The Florida Renaissance Festival is returning to South Florida for its 20^th year of family fun and entertainment. I am so excited – I attend the Renaissance Festival each and every year and love seeing the colorful participants, fun shows, and unique crafts.

The splendor of the Renaissance era will take over Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach for five exciting weekends, beginning February 11^th, 2012. Guests can browse through the enchanted craft village, where more than 100 artisans and merchants will demonstrate and sell their wares. Twelve stages of entertainment will host a variety of performances, including the critically acclaimed “Musical Macbeth.” William Shakespeare’s classic tale of ambition, magic and murder will be told in a 30-minute whirlwind of Broadway showtunes, pop hits and slapstick comedy.

“The Florida Renaissance Festival is a South Florida tradition that has delighted fans of all ages for many years,” said Bobby Rodriguez, executive producer of the Florida Renaissance Festival. “We are excited to celebrate our 20^th anniversary by bringing back many of our fans’ favorite acts and experiences.”

This week I have a cold, Zachary is getting over one, and I have a lot of work to do that I don’t feel like doing (would much rather rest). Posting this photo of a sunset I captured in Islamorada on our last visit down to the Florida Keys before having dinner at one of my favorite spots, Morada Bay Cafe. I wish I was there right now!

Canon 5D | 50mm f/1.4  @ 1/4000| ISO 160

I’ve been doing a lot of work around the house lately getting things organized, simplifying, paring down and throwing things away/donating. Sitting down too much doesn’t agree with this pregnancy (I get pins and needles in my legs, not to mention that persistent lower back pain), so I have been trying to avoid discomfort by walking around my house and being productive! It’s been working out great, and while it’s not “exercise” it still gets me moving in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

This past week, I stocked up on some organizing supplies at Target and got to work in our bathrooms.

My guest bathroom (which is also the kid bathroom) wasn’t really disorganized, but there was a lot of “stuff” on the counter and no real place to put an extra roll of TP or a tissue box. A plastic shoebox solved that problem, and now holds the aforementioned items, plus some room spray, a lotion, and Zachary’s bubble bath. Now the only items sitting on the actual countertop are hand soap and a candle. So much more tidy.

My master bathroom was by far the most disorganized. Every time I try to clean the bathroom counters, I always get frustrated by how much makeup is on the counter and how many bottles of this and that I have to clear away. I do use all the different bottles (soap, perfume, toothpaste, contact solution, hair stuff), but there are just so many of them. Another plastic shoebox solved this problem as well, as all the bottles now live in a shoebox giving me easy access and an easy way to move it out of the way for cleaning.

Additionally, I found an old lucite makeup organizer under my counter just taking up space. I cleaned out the bathroom junk drawer/makeup drawer and now have room for the organizer and ALL of my makeup! I think that cleaning out the bathroom drawers and cabinets is going to have to become a yearly activity, because I was shocked at how much old makeup was in there, not to mention the random expired contact drops, creams, and bottles of Advil! I filled up a whole grocery bag with junk and was astounded by how much crap I have held on to over the years. I’m sure I could even get rid of more things if I went through the drawer again…

My husband Adrian has always disliked the makeup being out, so he’s been really pleased, as have I — having all of this space available has really made it so much easier to keep our bathroom tidy.

This photo from Pinterest was my inspiration.

While my makeup drawer will certainly never be as neat and tidy as Martha Stewart’s (I contemplated posting a photo so you can see how I did it, but it’s better left to your imagination – and Martha’s is prettier anyway, lol), it’s much better than it used to be, and best of all, there’s now plenty of room on my bathroom counter!

How often do you organize your makeup drawer and bathroom cabinets?

Almost forgot to do WW today! Here’s an Instagram shot of our vegetable side dish from dinner the other night – Brussels Sprouts Hash. It was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever eaten! The recipe called for pearl onions, but I just chopped up a little more than half an onion and caramelized it since I didn’t have any of the pearl variety. Definitely going to make this one again! Meal planning is proving to be a fun and healthy adventure for 2012!

A couple days ago, I did a recap of my 2011 resolutions, and was pretty pleased with how many of them I accomplished.

