Finley Photo Outakes

One of my most favourite things to do along with having lye-ins and putting my make up on is taking snaps of that lovely jubbly sausage that is Finley!

You can guarantee that he has 20 pictures for nearly every day of his 1st year, they seem to have dwindled since purely because his hands and eyes are constantly on the lens and we can never get a picture of him sat still. But you can find me still regularly taking little candid snaps on Instagram and proper pictures on the big boy camera....even though now it takes me a lot longer.

When I take pictures for either our little family bundle or snaps for my blog I never delete anything, a little example for you, the last blog post I did I edited and posted a grand total of 6 pictures however I took 42 with products in different lighting, different layouts etc, so you can only imagine how many unused pictures are stored away on my harddrive. Plus I never have the heart to delete anything Finley is in, so here are some photo blunders I thought I would pop up here. I wanted to keep it real and let you all in on the 'behind the scenes' and how 90% of the pictures I take are like this!

I feel bad that there are so many photos hiding away in folders and sub folders that will probably never get used or even looked at...so I am sending them some love and hand picked a few for you to have a gander over. Some are photos from blog posts and others are just general snaps we have taken :) There are soooo many to pick from so here are just a few, some embarrassing (for Finley) others of him wayyyyyy to close up! 

Tiny Little Hairs

Anyone with a baby will know what face this is!

Pumpkin attack - Good job Daddy was on hand...safety first people

Typical Finley, climbing up my leg with half a face in shot - half my hallway full of baby items!

THE biggest diva you have ever seen in the history of blogging! Quick get this guy some puppies, white lilies and blue smarties! Sheesh!

All this because the grass felt weird!

Not sure if he is keen on his dungarees...or me!

Sorry for the picture overload but I thought it would be fun to share some snaps that I regularly take a peek at just for fun :) If you enjoyed this post and would like another similar please let me know as I have soooo many hidden snaps from when Finley was super duper tiny to now....plus a couple of rather embarrassing shots of me!

Thanks so much for reading.

Love Kayleigh x

Throwback Thursday

When Finley was born everyone including me agreed that he was a mini version of Matthew, I was surprised he was even related to me because he looked nothing at all like me. A few friends had said 'oh does he look like you or Matthew as a baby?' hmmmm I pulled out the photo album to have a glance but no, he just looks like a very tiny, wrinkled version of Matthew.

Well to my surprise the other day the thought popped into my head and out came the same photo album and BAM...

It was as though Finley was it all the pictures from 1988 onwards! How did this happen, why didn't I see this change in him! I thought you might all like to see a few snaps of me when I was the same age as Finley, let me know if you can see the resemblance or if I am going mad.

 I even noticed that Finley and I had the same eating habits, I'm glad to say that I have grown out of mine but now I'm just waiting for him to stop throwing his weetabix up the wall and squishing strawberries through his fingers!

There were a few other similarities I spotted, we both seemed to have that slight ginger tinge to the wispy hair dotted sparsely around our head although his is turning blonde as did mine at around 1ish (so I'm told).  Our eyes seem the exact same shade of blue, mine are a little more green nowadays so I'm expecting his to change a little. In the millions of photos I looked through there were only about 4 where I actually had noticeable hair....I was 3! Sorry Finley it looks like that little Egg nogin' of yours will just have to be bald for a little longer.

If you would like to see a few other comparison photos I will dig out some more for you all to have a look at, I love seeing old photos especially now we have a little baby of our own to see all the little similarities and family traits. 

Love Kayleigh x

Our Twinkley Christmas Bun

Wow...nobody ever told me that once you have kids Christmas engulfs your whole life for the entire month of December. Wrapping, cleaning, list making, card designing, present ordering, food shopping....I'm tired out all over again just reading that! 

Everyday for the past week I sat in my good old blog writing area (the couch) to write blog posts on all sorts of exciting things but could I finish one of them, nope! I have 3 draft posts crying out for photos but i just haven't had chance to take them, one reason being I have been THE most busy Christmas person ever and analysing the 'big' food shop over and over until I think we have everything but a box of cotton buds in the trolley. And the second reason is there is no natural light anywhere! I have a weird 'thing' that I have to take pictures only in the day when there is an abundance of sunshine....not something that the North West is known for in the Winter! I need to buy that lightbox I keep promising myself!

Anyway I thought I would make use of the dark, gloomy, drizzly weather and off I went to grab Finley, some fairy lights and my camera!

After I made Matthew risk life and limb climbing on chairs to disassemble our kitchen fairy light feature all for the love of photography we headed to the darkest spot in the house to take a few snaps.

As with the majority of my posts this may be a little picture heavy, but hey who doesn't love looking at the most adorable pictures ever?! 

I have had this idea pinned on my Pinterest board for ages and I finally managed to tick it off :) I just wish we had time to re-do our Christmas cards as I would use one of these pics to send out to family!

