Park City Anytime: (Senior) Taylor

This weekend I’ve got another beautiful senior from Park City High School! Meet the lovely Taylor. We got up nice and early for her shoot, and she gets bonus points because it was FUHREEZING, but she rocked it like a champ. (I mean seriously, you’d never be able to tell from her pictures that it was only like 35 degrees out!) Despite the cold, Taylor was an absolute doll and so easy going about everything. Enjoy a few of my favorites : )

Taylor, thanks for getting up early and braving the cold! I had an awesome time getting to know you. I hope the rest of your senior year is nothing short of fabulous, and regardless of what you decide to do, I hope that the next year is even better!  (I vote for China ; ) Haha).

I was a big fan of the boots. 

Work it Taylor!

We took a short break to change outfits (and warm up with a little coffee haha), and then we were back at it.

Gorrrrrgeous. 

Btw, she has the best laugh. I almost didn’t get these pictures because I was laughing so hard with her.

Taylor, you have the prettiest smile…

Helloooo beautiful.

I’ll end on this prettiness.

Happy Weekend!

Food For Thought

After a very long day in the middle of a really crazy week, I came home to find this waiting for me on the kitchen counter:

A little reminder of how blessed I really am. Suddenly all the problems and stress of late don’t seem as unbearably large anymore. And I’m thankful that I have a wonderful husband who reminds me of this constantly. Also, the amazingly talented and ridiculously inspirational Mary Marantz tweeted this the other day, and I totally loved it (partially because of the food parallel, but mostly because it gave me a huge attitude check)…

“Whenever I feel like I have too much on my plate, I give thanks for the extra helpings.”

Definitely gave me something to think about. No matter what this week brings for you, don’t forget to slow down and enjoy some dark chocolate : )

Renee - October 26, 2011 - 6:48 pm

Did the Mary you speak of come up with that herself or did she get it from somewhere?

Carissa - October 27, 2011 - 9:25 am

Hmm. Well I guess I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s her own words because she’s pretty good about naming her resource if she quotes someone and she didn’t have any quotations around that statement.

Renee - October 27, 2011 - 6:31 pm

Definitely inspirational!

Park City Anytime: (Senior) Grace

Today I’d like to introduce you to beautiful Grace! She’s a senior at Salt Lake School for the Performing Arts. She’s quite the musician… Her voice is as sweet as she is : ) We met on a beautiful Saturday morning, and I had SUCH a great time with her. She’s a natural in front of the camera, not to mention super fun and outgoing. I’ll just say she definitely made getting up so early a bit easier… Haha. So worth it : )

Grace!! Thanks for choosing to spend the morning with me! You seriously have one of the kindest hearts, don’t ever change. I wish you all the best as you finish your senior year and jump headfirst into this crazy thing called life : )

She only had one outfit, but she did little things to change it up, which I am all for. One of them was this hat. Umm, awesome.

Grace, you are unbelievably gorgeous. That’s all.

Love these.

Bombshell.

These two right here? Might be my favorites! She is so full of life.

We had to get a few in with the family dog, Noel. She might not look like it, but she’s about 14 years old and still kickin’! One of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever met : )

We were finishing up and I saw this patch of light…

I’ll finish on this one because Grace looks stunning.

kelli - October 24, 2011 - 7:59 am

What a beautiful girl!! These are great Carissa!

Kathi Eteaki - October 24, 2011 - 1:20 pm

I especially like the black and white profile. She is beautiful!

Park City Anytime: (Maternity) Macy

One of my favorite families is going to have a little addition soon! The lovely Macy is due in November, and I had the honor of capturing this beautiful stage in her life. Sometimes I hesitate at the thought of doing maternity photos, simply because I feel a lot of the time maternity photos that I see are really cheesy. (And I’m not a big fan of cheese…) But I knew this shoot would be different, because Macy is an amazingly sweet and elegant woman, and I knew her vision for these photos was the same as mine: simple, classy, intimate. And I think we did just that. It was really all her, though. She’s so easy to photograph. Enjoy a few of my favorites : )

Beautiful Macy!!

The bump : )

We started out doing a few with the whole family.

Please notice Quincy on the right. I died laughing when I saw this. Hahaha.

So precious.

Then the kids got to head back to the car and receive their reward (gummies!), and we focused on Macy.

