Instead of doing a year by year resolutions list, a few years ago I put together a 30 before 30 list.  I realized over the years, I kept switching them out as I crossed out each goal, which in turn, made me feel like I accomplished nothing. This year, I merged my old list with current goals that I have.  It’s my last year to really get these in!

1. Get photography published in print (post coming soon)
2. Become an integral part of a non-profit using my skill-set
3. Do a photography mission trip: Egypt & Haiti
4. Go to Italy and eat real Italian food
5. Go to Antelope Canyon & see the light shafts
6. Go on a cross country roadtrip slash adventure
7. Read a book a month for a year Upping to 18/yr & find me a goodreads.
8. Learn to change a tire
9. Take tango classes
10. Break 150 in bowling
11. Visit all the continents (except Antarctica)
12. Snowboard on the west coast
13. Run a 10k
14. Finish Insanity
15. Learn to play tennis recreationally
16. Read the bible from cover to cover. No skipping around.
17. Journal once a week
18. Complete Rosetta stone for French or Spanish
19. Take a cooking class from vikingschool
20. Cook all the recipes in the cookbook my gfs made me
21. Host people at our house twice a month
22. Learn to play five of my fave songs on guitar
23. Take social dance classes swing or salsa
24. Declutter entire house
25. Redesign every room in the house
26. Plant a tree
27. Grow an herb garden & keep them alive long enough to cook
28. Get to know one new neighbor
29. Skydive
30. Donate $10 to charity for every item on the list not completed.

Here’s to new beginnings and my new herb garden!  It’s the best use of our bathtub yet. Growing squash, cilantro, peppers, thyme, basil, and parsley.  Let’s just how many of this serial plant killer doesn’t kill this year.

Anyone want to do any of these with me? What are your goals/resolutions?

There are a multitude of things we take for granted everyday. It wasn’t our first time seeing poverty, but the reality sinks in deeper each time… of how blessed we are and how it’s important to count our blessings.  No matter the circumstances.  It wasn’t a long trip, but long enough to start missing our comforts.  Here was our top five things we missed & today we’re especially thankful for:

1. Warm showers
2. Power at all hours of the day
3. AC
4. Toilets with good plumbing
5. Internet. Oh, internet. What would we do without you.

And since it was Father’s Day yesterday, we can’t leave out our dads who love us and raised us to be who we are today.

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We’ve always wanted to do a cross-country roadtrip and finally decided to stop talking about it and actually do it!  Hopefully, we can hit all 50 states in the next five years, so this is only the beginning of our U.S. adventure.  If we’re in your area and you’d like to book a session with us, please contact jacob@estherjulee.com.  The photo sessions will be limited to only a few spots because of our schedule, but we’re always up for grabbing some good food/desserts too.  Here are our travel dates for July.

June 29 – July 4 – St Maarten
July 5-10 – Road Trip to San Diego
July 11-18 – Big Island, Hawaii
July 19-22 – San Diego and/or LA
July 23 – Drive to Seattle/Portland
July 27-30 – Drive Back to Atlanta

Happy Mother’s Day to all our mothers from Esther JuLee Photography!

“Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs… since the payment is pure love.” – Mildred B. Vermont

I remember blogging last October about the importance of date nights, and now that Jacob and I are almost at our 9 month mark, I can’t honestly say we’ve fought enough for our quality time together.  Date nights have taken a back seat while we were launching all these fun ideas for our photography business.  Jacob joined me to work full time this past winter which required adjusting.  And we also launched new, exciting projects like Heart Japan and Cocktails and Cameras.  These are all great things, of course, but completely trivial if our own relationship wasn’t working.

We started noticing all our conversations were about work. We fought more often.  Had more misunderstandings that were not being resolved.  It was time to have that talk again.  You know.. those not so fun talks about re-evaluating where you are in the relationship.

I may have thought I had marriage in the bag, but man… it sure does takes work.  Sometimes everyday.

Ironically enough, after skipping several date nights, our first date night together was at pottery painting studio.  Which in turn, reminded me of how much I treasured those date nights back in October.  It’s funny how sometimes when life moves so fast, before you even realize, you’re back to square one.  But what a great reminder it is to fight for all that you care about.

