• Life in Color mixed-media collage banner with vibrant patterned stripes and stitched edges, abstract art design.
    Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

    How about a night out?

    If you’ve been reading my blog for long you’ve heard me talk about CASA. Well I was introduced via a friend to another organization that helps foster kids. This one aims to reunite siblings for one week in the summer at  a special camp.
    Bj and I talked a few years ago about what we were going to “champion” in our lives. There are so many things to get behind, but for me helping foster kids is what I’m drawn to. I hope someday we can be foster parents, but until then I like to help where I can. Camp to Belong has an auction coming up and I donated a package from Life in Color Photography. I’m also going to go and have a date night, which should be pretty fun. The auction is at a winery called Stoller Vineyards. I told the very hardworking volunteer camp director that I would post some info up about it. Here is a an excerpt from a letter they sent out about the auction and camp:

    • We are requesting contributions and donations of goods and services, which can be auctioned at this event to raise funds for this year’s camp.  In recent years, we have been fortunate to receive items from awesome local vineyards; Oregon Artists; NFL Hall of Fame- Dan Fouts; Portland Trailblazers sports memorabilia; Oregon coast hotels; Dining, hotel and recreation packages; well being items, gift cards, jewelry, and more!
    • As a business or an individual, make a huge difference as a sponsor for a sibling group for camp! It costs $ 500.00 per camper to go to camp.  Consider being a corporate or individual sponsor and send a child or a sibling group to attend camp!
    • Consider joining us at this event on April 9, 2011. Come and have great wine, great food, and enjoy shopping at the auction and finding items that are unusual and fun to purchase!

    Lots more info on their site: Camp to Belong Northwest. And a few facts from their info sheet: Of the almost 9,000 youth living in foster care in Oregon today, 75% are separated from at least one sibling. 1 out of every 4 youth in foster care in Oregon live away from family. Since 2000 Camp to belong NW has served over 450 Oregon foster care youth. I’m looking forward to visiting camp this summer and meeting the kids while I take sibling portraits and hopefully some fun candids as well.
    Hope I see some of you at the auction. If you’re not local Camp to Belong is a national organization (just checked their site they also have camps in Australia), check to see if there is one in your area.

  • Life in Color mixed-media collage banner with vibrant patterned stripes and stitched edges, abstract art design.
    Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

    The Poof

    That’s what Tuesday is calling beanbags these days, poofs. I decided to make a giant poof for my sweetest littlest clients: the newborns. Originally I thought the big FatBoy bean bag we got would work, but it’s just too floppy and not filled enough. Plus Tuesday adopted that for her room. I looked into buying something but once I realized how silly easy this was to make I jumped into the project.

    I found a tutorial on a photography forum website I belong to (Clickin Moms). But now that I’ve made this I can say you really don’t need a tutorial. It’s two big circles of material (a fabric backed vinyl) and a long rectangle piece for the sidewall (you can piece this, I did). You can see I added a handle since I’ll be taking this around and hid the velcro by folding over an edge of the material. There is no inner bag.

    Mine is huge and took 4.5 bags of “beans” that flew everywhere and static clung to everything!  This is about 43″ in diameter and 15″ tall. A note about the material. I chose a supple kind of vinyl but I’ll caution you against this if you’re just going to use it alone for a bean bag to play on. I think it could get torn or scratched easily. I chose it because I need to be able to clean off baby messes and I knew I was going to cover it. I have a bunch of blankets I use, but I just couldn’t resist and had to make this as well:

    A big baby posing bean bag poof of happiness is what this is! A mom I worked with this weekend told me she loved the colors she saw on my site and I was inspired to come up with something fun for her newborn’s shoot. I used a wedge shape from this Amy Butler pattern (using a little math and a muslin pattern piece I tweaked it to fit). The bottom has a simple casing and some elastic.

    I don’t know what to do about the middle, ideas? I guess I wasn’t paying too much attention to the pattern after all. It doesn’t matter for shoots since baby covers the hole, but I think I’ll leave the cover on when it’s out in the basement. A huge beige blob just isn’t my thing. Reinforcement might be nice.
    And I haven’t been doing sneaks, but a cute baby really does take this to the next level…
    The baby this weekend tipped the scales in my uterus. Seriously. It was like, “maybe you do want another baby?” And I was like, “okay… maybe I do.”
    (hey grandparents: I SAID MAYBE!)

  • Life in Color mixed-media collage banner with vibrant patterned stripes and stitched edges, abstract art design.
    Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.

    This moment


    Joining in on Amanda’s this moment project. A moment from the last week. A slice of life.

designed with love.

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