Welcome to the Wedding Atelier podcast. I am so excited to be here with my full voice now. I have lost my voice probably on and off since April. It has been a ride and about two or three ginger chews a day. Two, get my voice back to where I want it. And yes. Now we sound all crispy clear today. This episode is gonna be a little non-traditional, I guess off the cuff. I was just thinking about it because this summer is here. My kids are out of school, my son's out of preschool, and I normally have them go to summer school so I can work, but for some reason this year I just felt the need to let them enjoy summer. I've learned that they're so much older now. Like my daughter's eight, my son is four. but he acts like he's five. He's always trying to tell people what to do. The point being is that they're a little bit more self-sufficient now, where they can play outside and I can see them just playing with other kids. They're actually outside right now because. It's giving nineties, and I am quite obsessed. I've always wanted my kids to be outside kids. I was an outside kid up until I was about a teenager when it wasn't cold anymore. And of course it just got too hot and I don't like sweating. But yeah, it's just really cool to be able to have that flexibility and. I just wanna tell you what I'm doing this year, how I'm going to stay sane this summer, but also make simple sales while not sacrificing everything. We just did a deep clean of all the kids' rooms. Every quarter, it's spring, summer, and fall. We just throw away all of the nonsense, the broken toys, the things don't have a match, and we take out a big garbage bag and my kids and I just throw everything away that we just do not feel connected to. My daughter threw away the most things, and yet still has a ton more. It's a work in progress. But my son was able to go through all of his things and be like, I don't play with that anymore. I don't want that anymore. And so that was a great day to start my summer of being, okay, we have cleaned, we're getting dressed, we're gonna go shopping for this week for groceries, and now I'm prepping lunch and dinner because obviously they're gonna be at home. My son eats four to five meals per day. And I'm not exaggerating. He's got a head on him, but he's not huge. Like he's not a big stocky boy, but he eats nonstop and so does my husband. So I'm pretty much cooking for a family of five or six to make sure we have leftovers to make sure that my son can go outside, come in and eat, and then it's dinner time. I am learning how to meal prep for lunch and dinner and how to plan for leftovers and how to plan for this. Making sure I'm not cooking the same thing so nobody gets tired of it and I don't have too much of one thing. So that has been fun is coming up with a summer food schedule. Meal prepping is new for me'cause I'm so used to just being able to give myself something really simple avocado, toast with egg. And that chili oil trend that it is with Trader Joe's garlic Chili oil. So good. Look it up on TikTok if you haven't already. It's delicious. And. I always put like a garlic butter on top to just make this nice, crunchy high in fat, low-ish in calorie breakfast so that I'm not completely working myself to death, and then I'm starving at two 30, wondering if the world's gonna end. So I'm learning to put myself first in terms of taking care of myself. Feeding myself good things, moving my body. I bought a walking pad a couple years ago and I just don't really like to use it'cause I love to be outside rather. But at the speed that I wanna walk and how long I wanna walk and how many steps I wanna get in, it just makes sense for me to be on the walking pad and open the window and pretend that it's the outside.'cause there's no way my kids can walk three to five miles with me at this age. So having that has been helpful. I started off my day doing that. I was like, all right, let me just walk for 30 minutes. Let me look at my emails. Let me check up on anything that I wanna get. Done. Let me see my students, how they're doing is there any announcements I need to make? So I did all my admin stuff on the walking pad and I feel like it really cleared my mind because I'm not a morning person. I hate getting up in the morning. I hate speaking to anybody anytime before nine 30 in the morning. Honestly, my preferred time is 12:00 PM 12:00 PM I'm ready to do things, get out there, actually put on a face and speak to people. But other than that, I'm pretty much sitting at the edge of my bed wondering how I ended up here. That fox meme at the edge of the bed with his eyes bulged open. That is me at seven 30 in the morning, but I have to get up early because I need to have time for myself before my kids get up and my son starts crying to me that he's starving. Yeah, starving for pancakes. That is my life the moment he wakes up. Mom, I want pancakes. I'm just like, what? It's seven 30 in the morning. How does your stomach even talk to you this early? I get up a little bit earlier just so I can have at least an hour or half an hour to myself. I journal a little bit. I do some morning pages, definitely inspired by the artist's way. I suggest everybody ever forever in their life journals. It is so important to just clear your mind you just don't want your brain all fogged and cloudy when you're starting the day. Like you don't want any residuals from the past day, the past week. I don't know. I just believe in self-care hardcore. So journaling if I need to do it, Reading my Bible, praying, all those things, getting active, if my kids are gone, I'll probably walk a couple of miles outside while it's still nice. And the weather here is really nice. In the morning it's 60, 70, so that's my preferred, but. If my kids are here, then I will walk inside. That is fine. I just need to be active.'cause I've noticed that when I'm not active I get really lethargic, apathetic. I get sleepy. When you have an online business and you're on the computer all the time, because you're editing photos, culling photos, answering emails, whatever that looks like, it just, it's really draining to your brain, to your eyes. And your body was meant to move. I really believe that when