My little lamb's spring outdoor photo shoot

It has been a LONG winter and I am SO happy that spring has finally arrived.  This past weekend was warm and sunny, which was great for my little girl and I to finally go for a walk outdoors.  I bought her a cute pair of rain boots a few weeks ago.  They are too big for her at present, but she LOVES them, so it was nice for her to be able to walk around outside wearing them.  And since it was almost her bedtime (7:00pm), the sunlight was a dreamy golden colour, which made for fantastic lighting for a couple of shots of her.

The next day was another warm, sunny day, so in the late afternoon I set up a large metal tub that I found at Winners.  (For my friends in the US, Winners is like Target, which I am happy to say that we will have here in Canada very soon.)  I filled the metal tub with warm, bubbly water and then I put my little girl in it to play and have fun while I snapped away some incredibly cute photos of her.  I got so many cute shots of her.  One of these days I will have to make a little book for her as a keepsake.

I am so glad that I am able to take so many photos of my little girl growing up.  At least she and I will have so many photos to look back on and reminisce when we are older.  

My little lamb's April photo shoot

Last week I shot my daughter's April photo shoot.  As I have stated before, my goal is to do at least one photo shoot per month for my daughter's first two years, since babies change so much during that time, I want to document the changes with pretty pictures.  So here is my daughter's April photo shoot that I just did.  I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.

Also, for anyone who likes this fabric backdrop that I made, here are the instructions of how I make them.  Enjoy!

Look at that chubby body!  Love it!!!!

Is it wrong to always have a photo shoot in mind when I purchase her clothes?

Things I wish I knew before having a baby

When I was pregnant, I really had very little clue as to what I really needed to get for my baby when she arrived.  My husband has two boys, and when I asked him he told me he didn't know because 1) it was so long ago (his sons are 16 and 19) and 2) his ex took care of that stuff.

I googled to find a list of what I would need, but was also conscious of not wanting to spend a lot of money. We were fortunate to have a lot of stuff given to us from friends who didn't need the items anymore (crib, baby clothes, baby bathtub, bassinet, indoor baby seats, toys, jolly jumper, etc.)  I was also fortunate enough to also have two baby showers, so our little bundle was in very little want of anything.  However, when people asked what we needed, I was pretty clueless.  I did say older baby clothes as I was smart enough to make sure that we didn't end up with a zillion newborn clothes, which she would grow out of in a month.  If I could do it over again, I would have been very specific in what I wanted for many items.  Here is a small list of items that I think are quite good to have for your baby (at least I found them to be helpful for my own daughter.)

Baby Bibs:  I was ok with using the small cloth bibs for my daughter when she began to drool and also when I began to feed her food, since she was still small.  However, since she turned one I started using those soft plastic bibs with a deep pocket to catch food spills.  Now, instead of having to throw bibs in the daily wash, all I need to do is wipe them clean with a damp cloth, hang them on the chair to dry and they're ready for the next meal.  Easy peasy.  Unfortunately, I have an entire drawer full of all sorts of unused bibs that were given at my two baby showers because I added bib to my list of things that I needed.  I think the worst ones that I tried to use were the flat plastic ones with a pocket.  You can't throw them in the wash and it's too hard to clean out those pockets entirely.  They're just gross.

I love these bibs!  I got mine at  Maxi (Loblaws)

Exersaucer:  I probably wouldn't have bought it myself since I was pretty clueless to what good baby items are out there.  However, the Exersaucer was a gift given to my daughter from a friend.  I recommend it as it was a great way of keeping my little girl entertained while working out her legs.  And I could give her something to eat while she was in there too.

Jolly Jumper:   We were given a used Jolly Jumper from our friend.  This is something that I would for sure have gone out to buy myself anyway.  Maybe it's because I used one too when I was a baby.  I don't know.  My daughter liked using it too.

Sleepers:  For most of the year of my child's life (and as I type this up) my daughter has been wearing sleepers since she was born.  She was born in the winter, so of course she wore these to keep her warm.   I did not bother to dress her up in anything else when we went out because they were warm and snuggly.   She slept a lot, so it was better for her to sleep in her pajamas, instead of regular clothes.  I prefer to wear pajamas myself when I'm at home because they are comfortable, so why would a baby be any different?

When my daughter was about four months old, I started to dress her up in cute little dresses when we went to church, ONLY because she had been given a large amount of dresses and clothes as gifts.  Thus, I figured that she should start wearing these cute outfits before she was too big to fit into them.  I also used to dress her up for her monthly photo shoots in these cute outfits since she would only wear them once or twice (yes, ONCE or TWICE).  This is why I think that these cute little baby outfits are such a waste of money--at least to me.

