Author Archives: Lisa Mercer

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I don't know if my old age is getting to me, or maybe that everything changes when you have kids of your own,  but I am having a really hard time believing (probably not quite as hard of a time as his momma 🙂 )  that Will is a senior.  Ahhhh! I mean how many years have I been married? Like 8 years?  And from the time little Will was the ring bearer in my wedding till now seems like it has gone by in a flash! Literally, I blinked and Will has turned into this 6'3 man.  Will has always been one of my favorite guys, from 8 year old Will showing me all his animals in his room to 18 year old Will showing me all his animals at the barn (and teaching me a thing or 2 about the chickens, lol.) He has always been the most personable, handsome, kind, intelligent, and outstanding kid I know.  (Way to go mom and dad, you should be so proud!!) He just excels in everything he tries, and makes it fun for everyone around him. (Even if it is a game of Mao, where I am ready to quit because I have no idea what the heck is going on... Yes, Will is probably the only one who can make me stay in the game. )  Also I have never met such a caring guy, whether he's playing with my Olivia, or helping me out on a night where I just really wanted something off the menu at Sheetz, or even helping a friend who just needed some ice cream (.... Erica) His devotion to people (and his animals) is so obvious and amazing... I mean seriously who can ask for more than that in your kid!

So Mr. Will Shultz ... I can't wait to see what you will do with this life. You are an amazing man and have one of the strongest characters I know.  The world is waiting on you!! (... and there go my tears.)  Enjoy!! shultz1 shultz2 shultz3 shultz4 shultz5 shultz6 shultz7

 

PS - Here is little Will at the wedding! AWWWW!!!

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Oh let me just ask how cute is baby Oliver! Geesh!! He is probably one of the most pleasant babies to be around, never once did he fuss, get mad, or do anything but smile and make faces at us! Although his parents say he is like a baby tornado at home! ( I may not believe them... LOL)

Becca and Freddy are some of my favorite Tiptoe people, they are like a comedy act, and have me cracking up every time! I have photographed their beautiful daughter Delaney, they had their wedding with us, their gender reveal, Oliver's newborn pics and now his one year! I love watching their family grow with Tiptoe!! 🙂 It's pretty amazing to be there for all these HUGE events in their lives!  Can't wait to meet baby "Jan" soon!!! (There is a big funny story about new babies nickname that of course had me cracking up... ask them about it!)

Check out baby Oliver in his newborn Harry Potter theme then all grown up with it again!! SOOOOO cute!! I just love him!!

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So I wanted to give a quick teaser of one of my favorites from the day to this beautiful couple! Matt and Louellen are just the sweetest people EVER.  They just have that natural ability to make everyone feel like a best friend! What an amazing trait to have, right!   And their wedding was SO PERFECT! It was a 10 am wedding ceremony which we have only had a hand full of times in our Tiptoe careers! They married at the Lowe farm in Shepherdstown, which was absolutely amazing and picturesque!  The weather was great, it couldn't have been a more amazing day! I am so happy they chose us to capture their day! They make a perfect Tiptoe couple! I hope you all love this shot! Enjoy!web1

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So if you are a close friend of mine... you know what a sucker I am for IKEA. All those IDEAS, all those PROJECTS.... I love it. Although often times I go there stock up on everything I need for 30 different projects and come home and do 2 of them! So this year I tried to pull that back and concentrate on 3 projects TOPS for my trip.

So this post is for any of our followers who have never been to IKEA before, I wanted to give you a couple of our favorite Tiptoe tricks, tips and to do's while you are there! IMG_8491

1st- Know what you need- I would suggest concentrating on a certain room in your house or 1-2 projects because you will go there and want to try everything! Start with the catalog and make a list!  Also a good tip is to have all your "stuff" measured out before you get there, so you don't have to call your husband 50 times to have him measure for you (mine always gets pretty annoyed with me, LOL). Here's my catalog and notebook!! IMG_8469 IMG_8470

2nd- If you have to bring your young kids, it's OK!! They have child care!  But keep in mind it is only for 1 hour at a time, and it depends on how busy they are that day! So Olivia and Tre have both accompanied me there, so I always take them through the showroom and to lunch with me and drop them off at childcare during my time in the marketplace (when I need to be able to concentrate, lol )

