My new website/blog

My blog has found a new home.  Check me out at www.catmcateerphotography.com.

Letters to my Daughters – February

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. This week I helped you write your names on valentine cards but before I know it you’ll be on your first date. Love truly is an amazing creature. As you collect life experiences, love comes with you for the ride. It grows with you, matures and changes and thankfully, there is always enough to go around. When I was young, I thought I knew what love was. Wild and overwhelming I tried to wrap my hands and heart around it. When I met your Dad, I realized that love is much more complicated and most of the time much less exciting. But it is the most comforting feeling in the world when you meet your equal and decide to share your life with him. Then I had you girls and I realized that I never knew what love was because the love of your children truly is the most powerful and terrifying feeling in the world.

So love large and often my girls! Most of all, do not be afraid to love because there is lots to go around and your heart is resiliant. Love the world, your friends, your family and most of all yourself and you will have a wonderful life I’m sure!

Love and kisses!
Mom

PS. Margot is the star of the show this month but there is one of both girls for good measure. I hope you enjoy a few of my favorites from January.

Please continue around our Letters to Our Daughters blog circle and visit Erin Pasilla I’m sure you will love her work and her words!

 

CM Monthly Challenge Blog Circle – Up Close Portraiture

I have joined up with a gang of amazing women from Clickin Moms for a monthly blog circle. Each month, we will be focusing on a new skill or photography challenge. I am really looking forward to getting to know these women and their work better.

Our first challenge was close up portraiture. Like many newbies, when I first started to get serious about photography last year I was told to get close to my subject – and then get closer! Looking back, I think I took this a little too seriously. All of my shots were up close and personal! For the last few months I have been trying to take in more of the scene and go for more “lifestyle” captures. So, it was really fun to go back to close up work and then take it even closer! These shots were a series of photos taken when I had my littlest out for a walk in the tobaggon. I used my 85 mm lens and an aperture of 2.8. I really love these in a creamy black and white conversion.

Please continue around our circle and visit the work of Stacey Brown http://staceynbrown.blogspot.com/2013/02/close-up.html. I think you’ll love her work and her gorgeous children!

Letter to my Daughters – January

I have been given an amazing opportunity to participate in a blog circle with 16 women from Clickin Moms . Over the next year, we will write 12 letters to our daughters sharing photographs that we have taken that month. I am so excited for this personal project and also to get to know these amazing moms and photographers. This project was inspired by a similar project which took place last year. If you are interested in linking to the other circle please check out Jaime Lackey, who has a great sense of humour and of course, is a beautiful photographer as well. http://www.jaimelackeyphotography.com/blog/you-got-this-letters-to-our-daughters/

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January 10, 2013

To my sweet little girls.

Over the next year I will write 12 letters to you with photographs which capture our lives as they are right now. This project is one that I will share with 16 women. We have never met yet we have a common bond of being mothers to daughters. As a mother, I know that I must walk my own path. On some days, I am lonely and walk alone. I feel as though my experience is entirely unique and no one has experienced what I am feeling on that particular day. On other days, I walk with the strength of knowing that millions of women are walking with me and sharing the same experiences and emotions.

Julia, you are four years old and growing and changing so quickly we can hardly keep up to you.  Every day I try to figure out the little girl that you are in that exact moment in time. Sometimes, you seem much older than your age – you use big words like coincidence and express complex ideas and feelings. At other times, you are still very much a little one, with feelings and emotions that you cannot understand, express or control. I am caught in between with expectations that are sometimes too high and at others, not high enough. Some days you race ahead of me and other days I feel as though I am dragging you reluctantly behind. If I am honest, I will say that you are not an easy child, although I love and respect your spirit which I know will serve you well . You will not be one to bend to peer pressure and I know that you will always know your own mind and find your true path in your life. So on the days that you test me, I try to keep these thoughts in my mind and give thanks for having given life to a fierce, proud, warm hearted Leo child.

Margot, you are 13 months old and every day you reveal a little more about the toddler, little girl and adult that you will become. You are a bright, sunny baby with an adventurous spirit. You love to discover and are learning to walk on your own time making sure that you will be successful when the time comes to take that first step alone. You have a fiercely independent spirit yet do not like to be alone. You already know what you like (cheese) and what you don’t like (which seems to change day to day). Like all of the women in our family, you love to communicate and are putting all of your energy into chatting, signing, and showing us that you understand what we are saying. Some days I am so excited for the next year of your life when you will have so many “firsts” and grow into a little girl. Other days, I want to freeze time so I can experience you exactly as you are today, over and over again. Because I know that my memories will gently fade into the past and I will not be able to remember exactly how I felt when you were this small.

Girls, I am excited to share my hopes, thoughts and dreams with you over the coming year. I hope that one day, I can read these letters with you and remember more about what our lives were like when you were so small. Perhaps you can take comfort in the shared experience of mothering if you become one yourself one day. Today, I will strive to live in the moment with you both exactly as you are. I will not wish for you to grow or change too quickly for I know that these moments will be over too soon. And then I will forget the tiredness, frustration, uncertainty, and guilt and only remember the sweet moments – the tenderness, smiles, hugs and kisses and I will wish that I could experience it all over again.

I love you both with all my heart!

Mama XOXO

If you would like to continue reading more letters to our daughters, please check out Bjorna Sigrid Hoen Almaden http://loveandbubblesblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/letters-to-our-daughers-january.html. She lives in Seattle and is from Holland – both places that are on my list to visit as soon as possible because they have amazing bicycle cultures (and I hear that Seattle has great vegan food too!). We also share a passion for birth (she is a doula)!  I am excited to get to know her better.

My new blog!

Welcome to my blog where I hope to be sharing my love of family and photography for 2013. I have committed to two blog circles for 2013 which I hope will keep me clicking, posting and sharing.  One is a Clickin Moms www.clickinmoms.com themed blog circle, which will begin in February and the other is a Letters to Our Daughters project.

For those of you that don’t know me, my family consists of a wonderful husband, two daughters and a 6 year old Portuguese Water Dog.  We live in Calgary, Alberta and spend as much time as we can biking, skiing, swimming, and hiking in the mountains near Fernie, BC.

Julia is 4 – a feisty, outgoing, bright young thing that challenges and delights us daily.  She is learning a lot these days – skiing, math “toughies”, her alphabet and numbers are currently on her list. 

Miss Margot turned 1 in November and we love her to pieces.  Iam still trying to figure her out although  I suspect that we will have our hands full with her as well.  She is currently focusing all of her efforts on communicating. She is signing and chatting up a storm although we need to work on our understanding of her new language skills.

I’ll be in touch soon!  The first letter to my daughters is due on January 10th!  Happy New Year to everyone.  May you have health, happiness and prosperity in 2013.

Catherine