2011 in Review

This year-in-review post is a little late as we are nearing the end of January now, but better late than never right? Let’s see, 2011 was a pretty big year for me and my family. I think the biggest things that happened are pretty obvious but let’s try to go through things chronologically shall we.

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January 2011
Dave and I announced our engagement. Since Dave proposed on the 30th of December in 2010, we did most of the announcing early in 2011. Our families and closest were informed that day after he proposed, but the world found out through Facebook and this blog in January.

February 2011
This was a big month for me. Not only did I learn that my brother would be having a boy (and I would therefore be getting a nephew), but on February 28, 2011 I officially started Stephanie Beach Photography as a small business. I got a domain name, website host and design and got an official business number from the Province of Ontario. It was an exciting and somewhat scary time for me, but I am very glad I did it.

March 2011
My birthday happens every year, but this year, as I turned 27, I think I might have moved from mid- to late-20s. It is a scary thought, but I think I am getting old!

This was also about the time when I got my own office. An office at work with a four real walls and an actual door. It is still pretty awesome. My own office came with a larger workload and much larger jobs to manage. Though I had shadow managed jobs before, I started working on even larger jobs as a shadow project manager around this time as well.

April 2011
April was the month where Dave and I searched for and purchased our first home. We wouldn’t get possession of it and move in until later, but the exciting purchasing process definitely happened here.

April was also the month where Dave and I joined Goodlife Fitness and signed up for personal trainers. It was (and still is) expensive, but we have been going ever since and I am glad we started and stuck with it.

May 2011
Though it may not seem like much, May 2011 was when I learnt that my 2009 accident had come full circle. An advance green light was installed at the intersection where I was t-boned. It left me with a weird, but satisfied feeling.

May 10, 2011 was the day my baby was brought to me…my Nikon D3s arrived in the mail! It was a wonderful evening and the next few months allowed me the time to really learn the amazing abilities that my full-frame camera has to offer.

June 2011
Dave and I got our house! It was purchased 6 weeks prior to us moving in on June 15, 2011. At the same time, my brother purchased his house (literally we put offers down on the same weekend and ended up closing on the same day). We have been here for over 7 months now and I still love my house! We have done some work on it, mostly painting, organizing and decorating but we are planning more significant updates later on.
July 2011
Jackson Robert was born on July 19, 2011. He was (and still is) adorably perfect and I love him to bits. My only wish is that I had more free time and could go visit him more, perhaps I will plan a trip to go see him in the next couple of weeks.

July was also a big month for my photography business as I shot my first wedding as the sole wedding photographer.

August 2011

As Dave and I had combined our bank accounts when we purchased our house, I had been spending the months following that event making sure all of my automatic payments, etc. had ceased or been transferred from my old account. August was the last of my ‘student plan’ capabilities at BMO and I therefore closed my very first bank account. My mom and I opened my BMO account when I was 12 or so as I had  gotten a paper route. I remember going to South Keys or Meadowlands with Chris to get to a BMO ATM when we were in school and getting a PLoC for when Dave and I bought the Honda Fit (though we didn’t end up using it then). Good memories, but the account wasn’t worth the bank fees. Seriously, why would I pay bank fees?

September 2011
This was the second quiet month for The Great Abyss (and my other blogs too). I was struggling to keep my head above water. To be honest, I still haven’t figured it all out and have been getting more and more comments from friends, family and even clients about how I manage to do everything that is currently sitting on my heaping plate. I could be doing much better if I focused on one job rather than the two official ones I have. I could be organizing my wedding in a much more timely fashion if I so chose. But I have chosen to try and do a great deal right now and I am doing okay at it (in my opinion).

October 2011
October was primarily spent trying to get things straightened out. It was the first time in my life that I knowingly carried a balance on a credit card and ended up having to take money from my personal line of credit to deal with it. This didn’t last long as before the year was done, any debt Dave and I had was taken care of, but it was an uneasy and uncomfortable time for me.

November 2011

Dave and I put chose our venue and put down the deposit, making our wedding date officially September 29, 2012.

November was also the month in which I finished my first conceptual photography series. I am very pleased with how 99 Luftballoons turned out and have received many great comments/reviews from friends, family, classmates and followers on the internet (aka strangers).  The final product and the responses from everyone have inspired me to think of more conceptual ideas and work towards getting them completed. You can view the images on Flickr (link above) and there will be a series of posts on my Photography Blog shortly.

December 2011

After a long search (I may have been looking for all of 2011), Dave and I selected our wedding photographer. We put down the deposit and are very happy with our choice.