we move, oh, sorry, my neighbor's dog just ran the street. Hello. But when we move our bodies, I feel like we're happier, we're better, and we just feel better. And it's not even about losing weight necessarily, it's just about getting your brain going. I don't know. There's something to it. I feel like every time I hit that 10 K mark, my light bulb just comes on and the sun starts shining in my brain. I can't explain it. There's scientific proof behind it. 10 K steps is the moment of clarity. It's happiness, it's dopamine, it's everything, but it's not always realistic. Can you walk 10 K steps every single day with kids in a summer and all the other things? Probably not. But moving your body in general, 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, I think that's. That's a good idea. So something else that I'm doing is planning my work life balance, the summer and fall. I usually go pretty hard, quarter one and quarter two so that I can rest more quarter three, quarter four. So I build the plan quarter one, and I'm setting up my goals and my expectations. And then quarter two is letting me know is there anything we need to tweak? Is there anything that we need to take up a notch? What are your sales plans, your goals, and then Q3 is all vacation. I think it's, yeah, it's all vacation and then my kids get ready to go back to school. And then Q4 is one last launch then holidays. And then start making a plan for the next year towards like the end of December. So that's pretty much it. That's how I plan my work and my life and my balance. And my biggest thing is always setting aside, at least, it used to be three vacations a year, but then when I did that so easily, when I just had that goal, I was like, okay, let me do four. And then Q1, I already had four vacations planned, so I was like, okay, let's do five. So we're shooting for five. Hopefully one every month, moving forward, and I think that will be cool up until the holidays. I just think it's so important to have something else to look forward to, at least for me, other than. The same old pattern, the same old schedule. It's being like, oh, we're gonna go on vacation sooner. Oh, let's do this. Let's take a trip versus focusing on just business goals and putting a heavy focus on personal goals, self-care, relaxing, rejuvenating. And every time that I do relax, that's when my creativity flows so easy and I have all these ideas, and then I come home and I'm, like, oh, I know how I wanna do this. I know how I wanna do that. I feel like I have the plan in place. I can see the strategy come together. And then it feels fun. Doesn't feel forced so I love that journey for me. And something else I have done, if you haven't noticed, is focus on myself and self-care This is my favorite time of motherhood right now. I am just soaking it in and I'm trying not to let the moments fleet by so quickly because they're at such a fun age. My daughter is eight and she's still fun and she still likes to do. Crazy things plus gymnastics or risk her life, who knows? And my son is more self-sufficient. And he's a little chatty boy for sure. He likes to tell people what to do, but their personalities and they're still fun, they're still kids, before they become teenagers. While I enjoy that moment for them, I'm realizing that I can't get myself too lost in motherhood to where I forget about myself because my moods will shift, my energy levels will crash, and then I'll think to myself, when's the last time that I did something for me? When's the last time you know that I actually. Spent money on something I wanted versus something that my kids needed half the time. They don't even need all the clothes that I buy them. I'm just gonna say that right there. I just feel like they do, and I'm just like, okay. I always find myself at the store buying them something they don't need and then being like, huh. But yet I am still wearing two years ago clothing. Whoops. So this year I'm making a very conscious shift of focusing on myself. Of course not, forgetting my family, but just shifting it a little bit and being like all. They seem to be good with their wardrobe. Let's look at yours. Is there anything in here that you have had since you were pregnant? Can we get rid of that? Can we do a closet cleanse so yeah, focus on self. I think it's been going well so far. I had two new hobby goals for this year, and I already completed them in quarter one, which is what I'm telling you. Like I think my goals are too easy. I thought they were hard, but they're not. So the adult coloring is super fun. I haven't done it in a minute because I'm starting to get like decision fatigue. I bought the 158 marker collection and I can't decide. Which color to choose and it's so stressful'cause there's so many colors. But when I do get the hang of it, it is relaxing to be able to just color and have some lo-fi music in the background. While my husband yaps about his day and I'm just like, this is great. This is fine. This is good for me. And I have taken journaling to a whole nother level. I actually bought a working desk for my office just for journaling. There are so many a Modi stickers. I have three different journals. I have my HP Sprocket that I bought years and years ago. I wanna say more than five years ago, but it was trending at some time. Maybe it was on TikTok where you maybe, no, it was before that actually. It was probably, it was before TikTok. It was a long time ago, but there was a deal and they were so cheap back then. I think now they're like a hundred bucks, But when I got it, I think it was$50 and it came with six packets of sticker paper. So you pretty much can Bluetooth any photo from anywhere, whether it's your computer, whether it's your phone, and it'll print it and it's ink endless and it's a sticker and it's really cute. So I've been printing moments of my children photos that I love, memories that we've made and putting that in my journal and that has been fun. So yeah, journaling is now. My right hand at this point, it was a hobby that has completely taken over me, but it has provided the biggest benefits ever. I will always have a hobby goal because what on earth, when you write down what's