Photography

Back from Summer Hiatus!

I wasn’t exactly planning on it, but I ended up taking a hiatus from blogging over the summer. With my daughter home from school and lots of travel, I just wasn’t able to focus on the blog (or much else) for the past couple of months. But school has started back up for us and we’ll be home for a while, so I wanted to jump right back in! My daughter started full-day Kindergarten this year. She did a half-day K4 program last year, so this year I’m finding I have a LOT more time to get things done during the day while she’s at school.

One of the things I’ll be focusing on is getting my photography business off the ground. I’ve got several photography blog posts that I’ll be posting in the coming weeks over at Kelley K Photography with pictures from our summer trips and a couple of sessions for friends, so you may want to add that blog if you aren’t already. I’m taking a workshop now that I’m really excited about, so there will be a photo share from that, and I’ve got some fall sessions coming up that I’ll be sharing as well. Yay!

I also have several projects at home that are in the works for future blog posts. I’m continuing my office organization project, and tackling a few new projects, including organizing all the cleaning products, organizing our bathrooms, painting some rooms, and more.

For now, I’ll leave with you with a collage I made from my daughter’s first day of school.

first day of school 3

That’s my daughter and her best friend in the photo above, and the drawing is me dropping her off.

For the other SAHM’s out there… what projects are you planning to tackle with kids going back to school?

Thanks for reading my blog. Time to take on the rest of my day!

3 Months of Taking on Today

Yesterday marked 3 months for my new little blog, and it’s been pretty fun!

I don’t post as often as I’d like still, but it’s because I’ve been busy making progress around the house, launching my new photography business, and spending time with my daughter now that she’s out of school for the summer.

I thought it’d be fun to look back at my most popular posts over the past few months:

My tent camping organization post has been viewed almost 1500 times, and pinned almost 1000 times! Seriously, I had *no* idea it would be that popular. Now if I could just get the rest of the stuff organized as well as our camping stuff is… I have a lot to do in this area, and hope to blog about it in the coming months, but lately I’ve been really focused on getting my photography business of the ground.

Launching Kelley K Photography, has been really exciting and challenging. I don’t post here about it much, because I setup a separate business web site and blog for my photography, so if you’re interested, please check those out and like Kelley K Photography on Facebook. I also joined Clickin’ Moms to help network with other photographers and sharpen my skills. I’ve been busy on their forum and will be doing some of their workshops and breakout sessions soon. It’s been a great resource already. The problem is just that I’m taking so many pictures, I can’t keep up with processing and posting them. I fall further behind almost daily.

I am (mostly) keeping up with the housework this summer though. We’re still making the beds every day, and doing laundry and dishes (almost) every day. It definitely helps when it doesn’t pile up. We had a few off days last week and I’ve had to play a little catch up, and it really made it obvious how much easier it is when I stay on top of everything each day. The app I’ve been using to keep track of my daily and weekly tasks is called Daily Planner. It’s very simple, and that’s what I like about it. It’s not a full-featured schedule manager or project planning app. It’s just simple groups of to-do’s in a clean format. There is an option that I use to have groups for daily and weekly tasks, and the cool thing about those is that they reset every day/week, so I check off my daily tasks as I do them each day (making beds, doing dishes, etc.), and then in next morning, it’s all cleared for me to check off again. Same for the weekly tasks, which I labeled with days (Monday – grocery shopping, Tuesday – trash night, etc.) so that I make sure I’m taking care of the things I need to do each week. And every Monday morning, the weekly tasks are all unchecked for me to start the new week. I also have a group for errands I need to run and phone calls I need to make, which helps me remember those things. I’m going to keep using this for a while, and if I really like it, I’ll upgrade to the paid version and then do more thorough review with screenshots.

Thanks to everyone who started following my blog in these first few months. If you haven’t yet, be sure to like the Taking on Today Facebook page, or follow via an RSS reader or email subscription (see link in the right column to sign up).

Thanks for reading my blog. Time to take on the rest of my day!

Things are taking off!

I’ve had a very productive couple of weeks and I’m super excited about it, so I thought I’d share a little of what I’ve been up to lately.

First, I officially launched my photography business on Facebook, and my web site is up!

logo-blackbkgdfacebook.com/KelleyKPhotography
www.kelleykphotography.com

I’ve already had a several friends inquire about booking sessions for their children or family, and I have a newborn shoot coming up in another week or so, for the baby of this beautiful couple that I did a maternity session for a few weeks ago!

