Confession time… I just took down our Christmas decorations a few days ago.  The absolute longest time I’ve ever left them up.   I feel like I have a fairly good excuse, though!   We just got back from a trip to Jamaica – we didn’t actually leave until January 12, so even that is way too late to leave up Christmas decor, but my mother-in-law was coming to stay with the kids and Emelyn wanted to leave the tree up for her.   I was so busy getting ready for vacation and I had several sessions to shoot and edit before leaving, so I really didn’t have time to take everything down anyway.   When we left, it felt weird to have it up but returning from a beach vacation where we spent 8 warm and sunshiny days on the beach to a houseful of Christmas decor was a bit off-putting.  Our house fully, from top to bottom, still looked like this.  At that point, I should have turned it into a Mardi Gras tree and pretended it was intentional!   We got home at 2 am on a Friday night and by noon the very next day, the house was fully de-Christmasd!

So I feel like, with that confession, it isn’t weird to share Santiago’s mini sitter session which was Christmas-themed and featured a hot cocoa bath!   I hadn’t ever done the hot chocolate bath before, so it was a fun new thing to try.   Santiago seemed to enjoy it, especially eating the marshmallows and cookies, but we couldn’t get him to smile AT ALL.  He was so happy and smiley for his 4-month session, so I couldn’t believe we couldn’t get him to smile for this one, but I still love how they turned out.

I’m really beginning to move into a much more simplified style for milestone sessions.  I really love having a simple, solid backdrop with few accessories and really just focusing on the baby.  Anytime I get to do something on a simple white backdrop, I always love the results!