About this Curveball…

Uncertainties are scary yet exciting…

Normally we like to share our highs, but we do hit some low’s along the way, just like everybody else. So let’s get real. So here is one huge bump in the road we are dealing with right now.

The beginning of 2018 brought us stability… Something we haven’t had in quite a while. I didn’t have any pregnancies or newborns this year in our family of 5 (we think our little family is complete now) and we had a stable income through our Wedding photography (If you were wondering… this is what we do). No crazy sh*t happening around us. Just a nice day to day routine and all was good. We finally got into the flow of balancing work and family.

On top of that my Instagram and this blog started to generate some income too! We had some pretty awesome collaborations amazing brands. It’s still not enough to stop doing weddings (not that want to stop doing weddings, weddings are awesome). But it was enough to let all the photo and video editing after we shot the wedding days over to Michiel, so I could focus on investing my time on creating content for this blog, the vlog, and my Instagram!

-“And then came Oktober… Oh my. What a curve ball!”-


The curveball

Things were pretty amazing!

And then came Oktober… Oh my. What a curve ball!
Our stable income was not so stable anymore.
The short version: We don’t have enough weddings in 2019 to keep ourselves afloat! So we need to make some adjustments. We need to push ourselves out of our comfort zone once again.

To fully understand what happened I need to explain it a bit more:
It takes us 2,5 week to process all the photo and video images of just one wedding. We do a maximum of 18 weddings every year. We don’t have room for more. 
The summer month we survive with the income of the weddings, the winter months we survive on the down payments for the upcoming weddings and the orders of wedding albums of the past wedding season.

We reach 90% of our clients through the biggest wedding fair in Holland. We participate two times a year, and then we are fully booked.
No need for online ads, campaigns or another form of advertising.
But this year, the wedding fair of October was a complete fail. Where normally there are on average 5000 visitors, now there were only 1000. We got ZERO bookings from that fair this year. Something that has never happened before in the last 5 years. And on top of that, the fair of March 2019 is canceled. The whole fair stopped. Forever!

-“looking back afterward it always has been exactly the way it should have been. We just didn’t know it yet at the time.”-

So now we have 4 weddings booked for 2019, Wich generates not enough to get us through this winter, or the next summer for that matter. so we need to get familiar with online advertising. But oh’my… its all sooo complicated and time-consuming learning process. And we don’t have the time, we need bookings like yesterday.

 

So Now what!?

I’m positive that we get this online advertising thing down soon, and we’ll get enough bookings for the upcoming summer. But until then, we have a bit of a financial problem. So one of us needs a job somewhere for the upcoming 4 months. On “project base” or for a longer period of time if we like it enough. And with “we”, I mean preferably Michiel. I want to stay focused on creating our content and keep the inspiring Wild&BOHO collabs going! I’m only selectively applying to jobs that I would LOVE to do so much, that I would maybe ditch all other stuff and stay working there forever! And there are not so many vacancies out there that will get my attention. I’ve written 3 so far. Michiel 5 and counting. We’ll see…

-“It’s not a curveball… its a Pusch in the right direction by the universe.”-

I’m stressing a lot about the What If’s.
Our reserves are running dry and something needs to happen soon! The uncertainties are taking its toll. Images of every imaginable scenario are going through my monkey mind. The never-ending chatter of my internal dialogue who sometimes gets stuck in a carousel… Going round and round in circles. Pointless and exhausting. We are doing our best here, there really is nothing more we can do.

One of my goals for 2019 is to just let the universe do its thing.
I’m going to do the best job I can, work my but off, and then I’m going to let it go. No stress. Trusting everything will be fine. Because looking back afterward it always has been exactly the way it should have been. We just didn’t know it yet at the time. This is a chance to grow, evolve, move forward instead of getting stuck in the same pattern over and over again. It’s not a curveball… its a Pusch in the right direction by the universe.

Our glass is half full. We have love, we have each other, we have our creativity, we have a nice home. We’ll pull through. 

-“Because of you this blog and our Instagram has started to become a way to support our family”-

So if you reached all the way to this point in the blog, I want to thank you for reading!
You are here not only for our best moments but apparently also here for our struggles.
Thank you for being there for us, for following our blogs, watching our video’s, checking out our Instagram posts and by leaving a comment now and then. Because of you this blog and our Instagram has started to become a way to support our family a bit! Maybe one day we can fully focus on creating art and cool content full time! We appreciate your support so much. So Thank you Thank you Thank you!

Have a Wonderful New year’s eve! We love you guys!

Love,
Jolanda, Michiel
Miley, Haley & Quinn

 

Blog post: Jolanda Marti
Photography: Michiel Fook

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About this Curveball…

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A little throwback to ‘Zeeland’

A little throwback to ‘Zeeland’

In this video we have a little trowback to the time the 5 of us were only 4! We made a little roadtrip to ‘Zeeland’ in the Netherlands and wandered the fields.

