When Krissy Vance and I decided to collaborate on a photo shoot, we were just two strangers who found each other on Instagram.
We tossed around ideas on the phone for a lifestyle session. I knew I wanted non-traditional-but-not-complicated and silly-but-not-goofy. She said, “What if we did something playful like making cookies?” And I said, “Yes! But what if instead of cookies, we made martinis?” And she didn’t hang up and call child services. Thus a friendship and a concept were born.
The morning of the shoot I was running around tidying up my house and cursing my chipped manicure and grown-out highlights. As I was in my closet frantically trying on gowns, I looked over and my girls were playing dress-up with my discard pile and practicing walking in my old pageant heels. I draped some necklaces over their little blonde heads, threw on a leopard cocktail dress I borrowed from a friend, shrugged and thought, welp, this is us.
My girls have always loved to be fancy. I occasionally make them mocktails with fresh garnishes in special glassware served on a silver tray. Our formal sitting room is full of white furniture and breakables so my girls refer to it as “the fancy room,” making it the logical backdrop for the day.
The mood Krissy captured in these photos is actually almost too elegant. I don’t know how she did it, but through her sophisticated eye, she made this silly idea actually look tasteful, and dare I say, dignified? I hope that someday one of my daughter’s beaus will stumble across these pictures of us guzzling out of champagne flutes and shaking martinis and say something like, “Wow, that lady seems totally inappropriate and over-the-top.” And my daughter will smile wistfully and say, “Oh, that’s no lady…that’s my Mom.”
Check out the other half of our Mommy and Me shoot here!
Mrs. Kansas Mommy 