Our family lifestyle session by j.rey
I love a beautiful lifestyle session. I find myself looking at them on Pinterest and other photographer’s blogs. They are so unique because it isn’t just a group of people in a location. It is people in their most familiar setting. A place where laughter fills rooms and tears fall. A place of safety and refuge. A place that, at the end of the day, is - home.
My dream was to “one day” have a lifestyle session in our home that we built. One day…after it was decorated how I imagined. One day…after all the walls were painted. One day…after I felt better about myself in pictures. One day…when we had the time to pull it all together and make it happen (because as a photographer myself, I know how much work family session prep can be - hair cuts, coordinated outfits, etc… Add in making sure your home is picture ready, and it is a project!).
One day…
You see, initially, we thought this home would be our “forever home”, so we built and treated it like it was. We added extra windows because we love natural light. We added custom light fixtures from West Elm. We carefully chose paint colors after pouring over swatch after swatch and taking polls with our friends on social media. We added wood to our stairs. We planted trees. So many trees.
We created a home.
One day though, we saw a message. We heard that there was another family that loved our neighborhood and that they were looking for a home to buy. At first, we weren’t sure, but then we decided to take the leap and see what God had in store for us next.
We do love a good adventure!
It isn’t always the case in real-estate sales that you ever get to know the people buying your home, aside from a name on a bajillion documents.. But, we were in a tight-knit community and we did actually have the opportunity to meet them and talk with them.
We realized really quickly that this beautiful family would take over where we left off. We believed that they would create wonderful memories in the house that was built with so much love and so many promises and dreams in mind.
We couldn’t have been happier.
It felt so right.
So, finally on a beautiful, sunny, and extra-warm-almost-Fall day, we invited Jared to capture our family in our home. Our home where we created so many memories - Millie learning to button her shirt and tie her shoes, Adi learning to ride her bike and read big-kid books, highs and lows, birthdays, holidays, and even raising a trio of ducklings. Our home…that soon would become someone else’s home. Our home…that we would soon say goodbye to, room-by-room, and then hand over the keys.
Our home…
I am still so happy that we made time for this session. We will love these images of our family forever.
This is us.
