I am a bit of a picture addict.  I love taking pictures of my kids and having them professionally taken.  Usually if I am going to take the kids in to have their portraits taken, I put weeks, if not months, into planning their styling and how I want the pictures to look. I wanted to share with the hive a set of my favorite pictures that I had taken and how I came up with the styling.

A few months after my twins were born, my mother gave me a gift that I treasured deeply.  She gave me my grandfather’s Purple Heart, medals and dog tags.  I come from a military family and this was a huge honor to me to be the caretaker for these items.  She told me they were for my little Joe when he gets older so he has something from the man he was named after.  After lots of tears on both our part, I tucked these little treasures away.  It was this gift that gave me the idea for a set of pictures.  I wanted to take a picture that would commemorate who my children are named after.  I don’t have a lot of items from each of the family members, but I thought if I could make a special picture for their baby books, that would be great.

This set of pictures took me over a year to bring to life.  I spent time collecting items both new and old.  What I really wanted for each picture was to have a toy that represented something important to the person they were named after.  I wanted a picture if the person was deceased, or the actual person for those they were still alive. I wanted them dressed in a way that represented their namesake. I also wanted something that belonged to that person.  Here is what I came up with:

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My oldest son James is named after Mr. Train’s grandfather (Great Grandpa Train).  Since he is still alive, we wanted him to be in the picture with our little guy.  I don’t own anything that used to belong to Great Grandpa Train, but we did find a cute set of plastic kids’ golf clubs that James absolutely loved. Great Grandpa Train loves to go out and golf.  When we drove out to visit them, the kids had a great time playing in their golf cart in their garage.  I thought it would be a fun way of honoring that part of him and the memory the kids made while visiting them.  I dressed him in a simple argyle sweater to go with the golf theme.  Something simple made it easy to coordinate with Great Grandpa as well.


James with his Great Grandpa all done up for a game of golf

Coming up with three little boy names in a year was not easy.  Luckily there were plenty of people we wanted to honor that helped us come up with names for our twins.

Nicholas is named after Mr. Train’s cousin.  They were close as children, and unfortunately his cousin passed away when my husband was just out of high school. I had to get information from Mr. Train on this one because his cousin is someone I have never met and didn’t know much about his personality or his interests.  We found a picture of him as a child that Mr. Train said everyone had in their house as their favorite childhood picture.  I thought it would be perfect if it was a picture that meant so much to his family.  The toy we picked was a stuffed husky.  His family had raised huskies for his whole life and they often had multiple dogs at a time.  One item that Mr. Train has from his cousin is a black leather jacket.  It is hard to see in the picture, but Nick is sitting on top of it. When talking to Mr. Train about how Nick should be dressed for the picture, the only thing he could remember was that his cousin liked to wear page boy hats backwards and had simple clothes.  I was able to find a small page boy hat and we put him in a white shirt and khaki pants.


Nick wasn’t giving us many smiles that day so I had to go with the not screaming picture.

Joe was the main reason I wanted to do these pictures.  I had the idea in my head as soon as my mother gave me those medals and my grandfather’s purple heart.  I knew exactly what I wanted.  This one was easier for me to stage because it was my grandfather and each detail held a special place in my heart.  I used a picture of my grandfather in Germany during World War II.  I can’t explain why I love looking at that picture so much, but he is so young, proud and full of life.  I hung the Purple Heart from the frame and brought his dog tags along with us.  The toy I used to represent my grandfather was a space shuttle. After getting out of the military, my grandfather worked for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a bunch of the Apollo missions.  (I know that this is the shuttle Discovery, but it was really hard to find Apollo toys and the ones I did find were way more expensive.)  I was lucky to find a used little aviator jacket for 5 dollars on ebay.  I think it really added to the look of the picture.


It brings tears to my eyes to see this picture and remember the man I honored with my child’s name

Lilly came along after these pictures were taken, but I knew when she was born I would want to do something similar for her.  Lilly is my only child that doesn’t have a first name as a family name.  I just couldn’t give up my favorite little girl name.  She does however share my sister’s middle name.  I started planning her picture before she was even born.  I knew I wanted her to take a picture with her Auntie, but that wasn’t easy since my sister doesn’t live near us.  I had to take the picture when Lilly was 2 months old while my sister was here for Christmas.  The toy I picked out was a stuffed Christmas tree.  My sister lives for Christmas and she gave us that toy as a gift when the boys were born.  My mom gave me the dress Lilly is wearing.  It was one of my mom’s favorite dresses to put my sister in when she was a baby.  Luckily it fit perfectly.  We took several pictures that day and my favorite one is the one where they were both wearing Christmas hats.  The silly spring hat fits my sister’s personality perfectly.  I tried to hang up the other pictures that were a little more serious and fit with the other pictures, but I couldn’t. The silly one is just perfect for these two.


Two of my favorite ladies in my life showing off their silly sides

These four pictures have a permanent spot on my wall.  I love that they commemorate something as important as their name.

Do you have anything that represents your child’s name or namesake?