Mélanie Driedger Photography | Guelph Wedding Photography | Toronto Wedding Photography | 519.994.1325

Today I had the chance of visiting Alicia and her new baby girl… Aralyn Rayne (another great baby name).  This little sweetheart is only 1 week and 4 days old!  She was awake the whole time while I was in their home, and we managed to get some great shots of her and Ellie.  When photographing babies, there’s always the hope to get some snuggly sleepy photos, but what I’ve learned from my experience with little ones is that you can only work by their schedule!  So that’s exactly what we did… and thanks to Ellie, her big sister, for being such a great help

I think Ellie is going to be the best big sister ever!  She’s been waiting for this day as long as mom and dad!

beautiful!

sweet little feet…

Aralyn Rayne

She loves swinging her arms around… maybe she’ll be a dancer like her aunt Bronwyn!

and a little sneeze…

Welcome to the world Aralyn Rayne!!

How much do you know about blood, bone marrow, or cord blood donation?

If you’re anything like me, you haven’t been informed simply because you haven’t needed it or known anyone whose needed it.  Well, that changed last Saturday when I met this young girl named Alysha.  She is a 6 year old girl who was diagnosed with Leukemia at age 4.  Long story short, Alysha has gone through chemo, radiation, the whole bit. Last year she had a stem cell transplant from a cord blood donor at Sick Kids. It didn’t ‘take’ like the doctors wanted, but it put her in remission and she has stayed in remission since then!  And as of now, she is actually doing fantastic. (Thanks God!)

Anyway, I have a friend Lauren who messaged me about taking photos for a blood clinic she was running in honour of Alysha.  It was going to be their 3rd clinic but had no photos to show of the previous events.  I said “yes” with the thought that “it’ll be great to help them out”.  Well, needless to say, my eyes were opened to the need of these donations… and with the upcoming birth of Eli, I realized I needed to inform myself a lot more about donating the cord blood.  Even though, it is way to expensive for most of us to store our own baby’s cord blood stem cells, I also know that if our little guy needed some of that in the future I’d be real glad that I donated…

To sum it up, I learned that donating blood is really not a “horrible” procedure.  I had thought that for so long.  But after asking many questions and seeing so many people do it that day, my previous thoughts/fear went away.

Thanks to everyone who came out to give blood… I’m sure it matters to people like Alysha more than we could possible know!

Here’s Alysha showing us her dance moves!

Alysha & her sister Amy helped the nurses… it was so cute to see how seriously they were taking their “job”

Yummy snacks provided for everyone donating. I may have had some baking… maybe.

It was a big deal for me to see everyone giving away their blood… but for Alysha it’s such a common thing.

Here’s Amy holding all of Alysha’s beads.  Every bead represents a “procedure” that Alysha has gone through.

So inspired by this man who’s given blood 25 times!

I think I ate enough chocolate eggs that morning!

Here is my friend Lauren just about ready to donate

me and the sweetie

This photo makes me laugh!  Alysha: “No Justin you can’t have anymore chocolate”.

Lauren & Sarah… the amazing girls who helped put this clinic together!

This is Sharon Delisle.  She works at the Guelph Blood Donor Clinic and can definitely help answer any of your questions (519) 837-4564.   She was so awesome in answering all of mine!

Alysha, Mark, Amy & Karen… what a lovely family

Thanks to Lauren, Sarah, Alysha & family, and the Guelph Blood Donor Clinic for letting me be part of this special day!

If you’d like to know more about blood donation, bone marrow donors and cord blood donors than you can check out their organization: Operation Alysha.

You better believe this is sweet NEWS when I START USING CAPS TO EXPRESS MY EXCITEMENT!!! ha!  Well, let’s get right to it:

We have our own APP… and it’s free!! Justin & I have been working on this for awhile now because we wanted all of our iphone / ipod touch clients to be able to download this app so that you can share our photography with your friends and family.  I’m sure you’ll find yourself somewhere on the app… which makes this such a convenient way for you to show off your sweet photos

Let me share a few photos of the actual app.

1. this is my iphone with our app on the first page … When you open it, you’ll see the HOME page.

2. I am so happy with our PHOTO page.  The people at SMUGMUG really help make this page GREAT! …. And the BLOG page (so you can read our posts on the GO).

3. There’s also a VIDEO page & a MORE page (which includes our twitter feed and facebook fanpage).  You can download it to see more of those

4.  And here’s a screenshot of the itunes store… (you’ll notice that I only have $0.01 in my account, but that’s OK, the app’s FREE!) ** You can click on the image and download yours today **

Lastly I must thank 2 people: Justin (myownphotoapp.com) and Adrian (Visual Though Communication).

Of course this was Justin’s idea (from last APRIL), but he couldn’t have done it without our developers at Visual Thought Communications, especially Adrian.  So THANK YOU!

** Also for you PHOTOGRAPHERS out there, Justin & Adrian worked really hard to make this app customizable for any other photographer who would like to have their own app for their clients to share with their sphere of people (at a way lower price than it would to have yours done on your own = sweet).  Head on over to myownphotoapp.com, where you’ll find more info on how to do that!

I think it’s baby season because I’m surrounded by pregnant women and/or babies… I’m loving it, for many reasons, but I especially love that I’m getting all this ‘baby-picture-taking’ practice before our little guy Eli makes his debut on our blog!!

Back in January we were hanging out with Aaron & Kariann watching the superbowl with some of our old school wedding clients and friends Jesse & Sarah (well THEY are NOT old-school, but we’ve known them for a long time now ).  Of course, Olivia was so small and only 2 months.  Sarah talked to me then about setting up a time to take some beautiful photos of their first child.  So last night, Olivia arrived awake and ready with her big smile and blue eyes.  She did wonderfully, as you can see from the following photos!

I love when babies are cute

oh oh… I see a few tears!!

I SO love father-daughter photos!

And now, they’re 3

definitely a few of my favourites!

there are NO WORDS…

The first few months of a baby’s life are so precious… Thanks Sarah & Jesse for trusting me with capturing some memories of Olivia!

I have a friend, her name is Alicia.  She has a beautiful family and is expecting again (another girl!!).  She wanted to have some photos done this time around, since she hadn’t had the chance last time in her pregnancy with Ellie.  Sooooo, of course I was up for a lovely shoot.  We definitely caught some amazing glowing moments of Alicia… as well as some beautiful family shots!  And obviously we had to give little Miss Ellie her time to shine too!  She’s such a sweetie with a personality as big as the sun!

Thanks Alicia & Dylan for trusting me with some important family memories!

They were so brave for bracing the COLD!

Ellie didn’t mind the weather so much, she was having a blast!

Alicia and her gorgeous preggo self!

LOVE this series of shots!

Enough of Mom… now it’s Ellie’s turn  She’s a princess with her “real princess crown”

Look at these three… can’t wait to meet the fourth!

Ellie made us laugh with her lovely dance moves!

My favourite of the day.  Hands down.
After some hot chocolate, we headed to the studio for a few more shots.  Thanks to Ellie for helping me test my lights

beautiful moment

Loveliness.

Many blessings in the final stretch of this pregnancy!!  Can’t wait to meet Aralyn xox