvas prints. There are a ton of websites for ordering canvas and some are clearly better quality than others. For these prints though I’m not looking for heirloom quality since they are only going to be up for a little over a month. For speed I had these printed at Walgreens (same day service for canvas). They usually always have a 50% off special on canvas. So I can literally do the photoshoot in the evening, edit them that night, upload and order from Walgreens online and pick them up the next day. Less than 24 hours from photo taking to hanging canvas on my wall is pretty fantastic.

If I have more time or want a greater option for canvas sizes I use canvasdiscount.com which is a decent quality for the price.

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photography Uncategorized

Family Photography – What to Wear Fall & Winter 2017 Family Photos

October 20, 2017

I love planing for family photos. Sometimes it’s hard to choose what to wear for your family photos especially if you have a larger family because there is more to have to coordinate. My three rules of thumb for family photography:

Choose all neutral colors and ONE pop color
- Neutral Colors: Black, white, tan, Ivory, gray, navy, khaki, denim
- Pop Colors: Pink, Green, Blue, Yellow, Purple, Red, Teal, basically any color that is not a neutral
Choose Classic clothing, you don’t want to look back on your photos wearing something too trendy because you will for sure say “What was I thinking???”
Start with YOUR outfit. YOU are the hardest person to dress (everyone else will just wear what you tell them to). So Pick your outfit and whatever that color/pattern happens to be…..plan everyone else’s outfit around that. If you start with the kids then you will have to find something for you to match them which could leave you on the hunt for weeks attempting to find something that you think looks good on you AND matches the kids. Trust me, pick your outfit first!

Stay tuned as I will update each season change with a new What to Wear for Family Portraits post!

All of these outfits are available from either Gap, Old Navy, Target or Nordstrom (women).

**Fall trend VELVET*** I love the velvet trend this season so I snuck in some velvet dresses. I think as long as you keep the velvet a neutral or subtle color and don’t pair it with any other trends then you should be good for not being “too trendy”.

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craft photography

Princess Birthday Party

May 21, 2017

This is what happens when your Princess can’t decide who her favorite princess is. We have a random Disney Princess Birthday party!

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craft decorate photography

Easy DIY Photo Standout Mount Prints

November 9, 2015

Christmas is coming and who doesn’t want to save money on gifts. This project is a great gift idea for parents, grandparents, newlyweds, and anyone else that likes to decorate with pictures. Everyone loves photo standout mount prints, but at $50-$100 a pop at the printer a whole wall can get a little pricey. We have a super easy and ridiculously cheap way to make your own….and they look just as good as the photo printing shop.

What you need:

A standout mount block: We chose ours from Hobby Lobby’s wall decor section. They have words and drawings on them that are super cute, but we just put the pictures right on top of the writing. We picked the ones with white edges, but they have black, different colors and even glittery ones too. These are ready made works of art that Hobby Lobby sells. We bought 2 of them (10 x 10 and 9 X 12 inches). Regular priced they were $9.99 and $11.99, but we went during a 50% off wall decor sale. So we paid a total of $11.00 for both!
Pictures: We had ours printed at Mpix.com. The 10×10 and 9×12 size printed on metallic paper were $5.69 each. We love the quality and fast shipping at Mpix, but you can print yours anywhere
Tools: spray adhesive, ruller & rotary cutter. We already own these items (who doesn’t?!?!?) so the tools are not included in our total cost. The standout mount boards were slightly smaller than our printed pictures so we had to trim a little off the edges of the prints and the clear ruler with rotary cutter worked best for this.

Once you have your tools all you need to do is trim the pictures to fit the blocks and then spray a light layer of adhesive to the blocks then lay the pictures on the blocks and press them down. Our spray glue was supper sticky so it was a little hard to get it off the first time we put the picture on a little crooked, but it held very well and did not cause any wrinkling in the picture. The finished product looked just as good as the ones we have ordered from the printer.

Project total cost $22.38

Total cost if purchased from the printer (Mpix) $100

That’s a savings of $77.62!

For that price we may just do the whole house in standout mounts. Spoiler alert, everyone knows what they are getting for Christmas now 🙂

Adventures photography

Disneyland Sleeping Beauty’s Castle Photography Tips

October 20, 2015

Nothing like a little inspiration from the Disneyland Princesses! We just got back from a magical trip to the happiest place on earth. We love taking pictures of princesses so today we are sharing a few tips for taking pictures at disneyland.

1. To get pictures of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle with no people in the background you should go early. Like be at the gates when the park opens or earlier. Wait for the initial stampede to go through the castle then there should be a clearing while people rush to get to the rides. If you time it right eventually you will get a shot with nobody in it.

2. Go in off season on a Wednesday. We went in early October which is less busy as kids are in school, but the park is still crowded. Wednesday was the least busy day of the trip and we were able to take pictures and get tons of rides done with no more than a 5-10 minute wait.

3. The camera we used was the Canon 5d mk iii with the 35mm 1.4 lens. The 35mm worked great for the tight spots taking pictures with princesses and low light situations inside. It also wasn’t too heavy to cary around on the rides. The wide aperture allowed for blurring of the background of shots where there were other people in the background so they were less noticeable.

4. Use the Disneyland App for your smartphone. It will tell you where the characters are located throughout the park. Then you can easily head straight to the spot where your favorite character is. This app is awesome. It will also tell you wait times for the rides, what entertainment is going on and what times, where food, restrooms, etc are.

Next stop Disney World to visit Cinderella’s Castle!

Life photography

Mother and Daughter Tea Party

April 13, 2015