One amazing year. Thank you.

Thank you for a WONDERFUL year everyone!

It's been an honor to meet your newborns, play with all your adorable babies, capture that special moment of your pregnancy and hangout with your wonderful families.

2011 was an amazing year. Thanks to you all.

We look forward to meet many more new faces. And also see familiar faces again as you return to our studio to have us captureanother amazing year with your growing babies.

Below is a slideshow of all our newborns from 2011.

Cheers to many more in 2012!

A recent favorite...from NYC

Just want to share a recent favorite of mine.

My silly boys. Just being exactly who they are.

Laughing, giggling, together. The chilly weather didn't matter to these two.

From a short trip to New York city back in November. Brrrrr.....

Coming up for some air....

Boy I can do better than this... yes, I'm talking about this blog. I'm finally coming up for some air.... I know, I've completely neglected this blog thing here. Blame it on my crazy life .... my way active 2 little boys, the overwhelming bookings throughout this year, placing orders, editing, processing, downloading my own images, and now that its the holiday season, it hasn't slowed down at all.

I'm grateful for all everyone who have hired me to document their babies' first few days of their life, moms with their growing bellies and adorable chubbawabba babies who sits, crawls and slobber all over. It's been a true blessing to continue to be this busy throughout this past year. I know at times I will need to step on the break for a little bit to share my gratefulness and here I am doing that.

Although we'v been quiet here, we have lots going on over on our Jenny Lee Photography Facebook page - please join us there if you haven't yet. Thank you so much for all of you that have joined. Our number of fans are climbing up each day... we got over 500+ "likes" on our Facebook this year (thanks to you all!). So don't forget to join us there for more updated photos, behind the scenes from our photo shoots or just hear my random thoughts and status updates every week. We love reading all your "likes" and comments.

I promise as soon as this whole holiday season thing is over and we're off to a brand new year of 2012, I will make some better changes here on my blog. I'm thinking about starting some kind of new photo project.

Thank you to all those loyal ones who have stayed updated with my life, my studio and everything else in between.

Off I go to finish up more holiday orders now....

Of course, I cannot post a blog without sharing an image or two so I will leave you with a few of my favorite teenie tiny baby toe shots from our recent shoot...

Keep those little toes warm during this holiday now!

Japan Town San Francisco

He wanted to wear that shirt.

Then, he wanted to wear that tie. (although the patterns don't really go together)

Freedom of choice Coop.


They love each other.


And I love his mole.


They never seem to get sick of each other.


I'm a lucky mama.

Lindsey ( 35 weeks )

There must be something in the water last year because it seems like everyone is pregnant this year. It must be a good year for babies!

Congrats to all the mommies out there. I can't get enough of these adorable babies!

Last Sunday, I met this gorgeous mama-to-be, Lindsey. She is expecting a baby girl in October. Her due date is October 3rd. I forgot to tell Lindsey that is just a day before MY own birthday (yes, hint hint, my birthday is coming guys!!). Now how exciting is that! Maybe this little girl will arrive ON my birthday if she arrived just a day late.

Well, we're all set for her newborn session as soon as she arrives. And I can't wait to be back to meet her. I love October!

Check out how GORGEOUS she is with her baby bump....



I loved her dimples


Sweet moments together...




The perfect pair for this little California girl.

*****

20+ comments left on this post
OR
30 "Likes" or comments on their Facebook post
will earn Lindsey a sweet little gift from our studio.
www.facebook.com/jennyleephotography.com


*****

Baby Sofia ( 6 months )

I'm finally coming up for some air.

No need to worry about me.

I've just been mad, crazy, insanely busy with my life over here.

But yes, I'm alive and I've been well.

I know its been a while since I've posted. I've been better with my updates over at my Facebook page (if you aren't on our Facebook group, please join us there). I've neglected this blog and it needs much more love than it does now.

Thank you loyal readers for sticking around.

You see, writing isn't my forte but already knew that. I'm a visual person so sharing pictures is much easier for me than writing.

So let me just get straight to the point.

I've been wanting share all my latest sessions here but just haven't had the chance to.

But last weekend, I met this very cute baby, her name Sofia. Through our email exchange, her mama told me Sofia is half India and half European. I couldn't wait to meet her, I knew she would be beautiful.

