2011 was an incredible year and definitely a busy one! Geoff and I are off to enjoy some well-earned R&R and adventure in Southeast Asia for the next three weeks. We are beyond stoked! We’ll be visitng 4 countries, traveling with backpacks, and visiting Thai islands, checking out temples, eating lots of yummy food, and going to an elephant camp! :) :) :) :) We are SO EXCITED about our expedition together and there will be LOTS of photos to share when we get back. We’ll be checking email periodically, but we won’t be able to return voicemails until February 1st.

I think ‘Up‘ said it perfectly: ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!

WOW. We are kind of reeling from everything. Geoff and I have been on cloud nine the past few days. Before this week, our trip to the Up replica house was just a fun and (BEYOND) amazing memory that Geoff and I were lucky enough to share. Since we posted about it, the photos have been spreading like wildfire! We are so thankful for all of the kind comments from friends and strangers all over the world! It’s been popping up all over the internet. One of the coolest moments was when we saw that the director of Toy Story 3, Lee Unkrich, tweeted about our shoot! The Daily Mail, a UK news site, even wrote a very sweet article about it: read it here! We sent Bangerter Homes a little album of the photos from the shoot and they put it in the Up House for all the visitors to see! Neat!

More than anything, we get such a thrill that our photo shoot has brought joy and happiness to other people. If just one other person got a smile from it, that makes me happy. :) I thought it would be fun to share a little behind the scenes!

These are from when we were planning our Carl and Ellie costumes. (These two are from my iPhone, sorry for the bad quality!)

Creating our handmade adventure book.

Sewing my yellow dress in the middle of the night before we left!

I wrote in the original post that hair and makeup was done by Enizio Hair and Makeup Artistry. Truth be told, I rarely step foot in a salon (I’ve been cutting my own hair for almost 5 years now) and I have NEVER had my makeup professionally done (yup, I did my own wedding makeup!). So it was really fun to splurge a little had get my hair and makeup done at a studio!

I’m kind of nervous to post this before and after photo, but I wanted to show you how awesome a job the girls at Enizio did! It was a really great experience. They even styled Geoff’s hair too! (His Carl haircut was done by Paper Doll Smile in Sacramento.)

We got there early to blow up all those colorful balloons.

Here we are with our photographers, Wendy and Tyler of Blue Lily Photography! It really was an honor to finally meet these incredible human beings. You must check out their blog and thier amazing work. I am truly envious of their travel-crazy, photographing, nomadic lifestyle.

Geoff and I post-shoot in a state of bliss. We were on top of the world!

We waved goodbye to the Up house and continued on our road trip in utter happiness. Off to another adventure!

OH my GOODNESS! I am SO excited to finally share these amaz-azing photos! They are being featured on Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride today (yay!), but I wanted to share them here plus a little more of the story as well! When Geoff and I heard about the Up house replica being built in Herriman, Utah, we got a crazy little idea to drive out from California and take photos there. We are huge Pixar fanatics and absolutely LOVE the movie Up. We watched it the day it came out and we were engaged at the time. So watching the “Married Life” sequence at the beginning of the film really hit home (read: bawling in the theatre). It still makes me tear up every time I watch it. So when we heard about the house, we knew it was a long shot but called up the folks at Bangerter Homes, the creators and builders of the Up house and asked if we could do a photo shoot there in honor of our second wedding anniversary. The team at Bangerter Homes is seriously amazing, because they sad “Yes!” We were thrilled! We later found out that we were the only ones that were able to do a photo shoot inside the house. We felt so special!

With less than a month to plan the shoot and trip, we made many-a-trip to Goodwill (I adore thrifting!) to get the perfect costumes. We have admired Blue Lily Photography for some time now, so we were overjoyed that they could be in Utah and could be our photographers! They did such and incredible job. So, so amazing. Let’s get to it! Here we are as young Carl and Ellie.

I gotta say, wearing overalls is pretty awesome.

The details and work put in to making the house a perfect replica was absolutely amazing. We had so much fun recreating scenes from the movie and making some of our own!

This next set is in the nursery inside the house. I absolutely ADORE the mural that is painted on the wall. This makes us so excited about starting a little family of our own…

Honestly, if this house was in California I would want to buy it. It’s like my dream home! So colorful, fun, quirky, bright, and the KITCHEN! That blue stove had a fridge dishwasher, and microwave to match.

I did a few craft projects for the shoot, one of which was creating our very own adventure book from scratch. I’m excited to fill the pages with all of our adventures and memories, starting with this shoot!

Of course, our photo shoot would not have been complete without BALLOONS!

See my yellow dress? I couldn’t find the perfect bright Ellie dress, so I decided to make one! At 5 in the morning the day before we left, haha! It is sewn from a thrifted vintage bedsheet. I had so much fun making and wearing it!

This one is one of my favorites…

Geoff and I scoped out the perfect hill to re-create Carl and Ellie’s picnic scene. I wish I could go have a picnic here every day.

We brought my picnic basket from home and used my great grandma’s vintage camera.

Grape soda, of course!

Back to the house! Man oh man, did the team at Bangerter Homes do an amazing job creating this house. Here are a few of the details.

Sigh, my man is so handsome.

There were so many meaningful things about this photo shoot. Carl and Ellie’s love is such an inspiration to us as a married couple, and we are excited about having adventures and growing old together. The part where we were “old” Carl and Ellie was pretty emotional.

The only way to describe being able to be in that house, sitting in Carl and Ellie’s chairs next to my love, was surreal and amazing. We literally felt like we were in the movie and we were both just so amazed we were able to do this.

