Since moving to Tampa there has been a lot of transition in my life, especially with captured. Through a summer and fall season that has looked a bit different that I initially thought it would, God has reminded me that He does in-fact have a perfect plan in store for my life and for this business. My evening with Molly, a senior from Freedom High School in Tampa Bay, was one such gentle reminder.

Molly and her wonderful momma, Susan, live next door to Ashley and Ben so I have had the opportunity to get to know them over the past few months. Their dynamic reminds me a lot of my mom and I’s when I was a senior in high school: girl with big dreams, lots of talent and a desire for full independence and a mom who is caring for family members, moving through the world with tenacity and grace, and living the ups and downs of life as a single parent.

It’s been a blessing to get to know them and to know I can run next door at anytime for that one egg I need to finish out my batch of brownies 🙂

Molly is helping me learn the Tampa ropes and is also helping J and I get to know the public schools in the area. She is an outstanding cheerleader and is planning to pursue a career as a pharmacist at the University of South Florida (Go Bulls!) next year! Her drive, kindness and passion are magnetic and made for a really fun portrait session.

After Helen’s senior portrait session on the USF campus last spring, I was excited to get out and explore some more. Though I’ve been on-campus for four months now, I rarely get away from the student center and/or the education building so it was exciting to discover so many new spots as Molly, Sergio (Molly’s awesome beau) and I walked around.

Molly,

Thank you for adventuring with me! You are stunning inside and out and I am so thankful that the Lord placed us next door so that we could meet! I know you will do great things– I can’t wait to see you be a BULL! Keep blessing the world with your smile and laughter!

in His love,

Laura

{To book a portrait session with captured in His image Photography please e-mail hello@capturedinhisimage.com or visit capturedinhisimage.com}

There’s really few places I love more than being in an airport. Call me crazy but I get such a high at being in the cross roads where so many people//stories//experiences//emotions come together. Joy, frustration, stress, fear, excitement– you can see and experience it all at an airport!

So, I’m going to soak in the last 45 minutes hangin’ at Tampa International before I hit the skies for a weekend in Kansas.

There’s no place like home!

XoXo,

Laura

Two years ago tonight I stood, shaky//exhausted//excited//nervous//happy, hand in hand with J as we exchanged vows in front of those who care about and love us most. We rejoiced and celebrated– after three job transitions, a move, a death in the family and the loss of our wedding venue space {all in the course of our 5 month engagement} we had made it. 

I remember clinging to our vows that evening thinking “we’ve already been through so much, it can only go up from here”.

The covenant we entered into when we spoke our vows is just as important tonight as it was two years ago.

________________________

I, ____, take you, ____, to be my lawfully wedded(husband/wife), to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.

________________________

Because the reality is, nothing could have prepared us/allowed us to fully experience trial andjoy in context of marriage except the Lord and the covenant we entered with one another and with Him on October 15th, 2011.

This week at church we talked about covenants as they relate to our daily life and our relationship with God. In a world full of broken promises, how amazing is it that we serve a God who not only wants to covenant with us, but also holds up our end of the bargain because we’re too broken to.

Praise Him for allowing our marriage to know Him, walk in Him, look to Him, trust in Him.

Last year at this time we embarked on an amazing weekend of adventure, renewal and reflection. It was wonderful, one of my favorite memories from the past ten years and came just days after I had submitted my application materials for graduate school. We knew the winds of change were blowing.

And now here we are. Another year later and in one of the most bitter-sweet of circumstances we’ve ever experienced.

• 1,200 miles most days feels life a lifetime.
• Joy is in our everyday, but it’s not quite the same when we don’t get to experience it together.
• Our future is unfolding, but the unknown still overwhelms us.

We’re human and we have to lean into the covenant of our marriage dailyto get by. Even then, the tears and worries still come. It’s part of this life and part of the imperfect beauty that is marriage. 

It needs a whole lot more than two broken people to make it work.

And so today, we celebrate. We celebrate where we’ve been and we celebrate where God has brought us. Though we can’t be together tonight, we’ve been making our 2nd year anniversary memories over the past few weeks through:

1.) A blissful, tear-filled airport reunion after 2.5 months apart

2.) A weekend on the beach, soaking in God’s creation and one another

3.) Amazing foodie adventures during J’s visit. Let’s be real, we don’t know how to celebrate without food.

3. Introducing Halloween early {because the reason we got married in October was so we could rock out our favorite holiday every year}

[Not pictured is the epic Friday night that followed gift opening. A night out in St. Pete? Nah. How about a night hangin’ in our hotel room watching Hocus Pocus, eating Halloween candy. Yessss.]

4. Making new traditions and continuing old ones.

Like taking our annual christmas card photo….

Being intentional to adventure. To soak in new sights and sounds.