At the time (2015) when we filmed these shots and after we arrived back home we found out we had a difficult and emotional year ahead of us, so we totally forgot about all the footage we shot.

Looking back at that year it went by so fast and everything ended well. Almost 4 years later we found the footage again and it feels like a little time capsule we opened up.
So now we edited it into this little throwback video, we hope you enjoy it.

Videography: Wild & BOHO

Music by: www.bensounds.com

A little throwback to ‘Zeeland’

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A Road trip to the Black forest in Germany – Vanlife family

We went on a road trip to the Black Forest in Germany

We hit the road with our family of five in our trusty little Volkswagen camper van.
And naturally, we made a little overview video of our adventures there! There where miles of road, lots of cuddles and laughs. But also a lot of chaos in the back of the van with our three kids! The breaks had a misfunction we had to fix, we swam in rivers and waterfalls, and discovered this beautiful and mysterious part of Europe in our Little Vanlife trip with 5 of us in a bus!

We made a lot of precious memories! We won’t say it was easy or relaxing traveling with three small children. Traveling with kids can be a challenge and is hard work! But the memories are definitely worth all the chaos! We explored this part of Europe and it was so beautiful that we will be back for sure to discover more hidden places of this magical place!

We hope you like our video about our road trip to the Black Forest!
Maybe we’ll make a longer 30-minute “documentary/vlog video” with all the moments so we can tell the full story of our adventure!
What do you think!? Would you like us to make a longer and more detailed video!? We would love to hear your thoughts!

Videography: Wild & BOHO

Music by: Viviihttps://www.instagram.com/vivii.official/

A Road trip to the Black forest in Germany – Vanlife family

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Searching for fairies

When the sun goes down and al the “good well behaved kids” go to bed so all the “good and responsible parents” can go and tidy up the house (and then Netflix) But let’s be honest… that’s just boring! So just once in a while, we just get our lanterns and put on our exploring boots! There is nothing more magical than searching for fairies in the dark! Magic. It’s real if you believe in it. We saw it with our own eyes! Fairies shooting over the fields and grazing the water. Twinkling little lights and fairy bells if you look and listen hard enough. You can spot them especially from the corner of your eyes! And if you get scared for what reason what so ever… just SING a happy song as loud as you can. The fear will melt away guaranteed. Because we all know that singing creates a magical positivity protection bubble all around you. That’s just common sense. And cuddles. Lots of cuddles. These girls are the bravest and strongest explorers I know! Oh, how we love to explore the fields in the dark. Magical things happen in the dark. Especially if you have a wild imagination and truly open mind. We create our own reality. Who needs to sleep when we can dream out loud…
Photography: Wild & Boho

Searching for fairies

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To the Moony and back

Having small kids, a career, wanting to have a free life and travel a lot, running a household can be a bit much sometimes!
Having extreme happy moments, and then the extreme overwhelming exhaustion kicks in! Feeling so tired at the end of every single day I tend to get a bit frustrated. Will this ever get any easier!? Everything is such a struggle. Never a moment of peace. Always moving, always something or someone to take care of, clean, work, manage.

But at the end of the day, I go through the pictures of the last couple of months and I realize… Years from now I will probably look back and see that these are the happiest years of my life! The childhood of girls, seeing them grow up, and experiencing so much love in our little family is the best thing that ever happened to me!

Our family photo’s always have been so important to me. And as soon as I tend to forget how lucky I am (because all parents know… this parenting thing is HARD and completely exhausting) I Flip open one my photo albums and my heart just opens up, my racing mind just calms down and I get this wave of gratefulness that just washes over me like a Tsunami of LOVE!

Photo’s make me remember what my heart already knows but what my head is to busy to notice. Looking at our photo’s is a tool to help me just stop and be mindful, it helps me realize how many good things are happening right now! And most important, It helps me focus on all the positive, instead of on the few negatives in my life!

Therefore I would say having photo prints and/or albums is improving my quality of life! And it’s so valuable to have as we will grow older and our lives, the world, and the people around us will change too. Photos are little time capsules. Great to have to lay around, amazing to be able to give your children as they grow up.

There are so many advantages to having photo’s in print! It just basically makes me really really really happy whenever I look at them. I got so inspired by that feeling of happiness while flipping through my new Moonylab book that I decided to make this happy little video with our DJI drone!

Moonylab is offering all of my followers a 10% discount using the code Wildandboho10 while placing your order!

Check out our video, and then the backstage Images below that Michiel took from me while I was shooting this video!

Hope you enjoy my outburst of happiness in this little experiment-video.
I put the video on my NEW InstaTV channel for the world to see!
Would you like to see more of these short videos on my Instagram?

Love,
Jolanda Marti

– This Blog post was made in collaboration with Moonylab

Blog and video by: Jolanda Marti
Music in this video is by Derek Clegg
Backstage Photography: Michiel Fook

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