Ever since Finley started crawling it has been so difficult to get any pictures of him sat still, the majority I get now are of a blurry baby zooming passed the camera or of him trying to escape up his stairgate. He was so fascinated by the lights he sat there playing with them patiently whilst I managed to get a few decent snaps in.

I think he looks like an angel in this picture, you could just imagine if it panned out there would be his beautiful white angel wings....

Thank you so much for taking the time to read and please share your Christmas snaps with me either in the comments below of on my Facebook page here

Love Kayleigh x

Happy Halloween

How exciting, it was Finley's first Halloween yesterday :) 

I bought his Halloween outfit back in August, a little eager but I do love a bit of fancy dress. I opted for a spooky spider as there is little other option for anyone under 1, it was either this or a pumpkin. I cant wait to dress him up properly - face paint, dyed hair - the lot.

I planned on carving the pumpkins together but Finley had other ideas and opted to take a nap instead and Daddy has a fear of pulp so it left Mummy to do all the hard work. Shhhh don't tell them that I actually really enjoy carving pumpkins. An hour and a half later we ended up with these beauties 

Last year I did an owl style pumpkin which was soooo good (blows own trumpet) and I wanted to re-create it this year but the 'Finley's 1st Halloween' one took so long I went for the traditional 10 minute scary face! Perfect for the doorstep don't you think?

We had loads of trick or treaters, they seemed to arrive in packs! I answered the door with Finley dressed to the nines in his swish spider outfit and all the kids were saying "is that Finley" "awww, happy 1st Halloween". Then there were the few 'kids' I had doubts about, I'm unsure if a 15 year old girl wearing a onsie counts as a trick or treater, especially when she used her hands cupped together as a bag! hmmmmm! 

Overall a great 1st Halloween for Finley :) I had tried to get a picture of him sat between the pumpkins but his newly found crawing knees didn't stay put for longer than a second so I had to weigh up what was more important, perfect Halloween picture but an on fire baby or safe baby and okayish pictures. 

Hope you all had a great day and enjoyed all the spooky goings on

Share your Halloween pictures on my Facebook page :) I would love to see them 

Love Kayleigh x

Photo Love

A bit of a lifey post for everyone today.

So we have been in our new home for almost 2 months now and I was starting to feel sorry for the naked photo frames dotted about the house. The only photos we had up were of a much slender Matt and I on holiday in 2006 - slightly out of date. Off I went on a photo rampage to fill our house full lovely little snaps of all of us looking delightful.

First stop printstagram! Since Finley was born I have been Instagram mad and captured his cheeky face throughout the year and it would be a shame not to display those retro beauties around the house. I ordered the small square prints which are around 2.5x2.5, you get 48 in total which is a nightmare when you have 180 pictures to choose from! In total for 48 pictures it came to $12 but beware shipping is also $12! A tad on the pricey side but totally worth it and they arrived in 4 days! Wowzers!

I also wanted to get some 'proper' photos to pop into frames and give to Grandparents so they can swoon over their grandson. 

I hopped over to Jessops to order some prints - yet again I stumble across another problem. We have too many pictures, we have literally thousands of Finley so it took all day just to choose the 40 we wanted. 

Quick Tip here - if you sign up as a new customer you can get 40 free prints! All you need to do is upload all your images as normal then enter the discount code 'welcome' at the checkout. You will still need to cough up for postage but its only £2.25 - what a bargain. 

I have ordered a number of prints in the past from Snapfish, Tesco, Asda and Photobox but the best quality by far are from Jessops!

Look at those kissable cheeks! 

After deliberating once more we narrowed down what we would pop in our frames and here are the finished products.

I love love love having pictures around the house, it just makes everywhere so homely and cosy, and also deep down every Mum likes showing of their baby! 

My next photo project will involve the hallway and nearly 30 picture frames, can anyone guess whats happening there? 

Love Kayleigh x

Our Little Finners

I thought I better make a post to properly introduce you all to Finley. 

Finley Christopher Derek Bamber was born on Sunday 15th January 2012 at 11:45pm.

He was a little eager to meet us all and ended up being just short of 3 weeks early. He weighed in at 5pounds 15ounces (which has always baffled me because I thought the scale topped off at 14 Ounces?) Anyway he was a lot smaller than expected, I think the highest weight guessed on the sweepstake at work was knocking on 11pounds! Crikey - I must have that look about me haha. 

Anyway I will write a more detailed post on the lead up to labour and the delivery itself soon :) 

I will leave you with some lovely snaps of the one and only Finley

Love Kayleigh x

Only a few hours old - look at those milk spots :)

A couple of days old - wrinkled and crinkled

     

Cheeky Chops 6 months later

Instagram Obsession

Does anyone else have a slight obsession with Instagram, I know I do.

I love the ease of just whipping out my phone, mainly taking pictures of Finely then putting a retro filter over the top making it look 30 years old! Makes no sense but I love it. 

My username is - Kayleighpebble 

come on over and follow me

Here are a few of my faves

Love Kayleigh x