And to continue to date//surprise//love in new and different ways.

We are blessed in so many ways and I’m really thankful to have at least one day a year to reflect on it!

We also love including Celebrating Love in our annual anniversary reflection because it encourages our hearts and minds to focus on other couples and to do what we can to encourage and support them. We might not have much in terms of worldly possessions or wealth, but we can still encourage others through community, prayer and photos/chocolate 😉

This year’s Celebrating Love entires, like last years, brought me to tears as they came in. These couples have overcome a lot and yet their love for each other is so visible. They enjoy doing things together, living life together and are all anxious to see what their futures hold. We related to all of their stories and rejoiced in praying over them and for them– what an opportunity!

Though it’s never easy to choose, I’m glad to be able to honor three couples this year with the Celebrating Love prizes.

The winners of the 2013 Celebrating Love Gift Boxes are……

And the grand-prize winner who will receive this year’s Celebrating love photo session, gallery & print-release are…..

We couldn’t help but hear parts of our story in these three couples’ entries. Distance | Trials | Theater | Overcoming the odds and it’s a true honor to celebrate all of our entries and to give these three a bit of extra lovin’ this year! {If you won, please e-mail me so I can snag some details from you– hello@capturedinhisimage.com!}.

________________________________________

Thank you so much for allowing us to celebrate you this year and for your thoughts and prayers as we continue to move through this bittersweet season of life. I can only imagine where I’ll be writing from next year at this time!

Until then, cheers & love to all of you!

in His love,

Laura & Jordan [married TWO years! WOO HOO!] 🙂

When Ash & Ben first found out they were expecting they decided that they would wait to find out whether the baby was a boy or a girl. To keep things gender neutral and to tie in Ashley’s love of literature, they settled on creating a world of storybooks and fairytales for this little bean to enjoy. A Peter Rabbit mobile for the nursery, framed covers of the classics on the wall– so many perfect elements that encompass their personalities and excitement for this baby!

September brought new challenges and trails when Ash was put on bed rest. Hours at home alone had her heart aching for a name to call this sweet babe. And so, all of us were blessed to enjoy the early surprise of getting to know Baby M {a GIRL!} a little bit more.

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect– Ash and I got to tell J when we picked him up from the airport for his visit, Ash & Ben got to surprise the “Kansas grandmas” during their visit to Tampa last weekend and I got to surprise all the guests at the baby shower!

With a storybook themed baby shower in the works already, I shifted some of the color scheme and added new decorations to showcase this precious little one, whose name we now knew.

Evelyn Lucille Motley. 

Can you say precious?

I flurried for 72 hours leading up to the shower making sure her name was on everything. I wanted people to know this little one, to wish and dream for her and to join her mommy & daddy in praying for her. Plus, I knew Evelyn Lucille confetti will come in handy when I do my feng-shui duties in the hospital room in just a few weeks  🙂

Having found Inkwood Books back in July when I first arrived to Tampa, I knew that the space would help me tell the story I wanted to. Stefani, Inkwood’s owner, was wonderful and kept me calm during the flurried, early morning set-up we encountered on Sunday.

I wanted things to be perfect but only because I wanted Ash and Ben to feel really, genuinely celebrated and for this little one, years from now, to know how very loved she is. Oh, and I also wanted to prove to my non-party planning/attending self that I could pull this off and more importantly, enjoy myself!

I tried to keep the decor relatively simple and very DIY while also considering the general aesthetic of Inkwood’s space. Some of my favorite touches were:

• The colorful ceiling pinwheels {Purchased in Target’s party section for $4}
• The diaper cake made using a basic tutorial with base/rubberbands/ribbon/topper purchased from The Dollar Tree & diapers purchased from Winn Dixie {had to have diapers with purple– Ben’s favorite!} I’d never made one of these before but everyone loved it and now Ash & Ben have 75+ diapers ready to go!
• The Evelyn Lucille printable I made and snuck into a frame from the nursery to create a focal point for the mantle. Gotta love Publisher and dafont.com!
• The small blue mason jars. I mean seriously, they made straws and plastic silverware look good! Thanks to my friend Wis for letting me borrow them– I need to get a set!
• The Baby Evey banner. I bought a roll of wide burlap at Michael’s for $6, a set of paper letters for $4 and a tube of black paint for $1. J did the assembly while he was in town (cut the burlap squares, sponged on the letters) and I hot glued them to twine! So easy// inexpensive but really created a statement piece that will now be up in her nursery!

The food was also themed and because the shower was mid-morning on a Sunday, I had some freedom in terms of what was served. Thankfully, children’s books have lots of yummy dishes with cute covers that you can easily turn into cardstock food markers…. 🙂

{I put these together in Publisher, printed them onto cardstock & cut them! So easy!}

I created the food cards late on Friday night and realized that I didn’t have anything to secure them with. Inventive thinking struck {thank goodness!} and I was able to rig photo holders by twisting floral wire around the handle of baby spoons and twirling the wire upward. They were cute, fit within the theme, free AND didn’t fall over– party planner SCORE!
{See photo above right for an idea of what they looked like}.

