I’ve said it before a couple of blog posts back…I simply can’t believe that it’s already halfway through 2016! Here it is already May and it feels like this year is literally flying by! Time slow down would you please?! 

As always, at the beginning of each month I like to post a small list of my goals that I’d like to accomplish by the end of the month for both my business and my personal life.  I like to think of it as a nice way for me to post it to the blog to hold myself accountable for it.  I figured, if I post it, I need to follow through with it, right? So here goes! My goals for May!

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Business Goals-

+Get my website concepts fully revised & finished! The team over at MediaNovak who is handling all this for me are incredible! They listen to my many changes that I want to make and show me some of my good & BAD ideas come to life on an actual website.  I’d like to get something fully completed and ready for launching in the next few months! Hopefully by June or July!

+Create the sample albums. I have yet to do this. I seriously need to take the next few days and GET. THIS. DONE.  Perhaps today, since it is a rainy day and all.  Oh…if I could just get this done, I’d feel a little bit more productive! Seriously y’all, this has been the worst trying to complete!!

+Have my weddings for May completely edited and returned to Couples by 10-15 days at most AFTER their wedding day! It’ll mean A LOT of editing on my part, sore eyes, and not leaving my office for a couple of days after their wedding days, but I want to get better on my editing and my return! I love being able to say that I’m able to return a wedding BEFORE the couple’s one month married anniversary, but I love it even more to be able to get the stress & pressure of editing a wedding off my chest! It feels very rewarding, but trust me, not having the stress of an entire wedding on my hard drive waiting to be edited is even more rewarding! So the faster I can get images returned to the clients, the better!

+Get a little bit better at my blogging and pre-blogging.  I always say I’m going to do this…but I never do.  I wind up blogging the day that the blogs are “due”, so my “Married Monday” posts are actually written on Mondays.  It’s not that bad since I can blog pretty fast, but it would save me a lot of time if I could actually pre-write them beforehand and get them scheduled the week before they should be posted.

+Organize and clean out the Emma Loo Office. This is something that I need to do pronto! To me, a clean and organized environment makes me more productive, so there are some things I need to clean out and “de-clutter” from the office, that’s for sure.  I might start that today too! Geez! Look at me, here it is May 1st, and I’m already wanting to get a move on my May Goals! Woo!

+Book 3-5 more weddings for the 2017 Wedding Season! I want to make sure I have at least 15 weddings on the books for 2017 before July.  Right now I have 9 weddings on the books for 2017, but I’d like to book a little bit more! Bookings and inquires come at such scattered times throughout the year, but I feel like I’ll be getting the most bookings coming up in the next few months as Brides-to-be start planning for their late summer and early fall weddings.  This year I’m completely booked from late August to November, so it’s wonderful and I’d like to keep that going for many years after!

Personal Goals-

+Narrow down & choose our painter for our house.  That’s right, we’re painting our house! We’re actually painting our brick, so it’s a MAJOR change we are making to our exterior! We’re going to spruce it up a bit and bring a HUGE facelift to the look of our home.  So far we’ve gotten three quotes on the endeavor, but we also have a tight budget.  So we’re going to figure out who fits perfectly into our budget and can get the job done and make it look great! That’s going to be a hard part for us, since the painters who we’ve gotten the quotes from are all friends or mutual friends of our families! Can’t wait to show y’all the process! It’s going to look SO good! I’m just too excited!

+Find a french door for a new office door.  I’d love to have a classic french door in the doorway leading into my office! It would really brighten up the space and look super cute! I’m planning to scope out Craigslist and the local Habitat Restore stores to find the door that will fit perfectly!

+Make plans for our Anniversary trip down to Charleston, SC.  Before we go I kind of want to put my Type-A personality to good use and make an itinerary for our trip just because there is SO MUCH I want to do while we’re there! Since Phillip hasn’t been to Charleston in a hot minute, we definitely need to take a carriage tour, I’d like to visit some nearby plantations (for picture sake!) and I’d like to plan to eat at some of my favorite restaurants.  Since we’ve decided to save some money and stay at our family’s beach house about an hour and a half away (saving money for painting the house! hehe!) then we definitely need to make sure we can have a well organized trip since we won’t be actually staying in downtown. Anybody have any ideas for us to enjoy while we’re there?!

+Make a cute place for our trashcans to sit BEHIND our house instead of right there at our driveway! I get so annoyed pulling up to our garage and our driveway and spying our trashcans right from the start! I’d like to build a little “trashcan island” on the backside of our house where the trashcans can sit out of plain sight when you first drive up to the driveway.  It’d be nice to be able to get them out of the way, plus, I’d like to have a little seating area/fire pit or something where they once were.  When we were engaged, Phillip made me a big “H” out of old pallets and I’d like for that to hang up on the side of the house.  Who knows! I’m full of ideas…who knows where it’ll lead! 😉

+There’s so much I want to do to the house, so I can’t keep listing all of my house goals here under “personal goals”…but pretty much, if you know me well enough you know that me and house decor kind of go hand and hand! Our one year anniversary is coming up pretty fast, and I’d so love to make a wedding album of our wedding day images for our coffee table or bookshelf.  I feel like I may need to make this album the same time I make the others, so I may just make this into a full rainy day goal and get them both done one day soon! I can’t wait to see our photos from our wedding day actually be in our hands in book form!

Hopefully I’ll be crossing EVERYTHING off of my list this month! Like I said, I need to start holding myself even more accountable with these monthly goals! Here’s to a productive May! XO! -Emma Loo