Apartment Progress!

So Dom and I have been so busy the past week and weekend moving and getting our new apartment in living-condition, and we made a lot of progress last night. Hopefully tonight we can get it in really good shape and be able to sleep there! Last night I posted this picture on instagram of the wall that Julian's crib is on, and it's funny because looking at it you would picture a perfect room, so it just goes to show that in the digital world, some pictures are only a small representation of what actually is. So here is the picture I posted, and here is what is actually going on behind it!

The rest of Julian's room... yeah, not so pretty!

The kitchen... hardly ready for cooking in.

Our little little bathroom!

Our huge bedroom... I'm sure it will be the last thing that gets organized.

Now it's sinking in that this is our home because I walk down the stairs to see this.

A view of the whole downstairs. Looks like a thrift store!

 It's looking more like a home than it did all day yesterday, though! This is what it looked like after just moving everything into the house. We had to wait until last night to move everything upstairs because carpet was being installed up there yesterday.

At least mostly everything is in the rooms that they belong in, now. We have to bring some dressers and the box spring around the front of the house, up the front stairs and through the apartment that spans the rest of the upstairs to a door that connects to our side. Sounds so fun, right?

It's strange putting all of the things that were once in another home into a different one because some things serve the same purposes and some things find new homes within the new home. It's awesome having a fresh start and being able to put things in different places than they were before, and I'm surprised at how many pieces look better in another room here than they did in their original rooms before. (if that makes sense!)

I'm so excited about Julian's room. I have some amazing plans for it! I was thrown off a little bit when I went up there last night to find that the carpet that was installed is blue. I was expecting it to be the same tan color as the rest of the second floor. It looks pretty good against the white and green walls, but I was imagining a green, black and white color scheme. Now I'll have to adjust it a little bit to include the blue. I'll share a mood board tomorrow to show you guys what I'm imagining, and it'll help me stay on track and remember all the things I'm visualizing right now!

Thank you to everyone who has helped us so far with everything from watching Julian while we moved to helping me trek boxes over last week to moving our furniture, as well as giving me moral support through it all! I am promising myself that we won't be moving for a loooong time- hopefully the next time we move will be when we eventually buy our own house. I'm decorating this place with long-term living in mind and organizing in a way that will work for us for a while.

Gratitude Journal // 02

Dom's Birthday card that I made for him this past weekend  ♥

Another gratitude post! I thought about what things I was grateful for this week at the end of each day, and I found that even when life is frustrating, there is always at least one thing to be grateful for in a day. Here they are:

• Fleece gloves because it’s been in the negatives here in Central New York this week. Temperatures are looking up though!

• I said this last week, but I literally am grateful for it every day of the week- amazing friends at work. Seriously, I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t work, because I wouldn’t have found such amazing friends here.

• White paint to cover up a bad paint color choice and a cheap old piece in need of an update.

• Remote car starters, even though I forget that my mom has one so I still get into a cold car usually.

• This blog, because it forces me to write, create and think, so that I have more to share!

Have an aazing weekend everyone! Hopefully we can do a ton of moving and be in our new place sometime next week. I want to post some pictures of the place before we move big stuff in, so stay tuned for that!

Currently // 04

Working on two things; one is the poster for my sister’s high school musical production of The Pajama Game, which I was having some anxiety about because there’s little room for creative interpretation on those types of things, but it came out nice and simple, just the way I like it. The second thing that is like 2% underway is a rebranding of my mom’s Flower Shop (literally called The Flower Shop), which will (hopefully) include a website so she can have a presence on the internet!

Thinking about too many things at once, of course. Particularly a trend in the blogosphere that makes me want to disconnect my internet that involves almost every single one of the bloggers that I admire most recently announcing that they’re expecting either their first or third child. Maybe more on my feelings in another post? 

Excited for our move next week!! We’ve been doing a little bit at a time so there is a lot of stuff there already, but we have so much that it looks like we haven’t moved anything yet. I’ve been staying at my mom’s because the transmission on my car bit the dust two weeks ago (yeah, two…) and it’s been hard packing things and then getting it to the new place without a car. I can’t wait to be in a new place that we actually love more and more every time we go there.

Obsessed with working out. I never thought the day would come where I physically need to go to the gym every day in order to mentally and physically feel good. I skipped a few days because the whole not having a car thing wasn’t working to my advantage but when I go for days in a row I feel amazing! Eventually I’ll be making some diet changes, but for now I’m just trying to be more mindful about what I eat and when I eat it. I already feel 50% better and I’m excited to start looking any percent better!

What's currently going on with you? If you have written a Currently post lately, comment below with the link to it! Thank you to Danielle from Sometimes Sweet for the original idea for this series. You can see my past Currently posts here!

