I'm a coffee loving, travel-obsessed, twenty-something based out of Central Illinois. I'm lucky enough to make a living doing what I love - photographing people! I specialize in weddings (destination + local), senior portraits, + boudoir.
This year, the holiday season is particularly exciting for me. I haven’t been able to figure out exactly why but I’ve pinpointed it to three main reasons:
Not to brag – but I’ve had almost 95% of my shopping complete since the first week of December. There’s been a few impulse purchases here and there since then (I blame Target) but as for main gifts – they’ve been handled for over a month! I also had all gifts completely wrapped more than a week before Christmas, which for me is pretty unheard of! I think the real stress of it all though for most small business owners is money. And I’m not here to talk finances and I sure as hell hate talking money, but I will share a small secret I use, in case it will help anyone else out there! Multiple accounts. Now, my banker probably hates me (I’m the queen of opening accounts) but as a business owner with inconsistent income, having an account specifically set up for the holidays is the perfect solution. Each month I stash away a little bit ‘o cash and hide it away from my online banking (out of sight out of mind am I right?!) and then when the holiday shopping goes in full gear I have that account to pull from if we need! This has been my second year of using that system and it really helps!
On to more exciting topics, Bexley! She just turned two in August so we’re at the age where she’s REALLY excited about opening gifts, and could care less about what they are. We’re trying to get in potty training mode, so a week ago we caved and let her open a gift early. It was a toilet. As a mom, it was the cutest little mini toilet I’ve ever seen in my life but for Bex it was a toilet and she was so stinkin excited for that thing that we opened it up and spent the next 30 minutes sitting on the toilet reading her “Everyone Poops” book. Anyways, she’s been really excited to open the rest and I honestly couldn’t be more excited to watch her open everything.
Last February we bought our first home, and I didn’t realize how tricky it was going to be to decorate a new space using the decorations I had for the old space! It’s been a fun and exciting challenge though, and I was so impatient to put our tree up that we had a Christmas tree sitting in our kitchen for a week while we got the living room hardwoods redone. No joke! I put the tree up and had it all decorated the weekend before Thanksgiving – a tradition I started the first year Brandon and I lived together – he had told me he wouldn’t help decorate before Black Friday (scrooge) so I waited until he left with the guys to go hunting for the weekend and pulled all nighters and cranked the Christmas music to get the house holiday prepped! So this year the tradition continued on, but when the guy came to do our floors, it meant having our couch and tree stuffed in our kitchen with the table for an entire week! But once that was over, I was able to figure out new homes for our Christmas decor, and finally have a mantle to hang our stockings! And last week (yes, the week before Christmas) Brandon even put Christmas lights on our house! You’d understand my excitement when you know that he had once (ok, more than once) told me that he would never put up Christmas lights. It’s no Clark Griswold display, but they’re just what I had in mind and he even hung lights on Bexley’s playhouse. ?
Well this turned in o a longer holiday blog post than I anticipated, but regardless –
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