My first blog post. I’ve had the idea of a blog in my head now for over a few years. I actually started one during my first pregnancy to keep track of my weekly progress (bumpdates), but I didn’t keep up with it. It was fun and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t really have a purpose for it after my daughter was born. Soon after, I started my etsy shop and that fulfilled my need for creativity. The shop was a lot of fun and I learned so much, met some amazing people, made some okay money, and was proud of my work. However, tackling the etsy shop, motherhood, graduate school, a part-time job, and trying to be a good wife, daughter, sister, and friend was challenging. Doable, but it was overwhelming at times. I would work really late into the night on my shop orders and even pulled a few all-nighters. In my college days, this was no-biggie. Now that I had a one-year old to attend to during the day, it wasn’t the smartest choice. But I loved my little business and I wanted to see it grow. It was about a year and a half into it that I realized the return wasn’t as great as the investment. I was missing out on time with my husband and my daughter Hadley, and it’s not like I was bringing in the big bucks. So I decided I would close the shop when I had our second daughter (I was 6 months pregnant at the time). I’m a very creative person though and I need something in my life to fuel that passion. So I knew there was something else in store for me.

In the meantime, my love for photography has progressed and I’ve started subscribing to online photography tutorials and attending in-person workshops to help improve. I mostly take pictures of the girls when we brand rep on Instagram supporting other small, handmade shops. I love taking pictures of babies and kids, they’re my favorites. I’m also really interested in fashion and product photography, and I’d like to start working with families as well. I’ll be posting a lot of my work on this blog so you can check it out and be sure to let me know what you think.

This blog is a hybrid of a creative outlet, photography, and other random adventures. I decided on the name, every little joy, after months and months (not exaggerating) of brainstorming names. I think I’ve had like 50 ideas that for some reason or another didn’t work out. Many of them were taken already when I ran them through the domain name database, or I found a blog or company with a similar name when I was researching to make sure I was unique. Joy is my last name so I knew I wanted to incorporate that. I tried to come up with clever sayings but they were either taken or too cheesy. The “little” represents my own personal little joys, my daughters. But every child is a little joy (even when they are driving us crazy) and I like how open that term is, “little joy”. We all have little joys in some form or another: kids, people, treats, days. every little joy is a place where those things are celebrated! I hope you stop by often and see what we’re up to…