3rd- Schedule- So if you are a first timer I would allot yourself a good 4 hours to get through it all!  Here is the way me and my girlfriends always do it! 1. Bathroom- go ahead, you don't want to get half way through the maze and have to go!! 2. Showroom- where you get to see lots of rooms already put together, and draw inspiration from them. If you see items you like there write down the item name and location in the marketplace, so you can find it! Tip: there is also an app now that helps you locate items in the Marketplace.  There are only a few items there that you can actually put in your cart in the showroom. 3. YUMMY lunch at the IKEA cafeteria.  I usually add the caprese salad, TRY IT, yummy! 4. Marketplace- where I fill my cart! You wind your way through all the different sections from kitchen, bathroom, office, closet, fabric, lighting and finally the warehouse where you get the larger items and furniture. 5. Checkout- pretty self explanatory, don't forget to get some swedish fish!! LOL! So comical!  And go ahead and buy that .99$ bag for your items, you will find so many home uses for it too!! 6. Frozen yogurt - yes there is a little counter where you can buy some before you leave for 1$!!! IMG_8453 IMG_8455 IMG_8456 IMG_8460 IMG_8463 IMG_8471 IMG_8480 IMG_8481 IMG_8482 IMG_8483 IMG_8485

4th- Wear comfy shoes- This is pretty obvious too! But you walk a lot. Also their carts are FUN and take a little getting used to! My biggest tip is to try to keep your body behind the cart when you are walking!

Check out this video on the carts!! LOL!!

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5th- Bring a BIG car- LOL... This is always something we do! Because we all say we are going in there for a couple things and come out with 20!! LOL!

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Some of our fun pics from our last trip there! I hope you all enjoyed! And let me know if you are planning a trip soon! I may NEED to go with you! LOL!

 

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I am so excited to share this session with you all. This couple booked their 2016 wedding with us just a couple of months ago, and thank goodness they did!  They are such a great example of a Tiptoe couple! They are so in love, so happy, and willing to go the extra step to make some great images! All that we could ask for!

So for their engagement session, they took me back to a place I haven't been in years! Like not since I was roaming the streets of Shepherdstown as a Jr. High Schooler!  Walking into town after school was the cool thing to do, so of course me and my group of girlfriends would do it. We would go to Tony's pizza have a snack and then roam to wherever our hearts desired. Sometimes this would be Sky's the Limit, the Town Run, the river access behind Shepherd College, and sometimes it would be the Rumsey Monument, which is where we went for this session! And with the exception of a couple of picnic tables, it was just the same as all those years ago. (On a side note, what were our parents thinking, letting 12-14 year olds roam the town for a couple of hours after school? Anyway...)  We picked the perfect time of evening because towards the end of our session the sun was setting behind those trees and it was magical!! We walked around for over an hour using all the little spots the area offered. They had such great ideas for pictures too, including the "Rocky" picture I included! I love, love, love that they would do everything I asked and they would do it with a twist to showcase their personalities! These guys were so much fun and I can't even wait to see how much fun their wedding is going to be!  Enjoy!!logo7 logo6 logo5 logo4 logo3 logo2 logo1

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I loved meeting this couple at our studio just a couple weeks ago to do their wedding consultation. And I super loved to hear that they are booking with Tiptoe!! So being that they live out of town, we had their engagement session right away!  We decided that their beautiful family farm, where the wedding will be taking place, was the perfect location. We also knew that we wanted to include their furry baby in some of the pictures. They warned me he would be wild but I think they were fibbing on that baby, he was perfectly mannered! 🙂 Enjoy some of my faves from the shoot!

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hardwood2 hardwoodSo as lots of you all know, we have been in our house for almost 2 years now. When we decided to build, first thing my husband and I did was search the internet high and low for a house plan, I mean we literally spent hours and hours searching for something that was going to suit us for the rest of our lives. We knew the house that we were going to build was going to be our FOREVER house so it had to have all the "things" we needed from a home.  Our main priorities were a first floor master bedroom, so that when we get too old to walk the steps we didn't have to worry how we were going to get to the 2nd floor,  seperate closets for him and I, I don't think I need to explain too much there (LOL), a space for the kids outside of our living room, a garage, and an island in the kitchen.  Not to much right?? Well it was! LOL...  Finally after a long, long time of looking, we found the perfect set of house plans for us! Now a harder part, finding a builder that was going to build a great house and not be over our budget... So after meeting with a few companies we went with Third Day Builders. They are a local company and after viewing several of the beautiful local homes they had built, we decided they would be a great fit for us!  And for anyone who has built a home before you know that just when you think you were getting to the easy part, because nothing should be more difficult that deciding on a home and finding the perfect people to build it, you find that you are spending every waking hour deciding on cabinets, knobs, countertops, doors, trim, colors, ahhh the list goes on and on... And me being a terrible on the go decision maker, I would want to go and see all the options and weigh out how each one would "go" with the other, then wait a couple days to see if it still felt "right", until it literally was driving me nuts... But the one thing that I knew I was sure of was dark oak hardwood floors! The decision for that came so easy!! And now 2 years into that decision, well lets just say, it was not one of the "smartest" ones I made. Don't get me wrong these floors are beautiful when they are freshly cleaned, but with our busy, busy lifestyle, mopping honestly only happens once a week! And even when it does happen they only stay sparkling for about 3 seconds, because here comes baby Tre with his sippy cup that leaks, and goldfish crackers, that are way funner to stomp on when he drops them, than to pick them up and eat them.  Ahh big sigh, there goes my clean and beautiful hardwood floors...  LOL! The best things I can take from my easy decision of the floors is that "we live and we learn" and they won't be babies forever, so enjoy every last goldfish crumb I have to sweep up....