I know I have said “amazing” a lot in this post, but that is because it was! Geoff and I now carry with us SUCH a wonderful memory of our time at the Up House. It was truly unforgettable and an experience we will treasure throughout our lives together. Thank you SOOOOOOO much to the folks at Bangerter Homes for making this all possible! Thank you to Wendy and Tyler from Blue Lilly Photography! You were so fun and the photos are amazing. My hair and makeup was beautifully done by Enizio Hair and Makeup Artistry in Utah. Thank you!!

Be sure to head over to Rock ‘n’ Roll Bride to see their post of our Up House photo shoot!

Last night was so amazingly fun and awesome! My birthday is in a couple days and in all the years I’ve had a birthday near Halloween I have never had a Halloween birthday party. Well, we put an end to that this year! We are suuuuuuuper busy all the time and we don’t get to entertain often, so when we do, we go all out! I has so much fun planning the party, decorating and making treats. We had lots of friends, yummy food, made by Geoff (my personal culinary genius), a costume contest, played games, and we set up our photo booth The Shot Spot! and Here are some photos of the decorations and pics from the party!

Creating this dessert table was one of my favorite parts! I made the cupcakes, but the cake is from Freeport Bakery (THE BEST).

In the pumpkin is Pumkin Pie Dip. Such a hit, sssssooooo yummy. I will be making this for Thanksgiving.

BRAAAAIIIINSSSS! They were really tasty.

In the living room I was going for a haunted house look.

My sister drew me the skeletons in the frame and the “moon” is a lantern from Ikea!

Evil photo.

Covering everything in spiderwebs was a must.

Our mantle, done up Halloween style! The creepy dolls were a Goodwill find.

Our old camera collection fit right in with the decor.

Love these!

One of the best parts of the party was having the Shot Spot set up! We all had way too much fun taking photos. Check out all the costumes—our guests BROUGHT IT! The first one is us, based on one of my favorite childhood movies, Pippi Longstocking! I was Pippi, Geoff was her horse, Alfonzo, Charlie was her monkey, Mr. Nilsson, and Little Dog was a banana.

Star Wars family, the Joker and Harley Quinn, double rainbow with unicorns, and Flint Lockwood (LOVE that movie!) with the Queen of Hearts.

Ryan (sad with no costume), Saints player with Ellie from Up, Barmaid with an A’s player, and a Kinko’s employee with a gypsy and a baby pirate.

Dorothy and the Tinman (and their baby was a scarecrow, so cute!), Holy Crap, a sheriff, and a convict with a doctor.

Barmaids, Belle with Gaston from Beauty and the Beast, Superman with a mermaid, and a zombie bride and groom.

Me and my three sisters!

My friends Brit and Tim, who recently got engaged in Disneyland. Adorable.

Here are some more pics from the party!

We we had a costume contest and finished things up with my FAVORITE party game, “Names in a Hat”. Seriously, if you have never played this before it is the BEST! So much fun!

This is me trying to get my team to guess Jim Carrey…

Thank you everyone who made the party SO FUN! Thanks to my sisters for helping put up all the decorations and thanks to Geoff for making the food! Oh and I owe it to Pinterest for helping me find so many great ideas! My actual birthday is on Wednesday and I plan on having a Pixar movie marathon and scrapbooking. yay! Happy Halloween everyone, stay safe out there!

About 4 years ago, Geoff and I started a journey. It all began with a friend asking If I’d be willing to photograph her wedding the following year. Geoff and I had photographed a few of my family’s weddings and with those under our belt, combined with our years of photography experience, we were up for the challenge. We set up shop (so to speak), built a website, got the contracts and all the business stuff together. When 2008 ended, on the eve of the new year, Geoff and I set a goal to book 5 weddings in 2009. “5 weddings,” we thought. “How are we ever going to find 5 people to let us shoot their wedding!?” Well, you have to start somewhere!

What happened next, was so amazing, unexpected, thrilling, and most of all, life-changing. The inquiries started coming in. Not from friends or family, but complete strangers that found us and recognized something in our passion, and in our love of people and photography. We booked 17 weddings that year. 17! We could not believe it! It was a crazy year of meeting so many amazing couples, working REALLY hard to be better and better, and most of all, a year for us to realize what we were meant to do in life. In 2010 we photographed 29 weddings and 2011 we’ll finish out at nearly 40.

While The Goodness was growing and growing, Geoff and I had been working our 40 hour a week day-jobs for Apple, Inc. As you can imagine, we were working literally constantly everyday, and sacrificed so much of our social life, free time, family time, etc. to keep up the level of quality and customer service that our growing client base had grown to expect. It was the most rewarding thing in the world, and while we loved every minute of it, it was EXHAUSTING!

Today I am beyond overjoyed to tell you all, my wonderful and loyal readers and clients, that we quit our days jobs. It’s a scary step, leaving the security of a corporate job, but we couldn’t be happier to be focusing all of our time and effort toward something that we love and that we believe in with all our hearts. For us, “The Goodness” truly lives up to it’s name, as that is exactly what it has brought into our lives. Everyday we still cannot believe that we are living this amazingly incredible life, but we are. And for that, we want to thank each and every one of you: our wonderful clients, our blog readers, our supportive friends and family, it’s because of you that our lives are so fortunate and so full of love and goodness.

Here’s a photo from Paul and Lesley’s Shot Spot a couple weeks ago. This pretty sums up how we are feeling right now: