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WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY BY TOOLE ART MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR DETROIT CHICAGO  AND WORLD DESTINATIONS bio picture

Modern style, beautifully classic, high end wedding photography


Welcome to our blog! We are Crystal and Mike, a husband and wife wedding photography team! We also shoot engagements, families and anything that might cross our paths. We do specialize in weddings however and bring to the experience two professional photographers with similar tastes but somewhat different styles. The luxury of working with two wedding photographers has always been an amazing bonus for our brides and grooms. We are located in Michigan and travel all over the state, we are also available for destination weddings and love to travel.


So if you are here to learn more about us, our style, our lives and anything else that might interest you, feel free to explore the blog and we hope to hear from you soon. If you are looking for something specific check out the categories section and for fun vendors, social networking sites, and other bridal goodies check out our links.


We will update as often as we can with images, life and information that you might like to know about, so bookmark if you are a blog stalker (like us). We also love comments and would love feedback and love from former/current clients, friends, family or whoever else might be interesting in the happenings of Toole Art Photography.

Hello Spring!

I apologize to those following this blog and the lack of activity lately. I have to say that adjusting to life with two little ones has been more challenging than I thought it would be. Going from one child to two seams like a huge change, especially when your little one is almost 4 already. Also Delilah has been a handful these past months. She is doing much better now, sleeping for me and not crying every night for hours on end, which allows me to get caught up on some photography work before wedding season gets here! On top of all this my baby sister is getting married in May! We have been busy with planning, showers, parties, etc. There will be many new pics of them very soon (for those of you who have watched me photograph them throughout the years!). To add to all this confusion and activity our hard drive on our desktop died and now we are transferring things from backup hard drives, scanning paperwork and re-desinging a few albums that got lost in the process. Oh well, things are quieting down now and soon the blog will be up and running again with lots of summer weddings, vacations, photo shoots and a few fun things we are working on at the moment ;)

So for now let me leave you with some recent photos from my 365 album (a photo a day of family/friends/etc. that I am making into an album at the end of the year!).

Dana and Chas

I know you guys are waiting for a preview! :) Here it is, our last wedding of ‘08. Hope you enjoy!

Quick update

So I thought I would post a quick update to why I have been missing in action for awhile now. As most of you who read this know we had a baby girl on November 6th of last year. Well recently we have been struggling with feeding issues. I don’t want to get into detail here but she isn’t gaining weight fast enough and won’t take a bottle to supplement food. This has resulted in many sleepless nights for me and thus my mind hasn’t been able to wrap around work, cleaning, blogging, etc. etc. On top of this our basement flooded again and so Mike has had to deal with fixing that while dealing with a sleep deprived wife. So we love our baby girl, we are enjoying her when we are awake and functioning, but for now blogging will have to wait. Here are a few recent pics. :)

Merry Christmas everyone!

We will be out of the office for a few weeks and I thought I would share a few pics of the kids before we leave. We have our last wedding of the year on the 27th and will be posting pics some time in ‘09. Hope everyone has fun with family and friends and drive careful!

Doesn’t she look terrified!

Like the hair?

Taking a breath

So, life really changes when you have a baby. I knew that already since I had my first beautiful baby boy 3.5 years ago, but the reality check really hits home when you are sleeping very little and exhausted from caring for everyone but yourself. Well I am starting to feel like myself again, and I believe that I can possibly get caught up on some of the things that need to get done around the house and for the business. Yeah! Christmas is just around the corner and I am very excited for my baby girls first Christmas (although she won’t have a clue what is going on!) and also the first year that Parker really gets it and is excited about the holidays. Since my baby girl is almost a month old (crazy!), I thought I would post a few more pics from the last couple of weeks. :) Enjoy!

Delilah’s Room

One more post for the day. These aren’t the greatest pics and her room is technically not done yet, but I wanted to post a few pics of our hard work getting her cute nursery finished! Here it is!

Once again the photos are horrible, but here are the really cute art pieces that I got off Etsy.com! Love em!

Here is the wall that took me way to long to paint, but in the end I really love it, so it was worth it!

The bookshelves that my dad and hubby made when this was Parker’s room. Very nice to have some storage space in such a tiny room.

We really need a new rocking chair (it is on the list) and I will be getting a few canvases for these walls, they aren’t quite done yet. :)

Happy “late” Thanksgiving

So I figured that now that Thanksgiving was over I would post a few more Halloween images that I never got a chance to update. :) Here are a few of Parker and Mike cutting up the pumpkin and Parker on Trick-or-Treating day!

Quick Update

Not much time to do anything over here. We are trying to get little things done, like orders that need to go through and albums that need to be designed, but with the lack of sleep it has been a bit difficult. One thing that has been hard to do is get photos of our new little girl. I wanted to hire a photographer (hello, we do love supporting those professional photographers), but Mike was convinced we could do it all on our own. Well we have a few good pics of her, but not quite what I want at this point. We are going to try for some more today, but here are a few to wet the whistle. She is a doll, now if she would sleep at night she would be an angel. Oh, and on a business note, we are only taking a few more weddings this summer. Both my sisters are getting married and since that takes up alot of time and weekend availability we won’t be taking as many weddings this summer. So if you are on the fence and need to book, let us know soon. :)

My favorite!

