A lot of people ask me what lifestyle photography entails. In my opinion, lifestyle is like the love child of posed portrait photography and documentary photography. You’re documenting the “every day”, but finding ways to make it more beautiful.

Snow days as an adult are AWESOME. We used to spend all day on the couch, watching HGTV marathons, drinking wine, and making some complicated dinner that took 6 hours to braise. Snow days with a toddler and a newborn are…different. By about noon, you’re all starting to feel that caged animal panic set in and you start giving your husband crazy eyes that say “HOW IS IT ONLY NOON?!” and contemplating pinterest toddler crafts that look like they might take 10x as long to clean up than they would actually interest said toddler for.

One of my favorite bored activities for kids that doesn’t cause TOO much of a disaster is cooking/baking. Even my 20-something single brother cooks real meals (and even uses a crock pot!) because my parents instilled a love of food and cooking from a young age and I hope to continue this tradition. Now, how did I make this lifestyle? I moved all of our ingredients into the dining room because our kitchen is literally a dark hole of artificial light and there is beautiful natural light in there. I found an extension cord and brought my mixer in, and I shoved all of the baby crap off the table and onto the floor in the corner, because it’s all about the illusion of an uncluttered home…because let’s be real, who actually has an uncluttered home on a snow day trapped inside with a newborn and a 3 year old? Not us! But even though I am creatively removing unnecessary clutter and using my home’s light to the best of my ability…it’s still real, and messy, and we are in our pajamas. Because, when I look back years and years later, I probably won’t remember that we had a gazillion tantrums before this baking session, or that there were spit-up rags all over the place– I’ll just remember how we used to bake together and lick the icing off the spoon, and how he didn’t even notice that it was all over his nose.