One day, I just knew it was what I wanted to do!

I have had many jobs since I left school, as I am sure lots of people have. When I left school, I really didn't have much of an idea of what I wanted to do. I did well at school and actually stayed on to do A-levels but I had lost that drive for learning at school and wanted to get myself into something I knew I would enjoy more. So I quit after a year and enrolled at Art college. I loved it but I lost total focus after about 12 months and ending up leaving the course early.

Now, with only my GCSEs and an AS level in Art, I knew I wanted to get into a job and learn at the same time. I decided on a childcare course over 2 years where I worked at placements 4 days a week and did my college work on the 5th day. Now this was amazing for me and I had the best 2 years working in Early Years getting my qualifications. I then went on to work in a number of private day nurseries and loved working with children.

I wanted to further my career after about 5 years and when an opportunity came up to train as a teaching assistant through an apprenticeship, I threw everything I had into getting offered a place. I felt so honoured when out of 250 applicants, I was chosen as one of the 12 offered the position. It was the start of a wonderful journey into school life for me. I trained both level 2 and level 3 and passed my course with a merit. I was even awarded 'Apprentice of the Year Award' in 2009, which was just incredible after the rubbish year I had, losing my dearly loved Nan.

When my training was complete, I was offered a teaching assistant position in school and finally had my dream job. I had always loved working with children but it wasn't until I worked in a primary school that I really fell in love with what I did. I was so happy and went on to work in another school when teaching assistant hours had to be cut back in the school I had trained in. I was so lucky to move to another school with another incredible team of people. I loved everyone there and settled in straight away. This had now been the career I had always wanted for about 6 years but this was soon to change!

I met my husband and we got married. Then we were expecting our first baby and everything was rosy. But after leaving school for my maternity leave and spending so much time with our daughter, Erin, I knew I didn't want to go back to full time work again. I didn't want to miss out on anything and I wanted to be with her as much as I could. So, I did go back, just 2 days a week until I fell pregnant with our second baby and it was then I knew, I definitely would not want to go back and miss out on two of my babies. So my husband and I made the decision that I would leave school until our girls were maybe a bit older and both at school. I could then go back to teaching and not miss any of them.

So I left.

And I loved being home with the girls being a mom. Being a mom for me is the best job ever. But I still wanted to help bring money home for our family and knew I had to think of something I could do from home. So I started a craft business (must be the arty person in me) just making plaques and frames and personalised gifts. It was hard at first, when the girls were so little, as I would often be working til silly o'clock at night when they had gone to bed. At this time, my husband had bought me a DSLR camera for Christmas after the birth of our second daughter. It was amazing and I not only used it for taking photos of my work bits and pieces, I was also using it to take photos of our girls growing up.

I really started to get into it. I was always getting my camera out to snap pics of the girls playing, eating their dinner, on holidays and I found the more I shared my photos, the more people were commenting that they were actually quite good. New year 2019 I decided that I was going to go and do a photography course at college and actually learn how to use my camera properly - in manual mode! (ahhh, scary!)

I loved it! Loved it so much, I did the next course, too! Then from there I really started to take an interest in newborn photography. I followed some amazing photographers on YouTube and decided yep, this is the next step for me. So I took my newborn training in September 2019 and got straight to it. I guess it's a perfect mixture of the two wonderful things I chose after leaving school. Art and children. Here I get to work with tiny babies and also children, which I spent so many years doing but I also get to show my creative arty side with how I compose and execute my photos.

I love the feeling I get when I capture memories for families. Freezing such special moments in time, to look back on for years to come definitely pulls me into this career, too. I know how I feel when I look at photos around my home, especially when some time has passed and I smile, remembering how little my girls were then, what a fun day we had there, the feeling we had 'that day.' Photographs are so important. They're priceless! I would like to be remembered as an amazing newborn photographer in Tamworth. Even better would be to be well known for it in surrounding areas too such as Lichfield, Sutton Coldfield, Four Oaks, Birmingham etc.

You really are never too old to start something new. It's taken me until I'm almost 40 (SHHH! That's a secret!) to fully know what I want to do that fits best around my home and family. I feel incredibly lucky that I have been able to set up a lovely studio in my home and I feel proud that I have pushed myself to learn new things again. My dream is to have my own studio one day, away from my home, with a lovely big store front that has huge windows. Ive always been inspired by this quote and one day...

I'm going to make it happen.