this is my friend casey.

(casey, i stole your profile pic off facebook. hope ya don’t mind.)

casey has a heart for the people of ukraine and russia and will soon be moving to donetsk, ukraine. casey’s mission is dear to my heart not only because he is a friend and college classmate, but because my heart is especially tender to the life of the orphan. casey will be serving, ministering to, and offering hope and a new path to the social orphans living on the streets and in the sewers of eastern ukraine. you read that correctly, LIVING IN THE SEWERS. the statistics for the future of these precious kiddos is heartbreaking to say the least. well over half of the boys will wind up in prison, many, many of the girls in prostitution and a chunk of them will take their own lives because the journey is just too hard to handle.

enter casey. he plans to take to the streets of ukraine and love these kids, show them jesus and teach them a little soccer, as well. you can read more about his ministry and keep up with him here.

upon hearing about casey’s trip and the ministry he would be doing that is so close to my heart, i knew i had to do something to contribute to his work. as you can imagine, packing up and moving across the world for the next 4 years requires a certain amount of funds. i was given a very clear vision of how to use my gifts as a way to help raise funds for the orphans of ukraine. and that was by creating some printable artwork to gift to people who make a donation to casey’s fund. and then i remembered oh yeah my sister is way more talented in the area of graphic design than me. so i pulled her on board as well.

 moving on to the pretties…

More the Merrier – by SwellMail Designs

these little russian matryoshka dolls were inspired by casey’s heart for the russian people.

Hosanna 1 – by beth marie

these words from the song hosanna by hillsong have been my constant prayer as of late. a happy accident was that i designed this print to look like the ukrainian flag and i didn’t even know what their flag looked like until casey told me.

True Religion – by beth marie

this verse is a theme of my prayers as well as a theme of casey’s work so it made perfect sense to use it for a print.

Full of Yourself – by SwellMail Designs

Hosanna 2 – by beth marie

HERE ARE THE DETAILS OF HOW TO GET YOURSELF ONE

In order to allow myself to keep up with the emails i am asking for a minimum donation of $15 to receive a print. obviously, feel free to donate as much or as little as you want. but for every $15 you donate i will email you an 8×10 sized pdf file of your choice (up to the 5prints i have designed).

once you receive the file(s) you may print the files or use them however you wish. but maybe don’t sell them. that would be kind of uncool. and by maybe i mean, please don’t.

So here’s what you need to do:

1. donate to casey jones’ fund through world venture (his mission agency) here.

2. you will receive a receipt for your donation via email.

3. forward that email to me at beth [at] bethmariephotography [dot] com with the subject: print project. In the body of the email include the name of the print(s) you wish to have me send to you and i will get it back to you ASAP.

I’m going to give this little project a 2 week time frame so please make your donations and send me your emails by Friday 4/26/13 at midnight.

**edited to change the date as i originally wrote the 19th which was only one week. whoops.

last but not least! Please share this link with all of your friends. I’d love to see Casey fully funded as soon as possible so he can start changing the lives of the people of ukraine.

-beth marie

this is what happened when i tried to get just one semi posed shot.

needless to say, i just gave up and chased 7 kids and 4 birds around the yard for a while!

-beth marie

so i thought a fun thing to do would be to occasionally take some shots from around the house and share details withyou. does that sound fun? well we will try it and see.

i’ll go in to some details on each of these things soon.

♥beth marie

the idea of not throwing a party is out of the question. however, the budget this year was “free or close to it”. there are not a lot of places that will host a party for “free or close to it” and having a daytime party outdoors was out of the question after last year’s “so fun, but so hot” outdoor party. she agreed to let me surprise her with a fun theme. knowing this is probably the last year i’ll get away with that one so i had better take advantage, i thought and i thought for the perfect inexpensive yet, fun (for me to decorate) celebration theme.

an outdoor movie popped into my head after seeing a few drive-in/movie themes on a few party blogs.

funnest party to date! held in the evening, so it wasn’t too hot. we already owned the movie, borrowed a projector, and made a screen out of materials we already had. budget appropriate,woop woop!