And as expected, baby Sofia was one ADORABLE little one with a little bit of her mama and daddy mixed in together for sure. I loved her chubby sweet cheeks and she has the cutest birth mark on her foot (her mama also thinks its super cute too!).

Now go see for yourself...

A sweet moment with Daddy.


She loved the camera and loves to look straight at me too.


She has such a beautiful sweet smile here.


She sat up for a few seconds ...


And that's the cutest little birth mark we were talking about...


And we can't forget about their first born.... a 3-year old labrador, April.


{ Thanks Sofia's mom and dad for a great session. Sofia did great even though she skipped her morning nap. I bet she slept REAAAAL good right after I left! }

*****

20+ comments left on this post

OR

30 "Likes" or comments on their Facebook post

will earn little Sofia a sweet little gift from our studio.

www.facebook.com/jennyleephotography.com

*****

Little Bennett, the Terrific Two

Here's a wonderful family I met last weekend. Please say hello to little Bennett.

Can you tell this strong little guy was getting over a stomach flu at our photo shoot? I can't either. He seems happy and still managed to give me some smiles that day.

Days before our photo shoot, his mommy emailed me and told me 2 things:

1. Bennett just rip a scab off his forehead in his sleep the other night.

2. Bennett has been having diarrhea for about a week now.

Yikes! Well, the forehead, we can lightened up the scab with some concealer and then work some magic in the post-processing. Not a problem. That's the beauty of digital images. I still remember back when I used to shoot and develop my black & white film in the dark room, I would have to mix the black retouching liquid with water to get the right grey tone before I could retouch my photo with the paint brush. Now it only takes a few clicks to fix - PS magic!

But with the diarrhea, I can't possible fix that (I wish I could). We can only have him change his diapers right away if it does happen during our shoot.

So I suggested to do the photo shoot at their house, just in case Bennett felt sick or had to change his diaper immediately, we had a comfortable place to handle all that. Well, their house turned out to be a great location because not only is the house beautiful, the light in the living room was gorgeous. We stepped outside for the rest of our session and drew all over the street with our sidewalk chalk too. Fun!

{ Thank you Sandra & Andy for having me over. I hope Bennett is fully recovered now and is back to his old self. Hope you guys enjoyed these sneak peeks }

*****

20+ comments left on this post

OR

30 "Likes" or comments on their Facebook post

will earn little Bennett a sweet little gift from our studio.

www.facebook.com/jennyleephotography.com

*****

My little dolphin...

...finally knows how to do the butterfly. Congrats on getting your GOLD certificate my little Aidan. You should be so proud of yourself.

Our Family Tradition...

My youngest one woke up to a room filled with colorful balloons all over the ceiling on his 4th birthday this year. This have somehow became a little family tradition now. I started doing this when my older one turned 4. I surrounded his bed with helium balloons tied to little matchbox cars all around him. He was obsessed with the Cars Movie back then and that's what I tied them to. It was like all of his cars holding a balloon celebrating with him when he woke up.

This year, the night before Cooper's birthday, I decorated his room with helium balloons all over the ceiling so that when he opened his big eyes, he would see ALL the balloons right above his bed up on the ceiling. I sneaked into his room and taped streamers on his door and hung up the felt birthday banner I made him. So that morning, he woke up to a room filled LOVE.

I love birthdays. I love seeing their happy little faces when they wake up. I love balloons. And I love celebrating every occasion. And I will continue this little family tradition year after year until they are sick of their mommy sneaking into their room at night.

I snapped a few quick shots that early morning, at exactly 7:47.am, the exact time Cooper was born... just 4 years ago in 2007.

Happy 4th Birthday my dearest little one.

Now stop growing up so fast already.

Happy 4th Birthday Cooper

There is a reason why we've been so quiet around here... besides filling orders and photo shoots. We were busy preparing for a very important kid's birthday party for the past few weeks.

This party is for my very special boy, Cooper. As you might have read in a previous post, Cooper is a very strong, tough and very brave kid who has gone through SO much this past year. Last summer in July 2010, he was diagnosed with Leukemia ALL. And since then, he has been going through chemo and is doing well right now. I am grateful to share that he is in remission now. But chemo treatment continues throughout the next few years of his life as he head towards 100% recovery.

So as you can see, for a 3 year old kid that has gone through this much in life, don't you think he deserves the BIGGEST, GREATEST and most FABULOUS party in the whole wide world? That's exactly what I thought too. This year, Cooper told me, "I want a Lego Ninja'Go party Mommy". Well, your wish is granted my dear. And off I went with my creative brain.

