The Smiles Have Started
Of course his smiles elicit big smiles from Mommy and Daddy.
Of course his smiles elicit big smiles from Mommy and Daddy.
In case you missed our Twitter and Facebook posts, LaBranda and I welcomed our beautiful baby boy, Ryker, into the world on May 30th. It was a long labor process with many ups and downs but in the end we have a very healthy baby boy. A week after his birth, the ever talented Rebecca Mill of The Indie Image (you should really check our her new site – it is pretty awesome) came to our house to photograph some amazing shots.
I’ve shared some of our favorites below. If you want to look at some more, check out the full Ryker’s First Photo Shoot gallery.
Early on in our pregnancy we decided that we wanted to invest in some maternity as well as newborn photos. We knew exactly who we wanted to capture these special memories for us – Rebecca Mill of The Indie Image. We met out at Joyner Park in Wake Forest one evening around 6:00pm and in just over an hour, she captured some amazing shots. Once Ryker arrives, we can’t wait to see what sort of newborn shots she captures for us. If you are in need of a photographer for any kind of event, connect with her on Facebook or Twitter. We hope you enjoy some of the photos below!
You can check out the full gallery on our SmugMug page at: http://photos.themanersfamily.com/FriendsFamily/Maternity-Photos/
That’s right folks – in just a few short weeks, there will be a new addition to this Maners Family! On (or about) May 23rd we plan to welcome Ryker Lee Maners into our family. LaBranda and I are VERY excited and can’t wait to share a lot of our new adventures with our little boy. While the blog hasn’t seen much life since this time last year, we plan to rekindle things with photos and more!
One of the desserts I made for Easter was a flourless chocolate cake. The idea for this cake came when I asked my friends at Savory Spice Shop if they could get in raw cacao nips, boy did they ever deliver. I had little idea what I wanted to do with the nips, other that just snack on them, but I figured I better use them in some kind of recipe. I started racking my brains of what I could make, and thought back to my time at Johnson and Wales. I had made a few flourless chocolate cakes while in school, but somehow most of my recipes that I worked on are MIA. After searching high and low in the black hole known as our garage, I went to work trying to create one from what I remembered, while adding some new touches. Here is what I ended up with, and while it still needs tweaking, it turned out pretty good for this non baking and pastry culinary girl.