Busyness destroys relationships, so I guess we have to fight harder for our date nights.  And we definitely still have some fight in us.  Hopefully by our 1 year, we’ll be pros at this thing called marriage. ;)

This month is declutter month.  Jacob’s been excited about this month and was even counting down the days.  Well now you know that I’m generally the messy one in the house.   Sshhh.  The good news is I’ve been making some slow yet good progress these past couple weeks… one shelf at a time.  Here are some before and afters.

Hopefully by the end of declutter month, I’ll have lots of items thrown away, donated, and put away in appropriate spots.  With photos to prove it, of course!

Now the bad news.  Sad to say between traveling and getting all four wisdom teeth taken out, I haven’t had much progress with Insanity.  I decided that I’m not going to beat myself up about it this time around.  I started back up this past Monday and I’m planning on pushing through till I’m done.  Then I can repeat it without breaks in between months. :)

How is everyone doing on their goals?

One thing that has been incredibly helpful is having an accountability partner.  I have an accountability partner for my business, one for my spiritual life, Jacob is keeping me accountable with decluttering, and I’m currently taking more volunteers for Insanity… since no one has made it past the first day! ;)

It’s a discipline to be able to take a photo for every day of the year.  Not just with a camera phone of random things in the day.  But with actual purpose.  Jacob thought it’d be smart to add another challenge on top of that – making them all portraits of different people every  day .  He’s had to ask quite a few strangers already.  Some say no, and it’s extremely discouraging when the day is almost over, and some are more than glad to be a part of the project.  So far it’s day 66, and  I have to say that I’m quite impressed by the progress.  Here’s some that he’s done, but you can follow it here, and send him lots of encouragement!

Although he hasn’t completed it, he has some good things to share about how he’s made it through so far.

4 Tips on Completing a 365:

• Give yourself a theme for the week or month to have a focus
• Take the photo as early in the day as possible.  If you can, make it a point to take the photo as your first task of the day.
• Update realistically.  Taking the photo is half the battle, and posting your 365 is a huge task in itself.  Make yourself a realistic goal depending on your schedule.
• Find someone to keep you accountable.  Just like with exercise or any other goal, it’s easier to push through with partners.

Here’s my progress:

This was the fifth week, recovery week, which was a nice break for me, but I didn’t time it as well as I should.  Next week we’re heading off to Vegas and it’s going back to an even more intense workout schedule.  Last year, travel really killed my p90x routine, so I’m really crossing my fingers that this time around since it was my one and only goal for the month that I will be able to push through!  How is everyone else doing on their goals?

I’ve been craving a lot of meat lately after my workouts, so we’re going to Ruths Chris tonight! :)

Since this was our very first valentines day as a married couple, I wanted to do something different, something special for the hubby.  I picked up a box of v-day cards.  You know the kind that you used to give out to all your classmates back in elementary school and secretly wish your crush would somehow just know that those were meant just for him.  Yeah, those v-day cards.  Instead of passing them out to everyone, I got 14 of them and wrote cute notes inside all for him.

The original idea was that you hide them in random places for your significant other to find.  Since we work together out of our home studio, that wasn’t happening.  I managed two days and then decided to hang them all on the wall so that he would have a note to open for every day in February until Valentines.  Pretty genius, right?  Thank you world wide web and my gf for passing that along.

Here are a few more that I liked courtesy of the www.

• make a mixed CD or tape of special songs.  ipods killed mixed cds, but really there was something extra special about mixed tapes.  Maybe it was all the extra effort with rewinds, stops, and records you had to push.  I miss the mixed tape era.
• spelling out “I Love you _____” in big letters on your garage for the world to see.
• if you want to go over the top, rent out a portable hot tub, have it delivered to the middle of your living room, and wait in it.. if that’s your style. ;)

What are you doing for Valentines?

Along with my 30 before 30, I wanted to take the time to refocus and update my bucket list… and I realize that this will be an ever-changing list, but it’s good to set them all the while being flexible.  I’m feeling pretty good about this year.  As long as I focus a one or two at a time, it can be done!

Oh. And if anyone would like to join me for any of these, pleeeeease let me know!  For one, I’d be more than happy to take on many, MANY more workout partners.

