Hi Sophie! Your Instagram account paints such a beautiful picture of slow living and natural parenting. You look like you are a nature lover and you certainly have your hands full with two busy young children very close in age. Tell us a bit about yourself and your family…
I am Sophie, lover of blue skies and deep water, magical light, good food and laughter. I am a mom of two wild children, Lexi and Finn, and a mountain loving husband, Cameron. Although our family is pretty nomadic, it feels like the Eastern Cape is in our blood. I grew up in KZN, studied at Rhodes in Grahamstown where I met my hubby, and since then have lived in Canada, Cape Town, Adelaide (RSA), and am currently in the funny little town of Alexandria, near Kenton-on-Sea. My hubby and I work for an adventure gap year program on a farm here, but I am also a photographer and blogger. I don’t see my blog or social media accounts as a place to spam you with adverts and products, but rather share and grow and inspire. I love sharing our daily adventures on Instagram, as well as the things I am working through as a mother and a woman. I love to think I keep things real and am pretty honest. I believe that kids need plenty of love, books and fresh air to thrive and do my best to give them these things while trying to feed them healthy food, look after our precious planet, love my skin and learn to love my body and tame my mind which goes in 30 different directions at once all day long.
As one of your loyal followers, I can assure you that you do keep things real. Your feed is not just pretty pictures but you also share valuable content for moms, and women in general. But your pictures are so pretty, you seem to have such a natural talent for capturing the beauty in the ordinary (and extraordinary) moments adventuring with your children.
I just love following your personal Instagram account. Where did your love for photography begin?
I have always loved art and creating and making, but after high school I decided that Fine Art was not the best life choice for a degree and, because I loved to write too, decided to study Journalism, and specialise in Photography. This sparked a passion for taking photos, and using pictures to tell stories, but it is only very recently that I have learnt to start letting the art back into my work. I feel like I have entered a whole new space in my work, wanting to capture memories and create art.
I love that – a beautiful family memory can indeed be captured forever as a piece of art. I think that when a moment is captured by an artist with an eye for aesthetics, it has the power to bring joy over and over again for years to come.
Having followed you for a while, I am interested in your views on parenting. You are clearly intentional about creating space for your children to learn through play and art and an appreciation of nature. Tell us more…
As I mentioned before, I feel very strongly that children only need a few important things when they are young. The first is obviously love – my views on parenthood have changed drastically since having children and I strongly believe in Respectful Parenting, however I do NOT find parenting easy or natural and still have to do a lot of work on myself. Next is unstructured play and time outdoors. I have also done so much reading on the vital importance of play for children – open ended, unstructured play and so I try and give my kids the space to do this. My toddler is only at school three days a week so we have more time for adventures and time in nature. I think nature is the best possible playground and that teaching our kids to love and value the natural world is so important. The trick for me is to choose small outings, to places nearby, and have really minimal expectations, and try and let the kids lead. We always take snacks and really slow down and appreciate the small things we find and try and have fun. I take my camera with us on most of our adventures, and sometimes I take lots of photos and sometimes I take none. For me, this is the way I am able to create art on daily basis and keep my talent and passion alive. The last thing I really fee strongly about is books and reading together – I don’t share about it as much but it forms a vital part of our days and life.
Yes, snacks are vitally important. And so are the minimal expectations, that’s great. I absolutely love the way my children are when we are in nature, every struggle and hardship of the day just fades away as they completely absorb themselves in adventure. And of course nature can do wonders for grown ups too!
So how does it go down behind the scenes, I mean you are a working mom. There is stuff to get done everyday, how do you do it?
The work/life balance is not a balance at all – it feels like a crazy juggle with at least one ball dropping all the time. I love spontaneity but am learning that I need a bit more structure in my life, so that’s something I am really working on at the moment to try and improve on. This will mean saying no more, which I need to get better at.
Balance is nonsense anyway. I’m all about finding rhythm. When you give up trying to balance everything you can be okay with the fact that some of the balls are dropping 🙂
I’d love to know what you do with all your beautiful photos. Do you get around to printing and organising them? Any advice on how to preserve our beautiful family memories?
I am really bad about getting photos framed, mostly because we have moved so much and never really had our own home. But I do get annual albums printed and my kids love looking through these. The way I do these is as the year goes by, I file my photos in monthly files. I tag my favourite photos and then at the end of the year, I pull all those favourite images into a Photobook file. Then I design my photobook using Orms Print Room software. I can also highly recommend Cassandra from Elysian Creative who designs and prints stunning books. I am hoping to get some prints framed soon for our walls. I’m going to display them on floating shelves so that I don’t have to commit to holes in the walls. Another lovely option for getting prints done is to get them printed as fridge magnets or little Nifty250 prints for your kids to look through and enjoy. I feel that the ways children see themselves in images shapes the way they think about themselves, and so I love choosing photos of my kids in nature and surrounded by family and friends who love them.
I love the idea of a yearly Photobook! I really must start doing that. Magnets are such a good idea too. I am thinking… Christmas gifts for the parents 😉
Like me, you are also currently living in the Eastern Cape. What do you love about living here?
As a nature lover, the Eastern Cape is paradise for me – especially our absolutely beautiful beaches which are really my happy place. We are close to Addo Elephant Park, we have beautiful Hogback and Fort Fordyce mountains, stunning farms and beautiful river systems and best of all, it feels like we have summer almost all year round.
Our beaches are amazing! We really love spending time at the beach as a family. Thank you so much for sharing, it’s been great to get to know you more, it makes following your adventure even more cool.
Follow Sophie’s personal Instagram account @what.sophie.saw here>
And visit her blog to follow her adventure and learn insights into topics like shopping local, natural parenting, healthy eating and other generally cools stuff, click here>
Follow Sophie’s professional Instagram account @sophiesmithfamilies here>
And visit her photography website here>
We want to live a slow life. A life of connection and simplicity. A life that allows us the space to assess what we really want to be spending our time and resources on. And so here we are, the Slow Down Family, working on slowing down more. We are figuring out how to apply this to all areas of our life, and how to do it while raising small children and pursing our dreams.
Follow our journey here as we share our experiences and tips on how to minimise and create space in our lives for the things that we really want to keep.