I have a little girl.  I have a little girl with a huge imagination and confidence to tackle just about everything set before her.  As a mama, those are precious gifts that I hope and pray each day as she grows, she will hold onto them.  I have a little girl who isn’t so little any more.  As much as I look at her and still see that adorable 4 yr old who loved to inform me about her imaginary friend Margot and her Mexico Mom, she’s 7 today.  She’s finishing up 1st grade.  I do realize that she’s not dating or preparing for college but she’s also reached the point where I can’t carry her up to bed any more and that’s one of those bittersweet milestones that tugs at my heart.  So I’m forced to accept that our relationship is changing and I want to do all that I can to keep us close as she grows older.

A couple of months ago, I had this idea to combine her love of pretend, and drama and dress ups with my love of photography and imagery and story-telling.  I asked her if she wanted to work on a project with me.  We got her notebook and started talking about favorite characters.  We talked about where their stories took place, what kind of costumes they wear.  From her list, we figured out which character she could pretend to be.  She chose Cinderella.  We talked about how she dressed up as Cinderella for Halloween.  How she spent an entire day in 80 degree heat walking around Disney’s Magic Kingdom in her Cinderella dress and how she recently shared it with a friend of ours because it she had finally outgrown the dress.  We also talked about what it might look like and feel like, to pretend to be Cinderella before she goes to the ball.  She made notes for costume possibilities (brown skirt, black vest, apron).  She said we needed a wooden bucket and a rag.  She listed feelings that Cinderella might have felt and then practiced making those faces.  So Sadie’s project, Becoming Cinderella, began.

Then we went shopping.  We visited the local Good Will Store and she loved looking through all the clothes.  This child somehow inherited the shopping gene that skipped me.  It was actually surprising how fast we found the outfit.  A plain brown skirt and (with a little convincing) she agreed to a black tank top that I promised her I could make look like a vest.  I found the perfect scrub bucket at Home Depot and had a headscarf already in my drawer.  And I decided we could re-use her apron from her La la Loopsie Halloween costume. She had everything to look the part.

I also knew from the start that Hartwood Acres would be the perfect location and so we dressed her up, grabbed her bucket, and went to recreate some Cinderella magic.

Now, normally, I choose only a few images to share but with this session, I just couldn’t resist sharing them all (or almost all).  I hope you enjoy these as much as we’ve enjoyed creating them!

And I couldn’t resist sharing some of these in black and white too!

And one final happy picture!