2016 Thoughts and 2017 Goals

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This month's Blogging Business Artisans team challenge relates to expressing what the past year meant, sharing hopes/goals, and reliving memories. It's still January {depending on your time zone :-p }, so I thought I'd better hurry up and post! I also have a free printable goals sheet to share further down the post.

I'm just going to go ahead and not link up with my 2016 goals. 😂 While I get get things more organized at home, many of my 2016 goals went unrealized and it's totally okay. Looking over them, many of the things I didn't achieve stopped being goals at some point in the year. For example, adding more wood items to my Etsy shop fell off the radar. Shipping changes made it impossible for me to get boxes I need to mail larger wood items I was working on, so that stopped being a reasonable goal. Additionally, I didn't see the Etsy shop growth I thought I wanted, but I realized that I actually didn't want that level of growth. I consciously did not make as many holiday items this year and didn't try to get the same number of November/December sales. Instead, I closed up shop for several weeks during the 'holiday sales' period! I realized that taking the time off so we could spend time with family and friends was more important to me. Ultimately, I devoted a lot of time and energy to different things throughout the year than what I imagined in January. Overall, I'm very satisfied with things I accomplished, learned, and did in 2016.

Throughout the year, both my husband and I worked to develop our photography skills. It's an ongoing process and we still feel like we have so much to learn, but it's pretty fun to look back and see our progress throughout the year! In the spring, I couldn't get my husband to understand how to focus the camera (even though it has autofocus)! Now he understands more about using off camera flashes than I'd ever imagined knowing, myself. We've both put a lot of time into watching CreativeLive classes and fantastic resources from Sue Bryce Education. {{Neither is an affiliate link, they're just both sites I used and love!}} If you're not familiar with CreativeLive, you need to check them out! They have a wide variety of classes and they both broadcast new classes live for free and periodically re-broadcast them. Some days I'm glued to my computer to watch a broadcast, but we've also purchased about half a dozen courses.

To celebrate photography and relive some memories, here are a few shots to celebrate the past year. {Some are from early 2017, but hey.}

We've been working  hard to learn about photography, lighting, and posing because we're starting a photography business! Eek! I feel like our website isn't quite ready, so please keep in mind that it's still a work in progress, but if you'd like to see more of our portraits stop by Nunez Photography's website. =)

One of the sections we're still building is what I like to call "contemporary glamour" photography. A big goal for us in 2017 is building a relevant portfolio of contemporary glamour and personal branding shots.

I'm also working on Re-Story your Life; a new 5 day freebie course; and some other exciting projects I'm not ready to unveil yet. It's going to be a very busy spring! That's why I created a lovely sheet to write our goals on. It's decorated with a paraphrased quotation from Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf. A more full version of the quotation is “The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”

You can download the printable PDF from Google Drive right here.

Did your 2016 goals change along the way? What are your biggest goals for 2017?