Sleep Sack:  I was COMPLETELY clueless as to these things ever existed.  However, I received not one, but THREE of them as gifts for my daughter.  I didn't actually use them until her second winter, as she spent the first winter sleeping in a small bassinet and I thought it was easier to use blankets for her.  However, once I started to use them I was converted and realized that I had finally seen the light as to why these things are  SO amazing.

With conventional blankets, your baby will move around and can end up cold because they are no longer covered by a blanket.  But with a sleep sack, they are zipped up all snuggly, so they stay warm, but their arms are free to regulate their body temperature.  We just add a thin blanket over top at night to keep her arms warm, but if she gets hot, she can move her arms out from under it.

And the good thing with having more than one is if my daughter wakes up in the morning with a wet blanket, I have another one to use in case I can't do the laundry in time for her morning nap.

Sippy cups.  Not all sippy cups are created equal.  My first attempt at buying a sippy cup was a failure to me.  It not only had 5 detachable parts to it, but is also leaked.  My second attempt at a good sippy cup was the Playtex 1st Sipster Cup.  They're cute looking, only have 3 parts and don't leak.  I love them.  I throw them in the dish washer, take out the silicone liner to dry out and voila, it's ready to use again.  Love them!

1st Sipster Cup by Playtex

Bottles:  Again, not all bottles are created equal.  When I was breastfeeding, I was also pumping so that others could feed my daughter at times while I slept.  By far the best bottle to use to mimmick breast feeding is the Medela calma bottles.  When I first started breastfeeding and was having problems, I went to see a lactation consultant and this is what she recommended.  In my opinion Medela also has the best breast pumps.  We rented the Medela Symphony breast pump for one month.

Medela Calma Bottle with close up of nipple

Once I stopped breast feeding, I bottle fed my daughter and used the Medela bottles for a few more months, but then all of a sudden, my daughter didn't want to use them anymore (I think because she was starting to teeth), so I switched and started using Playtex Vent Aire bottles that my sister gave me for a baby shower gift.  My daughter is mow 15 months old and I still use them.  They are fine.  However, each bottle has five separate parts, so it's a real pain to hand wash every day.  A friend gave me one Avent bottle and it is so nice to only have three parts to wash, instead of five.  If I knew then what I now know, then I would have just asked for Avent bottles.

Healthy oatmeal cookies for your toddler and child

Firstly, I must mention that I am not a nutritionist, doctor or dietitian.  I am simply a mother who has a vested interest in her daughter's health and will do what I can to help keep her healthy.  If you are like me, you are also very concerned with what goes into your child's mouth. When my daughter started eating food at six months, I would only buy her organic food. I know that not everyone can afford to buy all organic food. Heck, neither can I since I am no longer working full time, so the rest of my family ate regular food and I just bought organic food for her.  But now that she is older, she is starting to eat some of the same foods as we do and she still gets some organic food.

Another thing that I regulate a lot is my daughter's sugar consumption. I do not want my toddler eating refined sugar.  I had a local bakery make a sugar-free birthday cake for her, using stevia to sweeten it.  (Heck, I don't even give her fruit juice to drink because of the high sugar content, which leads to a number of negative side effects.) Any baby snacks that I buy, I make sure are organic and I still read the ingredients in the organic items too.  According to Vincent Iannelli, MD, who is a board certified pediatrician, "instead of juice, children should be encouraged to eat whole fruits", which brings me to what I wanted to share with you in the first place.

A couple of days ago, one of my friends (Thanks Jackie!) posted on her Facebook news feed about a sugar-free oatmeal cookie recipe, which was originally posted on Dr. Don Colbert's Facebook Page.  Normally, whenever I hear about, or read the term, "sugar free", I immediately think that it is sweetened with those horrible, chemical sweeteners, which are complete NEUROTOXINS.  However, since this was posted by my friend, who is currently studying to be a nutritionist, I immediately clicked on the link to see the list of ingredients that I would need to make these cookies.   And when I read the list of ingredients, I noticed that it is a vegan-friendly recipe since it contains no eggs or dairy.  

Lucky for me, I had most of the ingredients. However, I did substitute Almond Milk with Soy Milk, since I didn't have any Almond Milk at home.

These are all of the ingredients you need in the recipe.  You can always add some stevia to add a little more sweetness.