December was also the month in which I finished my last course of the Algonquin College Digital Photography program. Though I got my grade in January, the last class was in December. I am very happy to be done with the program and have learnt so much. More to come on this later on my Photography Blog.

And of course, Dec. 30, 2011 marked one year since Dave and I got engaged.

 

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So that was pretty much 2011. Some of the items above are a little forced to be able to get something in each month (you may have noticed). The big ones are obvious as I said before. Announcement of our engagement, birth of my nephew, purchase of our first home and starting my business officially. I started working towards my photographic dreams by starting as a wedding photographer and a conceptual photographer. I also started taking on much larger jobs at work as a project manager and shadow managing on even larger jobs earning myself my own office.

My goals for 2012 are pretty simple. I want to have a great wedding that everyone enjoys; continue advancing my photography business; continue working on my conceptual photography ideas; get closer to achieving my health goals; start my travel goals; and continue to make our home truly our own. I am also looking forward to watching Jackson grow up and really get his own personality.

Mission Goal 2011

In 2010 I defined my mission goal as being “I want to be happy, healthy and comfortable in 2010”. I wanted to do these things by losing weight, saving money, traveling and getting a puppy. I did not lose weight. I did save money, in fact Dave and I are well on our way to getting enough for a down payment on a house. We did not get a puppy. We did travel – we went to Florida, Quebec City and Toronto as vacations and of course the cottage on Lake Erie. So all in all, could have done better, but could have done much worse as well.
My mission goal for 2011 is unchanged: I want to be happy, healthy and comfortable in 2011. These things are likely to happen this year if I lose weight, buy a house, travel and work on my wedding plans (including the process of saving money for the wedding).

A Busy Summer

Throughout most of the year, Dave and I spend our weekends and vast majority of our downtime in general, doing nothing. We laze about the house playing video games and ever so slowly getting our chores done. This summer, this has not been the case. We have had trips planned and outing with family and friends and unfortunately tons of work to do. The summer has been so busy that I bought a moleskine to be able to keep track of it all. We have also had to resort to booking time off. All this being said, the things we have had planned have been really fun and I am looking forward to the events coming up, but I am a hermit and enjoy my time around the house and when I do not get to do it that often, I start to get stressed and really worn out. We have a weekend off coming up so hopefully that will help me out as my stress levels are pretty high lately.

Planning

I am an avid planner. Seriously – I will plan just about anything I can, from a vacation to  a tiny trip to the mall, even my daily routines and mundane events get planned. When I was in school I always used the planners they would give out but when I finished school I figured I didn’t need a formal planner anymore. I had an electronic one in the form of an excel spreadsheet (which acted as a secondary planner while I was in university) that I figured could do for my primary planner.

Recently, I realized that I do in fact need a formal, hard copy planner. I have had so many things going on; dinners with friends and family, photography shoots, classes and work events that I have come dangerously close to double-booking myself. I have even forgotten about upcoming civic holidays a couple times. For my planner, I went the way of Chris’ moleskine and purchased one for myself. It is however the pocket-sized weekly notebook version. In other words, it is much smaller than the one I bought for her and is a slightly different style. The days of each week are on the left hand page and there is a lined page on the right for notes. As I don’t have too many events on each individual day, this works out really well for me as it also feeds my list addiction enabling me to create them near the days I will be needing them.

Another handy feature of this version is that I didn’t have to order it from the American website. I purchased it from Amazon and was therefore able to ship it to my house after using my credit card as compared to last time when I had to ship it to Dave’s parent’s condo in Florida and use their American credit card.

One Minute Writer #53

Write about a goal you've had trouble achieving.

 

I think everyone who reads my blog or knows me in real life (or both) knows that my true passion is photography. One of my biggest goals in life is to become a professional photographer. In my mind, I have always thought of becoming a professional engineer and doing photography on the side as to not suck the life out of it. Lately though, I have dreamt of doing it full-time as I am not completely satisfied with my current full-time job as an (environmental) engineer in training.
Either way, neither goal is really moving forward at a pace that makes me happy (or even content). I am taking night courses and I am definitely learning more and more about photography as I progress through the program, but I am miles away from the quality of photographs that the pros put out.
To make a long story a little less long, my photography is advancing, I just wish it would pick up the pace a little.

Mission Goal

I am not a fan of New Year's Resolutions, in fact, I am pretty much against them all together. New Year's Resolutions are tacky and predictable and very, very few people obtain these goals, or even continue working on them once February rolls around.
I am however, a fan of determining what you want out of the next year (I am calling this my Mission Goal). I know it sounds like the same thing, but if I look at it as more of plan for the next year (an incredibly general plan of course), then it is something I can get on board with. There are no 'I will stop...' statements, or anything like that. Just some sort of idea of what you think the next year will bring you and what you want at the end of it.
I want to be happy, healthy and comfortable in 2010. For me, these things are most likely to occur if I lose some weight, get a decent amount of money in my savings account, travel more and get a puppy.