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This is one of my favorite newborn stories to date!!  So months ago one of our favorite clients/people Mary texted me and said she wanted to get her best girlfriend, Tara, a GENEROUS gift certificate for her baby shower. She explained that Tara and her husband Michael had been trying for quite some time to have a baby and how special this pregnancy has been for them: from planning the shower, to decorating the room, to just the overwhelming feeling of having their first baby.  Soon after the shower, Tara wrote in to say how excited she was to be working with us.  I sent her our questionnaire to see what ideas she had for the newborn pictures! She had SO many ideas!!  And... I LOVED it!! We spoke several more times during the 2 months before baby Aubrey got here, working on those ideas and getting a plan together for the shoot!

And then, a little ahead of schedule, I got THE text from Tara (still in the hospital), they had baby Aubrey! We got them right in for the shoot a couple days after they got home. Tara came into the studio looking fabulous, I mean hair done, fingernails painted, jewelry on, first time mommy AMAZING!  Daddy, Michael, had bags of props that he carried in, with a smile, I might add!  I could tell they were uber prepared and ready for this shoot. We sat down and went through the props and planned out how we were going proceed. Tara fed Aubrey and then we were ready to start! We put her in the first "scene" and I could hear sniffles from behind my camera.  Looking at her beautiful baby girl, Tara had started to tear up, which in turn made me tear up! I know how special all of this was to this family. How this was a memory they would keep forever, and how lucky I felt, in that moment, to be a part of it! It makes me remember all of those feelings I had my first time around which only added to my tears.   We spent the next several hours moving and folding baby Aubrey, taking our time to feed, and make sure she was happy!

Here are just a couple of my favorite shots from the day. I hope you all enjoy! This experience, from the gift certificate to the shoot has definitely reminded me of how much I miss all those "first time" experiences. I wish Tara and Michael the best. I am so excited for all their "firsts" with Aubrey.

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I am loving all these Tiptoe senior sessions this year, and Mikayla is one of my favorites! We took her brothers senior photos several years ago, and little did we know the adventure we were in for... Wesley volunteered for the Shepherdstown Fire Dept, so we knew we wanted that to be one of our backdrops, however while we were there shooting, they got a call, and we actually got to photograph the helicopter that ended up landing right in back of the station... It was such a one in a lifetime experience!

I knew that Mikayla's session needed to be just as memorable! We started off in town and got some amazing shots, but then we headed out to the ball field, Mikayla's second home (she is quite the talented softball player)... AND the sunset magic was upon us... Oh and so was Daisy the cow! Who was quite a hit...every car that was pulling out after practice stopped to greet her! "That isn't something we see everyday" is what we got a lot!  I even got messages later that evening asking if it was me at the ball field. LOL... they saw a girl with a camera, a senior and a cow, and OF COURSE they would assume it was me!  I love it! Daisy the cow has apparently been such a part of Mikayla's life for so many years, her parents say she is the friendliest cow ever, that frequently when Mikayla would get home from school as a kid Daisy would meet her at the end of the field and walk with her home, just like a puppy! Aww, if that isn't one of the cutest stories I have ever heard. Also just a little tidbit of information that I learned, Daisy was born a twin, and because of that she isn't able to have babies now (although they are still hoping for a miracle, because Daisy used to play mom to a pig, and would make an amazing momma.)

Here are just a couple of my favorites from the day guys! Enjoy! willingham9 willingham11 willingham19 willingham28 willingham32 willingham33

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Hey y'all... Here is a preview of our Tiptoe school portraits for the fall sessions on Saturday August 29th and  Sunday September 13th!  I had one of my best-est friends come out so I could borrow her kiddos on what could have been the stickiest hottest days this summer, just so I could get our set ups all ready!!  Now, there are a couple more things I have bought to add to the set up but you get the idea on how cute it's going to be!! I can't wait to meet the kids for this weekends shoot! We do have 2 spots still up for grabs if you are interested! Our prices for prints start at just $5 and are so comparable to the schools pricing! Don't miss out on having your kiddos "shot" by us!! Call us at 304-995-6743 to grab your spot!!

Here is an example of what Tara got from school!! I know Maddy is so cute it doesn't matter what else is going on in the photo butttttttttt.... we want better for you!!

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And here is what you could get!!

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