I had the honor of doing a commercial shoot for my friend Kiki Fluhr, the brilliant designer behind The Measure. Have I mentioned how lucky I am to be friends with such incredible kids clothing designers!? She sent me two ADORABLE Valentine's Day dresses and my girl Juliet, of Maya's Curls, sent matching hair accessories to help style the shoot. SO FAB! The best part of all these collaborations is that Juliet, Kiki, Jayme (of Lillipops), Julie (of ZOZOBUGBABY) and I are all really close friends and so we are able to be totally in sync and mix and match as need be. It's so delightful to be a part of such a fantastic group of creative, innovative, independant women business owners. I'm so grateful for the amazing friendships I have developed with them over the years. It's a major blessing in my life! And Ellie definitely reaps the benefits of these relationships! HA! :)
Since I had two dresses to photograph, I decided to have Ellie's dear friend Emerson join us on this shoot. I have photographed Ellie and Emerson together before (THIS POST) and these two girls are just MAGIC together. They WORK it. I love them! We decided to combine the shoot with a fun playdate of baking Valentine's Day cookies and just hanging out at my itty bitty cottage home. My kitchen gets the best light and I thought it would be fun for them to be engaged in an activity together for the shoot. The light, while magnificent for a few minutes, quickly shifted and left me with no choice but to take the shoot outdoors (OCF was ruining the look I was trying to achieve) and into our tiny little matchbox of a backyard! The girls still managed to stay happy and effervescent and played along. They even came up with the idea of drawing Valentine's Day themed artwork on the "chalkboard" I had just recently mounted on the side of our shed. It's actually just a HUGE piece of plywood I painted with chalkboard paint and my sweet neighbor affixed to the side of the shed for me. They kept doing their artwork even when I went inside to clean the mess in the kitchen (see the shot I grabbed from inside) and then posed for a final quick series of shots of their Masterpiece just before the light completely disappeared on us!
A huge thank you to my best friend Kirsten for loaning me her beautiful Emerson and to Kiki for the dresses and Juliet for the adorable hair accessories! Go check out The Measure and Maya's Curls if you want to find some fabulous custom made items. I'm all about supporting mommy-run businesses!!! Ellie's entire wardrobe is from my friend's shops! GO HANDMADE!!! :)