Finally

It has been a bit hectic here and things are finally starting to slow down a bit. We still aren’t sleeping the greatest, but with Mike home we can take naps during the day. So I thought I would post my birth story here for family, friends, clients to see and then I don’t have to repeat it on 50 different websites/emails/etc. I also have some photos ready to show of baby Delilah!

On Thursday, November 6th (about a day before I was suppose to be induced) around 5AM I started having very mild but annoying contractions. Mostly because I figured they were false labor and secondly because I couldn’t sleep after they started coming about every half hour and waking me up enough to keep me up till I finally rolled out of bed. I then started getting ready for the following day, cleaning house, vacuuming, bathing Parker, etc. I was still having these contractions but they were very little and not that noticeable. My Dad, Mom, Jenny and Becky were heading up around 10/11 at night to stay with Parker and to be there when they induced on Friday. My dad showed up around 2 and my contractions had started getting a bit more painful. We decided to run some errands. First to the post office where I had a few stronger contractions while standing in line to mail photos. Then to the groomer, so the dog would shed less when baby came. We were then going to go get groceries, but we decided that I couldn’t handle that. So Dad went out by himself to get food and I stayed in timing my contractions. They started to get closer together and stronger and even though I still thought they weren’t real I decided to call the doctor. Mike got home right around this time and my doctor called me back and said to get into the hospital right away. I was still a little surprised, but we got everything all packed up, called my dad, and family and headed out. My mom and sisters headed out early so they could get to Holland in time and I still thought we would be sent home from the hospital. Or at least I thought that till right around when we got to the hospital and boom, my contractions started to be a lot less tolerable. They were very hard to handle as we headed to the maternity ward and when they checked me I was dilated to a 4/5. About 30 minutes later I talked to the nurse about how fast labor was last time and how when I started really going it was a swift process. She said she would check my again and said, yeah you are coming along fast. I was at a 6 and they ordered me my epidural. This took about 45 minutes for the tech guy to get set up and in place. We had some trouble with threading the catheter. Or at least that is how they explained it. In the mean time, my head was down and I was wrapped around a pillow and was hyperventilating a bit. The nurse had to hold my head down cause for some reason I couldn’t think straight and kept wanting to get up. Finally it was in and they checked me again, 8. They then broke my water and I once again explained that last time they broke my water it was really fast after that. So a bit later they checked me again and I was all set to push. We had arrived at 5:30 and we were getting ready to push some time after 8. It all seamed very unreal to me. Especially after pushing through two contractions and the doctor announcing that the baby was here. I was like, WHAT? I didn’t do anything! So she was born at 8:31 and was much easier than her big brother had been. The rest of the hospital stay was nice and mostly relaxing and I actually missed it after getting back home. So now we are just trying to adjust to a new life together and trying to keep up on the little things (like paying bills) that need to be done. ☺

I am sure Jenny will be thrilled that I posted this one, but I thought it was so funny. He he.

Parker is such a good big brother. He is a bit grumpy and possibly wants all the attention, but he still loves his baby sister.

Halloween and baby talk

So I wanted to post a quick update and a bit of information that I thought would be helpful for those looking to book an ‘09 wedding. :)

First, everything is still going well with my pregnancy. I am officially in my last week, 3 days till my due date. I had some labor on Friday and Saturday this past weekend but we are really praying nothing happens till at least Friday. Unfortunately my hubby had to go out of town for 3 days, yeah bad timing. So we are waiting it out and hoping no more contractions come. The baby room is pretty much ready, I have been meaning to get a picture or two to post here, I will do that soon. For those who don’t know, her name is Delilah Brooklyn.

Secondly, thanks to all my understanding brides! This is prime ‘09 booking time and I know I have had to phone conference with alot of people lately, due to the fact that I can’t really leave the city of Holland. I won’t go far from the hospital at this point. And also, to any potential ‘09 brides, I apologize for not being able to meet up personally at this point, but I can phone and video conference if need be and I am more than happy to answer any and all questions that need to be answered. I also will have open days for meetings between Christmas and the New Year, so if anyone wants to meet up in that time frame I will be happy to schedule something. I am also more than halfway booked for ‘09 and due to the fact that both my sisters will be getting married this next summer, I have less dates available than before. I haven’t been updating my website calendar, so be sure to ask about your date soon because there is more booked than meets the eye. :) It is on my to do list to update that schedule.

Lastly, here is a pic of my little man in his Halloween costume. We had a party this past weekend and he kept this thing on for a total for about 1 minute! Hopefully he will keep it on longer for actual trick-or-treating!

AJAXed with AWP