I just have to say I LOVE this location and the more I shoot here the more I want to shoot everything here. Wide open fields, wildflowers, and very little foot traffic make this an idyllic location for many. It was a beautiful spot to shoot Lindsey and Eli’s maternity session. We met one summer evening and just missed a downpour. Just missed though doesn’t mean we didn’t totally miss some rain. You’d (hopefully) never notice that I individually edited out raindrops from her dress in Photoshop which may have been time-consuming but so worth it for the final product.
You may remember seeing this family before on my blog, the first time being in 2015 when it was just baby Lucas! Wow has my editing style improved since then! Jacquelyn is my big from our sorority and so we’ve known each other for a long time and had a lot of goofy times together, a lot of which involved Chanello’s pizza 🙂 Well now she is a momma to not just one sweet boy like in 2015 but three! These blonde cuties are sweet like Jac and goofs like their dad Quest! We always end each session with the boys picking a pose for their own goofy solo portrait. These have ranged from big-shot baseball players, to Captain America, to cowboys, etc. Always so fun and I love that they love this little tradition. 🙂
It’s that time of year again! I feel as though it’s Christmas Eve and I’m wrapping up the final gifts from Santa for Finley to put under the tree. All the while SO excited for the next day and celebration! This is because it’s officially time for FALL MINI SIGN UPS!
Fall Minis are my absolute favorite time of year for photography because I LOVE seeing my returning families year after year and meeting new families! This year the dates will be November, 5th, 6th, 12th, and 13th with 22 sessions available.
Getting to see Catherine and Kyle for their family session was a real treat. Who would have thought that it would be in the 90s in Virginia at the end of April!?! Regardless of the heat, they were real troopers and were amazing to work with. They came prepared to Manassas Battlefield with their own cooler of snacks, and water to keep the girls happy and cool. They also were willing to take breaks and go slow to get the best shots. Boy did it pay off!
It’s hard to believe that it was almost four years ago that I took the Tenney family’s first newborn portraits with Will. You can see that blog post here! Because of COVID, being pregnant with Finley and living in Baltimore, I wasn’t able to take their second son’s newborn pictures. Now they are welcoming their sweet newest addition – a GIRL and I was thrilled to be asked to take these images for them!
This post is definitely very special to me seeing as this gorgeous new mom is a dear friend of mine! Beth and I were Alpha Phi sorority sisters at JMU back in the day and when we both moved to Richmond Virginia we lived together in the Fan! She was in Sterling and my wedding and now that we are back in Richmond, it is such a gift to get to reconnect as new moms!
How can it be that it was two years ago that I was sharing the Lowery family’s first newborn session? I’ll never forget meeting them for the fist time in Baltimore at a coffee shop downtown to get to know each other. They were in town visiting Emily’s sister and so it worked out perfectly for us to meet in person before she gave birth to Nora. We grabbed coffee and walked around with their goldendoodle Winston and I knew they were great! I mean I have a goldendoodle Winnie and they have a Winston!? That plus they are the nicest people ever! Their newborn session with Nora was bliss and the images were gorgeous. It was also such an easy going session and I felt so at ease around Chris and Emily!
Whew! My mini-season was FAST and furious!! Over the course of two weekends (plus two rescheduled dates for weather), I met with 25 families and spent 12.5 hours taking pictures for them! I culled through thousands of images to find the best for each family and spent roughly 50+ hours editing! All in all, I delivered 2,424 images (which is a little deceptive because it includes the black and white duplicates). Whew!
It’s happening!! They are here!! The most wonderful time of the year!! It’s MINI SEASON!
I know I say this every year but I just LOVE mini-season!! I love love love that 90% of mini sessions are returning families and I get to see these kiddos grow up and get bigger and bigger each year! These sessions are SO fun and we’ll do just about anything to get the smiles! I LOVE all the bootie shaking, fart joke giggles, and silliness that happens during minis. I LOVE how excited the kids get to see me – almost as excited as I am to see them! I love catching up with families that have become friends and hearing about the new things that have happened in their lives. And I love being able to serve these friends with beautiful images of their families that they can keep and cherish.
All minis are 30-minute sessions at one location. You are guaranteed at least 15 images – the perfect way to snag a holiday card image and update your family albums. 🙂 Keep scrolling to see how to snag your spot for Richmond Minis 2021!
RICHMOND MINIS
Minis will be hosted on three separate days this year and at varying locations to add some versatility. All three dates also have rain dates mapped out and both weekends must be available in order to book in case of rain. Spots are more limited this year than in years past so don’t hesitate to grab yours!
To reserve your spot, email me at Alex@alexandra-michelle.com for full details. For details on how we will stay safe amongst the pandemic scroll to the bottom for COVID Precautions.