One Minute Writer #42

If you were a professional photographer, what type of photography would you want to do?

My dream is to do wildlife photography. I am also interested in portrait photography but the gap between the two dreams is quite large.

Whale Watching Raincheck

As I have previously mentioned (multiple times now), Dave and I had planned a trip to the East Coast this summer, but this has since been canceled in lieu of a 'new' car and an extended trip to Montreal and Chris' cottage. This makes me a little sad as I very much wanted to go whale watching. I have always wanted to capture an image like the one below, and though I know it is very rare, it would have been amazing.

(image from: here)

Our trip will be postponed and I will take a raincheck on whale watching until next year when hopefully there are less unforeseen, money-guzzling circumstances.
Chris was able to go whale watching on the west coast this summer and had the 'pleasure' of witnessing an pod of Orcas (killer whales) hunting sea lions. A truly spectucalur, yet dismal display of the natural world.

One Minute Writer # 27

Write about a business you would like to start.

So we all know what business I want to start and will eventually start - one day, but I am going to answer this One Minute Writer question from over a year ago (I have started going back in their posts as I am not finding the current ones very interesting), with a different idea of mine.

I would like to start my own food establishment. I am not sure what type exactly as it changes every once in a while, depending on my mood and current likes but something along the lines of either a delicatessen, bakery or gourmet chocolate store. Not only do I want to be the owner of an establishment like this, but I want to be the main cook/chef/chocolatier, which essentially means I want to learn one of these trades extensively. Perhaps in the future I will take a course or two in these fields for entertainment purposes, but I highly doubt I would ever start a business based on them as I would rather focus my entrepreneurial efforts elsewhere.

An Observation about One Minute Writer

So I was looking over my One Minute Writer replies and I noticed that the ones I select from the site often get me talking about my dreams of being a photographer professionally. I am not sure if that is because the questions sway towards the ways of dreams and jobs, etc or if I make them go in that direction so I can write about photography more. It could also just be because it is something that is really prevalent in my life right now due to the increased course load and great weather for photography. Either way, please bare with me as I really do enjoy the One Minute Writer questions and I am sure there will be some soon that will get me talking about other things, like #20 which was about my childhood.

One Minute Writer #22

As a kid, what job did you dream you'd have as an adult? What job do you have now?

As a child I always wanted to be famous but never for the really popular things like film or alternative rock music. I wanted to be a famous opera singer or Broadway star. I wanted to be a famous artist and have painting hanging in all the world's best galleries. These dreams mostly faded when I learned that I am not musically gifted and learning to sing or play an instrument would be a real struggle for me and I have never really been that good at drawing or painting from my mind though perhaps I could have with a bit of training and practice.
I know work as an Environmental Engineer as that is what I went to school for and have a degree in. I am working towards my Professional Engineering license and better positions in my field. I am also taking night courses in Photography and hope to start doing some things with that on the side. Who knows, maybe my dreams of becoming an artist are not dead after all.

One Minute Writer #21

Think of the biggest goal or dream you have. Is life giving you a red, yellow, or green light?

I think everyone who reads this knows one of my biggest dreams and career goals is to be a photographer. I believe life is giving me a yellow (amber) light right now. I am taking the night courses at Algonquin to advance my skills but at the same time could never really go after my dream right now as I need the money from my engineering job (and the experience to be able to get my P.Eng in a few years). So I am moving forwards but not nearly as quickly as I would like. But hey, at least I am moving faster than I was a few years ago and am actually doing something to get closer to my dreams.

Haikus

When I was in elementary school we learned what a Haiku was. Basically it is just a short poem consisting of three lines. The first line has 5 syllables, the second 7 syllables and the third 5 syllables. I wrote them every now and then and always chose them as a poetry form when choice was given. When I was in residence at university I covered our bathroom full-length mirror in Haikus and silly phrases and didn't have much difficulty thinking of them.
I am writing this post because I want to start writing Haikus again as they are creative and thought invoking without taking a great deal of time or effort to create. I want to try of write at least one Haiku each week for a little while and see how it goes.

One Minute Writer #19

How much money would you have to win in the lottery for your life to really be changed? How would your life be affected if you won that much?