in your brain and you don't filter it, you just write it down. Like even if you're saying The sun is shining through my window, I'm looking at this, which makes me think of that, and then everything starts flowing out. I am telling you things will come out on paper that you didn't even know was in your brain. Which is so weird that thoughts can just be spiraling subconsciously in your mind and you're not even aware of it. And it could be making you drained, it could be making you anxious, but if you ride it all out and get it out, whether it's you talking to a therapist, but writing it out, it's like you're just telling your journal and you don't have to wait to make an appointment. You can just write and see what happens. Highly recommend if you get a journal and you start journaling and you get the biggest ahas and ideas. DM me because I can talk about journaling all day, every day on the clock forever. So the next thing that I've done to achieve work life balance I hired a new team member and I have decided to finally stop doing every single thing in my business. And to be fair, I wasn't like this with my photography business. It was very rinse and repeat. But on my business is completely different. My new team member is helping me manage my inbox finally, once and for all. I just, I don't know. I just didn't know where to start and I don't mind checking emails. But do I have to check emails? No. So I'm letting that go. In addition to my children having a summer, I would like to have a summer with them, and I don't know, something just tells me this is gonna be a really good year. For me enjoying motherhood and my kids enjoying summer with me. My daughter got straight A's. My son is in preschool, I want them to think of summer as like their reward for working so hard and then also enjoying all this nonstop family time. And if I ever decide to homeschool, so help me Then I can know whether or not that is something I could do. So hiring a team member to manage my inbox to help me with all the things that I put off. I could just delegate that. It'll be nice and they already have a tiny team. I have somebody who helps me with the podcast. I have co-coach in my program, but I don't think I necessarily had a team member. That manage my entire business in terms of admin. I'm excited about that. So those are the ways this year that I'm handling work, self, and motherhood in a way that feels. Really doable and very balanced. And like I said, it really helps that my kids are a little bit older and they can play outside and I can keep an eye on them and take them on trips. We're not changing diapers anymore. We're not waking up every hour in the middle of the night. It just is so fun to me, this was the self-sufficient kid age, and I know it's gonna pass so quickly. And I'm just trying to enjoy it as much as possible. Before they get too old and they don't think I'm cool anymore. So right now they think I'm cool. Soon they won't think I'm cool and I wanna enjoy that. And I always wanna live life without regrets. So in order for me to do that, I have to make plans and I have to have goals. And people are probably thinking I'm. So goal oriented, and you are correct because when I don't, I feel like my life is so chaotic. If you don't make a plan, you plan to fail. That's what they say. And it's really true. Before I started meal planning and meal prepping, I feel like it would come a certain time and be like, oh, I had to buy groceries. Oh, am I making dinner? What am I gonna make? And I just don't like feeling out of control and constantly in a state of panic and anxiety. I want to feel like things have a plan, things are moving along, and there's not necessarily a goal here. I'm just like, okay, let's make sure. That I take the kids to the library. They love the library, right? Let's get some books. Let's read to the kids. Let's stay up all night. Their favorite thing right now is movie night. They like to pop popcorn and make a palette on the floor. So simple. I remember somebody saying about childhood that. Your every day is gonna be a core memory and you don't get to decide what that core memory is. And if I think back when I was younger, the things that I remember the most was just an ordinary day with my parents. An ordinary day where my dad was playing dinosaur and we would jump on his back, an ordinary day where mom was making mac and cheese and hot dogs. Would I make that today? But it's my, actually my husband's favorite nonetheless, I am trying to really soak it in. I feel like I'm in such a good head space right now with all the work that I've been doing and prepping I have been doing for Q1 and Q2, and now I'm ready to walk. In the beginning, all the work that I've been pretty much working towards since this rebrand, since the spring, and now we're getting into summer we're in summer. I don't know, it's been a weird summer here. It's been 60 degrees and then it's been 80 degrees, and now that it's summer, I kind of wanna reap a little bit of what I've sewed. All the hard work I've put in the year, and I think it's time for me to enjoy it. And actually live the life that I wanted to live. Why I built this business in the first place was yes, one, to change the lives of female wedding photographers and help them build this beautiful six-figure photography empire while enjoying life with their kids. I wanna do the exact same thing as I'm teaching them. I've done it before with photography, but now I wanna do it online and. While it's taken me a little bit of time to figure out all of the things,'cause it's a very convoluted, multidimensional, layered business. I'm at the place now where I've gotten the hang of it. And I'm ready to reap the benefits, enjoy it, and show my daughter that you can be an entrepreneur, you can be a mother, and you can also spend time with your children. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna hop off right now and actually make their lunch I will see you guys in the next episode. We're having lots of guest experts this summer, so definitely tune in. You're gonna learn so much from my friends, and I will probably pop in here pretty soon, but you never know. I'll see you in the next episode.