COVID INFORMATION:
In order to keep your family and my family safe, we’ll have to be extra cautious because of COVID 19. Please see the guidelines below that we’ll follow to make sure we are all safe. These are subject to change depending on the case numbers in Virginia.
All participants must take their temperature the morning of the session. If any participant has a fever or feels sick or is showing COVID-19 symptoms, they must forego their mini session. They will not have to pay the remainder of their balance and will be refunded their deposit.
Social distancing between myself (Alex) and participants will be kept when masks are off (6 feet at least)
Masks may be worn by adults when not being photographed.
Hand sanitizer will be available for use by participants
Unlimited air hugs will be available at any time.
25% Deposits are due upon booking and can be refunded only for cancelation due to coronavirus (aka showing symptoms, spiking a fever, exposure etc.). Final remaining payments can be made after the session has been completed and before galleries are delivered.
All payments must be paid online and cannot be paid via cash or check in order to limit germ exposure.
IF the state of Virginia goes into a statewide shutdown due to COVID numbers increasing and businesses are not allowed to operate and/or it becomes unsafe to host minis, the mini session may be canceled and full refunds will be made with advanced notice.
To all my Maryland families:
I am so sad I won’t be able to make it up to Maryland this year for minis. I want you to have the best portrait experience and so I’m sending you an email with a list of other photographers in the area that I think would do an amazing job!
This. took. forever. A labor of love for ELEVEN YEARS and I am SO glad to be done and also so proud of myself for finishing. So many mistakes were made, so so so many, which is why this quilt did not turn out as one big 6ft x 7ft quilt but instead became TWO MINI QUILTS. I’ll get into that in a second. 🙂 Also DISCLAIMER: this post is SUPER long but it’s only fitting since it took me SO LONG to finish this quilt haha.
I’ve made a total of 2 (well I guess now 3) quilts in my life and each time I started a quilt it was during a summer when I didn’t/couldn’t go to summer camp. Each time I found myself so camp sick and wishing I was in the Shenandoah mountains, jumping in the river. I needed something to keep my mind busy so I wouldn’t go crazy from boredom. Lesson learned: summer camp is more consistent fun than ANYTHING ELSE you can do in the summer, always choose to go! So this quilt was my second project and I started it in the summer of 2010. I had just graduated undergrad from JMU and my graduate school program started immediately after in May. All my college room mates moved out to go on with their grand adventures and I was in Harrisonburg in my very lonely townhouse. I couldn’t go to camp that summer since my grad classes started in May lasted through July before picking back up in late August. So I decided to pick up a new project and this quilt was born. I sat down with a pen and graph paper and sketched out the design. I wanted it to be a full sized throw so I did all the math calculations for how big each block would need to be in order for the final design to be 6ft by 7ft. I picked out five green fabrics and five yellow fabrics and started to cut! First mistake made.
Now you should know that this entire quilt, from start to finish, was one mistake after the next. I nearly gave up and threw EVERY BIT of it away multiple times. The first big mistake I made was not understanding basic quilting techniques. I thought that I would sew all of the diamonds together and so I cut out the large diamonds before really figuring out how I’d piece them together or do the edges…. So yeah, I have TONS of precut squares of EVERY fabric for this quilt just sitting in bags upstairs… because they were the wrong size once I finally figured out how to do it properly…. Mistake number 2: I bought more fabric and cut MORE fabric for the new pieces instead of just making the old pieces work…. (so many face palms here).
Well then the quilt lay dormant for a few years because I realized I didn’t actually know how to piece these together. Then I met a friend teaching at Quioccasin Middle School who also liked to quilt and was far more experienced than me! She invited me over to her house and we had quilting dates were we hung out and did projects together. In all honesty, without her encouragement and guidance, I would have NEVER finished this or actually enjoyed the process. Well I finished about half of the blocks and then, I got busy with life. I’d pick it up here and there and do a little bit more before putting it back down again. What I realize now is that Alex in her 20s didn’t dig the meticulous process that is quilting. I didn’t love having to sew and then iron and then cut and then sew and then iron and then cut and on and on and on it went. It was too slow for me then. So even when I wanted to finish it I just couldn’t get enthusiastic enough to do it. And then I was doomed. My sewing machine died.
Yes it’s true. The sewing machine I got when I was in 3rd grade and had ever since, called it quits on me. I tried taking it to the sewing machine doctor to get it fixed but was ultimately told that the machine I had had run out it’s life and wasn’t fixable. So that was that. My pieces of this quilt sat in a box for the next 5 years traveling from house to house to house. In grand total this quilt has moved with me to 10 different homes. WOW.
