Senior Shoot

The first time I ever heard of "senior shoots", I thought the photographer was talking about about REAL seniors.
As in people over 65 years old.
Weird, but okay. Old people need pretty portraits too.
Then I found out senior shoots are shoots with high school seniors!
We have "grad pictures" in Canada, but no "senior pictures".

Why not give it a try, eh?

Meet Jessie.
A real high school senior!

We had to get a picture with her car! You gotta document a teenager's first ride!

These pictures were actually taken weeks ago at the height of fall.
This Provo Canyon park had a million picture-perfect spots!

With senior shoots there are lots of wardrobe changes.

You want to showcase every side of who the teen is at this point in her life.

Jessie is a super sweet girl glowing with inner and outer beauty.
And she has this spunky side which had us laughing during the entire shoot!

The "blue shirt" pictures below are my favorite of the whole shoot!

Isn't she gorgeous!

This is my favorite picture. It screams "top model" to me.

Here are the "tree pictures"
We found this tree with a sideways branch you could sit on!

Jessie is also a softball player so we got some sexy-sporty pics too!

And lastly, we snapped a few pictures of Jessie holding these rings she wears on a necklace.

They have sentimental value for Jessie and she wears them everyday.

You can see them in almost every picture, but I wanted to make sure we had a few pictures just of the necklace.

Overall I learned senior shoots are a lot of work, but they're fun because you get to explore all the different sides of one person and tell a story through pictures.
If you get a fun person like Jessie, the shoot is a piece of cake!

A Doggy Birthday Party!

Our little Yoda is one year old!
I never in my life thought I would throw a birthday party for a dog, but here I am!

First things first.
You HAVE to see the invitation I made for Yoda's doggy friends.


This was the perfect excuse to invite my friends and their dogs over and have a dog-friendly cake!

My friend Mallory from Livin' Sweet is known for making amazing cakes, but I think she's outdone herself with this one.
It was a peanut butter cake with carrot shavings on top.
Yoda loved the carrot shavings!

Here's us presenting Yoda with his cake.
Yeah, we put Yoda in his Christmas outfit, so sue me.

All the dogs LOVED the cake! It was gone in minutes!

Here's Roxy eating her piece.
Roxy is my friend Ashley's dog.

Harry in this adorable elf costume.

Pete, in his hilarious Christmas sweater.
Both Pete and Harry are Mallory's dogs.

This is Cali. My friend Gaby "borrowed" her sister-in-law's dog just for the party! LOL!

And last, but not least, this is Cleo, Aaron and Ashley's new dog.
She's huge, but was probably the calmest one at the party.
She's such a good dog.

Here's Yoda cleaning up the crumbs.
I was going to get plates for dogs, but come on.
They're DOGS!

For the humans at the party, we had a hot chocolate bar with all the toppings you could dream of, including my new favorite, eggnog whip cream. So yummy!

We also had three kinds of marshmallows: mini marshmallows, strawberry marshmallows and GIANT marshmallows.

Ever seen a dog try to eat a giant marshmallow? It's hilarious!!!!

The marshmallow is almost as big as his head!

Some of Yoda's friend even brought him presents! That sure was a surprise!

The first gift we opened made me burst out laughing.
It's a dog Snuggie!

The second gift was a stocking full of dog toys!

Even when some of the guests were leaving, Yoda was still the life of the party.
Watching him play with his friend Roxy was hilarious!

Here's our birthday boy all pooped after the party!
Make fun all you want. We had so much fun!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Apparently we came home from Canada with more goodies than I realized.

You see, I fell in love with a tuque/scarf set when we were at Roots, but they were too much money considering how much I had already spent on our shopping trip. (See former post.)
But what I didn't know was that Tom BOUGHT the set when he bought his Canada hoodie.
He surprised me with them on Thursday morning, my 26th birthday!

They're PINK with a gorgeous maple leaf pattern!!!!
They're also super warm and match my winter coat. I love love love my new tuque and scarf!
Thanks to my wonderful hubby who clearly loves me sooooo much!

These pictures were taken at Tucanos, a Brazilian restaurant where you can eat as much delicious meat as you want! Then they roll you out of the restaurant in a wheelbarrow and you quickly slip into a food comma.
It was awesome.
Happy birthday to me!

A Picture Perfect Family

Meet Nate, Sheree, and little Rivers.
Have you ever seen a family so photogenic?

They were soooooo fun to shoot!
It helped that my friend Ashley was there to make little Rivers smile and laugh the whole time!
The location for this shoot was a little random.
There's a house/farm I pass on the bus everyday with a really cute barn in the backyard.
One day I got up the courage to walk up to the house and ask if I could take pictures there!
"Ummm, hi. I'm a photographer. Can I take pictures at your house? I promise I'm not a stalker creepy person."
Surprisingly, they said yes!
There were a million sweet spots to choose from.

Who doesn't love hay pictures!

Fence pictures (with mountains)!!I actually did this shoot on October 31st - Halloween!
So we had to document Rivers' 1st Halloween costume.
He was a Pea in a Pod!
Homegrown by Nate and Sheree!
;-)

There were over a hundred good pictures from this shoot. Sheree looked stunning in every one! Nate looked like the perfect dad in every one!
And Rivers, well, do I even need to say how adorable he looks? I want to pinch his cheeks in every picture!
It was REALLY hard to narrow them down to just these nine pictures.