Let me just start by saying that I absolutely love this family!! I met this family about 11 years ago although it doesn’t seem like it at all. Pastor Mo and Ms. Shontel were my very first youth pastors and I can vaguely even remember my very first youth service. When I stop and think back I can remember sitting and listening to Pastor Mo preach. I also remember numerous camps, conventions, and a missions trip to Jamaica with them! Pastor Mo and Ms. Shontel were awesome youth pastors!!! I really cannot say just how much this family means to me! I guess you can even say that I owe a little bit of who I am to them.
Fast forward a few years and Pastor Mo and Ms. Shontel now have two boys that are absolutely adorable. A couple of weeks ago Heather and I went and stayed with them for a weekend and took some pictures of their beautiful family!
Ms. Shontel’s sisters and their families also came over for some big family pictures.

I just love this picture! Dogpile!!

The boys play for the Des Allemands Gators so for their Christmas cards this year they are all sporting their football gear!

So much fun:

These boys are a mess and are as different as can be.

The whole gang:

Pastor Mo started it!
‘

Pastor Mo and Ms. Shontel, Thanks so much for everything! Heather and I enjoyed our trip! We love y’all so much!!

—-Miranda——

First, the GOOD: we have had an amazing year with some awesome clients this year. We have had so much fun with all of our clients and can not thank everyone enough. Our business has really taken off this year in ways that we never really expected. But that brings me to…

the BAD: we are swamped. Literally, we have so much on our to-do list that its scary to even look at. It stares us in the face everyday and laughs at our feeble attempts to conquer it. I know there are so many of y’all waiting for your wedding order and we are going to have them in by Christmas. That is our guarantee. But we have to have a cut-off point. So as of right now, we can not accept any more orders and have them in for Christmas. Of course, people are more than welcome to still place their photo order, but we simply will not be able to have them in for Christmas. We sincerely do apologize.

Thank you all so much for your patience and understanding in this.

- Heather and Miranda

To Toni…Here it is! I know that you have been checking for them.

To everyone else…. here is part 2 of Toni and Patrick’s beautiful outdoor wedding! As Heather said previously, we absolutely adore this couple! They were so much fun and were up for anything. They pretty much gave us free reign for anything that we wanted to try! I seriously can not say enough about how much fun they were!

The groom was a ton of fun:

Our favorite type of group shots (outdoor and relaxed!):

Toni and the girls waiting on the ceremony to start:

The ceremony:

As soon as the ceremony was over, the shoes came off:

I love the cupcakes:

I told you they were fun:

The flower girl was so sweet to share :

Just a reminder that we will be out of town for the next two weeks and will be returning all emails when we return!
Have a great week!!
—miranda—

I had so much fun photographing Sharonda and Adonis because Sharonda has been one of my closest nursing friends while in school. I was thrilled when she asked for pictures of her and her boyfriend. They were both so much fun and so relaxed, and you could just tell how much in love they were!

Sharonda, thanks so much for asking me for pictures! We had a blast! And don’t be a stranger now just because we’re out of nursing school

I love their playfulness in this picture.

- heather

So we’ve been really busy lately (which is a good thing, we’re definitely not complaining about that!) and we haven’t been able post about us in a while. And while we know that this is our business photography blog first and personal blog second, its fun to just ramble about our personal lives every once in a while :). So here I go…

First: I GRADUATED!!!!

It has been a long and difficult road navigating through nursing school and still balancing our photography business, but I am happy to say that I’ve reached the finish line (for this race anyways)! It’s always bitter-sweet ending a chapter in one’s life, and even though the “sweetness” is outweighing the “bitterness” right now, I am definitely going to miss my group of nursing school friends. We’ve been through a lot together and I’ll never forget them.

My beautiful and incredible family at my pinning ceremony. Mom and Dad, I love y’all so much and thank you for all your love and support. I couldn’t have made it through without y’all!

And my awesome friends:

And me with my very best friend Miranda:

Miranda has truly been a world of help to me throughout nursing school. She’s helped me out studying, helped me make posters for pointless projects, and has been my cheerleader (and my drill sergeant for those times that I didn’t want to study). Thank you so much Miranda. Love ya!

And what’s the fun in accomplishing something without rewarding yourself, right? So I gave myself two presents. First, I finally broke down and got something that I’ve been wanting for a long time. A tattoo.

This tattoo means a lot to me and I absolutely love it (even though it was way more painful than I was expecting)! Psalms 92:12 states, “But the godly will flourish like palm trees.” And what this verse talks about is how palm trees grow during storms and hurricanes. And as Christians, when a storm comes in your life, you should grow through it and not break. Plus, anyone who knows me knows that I am a bonafide beach bum and I love anything related to the tropics. So having palms trees on my foot with a verse from the Bible that relates to them was just perfect for me!

And for my second gift to me, a cruise!!!!

