Mar 7

Mar 7 Photos That Aren't Cool Enough for Instagram, Vol. 1

Imogen Quay, Loyal Gideon, Our Family, personal

We all know how it goes - second guessing what photos to post online, while some of our favorite photos remain on our phones. Well I'm committed to keeping it quasi-real (not TOO real. Never go FULL REAL.) so I've decided to post some that didn't make the cut! Here we go.

The number one highlight of our past week was throwing Josh a surprise birthday party last Saturday!! I worked hard to keep it a secret because honestly, I'm not great at secrets. But we did it and so many of our friends were in on the secret and played along to throw him off!! I let Imogen help me decorating the cake and then she had a meltdown because I told her we couldn't eat it yet. I love this picture of her, though. Every parent takes pictures of their kids crying, right? I never want to do this to shame her, and I would never take a picture if she were actually in pain or something, I just think she's beautiful even when the tears are streaming.

Highlight number two: my dear friend Laura came to town! Mutemath was touring through Phoenix, so she came in with Todd and stayed for a couple days. For the record, Laura is amazing with kids and Imogen loved her soo so much. She keeps asking for "Nina."

Another non-instagrammable highlight: THE CAM-FI. I got my cam-fi in the mail and I'm obsessed. I actually need to devote an entire post to it, but for right now here's an overview: It's a device (you can find it on Amazon for $130) that you connect to your Nikon or Canon camera. It creates its own wifi so that you can sync with the app on your phone and use your phone as a remote (with a viewfinder), and you can use the app to change your camera settings, put it on timer, and EVEN (THIS IS BIG) download the photos from your camera to your phone - it takes like, 1-2 seconds per image. It's so fast! It's encouraged me to use my DSLR so much more this week because I don't have to pull out the computer and the card reader. I just download the photos to my phone, edit them really fast (I use A Color Story app) and then post, save, or print them. You should look into it if keeping everything in your phone is more of your speed! The above photo is me, taking a very flattering picture of myself, which you can see from the phone. It makes it really easy to include yourself in photos if you can frame them up and immediately view them without having to keep jumping up and running to your camera to check them.

While both of these are incredibly similar to photos I actually did post to Instagram this week, I have to include them because COME ON. I can't take what a cutie this boy is. He's so strong and although not officially crawling, he moves himself army style everywhere. He is a DETERMINED kid. Once he sets his eyes on something he wants, neither hell nor high water will stop him from getting that thing. But when he laughs, he laughs with his full belly and his raspy little boy voice.

And one more creepy Snapchat face swap that cracks me up. Seriously these make me laugh so hard that I cry. I love Snapchat because you can't hide behind good filters - the crazy face filters make it really fun, and you see people more cutting loose instead of neutral curated personality. If you're on there, you can find me at Jamzforthelamb. :)

Anyway! Hope everyone has a great week! Let's see those unflattering photos and creepy snaps!