Matthew's Cake Smash

I was pretty shocked when my dear friend, Samantha, texted me to say that Matthew was almost one year old already, and we needed to plan his cake smash session.  It was less than a year ago when I did Matthew's newborn session which was far from usual, making history as the first newborn session done at Parkview's PICU.  Matthew has grown so much since then and is such a precious, chunky boy now!  

Samantha and I decided this session would be easiest at her house instead of bringing Matthew to my studio, so with some extra planning, we turned a corner of her dining room into a little set.  This cute cake was made with lots of love by Samantha since Matthew needed to have something that would be easy for him to eat.  He really liked his special cake!  His older sisters joined him at the end.  They adore baby Matthew so much!  💗

Jack's Cake Smash

This special cake was from For Goodness Cakes in Fort Wayne and was just perfect!  I decided to make a teepee because I figured it would be a simple, fun project.  It took a bit longer than I anticipated, but it looks great and added so much to this woodland theme.  I initially intended to use fake foliage, but none of the stuff I had looked that good.  So I called up my parents and took an impromptu visit to their house to gather real greenery from their trees.  My mom helped me gather some pine cones as well.  I really love how this set turned out!

Jack has gotten so tall and so far it looks like he'll be a red head!  He didn't seem to care for the icing, and he especially did not like touching the icing as he couldn't get it off of his fingers, but once we got to the chocolate cake underneath, he was more interested and clearly enjoyed the cake.  After he was done with cake, he got cleaned up and enjoyed some time playing with the stuffed animals.  Isn't he just the sweetest, cutest little guy?!

Abigail's Cake Smash

 This BEAUTIFUL cake was made by Bree Johnson!  I really enjoyed working with her on this cake and was confident that she could take my jumble of words and sample pictures and turn it into something amazing!  I also will admit that I kept a slice and it was SO yummy!!  I had so much fun putting together this session with the theme and colors!

I can't believe Abigail is a year old already!  She was ridiculously easy to work with!  She went right for the cake and ate it without making much of a mess at all.  She even grabbed the crown from on top and decided to give it a taste.  She was all smiles, especially when her daddy walked in.  At the end, we let her big sisters join in for some cake.  Aren't they all so adorable?!  😍

Charlie's Cake Smash

 Charlie came back to the studio to celebrate his first birthday with a cake!  We had to get some fall photos before things got messy.  For some reason, Charlie did not want to touch the sunflowers, so we moved on to the crate.  He's grown so much and didn't really like being in the crate.  In general, he just seemed to be a bit unsure about me and this whole thing we were doing.  I changed the arrangement so he could sit on top of the crate, but he quickly moved down to the blanket.  I don't know what it was about that blanket, but he lit up as soon as he touched it.  Then he grabbed it and started playing peekaboo behind it.  It was precious!  But that wasn't the main event, so we cleared the area, set it up with our Winnie the Pooh theme, and brought out the most adorable cake which was made by Dulces Pasteles (Sweet Cakes) by Mamash.  Charlie quickly grabbed icing and began spreading it everywhere.  He made quite a mess in just a few short minutes as he was clearly having the time of his life.  We convinced him to stop playing long enough to taste the icing.  His face once again lit up as he realized it was yummy food!  He's such a sweet little guy!  💗

Nora's First Birthday

I have had SO much fun photographing my niece this past year!  I can't believe she's a year old already!  She looks SO much like her sisters and she's such a happy girl.  My sister and I threw a lot of ideas around when we were planning this shoot.  We knew pretty early on that we wanted to do something different than a traditional cake for this "Cake Smash" session.  I distinctly remember the conversation after we had decided to do a strawberry theme when my sister said she really wanted to do cantaloupe instead.  I'll admit I was a bit frustrated because I didn't know how to pull off this new idea and make it look good.  After more talking and a huge amount of "winging it", we had a beautiful spread with pretty decorations that was better than either of us imagined.  Yay for teamwork!  This is seriously one of my favorite shoots I've done in my studio!  I love the vibrant colors with the grey and white.  😍

I discovered that Nora LOVES lemons.  She wasn't too interested in the watermelon or cantaloupe, but she did try everything.  We were able to do this entire shoot in like 30 minutes, including the outfit change, setting up the fruit spread, and cleaning up.  My twin sister and I make a really good team.  😊