But we had a few, um, unexpected visitors.

So many cows! They were all over the road, too. It was quite funny.

Macy, you are stunning. Really.

I’m sort of in love with these next ones. Macy is simply glowing. (Literally and figuratively. Lol.) 

Then Moses decided to make an appearance. He just melts my heart… 

Quick outfit change. I adored her pretty pashmina.

By the way, how amazing does she look?! I hope I look this good when I’m 8 months pregnant. 

We decided to end it with a few of the wonderful couple.

Love.

Congratulations you guys! I can’t WAIT for the new little one to arrive! : )

Kelly - October 21, 2011 - 11:50 am

Hey girl, you nail those backlit shots! :) Love it! These pictures are beautiful!

Marjorie - October 21, 2011 - 12:17 pm

Macy is just beautiful to look at. I love seeing her and Eric together too, and the boys!! They get cuter every time I see them. Can’t wait to see the newest addition.
Miss you Eric and Macy!!
Love, Marjorie

The One Where I Failed My Driver’s Test

“How do you think you did?”

“I thought I did pretty good. Maybe I could have parallel parked a little better, but on the whole I did pretty good.”

“Well, unfortunately, you actually failed.”

Let’s back up. Have you ever felt like your life could be a TV show? Or a movie? I mean, my family has definitely had a few Modern Family and Arrested Development moments. And I’d like to think my friends and I are entertaining enough that we could have made it onto a few episodes of Friends. Or, have any of you seen The Truman Show? Oh man. After I watched that movie I totally started drawing on my mirror with soap and becoming suspicious of everyone around me. Then I actually thought about it, and I realized I had traveled a lot, including a trip out of the country, so that probably meant I wasn’t living in a giant bubble… Yeah. ANYWAYS.

In general, my life probably isn’t exciting enough to make a quality TV show. (Although, once in high school my dad told me I could be on Alias because I pulled a Sydney Bristow and dyed my hair from blonde to a dark reddish-brown, but that’s a different story.) The day I took my driver’s test, though? That one might have made it on TV. You see, I failed on my first move. I failed PULLING OUT OF THE PARKING LOT.

It’s probably not what you’re thinking. I didn’t  hit another car or anything. I did, however, turn left at the light and turn into the far lane, which apparently is an automatic fail. And sadly, she wasn’t allowed to tell me that I had failed until afterwards, so I had to go through the whole dang twenty minute test thinking I was doing ok, only to find out I had failed in the first two minutes. Which leads us back to the above conversation.

“Well, unfortunately, you actually failed.” Aaaaaand cue the tears. Yep, I burst into tears. She asked me if I knew why (after assuring me there was no reason to cry, by the way, to which I wanted to scream HELLO I just failed my driver’s test!!!!), and when I didn’t know she told me I had turned left into the far lane at the stop light. She went on to ask me why I had done it, and I simply mumbled that I couldn’t see the paint lines on the road so I was following the car in front of me. (Which was entirely true. They need to paint those lines in better if they’re going to be testing kids on driving, in my personal opinion.)  Aaaaaaand cue the laughter. She started laughing at me. Laughing! I was utterly confused and upset that she seemed to be finding so much humor out of my situation.

As it turns out, I had done pretty well on the rest of the test, and I would have passed with flying colors had it not been for the left turn fiasco. So I guess she thought it was ironic or something. Whatever the reason, though, she let me come back the next day and try again.

Don’t worry, I passed that time.

So the moral of the story is, folks, when at a stoplight turning left, don’t turn into the far lane. And enjoy some candy corn today. After all, it is October.

Happy Wednesday!

Jeremiah - October 19, 2011 - 9:02 am

I turn where I want these days. :]

So sorry for the trauma. At least you past the second time!

Melissa - October 19, 2011 - 10:13 am

It’s ok…when we moved to Chicago we had to take the written test again…and I ALMOST failed. They had all the road signs that we had to identify, but none of them had words on them! I don’t know what a sideways yellow triangle is, or a white circle unless it has words! Trevor laughed and laughed, and now points out every “No Passing” triangle around.

Carissa - October 21, 2011 - 10:27 am

@Jeremiah Haha thanks : )

@Melissa Haaaahahaha I can totally see Trevor doing that! Gosh I miss you guys…