Holiday

Happy Thanksgiving

in

  It's a little bit late, but I wanted to share some photos from Thanksgiving and say how grateful I am to have had the time to spend with my family.  At the end of the day, I know that what I am most grateful for are a supportive family, a loving husband, and the time I get to spend with them.  But I'm also grateful for good food.  It's a close second :)  And nothing is better than Mom's cooking.

 

 

Amazing vegetables - Green beans sauteed with garlic (and butter of course!) and Asparagus lightly sprinkled with salt and sugar.  Unusual, but it's fantastic!

 

 

 

Roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams.

 

Fruit salad,                                                                                                                            Cucumbers and tomatoes with vinegar.

 

 

And not your traditional Thanksgiving meat, but since my Dad's from New Zealand, we grew up eating lamb with mint sauce for our fancy dinners and he was happy to cook it for us while everyone was in town.  It took a few hours to drive around and actually find a store selling it, but definitely worth it.

 

 

 

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving, and Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

Merry Christmas!

in ,

I'm off to Spokane with Thomas to visit my family for the holiday.  I hope all of you have a very merry Christmas, and that the holidays are a time for you full of love, laughter, and delicious FOOD!
As a special Christmas gift this year, we managed to find our box of ornaments that we thought had been lost in our last move.  I was especially excited about it as it contained all the ornaments I had received each year since I was a baby.  In my family, each year we each got an ornament that represented a little bit of that year, and I was given the collection when I got married a few years ago.  Some are beautiful, some are funny, and some are just sentimental.
Here's a peek of our tree, and a few of the ornaments on it....

The first one was a wedding gift to us from my mother-in-law, who has hand-made these satin bells for her tree.  Each bell represents over 40 hours of work! The second was my very first ornament ever!

I was originally a music education major in college, I played soccer for 8 years growing up and refereed for 3 years after that, and I was an adorable kindergartner.

Now the first photo might confuse you, until you realize what the little red bird is- it's a kiwi!  For those of you who might not know, I am a first-generation American.  My mother is from England, and my father is from New Zealand, and so I am half-kiwi.  The second photo pretty much sums up my sophomore year of college- I was diagnosed with mono (later it turned out that it was a misdiagnosis, but that's a story for another time), and went from sleeping an average of 3-4 hours a night to about 13-14.

The final photo is my first Christmas gift from my husband Thomas.  We decided to continue the tradition I grew up with and give each other an ornament each year.  This year I got this awesome pewter camera.  Given that I have been working about 60 hour weeks all year, eating, sleeping, and breathing photography, this ornament sums up my year to a T.  Here's looking forward to another year of wonderful times behind my lens!

Sunshine, Smiles, Sunsets, and FIREWORKS!

in ,

For the fourth of july, we decided to take advantage of the opportunity for some pretty neat backgrounds and scheduled Brooklyn and Kagan's formals for the evening. We planned to take some normal photos at a couple of different spots in Springville that we had scouted out, and then play around when it got dark to see what we could get with the fireworks. A half an hour before the shoot Thomas and I decided to go get some smaller fireworks of our own to play around with between sunset and the fireworks show. I am so glad that we did! We got a great variety of photos, but some of the "small firework" photos are my favorites.
In light of the upcoming state holiday this saturday, I figured I would get these firework photos up now and share them with you all... :) (For all my out-of-state readers, the 24th of July is "Pioneer Day", which essentially comes out to a second fourth where people barbeque, set off more fireworks, and have lots of parades. As for me, I think any excuse to blow things up and see pretty colors is perfectly fine.)

We really lucked out- before the sunset we got some wonderful daylight photos. Not too harsh, some nice backlighting, and enough direct light to manipulate to my heart's content.


Something about this one just makes me smile...


Now you're probably thinking as you look at these next photos "Oh wow, Whitney must have enhanced the colors on that sunset- no way that is real." However, if you were to think that, you would be WRONG. wrongwrongwrong. I can say with absolute honesty that this sunset was just as incredible as it looks. If fact, I think I actually decreased the saturation of the colors a smidge. It was unbelievable.


And now that the sunset is over, we get to play.... :D


Brooklyn is a big fan of Harry Potter- I think it shows...


This shoot was so much fun, and there are a lot of other photos I would love to share- so be sure and check out the full gallery here.

4th of July

in

Thomas and I got up super early in the morning and went on down to Provo to catch the final day of the annual hot air balloon festival. There were SOOO many people there, and I loved seeing all the colorful balloons as they were being filled up and prepared for launch. I felt incredibly jealous as they all began to lift off, one by one and soar away into the sky. Someday we're going to have to find an opportunity to take a ride in one of those things....

As they got ready to lift off I went to the edge of the field and Thomas gave me a lift up on top of this crazy high wall (Thomas thinks it was only 12ft or so, I think it was MUCH higher!) to get some better shots.

To see some more shots, check out the gallery on smugmug!

May God bless America.