Sugarless Oatmeal cookies 

• 3 mashed bananas (ripe) 
• 1/3 cup apple sauce (unsweetened)
• 2 cups oats 
• 1/4 cup almond milk (unsweetened)
• 1/2 cup raisins (try to use the raisins that are not sprinkled in sugar or oil) 
• 1 tsp vanilla 
• 1 tsp cinnamon

1. Mix all of the wet ingredients together.  Then add raisins and oats and mix together.
2. Drop a heaping spoon full for each cookie onto a lightly greased pan (or use parchment paper.)
3. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, depending on your oven.  (My oven bakes them in 16 minutes.)

(Yields 2 dozen cookies.)

Side Note:  Cinnamon has HUGE health benefits as do oats. 

After I made the cookies and let them cool, I fed them to my 15 month old daughter.  She really liked them, but I didn't doubt that she would since all of the ingredients are in her normal diet (minus soy milk.)  Although too much soy in a person's diet is never good, having only 1/4 cup in an entire batter is fine by me.

I must give one disclaimer about his recipe.  Personally, I found these cookies far too bland for my liking (ie. not sweet enough).  However, I have a MAJOR sweet tooth, so I am used to eating really sweet things AND it can easily be remedied by adding some Stevia, which is a natural sweetener.  But I must say that since there is no added sugar (except for what is found in the fruit) I am completely ok with my daughter eating this as a snack or small meal.  And since I do not give her sweets (she didn't even get a sugary cake for her first birthday), she has not developed a major sweet tooth like far too many babies and young children have with their families giving them cakes, candies, chocolate, etc.  

So I hope that you will try out this recipe and make a healthy treat for your kiddies.  

(P.S.  My daughter is currently sitting in my lap eating this healthy snack as I type this.)

Mash bananas and apple sauce together.

After mixing all wet ingredients together, add raisins and oatmeal.

 The cookies end up with a brown colour due to so much cinnamon in the batter.

Teaching your baby or toddler to brush their teeth

My daughter got her first tooth when she was almost seven months old.  The week that her first tooth came out, I began letting her brush her teeth.  Now you may be reading this and wondering how a six month old baby can brush her own teeth.  I am here to tell you that it is really quite easy.  You just need to have the right tooth brush.  I picked up a brush baby toothbrush at a local baby store.  Made with medical grade silicone and BPA-free, the brush baby toothbrush is designed for a teething baby.  All they need to do is chew on it--like they would with anything to help them with teething--and it's tiny bristles (which are found on both sides of this baby toothbrush) will help to massage the gums while also helping to get rid of food around the tooth/teeth. 



Silicone Brush Baby toothbrush

My daughter brushing her teeth for the first time at 7 months old.

If your child doesn't have any teeth yet, make sure to wipe their gums and tongue regularly in order to get rid of excess milk and food in order to keep their little mouth clean and fresh.

As for toothpaste, I did/do not want my daughter to use tooth paste with fluoride in it, due to the health risks that ingesting fluoride causes.  So I went to my local health food store and purchased fluoride-free toothpaste.  It's made by a company called Tom's of Maine.  Their naturally based products are for oral care and deoderants.  What I also like about this toothpaste is that all of the ingredients are natural, so I do not feel bad that my daughter ingests it.  She's too small to know how to rinse her mouth, so I just let her swallow her toothpaste-filled spit.  Some people may find that gross, but I find it more realistic and nicer to not try to force my baby to rinse her mouth out and then end up hating the whole process of brushing her teeth.  I want it to be an enjoyable experience that she looks forward to.

Every morning my daughter and I brush our teeth together.  I made this cheesy little song up and I sing it to her just before we brush our teeth.  I sing, "Brush your teeth.  Brush, brush, brush." and repeat it  a few times while I am putting toothpaste on our toothbrushes.  That way, my daughter knows exactly what we are going to do and she gets excited to do it. 

I then sit on the floor with her and we brush our teeth together.  The reason why I sit on the bathroom floor is so that I am at her level so that she can see exactly what I'm doing.  She loves it and watches me and what I am doing.  Then after I have rinsed my mouth, I then ask her to give me her toothbrush.  Most of the time she doesn't want to give it up because she likes it so much and that makes me happy that my daughter enjoys brushing her teeth.  Let's hope that potty training will be just as enjoyable and easy when the time comes.

My 15 month daughter brushing her teeth with the baby brush toothbrush.

How to make a fun photography backdrop

Since I am a portrait photographer I am always on the lookout for affordable backdrops in order to provide a variety of backdrops for my portrait photography.  Since I photograph babies and children I like to have colourful, fun backdrops.