100 Things to do in a Lifetime

1. Put together a beautiful wedding
2. Visit Japan during cherry blossom season
3. Pay off student loans and get out of consumer debt
4. Shoot a wedding on another continent
5. Second shoot a wedding for someone I admire
6. Learn to do an oil change
7. Learn to change a flat tire
8. Do a photog mission trip: (Egypt, Haiti)
9. Haiti relief project – Join or start one
10. Take tango classes
11. Bowl 100, 150, 200
12. Learn to swing
13. Put together an ideal 168 schedule
14. Compile a list of fave date spots (call it 50 first dates)
15. Get to know all the neighbors
16. See all seven wonders of the world
17. Do a food tour in Italy like from Eat Pray Love
18. Go to Galapagos islands
19. Go to Alaska cruise and see the aurora and polar bears
20. Hit every continent (except for Antarctica)
21. Walk with the lions in Southern Africa
22. Go to New Zealand/Australia
23. Snowboard on the west coast
24. Visit Paris and the countrysides of France
25. Go on a cross country roadtrip
26. Give away 50% of all profit to support others
27. Read bible cover to cover in a year (1 book or 2 books a week)
28. Study the bible with someone new
29. Keep a prayer book
30. Mentor someone
31. Journal once a week for an entire year
32. Read a new book a month or 12/yr (3 business, 3 spiritual, 6 for fun)
33. Do Rosetta Stone for French
34. Do Resetta Stone for Italian
35. Brush up on Korean vocab
36. Find language partner
37. Learn a new GRE word a week
38. Complete Insanity (6 days a week for two months)
39. Complete p90x
40. Run a 10k, half marathon
41. Hike halfdome
42. Hike machu picchu
43. Learn to play tennis
44. Perform three full pull-ups
45. Do 60 pounds in shoulder press (for a bet with Andrew)
46. Bike across the Golden Gate
47. Run up Stone Mountain
48. Don’t eat out for an entire month
49. Go on a diet coke fast and drink water for a month
50. Read ten books to benefit my business. (3/yr)
51. Update and fully customize my blog
52. Do a photoshoot for a rising actress/singer/group.
53. Second-shoot for fun with three local photographers.
54. Shoot a wedding for free – which would be chosen through a selection process.
55. Organize the office computer and create an efficient workflow
56. Hire an in-house photo editor
57. Take the YY workshop
58. Teach a basic photography workshop with Jacob
59. Finish renovating the studio space. Possibly hire a designer
60. Complete a 365 (photo a day) and blog it
61. Do a photo series on clouds & sky
62. Shoot a Bridal session in the snow
63. Shoot a Bridal Trash The Dress session in a body of water
64. Have an open house party for the studio
65. Pick 2-3 networking groups to be a part of
66. Do the 50 states photography challenge
67. Publish a photobook on women
68. Start a women’s photography group/monthly event
69. Dabble in travel photography and get paid to shoot 5 resorts in exotic locations
70. Learn to play all basic chords and strumming on guitar
71. Learn to play 5 of my fave songs on guitar (at 2.5/5)
72. Finish the last piano piece I was playing before I quit six-seven years ago.
73. Take speech classes or join Toastmasters
74. Learn to throw a football
75. Grow a herb garden and keep it alive for more than a few months.
76. Take a cooking course
77. Cook all the recipes in the scrapbook that my gfs made for me
78. Learn to cook an elaborate 5 course meal
79. Julie/Julia project with Everyday Italian.  You gotta start somewhere
80. Create a personal cookbook with 52 favorite recipes (one a wk)
81. Make dinner for my husband every night for an entire week.
82. Learn to salsa
83. Learn how to make jewelry and accessories
84. Learn to brew own beer
85. Learn to basic sew buttons and little things
86. Take a beginner’s improv class
87. Go back to Haiti to visit the kids
88. Be an integral part of a non-profit I’m passionate about
89. Pick three places to donate photographic services
90. Declutter the home and keep it that way
91. Design every room in the house
92. Setup a nice hammock in the backyard
93. Adopt a cat
94. Perform at an open mic.
95. See a broadway on broadway
96. Learn how to shop like this crazy coupon lady! and grow an impressive stockpile like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzbZlxTQDR0
97. Have a wardrobe makeover that makes me excited to get dressed everyday. http://www.realsimple.com/beauty-fashion/clothing/wardrobe-basics/wardrobe-basics-checklist-00000000000952/index.html
98. Get a bachelors, masters in taco mac’s brewniversity
99. Skydive
100. Plant a tree

What’s on your list?