My motto for 2012 is “Get Things Done” and I think my resolutions for this year will reflect that.

1. Spend 30 minutes a day (at least 4x a week, let’s be reasonable here) doing something productive or organizational around the house – cleaning up the kitchen, doing dishes, folding laundry, sorting mail.

2. Read at least 50 books this year (same as I did last year) – if I hit that, read 75! Additionally, record my reading adventures more on my blog – I’ve been reading so many good books, and want to share them with others.

3. Finish designing our family photo albums and get them printed. There is no excuse for not having an album from our honeymoon seven years ago. Get caught up before things get busy! Yes, this is a repeat resolution from last year since I feel that I didn’t do well with this.

4. Maintain a healthy weight during my pregnancy and eat well afterwards in order to drop any excess, hopefully by the end of 2012.

5. Spend at least one day each month sorting through things to get rid of or donate. I actually started doing this a while ago, but I need to continue, since we are going to be clearing out my office for the new kids’ room and swapping Zachary’s current room with my current office.

6. Be a better blogger. That includes redesigning this blog, too. Another repeated resolution from last year.

7. Shoot more for myself and capture more details of family life. Capturing my life no matter what format it’s in (DSLR, iPhone, Point & Shoot) is important to me, so while I would LOVE to use my DSLR more often for personal stuff, it’s often more convenient not to. My goal is to just shoot as much as I can, with whatever I have available.

8. Make a concrete plan and to-do list of what needs to be done to get the kids’ new bedroom and my new office finished in a reasonable amount of time BEFORE baby #2 gets here. June is much closer than it seems!

9. Take more time out of each week (or at least each month) to spend on marketing for the business, such as working on my photography blog, business facebook page, or meeting with other vendors. Another repeated resolution. I feel like I could have done a lot more than I did last year, and want to make this a focus as well in 2012.

10. Start meal planning at least 3 nights per week so we always know what we’re having for dinner – and most importantly, it’s good for us. Have reliable alternates with items that are “in stock” so I can whip something up on tired nights or non-planned nights.

11. Put together a rough schedule for each day, and follow it. Working at home, sometimes it’s easy to slip into taking lots more breaks than you normally would, so I want to have a good idea of what I should be doing at what time, with a goal to stay on track so I can keep up with my backlog.

12. Spend lots of time with family and friends, and make more wonderful memories!

What’s your most important resolution this year? What are you looking forward to getting done in 2012?

I love this photo (iPhone 4s, Instagram)! Zachary found his love for Play-doh a few months ago, and it’s greatly increased in recent weeks. We do Play-doh every day now (sometimes more than once a day). I enjoy this time for him to be creative and use his imagination.

What crafty toys do your kids enjoy playing with?

The weather we’ve been having down here is SERIOUSLY AWESOME. Zachary has been on winter break from school for the past couple of weeks, and I feel so lucky that we’ve been able to go out every day and enjoy the weather – either playing outside in the backyard (he’s loving the playhouse he got for his birthday) or just running fun errands together.

At 3 years old, he’s really become my little buddy. We have great conversations together, go shopping, share a snack, go out for lunch, play trains, and pretty much do anything. He is totally portable right now, and so much fun to hang out with. In a way, I’m really glad that we waited until Zachary was 3 to get pregnant again. He is such a big boy now, and I can focus on making some wonderful memories for him and with him, and really enjoy our time together as “just us” before our new baby comes along. He is REALLY excited about having a brother or sister (he said yesterday that he wants a brother, but we’ll find out for sure in a couple weeks!) and I know he is going to be an amazing big brother.

After running some errands yesterday, he looked up and said, “oh, look, Mommy! the moon!” and sure enough there was a tiny sliver of moon in the late afternoon sky. At his request, I took a snap with my iPhone using Instagram – you can barely see the teeny tiny moon, but you can tell by the beautiful color of the sky what a wonderful day it was! Here’s the result! :)

I hope you’re all enjoying the winter vacation as well and are excited about 2012! I can’t wait to finish writing my New Year’s resolutions and share more of my photography with you all next year!