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In addition to my photography stuff, the blog has been doing well. I’ve had a few really popular posts. My Teacher Appreciation Cookies post has been getting a lot of traffic this week, since it’s national teacher appreciation week. (I’m not sure why our school had it in March.) My last post about organized camping and my camping packing list was my most popular yet – it’s gotten a ton of traffic, and it’s been pinned and re-pinned on Pinterest a bunch. Exciting! And in somewhat of a surprise to me, my post about converting our old kitchen table into a kid’s playroom table has  also been very popular on Pinterest among homeschooling moms.

Finally, I’ve been getting a lot better at my regular housework AND working hard to get my office/craft room under control. My room was a complete DISASTER after my daughter’s birthday party, because I’ve never gotten it fully organized since the move last fall, and then we stuffed a lot of her stuff in my room to get it out of the way for the party, so you could barely walk in there. This week I’ve cleared the entire floor and now I just have some (big) piles of paper to sort through. For my daily housework, I’ve been really consistent the last two weeks about making the beds every morning, doing the dishes daily so the sink is empty and clean every morning, and doing a load of laundry each day – including folding/hanging it and putting it away every day. I’m trying out a new app to keep track of my to do’s, and if continues to work well for me, I’ll be posting about that soon. I’m also working on a post about the transformation in my office/craft room, complete with before and after pictures. Hopefully that will be up sometime this weekend. It’s still not going to be “done”, but I’ve made a TON of progress this week that I’m excited to share, because it’s a huge difference.

Thanks for reading my blog. Time to take on the rest of my day!

I’m still here!

Sorry I’ve been absent, but it’s been a busy week…

  • I started planning Andrea’s birthday, and we made her invitations together so she could pass them out last week. It probably should have been done a week or two earlier, but at least I got them out before Spring Break. I designed them in Photoshop Elements, printed them on a color laser printer, and then cut them out with my paper cutter. Then I cut out card stock so that it would be 1/2″ taller and wider, and I used a glue stick to mount the printed invite on the card stock (with 1/4″ around each side). Andrea loved it, because she said the card stock frame made it look like a TV.
  • We closed on the sale of our old house!!! That involved pulling together all my manuals and warranty information for stuff that stays with the old house (appliances, security system, gas fireplace logs, etc.). Conveniently, I had these all in my file cabinet in a single file folder. Yay for some organization I did a long time ago that actually worked! I also typed up a document with some notes about the house that would be helpful for the new owner to know, along with a list of utility companies and contractors that we used, along with their phone numbers and web sites. The new owner was very appreciative of all of this information, and the real estate agents were really impressed with this extra step.
  • I also (mostly) finished the web site project for a customer that I started recently. The project is almost complete, and I’m just waiting on a little bit more content from the customer, but for now it’s off my to do list at least.
  • I volunteered at my daughter’s school fundraiser, a fun run. I photographed the event and then quickly processed nearly 500 pictures, shared a some favorites on the school’s Facebook page, and posted the rest to a private album for the parents to look for their students. Several parents thanked me for the pictures I took of their kids from the run.
  • I’m still processing pictures from the wedding that I shot last weekend. I’m about two-thirds of the way done, and the bride and groom are THRILLED with the preview album I showed them. It’s getting me really excited about doing more photography work in the future.
  • While we’re on the subject of my photography work, I also did some research into setting up my business. My husband and I already have an IT consulting and web design/hosting business that we incorporated, so I’m probably going to just add a “dba” for my photography business. I found the process to apply for that and printed out the forms. I’m also designing a logo/watermark to use on my images that I use when I share them online. Next step will be setting up a web site and pricing for my photography business. I already use SmugMug for my personal photo hosting, and have been very happy with them, so I’ll keep using them to host my professional photos too, but I still want a separate site for the business.

That was all last week. No wonder I didn’t have time to post more on the blog! I also had to pack, because this week is Spring Break and we flew to visit my brother and his wife, who are having their first baby. We were expecting the baby to be here before we arrived, but as is often the case with first babies, he’s taking his time, and is at least a week overdue already. While we’re waiting, we took Andrea to the slopes for some skiing. Hopefully there will be a baby here soon though. Andrea’s very excited about meeting a new baby cousin.

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Thanks for reading my blog. Time to take on the rest of my day!
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