Christmas Card

I ended up using this photo that I took last year in Utah for our Christmas Card background. I love how it turned out. As soon as I took the photo I thought it would be such a fun background.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year! We hope you were able to enjoy celebrating the holidays with family & friends!

Colorado Wedding

In September, I had some clients fly me out to Colorado to shoot their wedding in Colorado Springs. It was beautiful & I just wanted to share some of the images from the day. (I was lucky enough to have my friend Kristen come shoot with me & I couldn't have done it without her.) I played soccer with the Bride in high school, and it was so fun to see her again. The ceremony was beautiful & I just can't get enough of weddings!

New Favorite Recipe

Sorry we have been MIA lately, the move and getting settled in to the new place have kept us busy. We had dinner at our friend's place and they made this recipe in a little bit of a variation, but I LOVE IT! Its pretty quick & easy- try it out!

Chicken Saltimbocca

Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis

Prep Time:

15 min

Inactive Prep Time:

--

Cook Time:

20 min

Serves:

6 servings

Ingredients

• 6 (3-ounce) chicken cutlets, pounded to evenly flatten
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 6 paper-thin slices prosciutto ( we used Ham slices instead)
• 1 (10-ounce) box frozen chopped spinach, thawed ( I think this is optional)
  
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 (14-ounce) can low-salt chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions

Place the chicken cutlets flat on the work surface. Sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. Lay 1 slice of prosciutto atop each chicken cutlet.

Squeeze the frozen spinach to remove the excess water. Season the spinach with salt and pepper. In a small bowl, toss the spinach with 1 tablespoon of oil to coat.

Arrange an even, thin layer of spinach atop the prosciutto slices. Sprinkle the Parmesan evenly over each. Beginning at the short tapered end, roll up each chicken cutlet as for a jellyroll. Secure with a toothpick.

Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of oil in a heavy large skillet over high heat. Add the chicken and cook just until golden brown, about 2 minutes per side. Add the chicken broth and lemon juice, and scrape the browned bits off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon. Bring the liquid to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium. Cover and simmer until the chicken is just cooked through, about 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a platter. Simmer the cooking liquid over high heat until it is reduced to about 2/3 cup, about 5 minutes. Season the cooking liquid with salt and pepper, to taste. Remove toothpicks from the chicken. Drizzle the reduced cooking liquid over the chicken and serve immediately.

(These are her instructions from the food network website).

Forgiveness

Forgiveness: My Burden Was Made Light

This morning while I was eating breakfast I went over to lds.org and decided to watch some of the Mormon messages. I loved watching this video and it is a great reminder to me of the atonement in our lives. Our Savior is such a great comfort in our lives if we let him in. Something that really struck me from this video was when a friend said that he believed that this man had decided long before the accident, before he ever knew anything would happen like this, that he would forgive. I wonder if we have each made that same decision in our lives. I also enjoyed hearing how much this man was able to rely on our Savior to help him forgive and begin the healing process. Our savior is an incredible being, who was sent to help us in our lives.

If you get a chance- watch this video and if you have even more time, watch all of the video's on lds.org "Mormon Messages". What a blessing it is to have the gospel in our lives and the technology to share it.

Engagement Photos

On Monday I went with a couple to take their engagement photos and I LOVE how they turned out so I couldn't wait to share some. There are a couple that we took on a polaroid camera too that are fun! I am so excited for their wedding in August!

Relief Society Photo Class

I love love love love love this photo! This is my beautiful cousin Stephanie & she got married last August and had me come photograph her wedding and I had such a blast at her wedding. It was so easy to photograph them and she has great taste and is so beautiful!

Next week i am going to do a relief society class on photography and I wanted to see what people might be interested in learning? Have any suggestions for me?

Recent Wedding

I have been able to do a lot of fun shoots lately. One of them was this wedding. I took a little bit of time after the bride finished touching up for pre-reception photos and took these shots. I like them all but wanted to see which one you thought is the best out of them. so... tell me what you think!
I love the natural light in these photos. I took them right next to a window and I just think she looks gorgeous. One thing I am working on is my posing to get the right look and angles, but I think they still look pretty good.



Also- this is the wedding where I took that awesome photo of my ring. I took some of the Bride & grooms rings as well, but I just couldn't pass up the chance to put my ring in that beautiful setting.
Here is the shot with the Bride & Groom's ring:
In other news... we made reservations for a moving truck. ETA 2 months and we are headed east!

And... I got to go swimming today with Adam and some friends after dinner. I am one happy girl because I LOVE to SWIM and I am looking forward to spending any minute of free time in the pool this summer.

2 Year Wedding Anniversary!

We are in love and loving life! We can't believe that 2 years has gone by so fast, but we are enjoying being married.

On our anniversary, I was in my last day of finals so I was working non-stop to be able to finish my last final so we could go to dinner and celebrate. Adam had to work, so I was trying to get his gift before he would get home, so I took a break from studying to go pick up his present. After being at the store for only 10 minutes or so, I was looking at something and then turned around and saw Adam! Apparently we went to the same store to get our gifts, so it was pretty funny running into each other. Adam also gave me some beautiful flowers. I love flowers!

I guess its kind of tradition, but we went on our first date to Outback steakhouse and so we decided to go there for dinner and then we went to Chili's and got a molten chocolate lava cake to go. It was so yummy and fun to celebrate our 2 married years together.

Know anyone in Knoxville, Tennessee?

Because if you don't now, you will in a few months!!!!
Yes- we have decided and Adam is going to start the MBA program at the University of Tennessee this fall, so we are going to move there this summer! It will be a huge change and I am sure that it hasn't hit us yet what a huge change it will be! Yikes! But we feel good about moving there and are excited for the new adventures ahead! I am not too excited about the idea of packing up and driving across the country, but we will make it work.So if you have any great moving tips or know someone in Knoxville, let us know because we would love to start making contacts there and starting all of the plans!

In other news- I finished my 20 credit crazy semester with a 3.8! I was pretty excited about it, but was working for a 4.0. I am still happy though because it was SO busy and I am glad the semester is over!

And a post is not complete without photos so here are some I took while we were in Escalante in Southern Utah on a camping trip last summer!

2D design

One of the classes I am taking right now (and almost over with!!! only 2 weeks left of this term!!!) is a 2D design class. I am loving it! I have learned a lot about the elements and principles of design.

My latest project was called Image manipulation and I had to do just that- manipulate an image using the elements and principles of design and follow some other criteria. I went through a bunch of ideas, but finally came across the idea to mix these two photos.

One of the images is of my nephew and the other is one that I took in Disney world.

My nephew loves LOVES loves LOVES elephants, so it would be fun if I could do something like this, but with an elephant shadow, but I am still happy with the way it turned out.
What do you think?

Nephew

Lacey was in town for a fun week in February and we took the chance to take some quick photos of dustin in our front room. I think they turned out so cute! What do you think?