The other day, Luke was playing on his phone and proudly asked, "Do you know what the temperature is in Indiana?"

Indiana is where Luke was born and raised. A long way from Texas.

"No idea." I answered.

It was 9 degrees.

I immediately thought of the stark contrast between the winters that I grew up with here in Texas and the winters that Luke grew up with in Indiana. While our friends up north have winters with heavy coats, stocking hats, and snowmen, our winter (lately) has been short sleeves, flip flops, and cooking out on the grill.

Sure, it's not all green grass, but there's no snow. The pecan trees lose their leaves and look bare. But it's what I grew up with, and what I'm so grateful to call home.

This is the view around our home. Our winter.

This is one of our favorite barns on the ranch. It's right outside our back door, and I've watched it age with time. In the 8 years I've lived here, it's managed to age gracefully. Me too, right? :)

All of these images were shot on film with our Contax 645.

I was blog surfing the other day and came across our Boston wedding photographer friends Bethany and Dan's blog post about Bethany's Top 10 Songs from 2012. As a music buff myself, I scoured over the list and read every word.. and also downloaded a few. Of course!

Bethany's idea inspired me to write my own list for 2012. The thing is, I love music *so* much, I have no way of judging. Thank goodness for iTunes stats! I know it might not be 100% accurate (it doesn't consider Pandora, which I listen to a lot) but I made a smart playlist with the rules that it had to be a song purchased in 2012, played more than 50 times. iTunes presented me with a list of 31 songs, of which I sorted by the amount of plays.

Some of the list was taken up by an entire album - meaning that I bought the whole album and just let it play. In that case, I selected the top played song from the album and removed the rest from consideration, just to be fair. For your information though, the 2 albums that took up half this playlist were Birdy's self-titled first album and Bruno Mars's newest album, Unorthodox Jukebox. We love both of those albums, so I'd love you to check them out!

So.... here's my top ten list of my favorite songs that were the soundtrack to our life and our workdays (because that's mainly where we listen to music, here in our office.)

1. Terrible Love by Birdy.
This is no surprise to me! This song is a cover of one of my favorite bands, The National. I heard it playing in the background on Grey's Anatomy at the end of their last season. I recognized the lyrics immediately and *had* to know what it was. This lead me to buy the entire Birdy album, by the way, which is made up of covers. Great album!

2. Big Jet Plane by Angus & Julia Stone
First heard this song during Jose Villa's platform class at WPPI. I didn't know about Shazam yet, so I literally wrote down the words to the song and googled it when I got back to my room. I'm surprised this one wasn't our most-played, because Luke and I both love this song. Just hearing it makes me smile and think of our amazing 2012!

3. Somebody That I Used To Know by Gotye
Also first heard during Jose Villa's platform class at WPPI. This was back in February, but the song didn't become insanely popular until months later. I remember sitting in our hotel room at the MGM Signature and watching the video over and over again so we could hear the song. We called our friend Randa who said, "Yeah, that song is kinda weird, but I can see how y'all like it." Um... thanks? :) By the way, this entire album (Gotye's Making Mirrors) is incredible.

4. I Won't Give Up by Jason Mraz
The fact that this is in our Top 10 just shows how special our friends (and past bride and groom) Katie and Drew are to us. I downloaded this song after hearing it as their first dance song at their wedding. Every time I hear this song, I think of them. And most of the time, I text Katie some sappy text saying how I miss her. Yeah, I'm that person.

5. A Face To Call Home by John Mayer
The new John Mayer album was our 3rd most played album of the year, and apparently this is my favorite. Ahhh... Sappy music... my fave!

6. Young Girls by Bruno Mars
Bruno Mars was the musical guest on SNL and we became big fans! This was one of the 2 songs he performed. We bought the entire album and this is our most-played.

7. Closer to Love by Mat Kearney
I had always heard this song but never really took notice until I saw it used on another photographer's promo video. I downloaded it and played it in our car, while Luke drives on sunny days with the windows down and the bulldogs in the backseat. Just painting you a picture there... :)

8. About Today by The National
The National is one of my favorite bands! Pandora introduced me to them, but now I own lots and lots of their music. I didn't realize I played this song so much, but I must have. It was featured on the movie Warrior which was one of our favorite films we saw this past year, too.

9. A Thousand Years by Christina Perri
Twi-hards just perked up. What can I say? I love this song. The lyrics literally made me tear up the first time I paid attention, mainly the part that says, "And all along I believed I would find you." I know I wasn't *that* old when I found Luke, but a lot of my friends the same age as me had already found their person. Without boring you all with the details that let you know JUST how sentimental I am, that lyric is how I felt the entire time I was looking, until I finally found MY person!

10. All I Ask Of You from The Phantom of The Opera Motion Picture Soundtrack
So this one is just funny. Sometime this past year we happened to watch the Phantom of the Opera on HBO. After that, we downloaded the soundtrack and listened to it (apparently) often. THEN, this summer, we were photographing Lydia and Brandon's wedding in Austin and during the toast, we found out that Brandon was a huge fan of the movie soundtrack as well. Lydia can hit the high notes! Go figure. So can I. Not really. That's a lie. HA!

If you are a photographer, this season of the year can be one of ideas and dreams. If you're anything like us, you're also trying to look ahead and map out where you want to be in 12 months down the road.

So, for us, we're right smack dab in both the busiest AND the slowest part of our year.

It's busy because many couples got engaged over the holidays and are reaching out to us, wanting to chat it up about the possibility of us shooting their wedding. The fact that brides even consider us is such an honor, and makes us smile from ear to ear. They may not realize it, but their business is a blessing that allows us to live our dreams and the life that we want.

It is also a slow time, because like most wedding photographers, December and January are slower parts of the year, just because not very many people want to get married in the cold days of winter :) This allows us to have a few free Saturdays (Hello DVR Catchup!) and also gives us some time to set goals, refocus, and get ready to conquer the upcoming months!

One of the things that we have always done is set an education budget each year that allows us to learn from other photographers or business people. I would say that investing in our business in the form of education has been the biggest key to our success. And as photographers, with the plethora of information available out there, we've always felt that we couldn't afford NOT to keep learning.

Flashback to 2011. We took the journey to Nashville, Tennessee for a business/photography one-on-one mentorship with fellow husband and wife wedding photographers Zach and Jody Gray. It started as a mentorship, but two years later, has turned in to a friendship that we treasure. Though now our relationship is more than teacher-student, every time we are around our friends Z&J we learn something new. It could just be a different way of thinking of something, a new Lightroom trick, or a new strategy in our favorite board game, Blokus.

So that's the backstory. Here's the point! :)

Zach & Jody are featured speakers of the Joy of Marketing reFOCUS event, a live FREE broadcast for photographers. They will be speaking about 3 steps to bigger sales. This event is tomorrow, January 24th, and if you have the time you should sit in and get ready to be enlightened.

In addition to the free broadcast, you can purchase additional info that compliments Z&J's segment. Here's the exciting news... Zach and Jody invited US to be a part of this! If you purchase the add-on to their component, you get lots of bonus content, one of which is a 10 minute video of us speaking about how important it is to treat your clients how you would like to be treated. We go over three different points that we feel have made our customers happy (which they so deserve!) and, in turn, blessed our business with tremendous growth and our life with the freedom to live our dreams.

So, we hope you'll tune in to hear Zach & Jody's broadcast, and if your 'education budget' allows it, invest in the bonus content and watch our 10 minute video!