Now onto the good stuff, the games! 😀

The games were the hardest part of the entire shower for me 1.) because I’m not very fun {ha!} and 2.) I always worry about people not liking the games. I procrastinated until the final 24 hours before to decide what I actually wanted to do and ended up really happy with my decisions– people were laughing, I mean really laughing and nothing took too long or involved melted candy bars in diapers {who invented that “popular” baby shower game anyway?!

The passive game elements {both pictured at the beginning of this post} were:

1.) Wishes for Baby- Guests completed these cards, read 1-2 wishes when Ashley and Ben opened the gift from that guest and got to keep all of the wish cards at the end for Evey’s baby book.

2.) The Sonogram Matte -guests could sign/leave thoughts on. Ben and Ash will continue to have visitors and friends/family who couldn’t be at the shower sign this and it will be displayed in Evey’s nursery!

Then, we got people moving! First with an artistic challenge for guests to draw a family photo of the Motley’s onto paper plates they were balancing on their heads. We had a talented group– it was hard for Ash & Ben to pick winners!

We also tested guest brain-power with a wordy guessing game. I used content I found online and tailored it into a printable that matched the rest of the shower. Everyone loved it even though they were pretty stumped!

Our last game encouraged the guests to team up and use a role of toilet paper to guess Ashley’s baby bump size. Her husband lost….. poor guy. 

Overall, it was a really amazing morning just to honor and celebrate Ash, Ben & Baby Evs (as I’ve already started calling her). Guests had flown in from all over to be there and I know it meant the world.

Ash & Ben,

Thank you for trusting me with this little piece of celebration. You are going to be amazing parents and it’s an honor to walk alongside you during this journey. Here’s to many more parties & moments of joy in the future!

“Rejoice always” Thessalonians 5:16

in His love,

Laura {the seudo aunt–roomate–photographer–party planner} 🙂

In honor of J & I’s 2nd wedding anniversary (1 week from today!) I am *so* excited to announce the start of the 2nd annual “Celebrating Love” Contest!
This was something I felt compelled to start last year as a way of getting to know my clients and friends better while also supporting and celebrating the beauty of marriage. It was amazing to pour over photos and stories on October 15th last year and I can’t wait to do it again next week! The best came when we got to meet Maren & Sean, the winners of last year’s contest, for their Celebrating Love session. Their story inspired J and I and meeting them in person was even more amazing– you can check-out their session here.

So, onto this year’s contest. Since captured in His image is on a Facebook break, I’m really excited to leverage Instagram {here’s my profile if we’re not already connected} to see your photos and learn about your stories.

 

Here are the details:

• Post a favorite photo of you and your husband or wife on Instagram with a sentence or two about your journey/story/life together.
• Tag me (@lefoote) and #capturedinhisimage & #celebratinglove. If you live in the Tampa Bay area, include #Tampa, too!

Winners: 

• J and I will be selecting two couples to receive a “Celebrating Love” gift. If you don’t live in the area, I will ship it! We’ll be including some of our favorite things and some encouragement for you, too
• I’ll be selecting one couple with the #Tampa in their caption who will receive this year’s “Celebrating Love” photo session! This includes: a one hour, on-location session, a gallery of all images (edited & high resolution) and a print release. Session must be booked between October 15th & November 15th 2013.

Last year J and I prayed over every couple, every photo, every story and asked the Lord to help us select the winners. This will be our process again this year and I will announce them both here and on IG next Tuesday night (our anniversary 😉 )!.

Please share this opportunity with others! So excited to celebrate with you all!

in His love,
Laura

Ladies and gentlemen, the Footes have [almost] officially survived 67 days apart

i.e.

201 breakfast/lunches/dinners // 10 tanks of gas // 2 haircuts // 6 weeks of Saturday morning cartoons // 5 weeks of classes // 10 + boxes of mac n’ cheese // 30 loads of laundry.

You get my drift.

We’re excited and ready, even if the countdown only gets to enjoy being at 0 for the weekend.

As I type J is on a plane heading from Kansas City to Houston and we hope he’ll be here by midnight [delays have already kicked in]. Tomorrow we head to the beach for a 2-day getaway and I. can’t. wait. A weekend of sand, sun, foodie lovin’, prayer and quality time with my husband, yes please!

I’m ready to have my Don Draper back. Let’s do this.

P.S. Tampa International Airport Patron– this is my fair warning that there might be shrieking// crying// jumping tonight near the arrival gate 🙂

 in His love,

Laura