Myself, Miranda, my mom, and my two grandmothers are going on a 7 day cruise to the Bahamas from May 30-June 6. This cruise was actually originally scheduled to be a 4 day cruise to Cozumel, but because of the swine flu, it was changed to a week long cruise to the Bahamas. Yay :)! I CANNOT WAIT!!!

And in other news, Miranda and I are absolutely pumped that Kris Allen won American Idol this week!!!! I loooooooooooove me some Kris Allen. He is just so beautiful and perfect :). Here are some links to our favorites performances from him:

• Falling Slowly
• Heartless

And, see, didn’t I tell you he was beautiful! Plus, anyone who sings songs from indie Irish movies (Falling Slowly is from the movie “Once”) and makes me like a song by Kanye West gets my vote.

Ok, well, I think that’s about all for now. I’ve rambled on enough. Have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend!

- heather

So it’s finally finished: our new website (go HERE now and check it out)!!!! We’re still waiting on our new and improved blog, but we’re just too impatient and we had to post all of our exciting changes right now. As you can tell, we’ve had a new logo posted on our blog for a while now, and now we have all the goods to go with it. New albums, new brochures, new business cards, new custom-made blank CDs, a new website, and a new blog coming!!!!!!!!!!! <— I know that’s a lot of exclamation marks but that’s just how excited we are!

Check out all the exciting goodies:

Our new brochures that our awesome friend Emery designed for us. She’s also the creator of our rocking logo. (I would link y’all to her site, but she doesn’t have one yet).

Here’s the new deluxe albums we’re offering. They are seriously nice. Like, I’m afraid to touch them they’re so nice.

We’ll still be offering the same memory book that we’ve had, and here’s a picture of it:

And how awesome are our new CDs and business cards!

And, last but not least, here’s a screen capture of our brand new website:

You’ll be seeing a few more changes in the near future so check back soon! Thank you again to Emery for all the graphic design help and thanks angela for the pictures that you took of us for the new site; and of course, thank you to all our clients for making our business what it is today. YOU ROCK!!!

- heather and miranda

Heather and I are so lucky to have the best clients! Our clients are our best means of advertising and we are so blessed to be able to get so many referrals from them that there is no need for us to even advertise! Hannah and Brandon contacted us after we shot their friends, Lacey and Matt’s wedding. thanks for the referral Lacey and ms. Shannon. Hannah and Brandon were so easy to work with. they pretty much did every thing heather asked them do including climbing a tree. we had a great time shooting their engagement session and are looking forward to their wedding!

**disclaimer for future clients** Heather is the crazy one and will always ask you to do crazy things. If this occurs and it really is crazy, then I will try to save you!

i’m loving the colors in this one:

any clients that we can convince to climb tress have got to be good.

aren’t they a beautiful couple?

Heather and I are looking forward to our two weddings the next two weekends in a row! we are definitely staying busy!! —-miranda—–

anyone that knows me well, knows that i have a huge obsession with anything hawaii. while shopping in target the other day, i ran across the cutest hawaiian tshirt and hat ever! knowing my obsession with all things hawaii, there was no way that i couldn’t buy it.

so without further ado, her is abby modeling the cutest outfit ever:

heather has always been the type to not really want to dress her dog up. since i don’t have a dog, i had to buy it for heather’s dog. i got abby all dressed up and when heather saw how cute she was in the hawaiian outfit i think that she was sold! (even though heather tries to act like she doesn’t like dressing her dog in people clothes, don’t let her fool you. she has dressed abby in it a couple of times since she’s had it.)

isn’t abby adorable in her new suit! this is one of my favorites:

hopefully, this monday wasn’t too long for you. school is back in force for me now and i’m ready for the weekend already!
have a great rest of the week!

—–miranda—–

If you are looking for the portraits from any shoots from now on, we now have a new online gallery including the pictures from the Fenner Wedding back in February. Our new gallery allows you the option of paying online using a credit card if you prefer and is really user friendly. The online gallery will now be taking place of the proof book.

Please click HERE to view your photos.

So here’s the deal: we originally picked out the name “captured moments” for our photography business name. However, the domain www.capturedmoments.com and every other “capturedmoments” combination you could think of was already taken. So, therefore, we went with www.makemoments.com as our official website domain name. Well, that has caused some confusion with customers on what our “real” name is. So we’ve changed everything to now “Make Moments Photography.” That’s our official name. We’ve filed a partnership with the LA Secretary of State and have applied for a tax ID number with the name “Make Moments,” so that name is here to stay. We’ve also changed up our logo a bit and added a cute little camera icon . You can always view our old blog here cause we’re going to leave that up too. But we will no longer be posting on our old blog, just this new blog.

We have a lot of exciting events coming up and lots to share soon (new cameras, new office, upcoming wedding, etc.) so stay tuned!

As always, thank you for visiting and stay in touch often. We really appreciate all the encouragement and support we’ve recieved over the past year. We thank all of you - our family, friends, and of course our customers.

- heather and miranda: official business owners of the new “make moments photography”