September Goals. Personal.

So, I’ve been meaning to start this for a while now… Posting goals every month to keep myself accountable to accomplishing them! But, obviously, it hasn’t quite worked out yet. And yes, it’s the middle of September already (wait, what!? where did this year go!?) but I’ve already made some headway on my goals for this month and I’m going to share them with you anyway! I’m hoping to do this at the beginning of every month to help myself gauge where I’m at both in my business and personal life and motivate myself to check things off my ever-growing list of ideas and to-do’s. Hopefully at the beginning of October I’ll be able to mark some of these off!

Some of these goals are bigger than one month can handle but hopefully I’ll be able to make some progress on the big ones, too…

Personal goals :

1. Get in the habit of making our bed every morning. I make our bed most days but not always in the morning… I’ve found that when I do it as soon as we’re up and out, it’s refreshing for me to go up to our room later rather than overwhelming (I get stressed out when things are messy). I’ve been doing pretty good at this so far the last couple of weeks!

2. Take Jonathan on a date. You know how awesome it is to have alone time with your spouse? Well, it becomes even more precious when you have a little one at the house. Even just a couple of hours out to dinner or to the park, driving around holding hands, talking one-on-one with no distractions… It’s really really important to our relationship! Thanks to my amazing family and super great friends, finding a babysitter is usually not hard :)

3. Schedule dates for the next couple of months! On the same note, we need to sit down and pick at least one day a month for a date. With our work schedules it’s really easy for us to (accidentally) schedule something every night of the week. Yikes. If we don’t block out dates a few weeks in advance, we end up not having any time for each other! And that is no good.

4. Write and mail a note to a friend. I want to start doing this every month! I love to encourage people and who doesn’t like getting an unexpected note in the mail? I have a friend that is SO GOOD about sending cards and notes for not only birthdays but every big event – buying a house, pregnancy announcements, new baby… And they make you feel so special! I want to get in the habit of helping my friends celebrate as well as random notes of encouragement :)

5. Schedule a family photo session for US!  Guys, I can’t believe how fast this year has gone by and how much my little Noah is changing every day! You would think, since I’m a photographer, that I’ve been documenting every second of his life on camera but it’s not true. I’ve been taking photos and videos but I could do a lot better. And (I’m kind of ashamed to admit) we don’t have any professional photos of our family of four (gotta include the puppy!) yet :-

6. Blog about our summer. Um, did anyone else not realize the first day of fall is Sunday? Enough said.

Business goals :

1. Prepare for in-person ordering sessions. I wanted to go ahead and cross this one off because I’ve done a couple of sessions already with my high school seniors but I still need to tweak some things. I’m hoping to start doing these for engagement and bridal sessions as well! I feel like it’s so much better to see your images for the first time on a big, color-corrected monitor with a cup of iced coffee in your hand and a plate of warm chocolate chip cookies on the table (sounds good, doesn’t it?) than to view thumbnails on an online gallery after you come home from work/school/whatever. Then I get to show canvases, albums, prints, and other fun things available for a discount. I’m excited about this one!

2. Start planning for Alexa’s Photography’s FIVE YEAR anniversary! Yeah, the five year anniversary of Alexa’s Photography is this year! I can’t believe it’s been so long since I started this crazy adventure called “owning your own business”. The anniversary is technically this month but I’m hoping to do a little celebration party sometime in November – I’ll keep you posted. Just a hint : It will definitely involve cake.

3. Submit weddings to publication. I’ve been tweaking my workflows to include submitting every wedding to some kind of publication or wedding blog but I haven’t gotten there yet.  I’m going to try my hardest to submit some of the weddings from this past fall and summer to some wedding magazines this month!

Once I have it all written down it kind of looks like a lot! Hopefully this list will keep me motivated to get some things done!

Oh, and here’s a photo of my little man. He’s the best.