Flash forward to Mother’s day of last year when I was pregnant with Finley and my parents gifted me a new sewing machine for my first pre-baby mother’s day. I now had the opportunity to finish this quilt! I didn’t have any more excuses. The reality though was that I honestly didn’t want to finish it, I just didn’t like it anymore. I fell out of love with the fabrics and couldn’t get myself geared up to finish. The real reason I finished this quilt was because I made myself do it. I have three (or more if we’re being honest) projects that I am SO excited to start and I looked at this big box of fabric and half pieced quilt and said “I’m not allowing myself to do any of the fun projects I want until I finish this d*#$ quilt.”
So with a new found motivation I sat down and BUSTED IT OUT! I mean really! The quilt in total is 42 blocks and before this moment I had finished 20 of them. In TWO WEEKS I finished the other 22 blocks and was ready to piece the whole thing together. I was PUMPED! I instra-storied the whole layout of the big quilt, organized the rows, sat down to start pinning and realized the biggest mistake of the entire eleven year project. The blocks didn’t fit together.
Yup. All of the blocks that I started on my old machine measured 12in x 12in (almost) exactly. All of the new blocks from the past two weeks… measured 11in x 11in (or even 11.5in x 11.5in)…. Yup. It’s because my old machine had a quarter inch seam presser foot and I assumed that the edge of my new machine’s presser foot would also yield a 1/4 inch seam… No such luck. It instead was 3/8inch seam. And yes, the 1/8th of an inch did make that much of a difference. Full discloser moment: I did notice the mistake earlier on in the process but that that maybe all of the fabric had collectively shrunk… at the same rate… over the course of the last eleven years.. Yeah, my brain was off that day.
You might ask – “So what? What’s the big deal?” Well with the blocks being off by an inch all around meant the points on the diamonds didn’t line up and the edges didn’t match. Huge deal with a HUGE headache of solutions that was WAY MORE work. “UGGGGHHHH” + tons of curse words was my response. I literally sat slumped in my chair staring at the pieces for 30 minutes thinking “Welp, I’m done. I’m throwing this all away.”
I reached out to my old quilting buddy friend for ideas and she was such a help problem solving with me. And then I realized the answer. Just split them up and make two tiny quilts. It was almost evenly split with 12x12s and 11x11s and so I took what would fit together and made two separate baby quilts. Each quilt used 15 blocks, totaling 30 of the 42 blocks. Blocks that were too small, wouldn’t fit, or in a fabric I no longer loved, got tossed to the side and I only focused on what I could make work. The other 12 pieces became scrap for practice or are still being stored in my attic. (Shout out to anyone wanting them! They are yours for the low low cost of FREE!). Years before I had bought new yellow and green fabric to use for the quilt instead of older fabric I no longer liked and it happened to be just the right size for the backing fabric. Within a few weeks I finished both!
With a TON of broken needles, A LOT of cursing, the wrong walking foot purchased, a trip to the sewing machine doctor, and mistakes made EVERY STEP OF THE WAY, I finally finished, eleven years later. With the final touches of quilt labels hand sewn onto the backs and a vinyl applique of our camp’s symbol ironed on, they are done. Since I was on the green team, Finley is going to keep the quilt with the green backing and the quilt with the yellow backing is going off to Richmond for my camp friend Lauren’s baby girl Rook (Lauren was on the Buff (a version of yellow) team).
Now that they are done, I kind of love them. I also love that they are two separate quilts and will have a longer life in two homes. I love that the quilts are twins and can connect Finley and Rook, if they want of course :). I don’t typically brag on myself but I have to say that as many visible mistakes as there are (like 1/4 of a block being cut off the top), I’m really proud of these. I’m proud of them not because they are beautiful or perfect but because they are done. I didn’t let myself throw away years of work just because I was bored with it and now I have something to give away that represents finishing the job even when it’s not perfect and when you’re mentally over it. 🙂
So here are some pictures of the finished projects and of course some cutie pics of Finley too since she was my side kick through the final push! You won’t have to look too closely to see the mistakes haha but I think they’re pretty regardless. 🙂 Also it’s worth mentioning that the 30s version of me LOVES the slow meticulous process that is quilting. 🙂
Finley deserves an award for most patient self timer baby! The two quilts compliment each other with opposite backings and bindings. Finley will keep the one with the green back and my good friend Lauren’s baby will receive the yellow backed one. I used Terrial Magic spray to stiffen fabric. Then I was able to print directly on the fabric to make the quilt labels. More mistakes were made when I didn’t set the ink with vinegar before sewing it on to the quilt. Of course it bled everywhere the second it got wet and I had to tear it out and redo the process…. (Face Palm).