I hope all of you had a very Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!

We have really enjoyed celebrating Hanukkah with Zachary the past week now that he is old enough to understand lighting the candles and says the prayers with us.

Here is my favorite photo from the last night of Hanukkah, which we celebrated last night. He is going to be so disappointed tonight to realize Hanukkah is officially over. I can’t wait til next year though – we are going to have so much fun!

photo taken with iPhone 4s and Instagram.

Last year I made 11 resolutions and I thought I’d take a look back and see how I did.

I think I did better than usual, but I will be repeating a couple for 2012 for sure.

Here is the rundown:

1. Sleep more. Quit staying up until 3am working. Nothing is THAT important and it can all wait until tomorrow.
Definitely succeeded here. I never stay up late working anymore. I’m thankful I made this decision – I have felt much healthier since I started getting more sleep. Granted, I still stay up late sometimes watching a movie with my hubby or reading a good book, but I think I can count the number of times I was up at 3am this year on one hand! Yay for sleep!

2. Start reading again. Go to the library. See if I can hit 25 books – if I make it, read 50!
53 books this year! ‘Nuff said. I think I will aim for 50 again next year, and raise it to 75 if I hit 50. So thankful my mom gave me a Nook as an early Hanukkah gift. I owe it all to the ease of using my Nook!

3. Finish designing our family photo albums and get them printed. There is no excuse for not having an album from our honeymoon seven years ago. Get caught up before things get busy!
okay.. I did not do so well with this. I started working on Zachary’s first year book, but didn’t get any further than that. I did manage to print up another custom calendar for 2012 with personal photos, and I made a book of my iPhone snaps from our summer vacation, which was good. Since I’m taking some down time this year with being pregnant, I am really hoping I can get more books done.

4. Lose weight before I decide to get pregnant again!
Well, I didn’t really lose any weight, however, I’m 14 weeks pregnant today and haven’t GAINED any weight! I don’t want to gain more than 20lb this time around, so I am happy to be staying on track.

5. Get things organized better around the house and in the garage. Stay on top of organizing/cleaning on a regular basis.
While my house is still not completely organized, it’s better than last year for sure, and I’ve donated and thrown out a lot of things that we don’t use. As I prepare the home for baby #2, I can only improve upon this in 2012.

6. Fill up the walls with artwork – either my own prints or original artwork found on Etsy.
Done! I have a few more pieces I want to get, but overall I’m pleased with the number of family photos I’ve printed for our home this year.

7. Shoot more. I believe that I have a gift with the camera, and not using it for myself is a disservice both to me and my family.
I don’t think I did a wonderful job at shooting for myself with my DSLR, but I did use my iPhone camera a LOT and captured tons of great memories with that.

8. Be a better blogger. That includes redesigning this blog, too.
Totally failed here. I had a busy year and didn’t blog as much as I wanted to. Plus I didn’t redesign the blog. That’s happening in 2012 though.

9. Work during working hours. Use the time after the baby is in bed to work on things that don’t include sitting motionless staring at a computer screen. After all, why be your own boss if you can’t enjoy it?
Done. However, Zachary tends to go to bed pretty late, so instead of working on personal things, I typically ended up reading or going to bed myself. :)

10. Take more time out of each week to spend on marketing for the business, such as working on my photography blog or meeting with other vendors.
I did this too. Not as much as I could have, but I worked on a lot of networking for my business and have lots of plans to continue next year.

11. Make more memories, have more adventures, and enjoy life as much as I possibly can!
Done, done, and done!

So, how did you do with your resolutions in 2011 and what are you looking forward to next year? I’ll be posting my full set of resolutions in the next couple days. I’m excited to get started with some new goals!

Last week we took a mini vacay to the Florida Keys with Adrian’s family, who were visiting from out of town. We visited Key West, Marathon, and Islamorada. Islamorada is my favorite – we stayed at the fabulous Cheeca Lodge and ate at Morada Bay Cafe, one of my favorite restaurants!

I mostly shot with my iPhone and got some great images that I wanted to share. I captured and processed all of these images using Instagram on my iPhone 4s.