I went to Fabricland and looked around at their discounted fabrics.  I picked six different colours/shades of fabric that I figured would make for a nice background.  They were only $3.50/m, so I got two metres of each colour.  I chose to make one backdrop with 3 of the colours:  pink, fuschia and yellow while the other backdrop had blue, green and lilac.

I then ripped 2" wide strips of each colour lengthwise (to ensure that each strand is still 2m long) until I used up all of the fabric.  This process leaves torn looking edges as you can see in the 2nd photo below, but it really doesn't matter since (at least for me) the backdrop will mostly be out of focus.  And even if your background is still in focus, the jagged edges add more flare to the funky looking backdrop.  At least I think so.

Once all of the fabric is torn into 2" wide strips (2m long), take one strip and fold it in half so that it is now 1m in length.  Take the middle of the fabric and wrap it around a piece of string and then loop the rest of the fabric through the loop so that it is now looped onto the string.  

I tried to make the colours look a bit random instead of making them stay in the exact same colour lineup such as pink, fuschia, yellow, pink, fuschia, yellow, etc.  As you can see, some the of the colours double up to add a bit of variety.  However, you can do whatever you like.

 

Make sure to leave extra string on either side of your backdrop so that you can attach them to a stand on either side, if needed. However, I chose to just attach them to pins on the wall for these photo shoots.

What the actual backdrop looks like hanging on the wall.   

Close up of how fabric is looped onto a string.

What the backdrop looks like when used in portraiture at f /1.8

The bright colours add some fun to a baby portrait.

This is the other backdrop colour combination that I made.

Birth without fear: A license to rape

This is a fantastic article written about how many, many, many women are physically assaulted by health professionals against their consent.  It is sad that thousands of women have had to dead with this type of trauma when they are at their most vulnarable.  I just wanted to get the word out and make more people aware.

Read the article by clicking on this link:  A License to Rape

February photo shoot of my baby girl

Since my daughter's birth at the end of 2011, I have tried to do a monthly photo shoot with her to document the many changes that have been happening as she is growing so quickly.  I wish that I could slow it down as I love this time of babyhood.   Alas, these days will not last long and so I opt to at least snap some moments in time to savour forever. 

This particular photo shoot was done at the very end of Feburary 2013 when I realized that the month was almost over.  I quickly hung up a handmade backdrop in the kitchen and layed out some vinyl flooring.  Our kitchen has a lot of great light, so I sometimes use natural light instead of a light source as in this case.  I put a cute outfit on my daughter and voila, I got some great photos of my little girl.  I must admit that since she is such a doll and she is quite photogenic, I end up with lots of cute shots of her (says the proud mamma).  However, as any mom can attest, it is very difficult to get her to sit still long enough for me to get the shots that I want.  However, I did manage to get some really cute ones.  Just look at the hint of attitude in the first image.  I hope that you enjoy these photos of my favourite little girl in the whole wide world. 

How to live more frugally

I have been called frugal.  I have also been called cheap.  However, one thing that I have not been called is wreckless with my money.  When I had student loans and car payments I used any extra money that I received to either save for something or to pay off debt.  I have zero debt. (OK, my husband has the mortgage under his name.) My student loans are paid in full and neither of us have car loans. I also pay off my Visa in full every month as well as any other monthly bills, like phone, cable, internet, cell, etc.   My husband also pays his share of the monthly bills in full too (heat, hydro, mortgage payments).

I have watched so many episodes of Till Debt Do Us Part and its spin off, Princess.  I am a HUGE fan of the host of both shows, Gail Vaz-Oxlade, and her ways of helping people to grind down their personal debt.  Gail's website offers a whole pile of articles and resources that you can look at to help you get on your way to living a healthy debt-free lifestyle.

Another person that I admire is Suze Orman, a financial guru who has great financial advice for people in all finacial brackets.  You've probably seen her on the Oprah show or her own show, The Suze Orman Show.

I am proud to say that I have been good with my money since I was about 18.  It was around that time that I realized that I had to stop spending all of my money earned from my part time job in order to save for college since my parents could not afford to help pay for me to go to school.  From that point on, I really understood the value of money and how hard it is to keep it. 

We are constantly bombarded with marketing telling us that we deserve this or we deserve that.  There's also so many buy now, pay later commercials everywhere.  And the sad thing is that millions of people actually fall for these snares. 

