By blogging standards, I’m a little late to the game with this post. It probably should have been up the first week of January, but oh well. Better late than never right?

(by the way, I will have a look back at 2012 weddings post up soon also!)

I’m a firm believer in putting things down on paper and making lists. It really does help to motivate you to accomplish your goals. Some of these will be a lot easier to accomplish than others, but here are my 2013 goals:

1.

Get our website finished! Here’s a sneak peek!

2.

I rarely went out and shot last year just for the joy of doing it. Not only have I been bad about shooting personal work but I also have been bad about sharing anything that I’ve shot. I’ve also noticed that Josh and I have very few pictures together and I have very few of myself as well. I look back at all of the family functions, hangouts with friends, things like that and realize that I’m always the one taking the pictures and am rarely in any. I’ve been thinking about trying to do some self portraits this year, I’m 30 and don’t want to look back on my youth and not have any images of myself.

I recently saw on another photographer’s blog (wish I could remember who!), that one of their goals was to share more personal work even if others may not understand it. Reading that defintely hit home for me. I know I’ve struggled a lot in the past with whether I should share certain images even though I absolutely love them but worry that some people might not fully understand or “get it”. They say that it takes a long time for a photographer to find their style, and I feel like I’ve finally done that. My goal is to share more images that show who I am as a photographer and who I want to be, which leads us into my next goal…

3.

I defintiely plan to blog a lot more and I hope to load more images to facebook as well. My goal is to post and share every wedding that we shoot this year.

4.

I ran warrior dash the past two years, without any training before hand. I would love to run a few more this year now that I’ve actually been hitting the gym (here + there anyway).

5.

here. I hope to share more of our home projects this year, I didn’t get much up last year but took a ton of photos of projects along the way that I hopefully will get around to sharing eventually. Here is just a quick list of some of the projects we hope to tackle in the next year: remodel kitchen, paint staircase, finish painting walls, refinish floors on the second floor, more landscaping, decorate spare bedroom, finish josh’s office…. this list could go on and on.

8.

This was on my 2012 list as well, and while I’m usually an avid reader I don’t think I picked up a book the entire year of 2011. So, just to make sure I stick to it I’m adding this to the 2013 list also.

Watch more Creativelives and possibly attend some workshops. I tuned into a few creativelives last year, and so far have watched 2 or 3 this year. I always want to continue to learn so I can better my photography and my business.

14.

When we used to live in an apartment, we would take Lil on walks all the time. I don’t think we’ve gone on any since moving to St. Bernard. Now that we have a backyard, we just let her out to run around. I want to start taking her on walks again and exploring our neighborhood more.
15.

once before one of our flea market trips and all of the things we bought, and I really want to start doing this more often. For example, I found this needlepoint at a local thrift store for $3! Not only is it super cute, but I love that there is a note written on the back of it. If it’s hard to read in the photo it says: “September 25th, 1974   To Grandma & Grandpa on their ’48th’ anniversary. The two ‘greatest’ grandparents there are. Love Jim, Cathy and Jennifer xxx” Is that not one of the cutest things ever?! I also love it because September 25th just so happens to be my birthday.

17.

Josh got this awesome polaroid sx-70 land camera for me for my birthday along with a bunch of film! I have a few other polaroid cameras as well as this one. I don’t shoot nearly as much polaroid film as I should. It’s on the expensive side, so I always feel like I have to wait for the perfect time to use it, but then never do. I’m going to definitely shoot more of it this year and use this camera a lot more also. One of the really cool things about this camera is that it folds down flat so I can take it with me more easily. I also have a fuji instax camera as well that I want to start using more often also.

18.

I used to love to draw & paint and every once in awhile I’ll bust out all my art supplies and get creative. I really want to make time to do this more often this year. Now don’t get me wrong, I am no where near being considered good at it haha (as you can tell from my little portrait of Lily up there) but I still love to do it. The song lyric painting was influenced by this post over on A Beautiful Mess. It was super simple to do. I chose some lyrics from Neutral Milk Hotel and plan to hang it in our bedroom.

19. Get my motorcycle license. Sorry that I don’t have a pic to go with this one haha. I’ve been wanting to get my motorcycle license for years now but just never seem to get around to it. It will happen this year dammit!

I was hoping to round this list out at an even 20, just like last year’s list, but I honestly could not think of anything more to add. I’ll let you guys know how my goals go throughout the year and will do a follow up in the beginning of 2014!

Thanks for taking the time to check out my goals for the year! Don’t be afraid to leave some comments letting me know what your goals are, or if you have any advice for helping me reach mine! Here’s to 2013!
ps. you can view my 2012 goals here, and the follow up to them here.