As a photographer and graphic designer mommy, its my job to work my magic to make this Lego Ninja'Go party a fun and very memorable one for him. So I started to brainstorm.... searched online...designed... searched online some more for inspiration and browsed on my favorite site, Pinterest for more party ideas. Feel free to check out my boards here.

During my search for creative party ideas, I came across Swanky Chic Fete's Facebook page, which had lots of great party planning ideas and more. I emailed the owner and asked for some guidance and told her about my party planning dilemma. Lili, who is the creative owner of Swanky Chic Fete was so generous with her time, she offered to create a custom inspirational board for Cooper's party. You can see her blog post about that here.

With her kind heart, she naturally reached out to a few of her favorite vendors to help me plan this party for Cooper. A few bakery generously donated some beautiful cookies and cake pops to Cooper's party to help me make his day extra special. Thank you so much for helping me out with the party planning guys. It means SO much to us!

In order to stay green to our earth and to also make things more convenient for a busy mommy like me, I sent off our invite thru Evite, with an image of Cooper and his favorite Lego Ninja'Gos.

Our little birthday ninja shows off his new Lego Ninja'Go t-shirt that I designed for him to wear for his very special day. Oh, I love iron-on transfers :)

Lego Ninja'Go T-Shirt:
I grabbed the artwork of the little characters directly from the Lego Ninja'Go website. They were mainly from the free wallpaper downloads since those images are much larger, and it gives you pretty good resolutions. I designed and printed them onto Iron-On transfer paper from my own Epson printer. Then I cut out the design and Daddy helped to iron them onto brand new white Hane's undershirt that we got from Target.

-----------------

The Lego Ninja'Go party turned out FABULOUS! (besides the windy weather from outside, which kept blowing away all our decors and food) But most importantly, Cooper had SUCH a great time. He was all ninja'ed out by the end of the party. He even told me his "high" from that day was the "BIG jumpy house". (Yeah, it was all worth the rental.) And his second favorite he said, was the birthday banner that I made him, which were Lego Ninja'Go posters that I printed out from their website. I printed them onto 8.5x11 paper and string them together to make a Lego Ninja'Go banner. That banner is now hanging in his bedroom and he loves it.

Our main course was, yup, you guessed it, PANDA EXPRESS, why? Not because Mommy was lazy to cook but because PANDA EXPRESS is actually Cooper's FAVORITE, FAVORITE place to eat and all he ask for is "mein mein" (aka. noodles) every day.

I also made a special felt birthday banner for him. As I was hanging it up, I told him "Cooper, Mommy made this for you, do you like it?" He looks at it and then says to me, "I yoove it, it makes me happy". Aww, sweet one, you just made those few nights of hard work ALL worth it just by telling me that.

Happy 4th Birthday little Cooper. I can't wait to celebrate 100 more birthdays with you... year after year after year. And Mommy will try to make it even better and better year after year.... for both you and your Big Bro.

Here are a few highlights from our ninja party!


Birthday Banner:
The felt banner was made by hand....yes, I cut up all those letters one by one. And same for the flags. I bought squares sheets of felt from Walmart ($0.25) and fold it in half and cut them into triangles as one flag. I used a different color and cut up letters. I then glued the letters onto the flag. I used wooden clips to clip each one in between and hung it all on a yarn. It was a great backdrop to use for taking photos.

Ninja Power Water Bottles:
I made "Ninja Power" labels in Illustrator and cut them up and replaced all the ArrowHead water bottle labels. It was a fun idea for the kids, as they all wanted to drink them thinking it will give them, um... Ninja Power! The grown-ups were impressed by how fun it made all the water looked. It's so easy to put on. You can use my water bottle design if you're throwing your child a Ninja party too. I'm including my free printable here for you to DOWNLOAD HERE.


Jello:
(Jay-llo, as I labeled this one because one of the Lego Ninja's name is "Jay", he is the blue one)
The jello took 2 days to make. Day 1 we poured in the red color, Cooper made these actually. he helped to pour them into all the cups. Then, the next day, we did "blue" and then we put it back into the fridge. That's it. On party day, its all ready to serve for all the kids.