my mom happened to own this red and white striped tablecloth which quickly became the theme for the party based on the popcorn boxes. i searched high and low for red and white striped cupcake liners to line my popcorn looking cupcakes. they were found on the independence day aisle at hobby lobby for much cheaper than the price of the regular cupcake liners on the baking aisle. odd, but fine with me!

the popcorn was obviously a hit. the juice too :)

the party site was one i’ve shared before for sweet peas baby shower. you’ll remember my favorite spot. my almost wedding reception location (had it not been december): my parents backyard tree.

i invited the guests to bring their blankets and come enjoy the show. i used the poles my dad made for sweet pea’s shower (that i thought i’d never have a reason to use again) to hang lights with.

little brother not only brought his own blanket, but his own bed.

he woke up in time to enjoy the show and entertain the guests.

storm clouds rained on our party about midway through the movie, but rori didn’t seem to mind too much. after playing with a few of her new toys outside she got to take it all inside and give a thorough inspection while we finished the movie up there.

-beth marie

i’ve always thought it a good idea to take similar photos of my guy in the same poses as i did my girl at any particular age. for comparison.

i can’t look at photos of rori from a certain time in her life and not just wish so deeply to return to that moment for just a second. just to be there and feel that way again. no matter how hard i want to recreate what it was like to be the mother of my 7 month old, first born, baby girl: i can’t.

i took this photo of my girl for her 1 year photos(this is just a screenshot from facebook…not very good file quality, i didn’t have the energy to track down the original file)

it is one of my favorite photos of her. the chin strap placement sort of bugs me but that doesn’t stop it from being one of my favorites.

i recreated it for my boys 6 month photos.

I may never be able to get those old moments back. and the moments that we are living now, with my 7 month old, second-born baby boy and his rockin’ big sister can’t even compare to those old memories. however, in that same regard those old memories can’t  even begin to compare to these moments either.

sometimes, it’s good to look back and remember. compare then to now. you can actually be filled with the joy of those memories as well as realize the joy of this moment.

and sometimes you can compare how far your photography skills have come in a few years. and celebrate that as well.

comparison stinks. comparison can rob you of your joy.

but there is hope. comparison steals your joy, except when you don’t let it.

i need to tell myself this VERY often.

-beth marie

the owasso egg drop has been a second year tradition for our family and just like last year we had friends over to color eggs afterwards. we had a blast with both events.

i’m so thankful for:

some alone time with this little bunny.

rain boots. and the just between friends sale for providing them to me at half the price of the ones i bought of the same style/different color at old navy last year!

a great community.

eggs filled with coupons, stickers and trinkets versus loads os sugary candy.

sweet cousins to share said trinkets with and to root you on when it’s your turn to hunt.

-beth marie

matching my family for easter sunday has been a thing of mine since nathan and i were just newlyweds with no littles. this year was one of my favorites, unfortunately it was a rainy day and there was just not really a place to take some nice family photos. oh well.

-beth marie

my poor little blog’s dashboard went a little haywire several days ago and that is (among many other reasons) why i decided to forget it and take a break until it gets fixed.

for right now i will leave you with this. just when  i thought he couldn’t possibly get any cuter: someone has found his little toes. oh man….be still my heart.

-beth marie

3 months. 1/4 of a year.december, january, february. how did that happen? one thing is for sure: he won’t slow down on the growing anytime soon. i looked at his sweetness snoozing away and dropped everything to capture it right then. i just had to. because not just next month, but next WEEK he won’t look the same. and this sweetness, i wanna remember this forever.

he looks exactly like his sister did.

she was pretty fond of her mam too. only, this boy just replaces it with his thumb whenever need be. wahhhhhh(that’s me crying for fear of having to break a thumbsucker one day.)

among the chaos of big sister running around like a crazy girl and screaming and yelling while she plays with our friends, here’s this guy.

i’m a little jealous really. but mostly lovestruck, enamored, in awe and generally joyfilled to be blessed with this little guy, who one day will be joining right in with his big sister creating the ruckus. but for now he just sweetly passes out in his jammies in the middle of the chaotic living room.

-beth marie