I am not sure about an exact number as I do not play the lottery game at all but I would think a few million (perhaps 10) would have meleaving this job. In the grand scheme of things, a few million would not be enough to live on for the rest of my life with no worries whatsoever, but it would mean I could follow my dreams a little earlier than I am currently planning. I would probably finish my schooling faster and maybe even enter in a full-time photography program. I would start my own photography business and try to get it running successfully. I would invest in Dave by paying for the helicopter training he is dreaming about and we would likely get own our place (rather than rent). Basically, our lives would just be more comfortable and filled with our dreams.

Vacation

I turned in my first Vacation Request Form at work yesterday for June 3-5.
Dave's younger sister, Jess, is graduating from Trent University on June 3 and we really want to go and support her. I know Dave is very proud of his little sister (as am I of course). We both know how hard it is to finish school no matter what program you are in and Jess was able to do it while working and maintaining her personal life!
After the graduation day, we are planning on going to the Toronto Zoo. We went there about 2 years ago as a side trip after a family event and had a blast - but my camera had camera envy as I was using my little Kodak back then. I want to spend a day there with my new fabulous camera and the zoom lens and quite possibly the tripod as well. I have been to the zoo many times in my life and really like it - the Toronto Zoo takes really good care of their animals and their exhibits are very similar to their natural habitats.

One Minute Writer #13

If you could hire someone full-time to make your life easier, what would their duties be?

Their job would be my job. I would want someone to come and work here so that I could still make money and earn time towards my P.Eng while I was able to work towards my many dreams and aspirations. I would love more time to work on my photography obviously, but other things as well. With no full-time job to attend I could put in enough time and energy needed to properly and quickly lose my extra weight, I could attend to my backyard garden a bit more and my house in general and just enjoy myself more often. Instead, I will have to go to work 8:30-4:30 every weekday and live for the weekends like so many people do these days. I only hope that one day I can be working somewhere I love, but for now, this job is pretty good.

Commissioners Park

Dave and I made out to the Tulip Festival yesterday (during the opening weekend). We went out to Commissioners Park after a long day of driving and car shopping. It was nice and relaxing, just what the two of us needed. I obviously took a ton of photos but due to a spot on either my lens or within my camera itself, a large percentage of them are not as good as I would have wanted. I was also trying a few different things in terms of aperture settings, etc so some of the photos are a little over exposed. But they are not beyond repair and there will be tons of time to take more photos during the Tulip Festival so I am not discouraged in the least. There shouldn't be any problem with returning multiple times as the event is free and due to Dave's vast knowledge of the area, we are able to park without having to pay the large fees that the lots charge near the sites. I really enjoy the just walking around the Tulip Festival sites and spending time with Dave.

One Minute Writer #6

What are you running from, or what are you running towards?

Somehow I am both running from things and towards others. I am currently running from all the drama and anguish that has occurred this past week and a half while running towards some kind of happy future. I don't really know what the future holds for me or how I get there (or if I ever will) but I know I want to be there. In my head this future holds a great career that I love and of course Dave. There are no car problems or business trips, there aren't any frustrating bosses to deal with or a recession holding back job opportunities. I hope I get there one day - preferably sooner rather than later.

Tulip Festival 2009

The Ottawa Tulip Festival starts this weekend and runs until the 18th of May. It is quite possibly my favourite festival that Ottawa runs throughout the year. It is mostly free, has beautiful flowers and art displays and allows me to really focus on my photography.
This year I want to try and take in other aspects of the festival (other than just photographing the flowers that is). There is a presentation about Karsh on May 7 that I am hoping to go to but my attendance depends on a few things.
I can't wait to get out there and really start moving forward with my Tulip photo collection - and this year I can even take photos in my own backyard when I am too lazy or tired to go to one of the festival sites. I am obviously very excited.

Tulip Arrival

On Wednesday I went to check the temperature outside to see if I needed my winter coat or not - as I stepped out the back door I saw that the tulips Dave and I had planted literally just before winter hit, were beginning to sprout. It made me so happy. I love flowers in general but tulips are so pretty and so extremely photogenic. I showed them to Dave when he got home last night and he seemed pleasantly surprised that our last minute planting had worked. I spent some time out there this afternoon taking pictures of the little guys as I want to document their growth.
This is what the backyard looks like right now:
I want to get some grass seed as moving into the house and the planting of the tulips has destroyed the little bits of grass that we used to have. I also want to get some marigolds or other 'easy' flowers to have in some planters around the yard. I was also thinking of some rocks to put around the edges of the flower beds as they are currently blending in with the ground. I am so excited for Spring to be coming and even more excited to have my own backyard (well sort of) that I can make pretty and photogenic.