Pudding Painting in Gypsum. Through the Lens Series, Entry 19.

How much time have you spent ogling over interesting tidbits and crafts on Pinterest?  I know for myself, I always look at things on there and think 'I could totally do that and I'll definitely try it one day' only to forget about 5 minutes later as soon as something more important comes along like laundry or a screaming toddler.

Thankfully, my friend Kim found a kid-friendly Pinterest activity that only involved 2 ingredients.  The 2 ingredients for Pudding Painting are pudding and food coloring.  Other non-edible essentials include lots of space, old sheets, wet rags, paintbrushes and paper.  Clothing is optional!

As any mother out there knows, children of a certain age tend to put everything in their mouths.  This activity was designed to get them used to painting and holding onto a paintbrush.  If they wanted to eat the paint, it was completely edible and slightly delicious.

Here are the results.  Thank you Pinterest!

Step 1:  Take any kind of vanilla pudding and a few bottles of food coloring.

Step 2:  Add a few drops of food coloring.  A little goes a long way.  We used 2 -3 drops per Snack Pack.

Step 3:  Give each child a spoon and a brush and place them over a large piece of paper.  Don't forget a drop cloth!

Tip:  Ask your local newspaper for their leftover rolls of newsprint.  They'll usually give them to you for free.  

The end result...not too much painting was done and there were certainly no masterpieces to hang.  It sure makes for one cute mess though!  Don't forget to have wet cloths ready to go for a quick clean up.  

Follow up on Father's Day. Through the Lens Series, Entry 18

In case you had your head under a rock somewhere and you didn't hear, yesterday was Father's Day. Some Dads I know were spoiled with tool boxes, ladders and Omaha Steaks.  My Rusty was pretty easy to please with a few IPAs from a couple of our local micro-breweries and time to go mountain biking.  Regardless of how you celebrated, I hope all of the good dad's out there were able to feel special in some way yesterday.

In honor of Father's Day, I've put together a few photos of my husband that I think show how much of a good Dad he is.  They're from a special day a few weeks ago when we were able to take Maxwell to the very spot where we were married.  We haven't been back there ourselves since our wedding, so it made it extra special being able to go back there together as a family. 

To give credit where credit is due, I think the second photo was taken by my brother Jaycen, who is also an excellent father. I just wanted to point that out before we get into any copyright wars!

Beaver Creek Chapel Wedding with Katie and Mark. Through the Lens Series, Entry 17

I've been a guest at the Beaver Creek Chapel before, but I've never had the chance to shoot there before, so I was very excited when Katie and Mark asked me to photograph their wedding there a couple of weeks ago.  Everything is so green in the valley at the moment.  In some of the after-ceremony photos, it looks as though I've really turned the color up, but that's how it really looks!  You can also see the impending weather in the later photos.  It made for a really dramatic background, but luckily there was no rain on this parade and everything went off without a hitch.

A big thank you to Katie and Mark for letting me shoot their wedding in this gorgeous setting.  Congratulations!

Family Portraits in Vail with Lauren and Lindsay. Through the Lens Series, Entry 16

I'm shooting my first wedding for the summer this afternoon, so I wanted to get some more photos up on the blog before I get swamped down with editing this week.  As I mentioned in my last post, we just had Maxwell's first birthday, and he was lucky enough to have his grandparents and cousins fly halfway across the country to help him celebrate.  I had planned on taking some photos of the girls while they were here, but the weather wasn't necessarily on our side.  During their stay, we had 2 days of snowfall and rain, while the rest of the country seemed to be at least in the high 80s.  We finally had a short window to take some photos on their last night in town, so we took a couple in Eagle Vail and then we headed down valley to Moe's in Eagle for dinner.  We had about 5 minutes to snap a few in a small enclosure outside Russell's office before we were called inside for dinner.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had purchased a few sets of actions from the Florabella Collection.  These actions are gorgeous and so much fun to play with, but they don't always lend themselves well to studio photography or male subjects.  In other words, they're very girly and fun to use on outdoor shoots, so these photos of the girls were the perfect opportunity for me to play around with them. 

I want to say a big thank you to Lauren and Lindsay for being so cruisy and letting me take their photos in such a short amount of time! Here are a few of the photos.



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