I can’t believe it, it’s 2013.  I swear it was just August 2012 yesterday.  But, here we are, with one more fabulous winter wedding coming up and then a couple months of “off season”.  Crazy!

I’ve never been one to make New Years Resolutions.  In fact, I’m not really a list person.  But if I’m being honest, I’ll admit that I tend to avoid voicing my secret resolutions just so that I won’t be embarrassed when they inevitably get lost in the confusion of daily life.  But not this year!  No, this year it’s time to stand up to my fears and hold myself accountable to my dreams.

Here are a few things that are on my mind for 2013

– Fully Book our Wedding Season.  This one is obvious, and we are well on our way, but I couldn’t leave it off the list!

– Shoot 100 Women.  In 2012 I fell in love with shooting portraits of women, but neglected this line when wedding season got busy.  But it makes me so happy to do it, that this is the year I’m going to push it.

– Streamline our workflow to deliver products more quickly.  The thing about being a small-business owner is that you start to think you can do everything yourself.  Eventually, that ends up costing you time when little tasks prevent you from doing the things you really need to be doing to keep your business going.  So this year, we’re going to look at what we can outsource and what we can do more efficiently so that we can serve our clients even better.

– Submit to publications once per month.  Last year I thought I would do this more, and totally let it slip.  So here it is – on the list.  Hold me accountable, people!

– Lose 20 pounds.  Ok, I hate to talk about this, but I feel like if I don’t put it in writing, I’ll let it go.  Again.  Ever since moving to Chicago, getting married, and working from home, my lifestyle has become less and less active.  As a consequence, I feel worse and feel worse about myself.  Here’s the weird thing – again, it’s easy to think that I need to get stuff done at my computer rather than spend the time at the gym…. but then I get tired and sluggish and it slows me down even more.  So here’s to caring for our bodies as well as our business.  (And Kam and I totally did the cliche thing and joined a gym on NYE, so we’re on our way!)

– Take a once per month “Get Inspired” day.  In addition to caring for our business and bodies, let’s take care of our minds and do something that inspires us.  Regularly and with purpose.  Go to a museum, or a concert, or someplace beautiful.  We always work so much better when we are excited and inspired, we need to be deliberate about it.

– Take regular “Date Nights” and weekend getaways.  Kam and I are pretty good at escaping for dinner or lunch once a week or so, but we need to get better about taking a day or two off just to focus on our relationship.  You would think that working and living together would be enough, but trust me, it’s not always easy.  Those times that we do get away we always say “why don’t we do this more often?”  So this is our year to actually do it.

I’m sure I’ll add to this as the year goes on, but for now I think we’ve got a good place to start.  I’m following the example of some of my favorite photographers/friends by putting this out there, so I’ll try to check in on it regularly and let you all know how it’s going.

And speaking of getting inspired and taking time off, I’ve included a couple images that we took over the holidays at my parents’ place up in Wisconsin.  They received 20″ of snow right before Christmas, and it just hung around all week.  Can you believe this?  I, for one, can’t believe my parents live in this wonderland.  It’s awesome!