Having three kiddos and only three bedrooms in our cozy little home means either someone is sharing a room or we need to get creative. We decided to go with the latter. When we built our house three years ago, we loved the idea of having a flex space downstairs. Over the last few years that little flex space has served as an office, a playroom and most recently Mason's room. When we found out we were expecting baby #3, we decided that Mason would be moved to this space to make room for his baby sister. Surprisingly he was okay with this decision, under one condition; he wanted everything to look the same, decor and all. I knew that his life was about to change, he was going to be a big brother to two little sisters and my mommy-gut told me that too many changes at once might be hard for my most routine child to handle. After a few months of transition had come and gone, we began the process of refreshing this space. When it comes to doing an entire room refresh, I typically start with one item that I like and then base the rest of the decor pieces around that. In this case that item was the bear pillow - is he not the cutest?! A few more throw pillows later, plus signs and buffalo check patterns and I had established a theme of black + white with accents of orange. ...

In another life, I was a lifestyle photographer. Okay, it was actually in this life. Three years ago, I closed up shop, pulled down my website and decided I needed more of #balance. Between juggling two kids, building a new home, a long commute and fast-paced corporate job, something had to give. I struggled with letting go of something I was so passionate about, but I also knew I was burning the candle at both end. Once I relocated from NJ to PA, my weekend session turned into hour trips away from home as my client base still resided in NJ. I'm not an artist, I can draw a pretty mean stick figure but that will only get one so far. For me, photography became an art and an medium in which I could use as my own creative outlet. When I wasn't shooting, I would literally walk around and compose shots in my mind; the most ordinary of things became photogenic to me. I'd be lying if I said I don't miss it. I do. I knew I wanted to capture our little family unit just the it is now, one last time before baby girl makes her arrival. Instead of setting up a session, I decided I could approach things creatively and do the session myself. Easier said than done - ha! Have you ever tried to take polished photos of your young children? Need I see more? The kids were troopers and although we incurred a few meltdowns, myself included...I put WAY too much pressure on myself - can you say perfectionist? I was able to capture everything I wanted. A few shots of the kids, shots with mommy and daddy respectively (with some light coaching for when dad was behind the camera) and thanks to the self-timer setting, one last photo as a family of four....

Will our tiebreaker be pink or blue?! If you read my last post, you know that we had a blood test done to rule out any chromosomal abnormalities as a result of findings during our 12 week ultrasound. Prior to these findings, Sean had wanted to be surprised with the gender, but after going through this test, I decided I wanted to know. I wanted to bond with my baby in the same ways I had bonded with both Mason and Emory. We found out their gender at 20 weeks. The difference here is that this would happen quite a bit sooner for baby #3 - 7 weeks earlier to be exact! We decided to share our good news with the world by letting Mason and Emory reveal the gender. We have been openly talking with the kids about their future sibling since about 6 weeks. They are both SUPER excited and have lots of questions! Of course, Mason was adamant about having a baby brother while Emory had her heart set on a baby sister. One box, a sign and some balloons later, and we were ready for our reveal....