Cake:
We ordered this Ninja cake from Baskin Robin. Inside was Rainbow Sherbet ice cream with white cake. I had an idea of what I want, something simple but very ninja. So I searched online and found this ninja cupcake image and told them to just make it into a big ice cream cake. To my surprise, they did a pretty good job on this. I was very happy and impressed!

Rice Krispy Sushi:
I found this fun sushi idea on Pinterest. It's made with gummy fish and fruit roll-ups. So easy and so cute, I had to try and make it. This one was a big hit. We were left with none at the end of the party.

Grapesicles:
I also found this great grapesicles idea on Pinterest as well (I told you I love this site). It looked easy enough to make. Cooper and I even did this together just a few days before his party. He loved helping me with it too. We sat together and put all the grapes through the skewer. Then we placed it all in a ziplock bag and freezed it until the day of the party.



These delicious and beautiful Lego cookies are made from Beth of Sunshine Bakes. She has this really cool Etsy store you need all should check out: www.etsy.com/shop/SunshineBakes Thank you Beth for making Cooper's birthday so special for him.




The birthday ninja LOVED the jumpy house. Can't you tell?


And a little sweet moment with one of his cousin, Nate.


And these ADORABLE cakepops? They are from Moms Killer Cakes & Cookies. They also have a fun Etsy shop online too. You must check them out: www.etsy.com/shop/MomsKillerCakes







Ninja Cupcakes:

My awesome sister-in-law, May, helped out by making ninja cupcakes for the party. She baked yellow cake as the face and then added the color icing on top. And then used a gel icing tube to make all the eyes and eyebrows. It turned out really beautiful and colorful. Thank you Auntie May!




Guessing Game:
We played "Guess how many lego pieces are in this jar?" I filled a jar with red, white and blue legos. I added in a few very special "golden" lego pieces in there as well for guessing. The kids gathered around and took a guess and wrote down their answers. Whoever guessed the closest to the right number, wins! Winner received a sweet gift. Yeah for Kaylee! (and her mommy too!)



Party Favors:
All the little guest went home with a fun goodie bag filled with asian rice crackers, 4 fortune cookies and a ninja toy! Chinese takeout box were purchased from Michaels. I designed a circle label with a Lego Ninja'go character on them which I found the artwork from the Lego website. It was cut out from the bigger wallpaper that you can download for free. I bought a 1.5" circle punch cutter and punched all those designs out one by one. It was pretty fun actually.

---------

Update: Thank you "How to cook that" for finding us and including our party ideas on your site for the "Best of the Web 2011". Yippy! We are honored to be a part of your page.

Baby Clarissa { Day 10 }

Seems like it wasn't too long ago when I photographed this glowing mother-to-be named Audrey. Well, that was in February, and I didn't realize how fast time passed already. I didn't even have the chance to post the maternity images that I've been meaning to share on my blog.

Well, she called me the other week and was so excited to announced her baby's arrival. Baby Clarissa is her name, and she was born on Wednesday, March 9.

Even though I might see this belly to a baby scene many times enough, I am still amazed by the idea of seeing this baby, now outside that womb... vs. this baby who was just inside that womb just 3 weeks ago. I am amazed that these babies naturally knows when to do their little magic and force themselves out of that womb to meet their parents. How do they know when its time to arrive? How do they decide which day they will have their birthday for the rest of their lives?

It's called a Miracle. And life is truly a miracle. A man and a woman can create another life together. That's just incredibly amazing.

Each and every one of these babies I come across and meet for the first time, they still make my heart sink. The moment we meet, I am still in awe of their tiny-ness. When I hold them in my arns, each and every one of them reminds me of the day I held my own for the first time.

It must be a blur for many moms during the first month as it definitely was for me. But I promise you that with these images will only bring back the special sweet moments you might have forgotten during the first 2 weeks of your baby's life. You will be able to live that moment again once you open that album again and see your tiny one.

This is their story.

** Leave 20+ comments for baby Clarissa and she will receive a fun gift from our studio.

Send him some love**

Their very 'first born' child wasn't forgotten at all.

Just a few weeks after the maternity session, we have baby Clarissa here with us.

I love how excited new parents get to see their newborn's eyes open. I always try my best to photograph an open eye shot of them while they are awake for a few minutes.

I don't do enough 'before' and 'after' series during my Maternity & Newborn Collections... but this time, I remember to and I am loving this one especially when they are placed side by side.

I will title this one: "Inside, Outside".