Pinterest is a magical place isn’t it?

The most scrumptious recipes, the most gorgeous homes, and the most incredible family photographs. Once I open the app, I get sucked in for a good hour or two, just browsing, pinning left right and centre and building my dream home and wardrobe in my head.

While it’s all good and well to dream and set goals, I often feel inadequate after closing Pinterest. My home is no where near perfect. We bought it a year ago to renovate and to be honest, we haven’t done a helluva lot yet. Our kitchen has terracotta tiles and bright turquoise cabinets, the laminate flooring has a horrid red undertone and is not laid well at all, and our bathrooms have tiles that are both powder pink and powder blue. Definitely not a Pinterest worthy space and so I pick and choose where I take photo’s that will be posted online. Not to be misleading, but just to portray the best possible image of myself that I can (because tiles and kitchen cabinets have so much to do with my personality, you know?)

When Chloe from Kiss Kiss Photography asked if we would be interested in a family photoshoot, I was so excited! And then she dropped the bomb that she does “documentary style” photography. As in, no posing and nothing overly curated, just real life. Boom! And then she dropped the second bomb: we were going to do the photoshoot at home. BOOM! None the less, I agreed. I mean, I could still work my tooshie off to make sure that our home looked perfect and surely I could limit her to only certain parts of our home? You know, the better looking, not so dated parts.

The day before our photoshoot I must have asked Dan about twenty times what he planned on wearing, each time was met with the same response, “I haven’t even thought about it yet”. Men can be so infuriating! Of course I had a beautiful outfit all set out for Aria and I had tried my best to lighten the marks and hide some of the tears in our couches. You see, having a baby and a puppy and light coloured couches, does not work. Moose has jumped on the couch with muddy feet more times than I can count, even though he knows he isn’t allowed to, and Aria has knocked my coffee cup out of my hands, onto the couch a decent amount of times too. They are also old couches and so they have suffered from general wear and tear. But, I did a good job, and when we left to go to our friends birthday party that night, I was confident about the fact that the next morning would go smoothly and that Chloe would only photograph the strategically curated areas of my home.

Later on, we got home from the party, put Aria down in her room and snuggled into our own bed. An hour later Aria screamed and cried like I have never heard her scream and cry before. The poor bub was in so much pain from teething. And even though it was only an hour of rocking and patting and stoking her hair, it was exhausting. Finally she went back to sleep and so did we.

Photo day rolled around, and it did not get off to a good start. First of all, I completely overslept (absolutely buggered from soothing Aria the night before) and when I did eventually wake up, I had the most insane headache (thanks to a few too many glasses of wine, and not enough water, oops!). To cut a long, very disorganised story short; it was ten minutes before Chloe was due to arrive, there were dishes piled in the sink and laundry stacked on the kitchen table, I still had last nights make up on, was running around in my pajamas, Aria was still in her pajamas and eating her breakfast. Not at all how I planned things. I was about to have a mini meltdown and then I thought, do I really want these photo’s to be something that we aren’t? We aren’t anywhere close to perfect or refined, we are a crazy bunch who just manages to hold it together at the best of times. My child has dirty knees and feet most of the time and my dog is anything but disciplined.

When Chloe arrived, we made some tea and coffee and just carried on with our normal antics. She made us feel so comfortable and wasn’t at all intrusive. Even Dan, who is not a fan of having his photo taken was completely at ease.

Our photographs from Kiss Kiss photography don’t showcase a perfect family or a Pinterest worthy house; but they show us for who we are, and the home where we are bringing up our little girl and crazy pooch. I love our expressions and that I’m not consciously sucking in my gut half the time but just having fun with my favourite people, not even aware of Chloe behind the camera.

There is definitely still a place for more curated and styled photographs, but I think everyone needs to have a completely natural, documentary style photoshoot every few years. You need to relinquish control which can be hard (believe me, I know!) but the results speak for themselves.

Thank you so much to Chloe for the beautiful moments that she captured for us, I am so thankful and will treasure them forever.

If you would like to see more work from Kiss Kiss Photography (her birth photoshoots are out of this world), you can visit her Facebook or Instagram pages.

PS: If these images look slightly grainy, it’s just because I had to shrink them for the blog post. The pictures that Chloe sent us are incredibly high res and perfect for printing.

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