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My son turned six last month and I had tons of fun planning a camping themed party for him!  If you follow me on Pinterest, you probably already know that I’m a bit obsessed with party planning.  I was really excited with how this party came together… Lots of work but it paid off when my little Gavin told me that his party ROCKED! 

I ordered the invitations and all the tags from BrightSide Prints and was so pleased with how everything turned out.  Jill did an amazing job designing everything!   

I forgot to take a detail shot of the ”Camp Gavin” banner, but the middle flag says “established 2006″… thought that was so clever and cute!

I made the cake with homemade chocolate mousse (try this recipe!!!) and saved some marshmallow ghosts from Halloween for the party.  I was definitely planning ahead!  The acorn idea was a Pinterest find and they were super easy and REALLY yummy!

The s’mores bar recipe was the BEST bar recipe I have ever eaten (if you’re a fan of s’mores… which I am!  Try it!).  Recipe found HERE.

The camp cookies were purchased on ETSY here.  I’m not usually a fan of sugar cookies, but these were seriously delicious!

The fort kits were the take home gift… They ended up being quite a bit of work, but after hearing from party guests about how much they have enjoyed them, I decided that it was worth it!

Each kit included a sheet with grommets on the corners (my awesome hubby did all the work on those!), rope in different lengths, clothespins, clamps, suction cups, and a flashlight.

I love how this girl one turned out!

The day of the party turned out to be bright and sunny but very, VERY windy.  That combo caused all the chocolate to melt and everything to blow all over the place, so I ultimately had to bring everything inside… try to ignore the cluttter in the background!  I like how the mason jar drink cups turned out and the paper on them doubled as a place to write their names and keep track of which drink was for each child!

I also bought some plain muslin bags online and then stamped on each of them… aren’t the little tags cute?  (also from Brightside Prints.)  The Trail Mix Bar turned out to be a huge hit with all the kids!

For the craft project, the kids decorated pet rocks. 

The big finale was the marshmallow shooters (my hubby also made and spray painted all ten of these!  He was so helpful with the party planning and ran the party while I was running around like crazy taking pictures!).  The kids had a little marshmallow war in the backyard.  SO fun!!!

Whew!  Aaaaaaand now to plan the next party!  Hahaha!

One of my new year’s resolutions for 2012 is to do a photo shoot of one or all of my children each month.  It’s my solution to the whole “the cobbler’s children have no shoes” theory (which I am totally guilty of!!).  I thought it would be fun to choose a theme each month to make it a bit more interesting, so January’s theme was “glitter”.  I took my oldest daughter, Kate, out for a super quick photo shoot… it was seriously about 15 minutes and we just walked down the street to the park, but I totally love the pictures we were able to capture!  And she had lots of fun playing with the glitter.  Check out my favorites…

This one is going up on the wall, for sure!  LOVE!

I love being a photographer.  It is such a fun job, and is really a dream come true for me!  But I have a confession to make.  I don’t photograph my own children as much as I should.  I mean, I take snapshots of them often, but I don’t usually do “real sessions” with them (at least, not very often).  When my third child was born, I swore to myself that she would get just as many pictures taken of her as my other two had when they were babies.  I was the third in my family and was hardly photographed at all as a baby (seriously.  I have two scrapbook pages of pictures under age one and they were all taken too far away that you can’t even tell what I looked like!) so I didn’t want the same thing to happen in our family.  Unfortunately, I’ve failed miserably.  Kate, my oldest, has thousands of pictures from her first year.  Gavin has quite a few, too.  Sophia… not so much.  But I’m trying (that counts for something, right?).  So earlier this week, after we’d sent Kate off to school for the day, I decided to do a real photo shoot with Gavin and Sophia.  The light in my bedroom is PERFECT in the early morning (for taking pictures, anyway…) so I took them upstairs and we had a little playdate with my camera.    I am thrilled with the results.  I got exactly what I was hoping for.  Their personalities totally shined through in the pictures.  Gavin – the sweet, loving four year old that he is.  Sophia – my little ten month old who is now speedily crawling everywhere and is so happy all the time.  I love it!  Now if only I could get a session in with all three of my kids together!!!  Some of these are definitely destined to be wall portraits.  Here are a few favorites…