I am not going to lie.  Money stresses me out.  With that said, it is also one of the biggest motivators in what I do in my life.  I am a workaholic.  I will work and work and work to do whatever I can in order to help myself to make more money.  Some people may read this and think that that is greed, but it is not.  Having grown up pretty poor with a single mom trying to raise three children with very little (if any, at times) money given in child support, I remember living on welfare until my mother got remarried when I was 17 years old.  I still remember when I was six and being at the grocery store and watching my mom having to put back some groceries at the checkout because she didn't have enough money to pay for all of them.  I also remember sitting in a tiny apartment in Alberta and we were only able to eat one jam sandwich each for dinner and being SO upset that my older sister decided to take a bite out of my sandwich because there was no extra food to replace it.  Due to the hardships that I faced while growing up, I try to do whatever I can in order to make sure that that does not happen again to myself or my own family.

I have never had a job in which I made a lot of money, so I have to really think about where each dollar is going.  For example, there have been SO MANY times over the years in which my coworkers wanted to go out for lunch on payday and I simply told them that I could not afford it.  Of course, I would get the response that it is payday, so I should be able to afford it.  However, I have already allotted where my money would be going (car payment, rent, charity, groceries, RRSP contribution, visa payment, etc.) that going out for lunch didn't fit in with my weekly financial plans.

Here is a list of things that you can do in order to save money:

• Eat out less
• Make your own coffee at work (or bring it from home).  There is a book I read called The Automatic Millionaire and it explains this as the Starbucks effect.
• Buy most of your clothes at second hand stores and buy some new accessories and other clothes to mix and match with them. (You'll be surprised at how new looking a lot of the clothing looks at second hand stores.)
• Buy previously owned cars (1-3 years old) since new cars depreciate as soon as you drive them off the lot
• Pay yourself first, which means treat your retirement savings as a bill payment that you MUST pay every month.  When I was working full time, I set my RRSP contributions to come out automatically from my bank account every pay day.
• Pay your credit card(s) in full every month.  OR
• Only use debit or cash to keep yourself from relying on credit.
• Buy items on sale
• Use coupons whenever you can
• DO NOT tell yourself that you deserve it to justify splurging.  (The ONLY things we truly deserve are food, shelter, and love.  Everything else is just icing on the cake.)

If you do not have enough money to pay for your lifestyle you must either find a higher paying job, work more to make more money OR cut back in order to save money.  I was taught to not go into debt (except for school, a house or a car) and have worked to live by that rule.  Also DO NOT expect others to pay your bills or give you money.  To me, that is the ultimate in selfishness.  I get so annoyed to hear when friends tell me that family members are giving them money to help pay their bills, yet they still have their cable, cell phone, buy new electronic gadgets, new clothes, booze, etc.  To me, if I can't afford to pay my bills, I get rid of ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that I can in order to cut down on my monthly expenses.  Cable, cell phone plan (unless you need it for work), a car, gym membership, new clothes, eating out and going to the movies, vacation, etc. are all considered luxuries that we can get by without.  Yes, it may be less convenient or less fun than if we had all of these items, but you will not die without them and there are other ways to still be able to get the benefits of these things as if we still had them.

Take a bus or ride your bike to work, go jogging or bike riding in order to keep in shape.  You can also do yoga at home, etc.  Before the days of the internet, I used to sign out a lot of movies from the library in order to save on movie rental expenses.  Now you can watch movies and tv shows on Netflix for $7.99/month. 

There have been times when I have had to really live a lean lifestyle (lean in North American terms).  I went five years without a car in order to pay off my student loans. (I rode my bike to work and took the bus to other places that I needed to go.)  I remember back in 2007 when I started to go to a chiropractor again, it was costing me over $200/month, but I really needed the care, so I cut back as much spending as I could, including cutting my own hair and also doing small repairs myself to my car (ie. changing bulbs) instead of taking it to a garage to get fixed.  It was so hard for me to even do this since I was already living a frugal lifestyle, that I realized that I needed to work for a chiropractor in order to get free care and save the $200+ per month.  Thus, I applied for a job to be a receptionist at a chiropractor's office.  Nothing like getting free chiropractic care and saving money.

Savvy money people do what they can to make sure that they can afford their lifestyle as well as save for things that they really want.  If you are not used to living within your means, try some of my suggestions and see how it goes and then try a few more suggestions.  It is actually easier than your think.  You just need to change your mentality from looking more at your needs than your wants and you will find that you will not only be able to pay your bills, but be able to save some money too for retirement as well as for things that you really want to have or do.  This is coming from a woman who has paid her own way to visit 20+ countries without going into debt. I hope that you find this post helpful in some way.

Great books to read:
The Automatic Millionaire
The Wealthy Barber
Money Rules
Debt Free Forever

Great Reads:
7 Signs you are living beyond your means
Wants vs. Needs