Finding Happiness: A Gratitude Journal

Earlier this week, I was inspired by a website that I somehow stumbled upon called The Greater Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, and it has tons and tons of articles that are backed by Berkeley research about that subject. One of the things I saw talked about creating a journal of the things you are grateful for, or a Gratitude Journal. I wouldn't consider myself an unhappy person at this point in my life, but I definitely have a lot of stress and some of it is related to feeling like everything goes wrong for me, continually wanting something more and better, and always comparing myself to others.

So, I thought "Hmm... what if I mindfully thought about the things that I am grateful for? Would it help me look at my situation differently? Yes, probably. But journals always fail for me, so maybe it's a stupid idea. But wait, I have a blog. What if I wrote weekly about what I'm grateful for? It could be a beautiful thing!"

And that's how ideas come together in my head, folks.

So I thought all week about what I would write, and I've come up with the following concusions:

• I'm grateful for my mom, my dad, Hammie, Grandma & Grandpa B, my sister, and pretty much my whole family that I can always count on to support me when I’m in need of something. (A.k.a all the time)
• I'm grateful for my amazing co-workers who I always go to for advice. They’re an amazing support system of friends and secondary mother figures that have really guided me through a lot of things.
• I'm grateful for winter days that are cold but still nice enough for me to walk from work to Julian’s daycare to my mom’s house without being cold. You know, since I’m car-less and everything.
• I'm grateful for fruit smoothies and homemade lattes to get me through my mornings.
• I'm grateful for the Internet, which is where I get to virtually visit pretty homes and imagine our next apartment décor.
• I'm grateful for Dom, for being understanding and always patient with me, even when I get crazy ideas that he gets dragged into. And also for supporting me on my venture to become physically (and therefore mentally) healthy.
• I'm grateful for the time I get to spend with Julian every day, even when he’s not being the best version of himself.

So there, those are the things I'm thankful for this week. I'm excited to have an opportunity to mindfully think of all the things I do have right now. Gotta stay positive!

The most positive thing is that it's Friday! I'm looking forward to packing more of our things up this weekend and hopefully haulding them over to our new place. I don't know how they'll get there, so if you see me walking down South street with a red wagon full of stuff, that's me moving.

Happy Friday!!

A Value Assessment

As I was doing my usual morning blog reading to get my day started, I stumbled upon a post by one of my favorite designer bloggers, Breanna, who talked about and shared a link to a really great self-assessment that can also be really useful for developing your brand and your business. I wanted to share it here because I, too, LOVE quizzes and assessments of all kinds and this one was really thorough. The picture above is how I counted my answers and then added them up the way that Abby Kerr tells you to.

All you have to do is go to Abby Kerr and The Voice Bureau, subscribe to her posts and you'll immediately get a link to take the test.

At the end, it tells you several ways to interperet your results, which is super helpful. It's also pretty open so you can use the results in lots of aspects of your life.

If you have a spare 10 minutes, I suggest you take it, no matter who you are! Have a pen and paper or word document handy to write your scores down on and to do *simple simple* math. Like, numbers don't go above 4, which is perfect for me.

I'd love to know what your top values are! I scored highest on security, intimacy, helpfullness, transparency, playfullness, enthusiasm, and depth. I don't know about playfulness- I'm usually the serious type, but like I said, you can bend the descriptions to fit yourself better and it ends up making sense!

Why do you read blogs?

I don’t know about you, but I’m always trying to analyze different aspects of my life and one of the things that takes up a lot of my time is reading all of the various blogs that I follow. So I was thinking about the reasons why I read blogs, other than the obvious reason being that I just like to. Why do I like to, though?

I think the answer to that question is similar for most readers out there, whether you’ve thought about it or not. It’s because you’re hoping that by reading what someone else who is somewhere else has to say, you’ll gain some sort of knowledge or insight to something you otherwise wouldn’t know about. The kind of things bloggers write about aren’t always searchable on the web, you can’t really find in books, and sometimes you don’t even know that you’re looking for information on something until you see it there in front of you!

If you keep your own blog, it’s definitely important to think about your answer to this question, because once you can answer it thoughtfully, you’ll probably think of a few new things to write about.

For instance, my answer has me wanting to think of something new that I haven’t seen on Pinterest/other blogs/Google/Facebook/out there somewhere that readers will stumble upon and be able to learn something from.

Do you think everyone reads blogs for this reason? Do you have a completely different reason for reading blogs? Please share what your reason for reading is!

Happy Hump Day!!

Becoming an Expert // Take Two

There are all kinds of people that call themselves designers. I've looked through probably at least 20 portfolios so far this year (we're only on day 9...) because I love seeing the work that other people are producing. I like doing that not so I can copy or do something similar, but I think it's good to have an idea of what you like, how your designs differentiate, and also to get inspiration to keep in mind for the future. I also like to think of self-commissioned projects that I could create for myself to add to my portfolio.

But, all of them look pretty different, and not only is there a difference in all of the projects I've seen, but there's a difference between designers and their specialties. Sometimes I feel like every good designer knows it all, and can satisfy any client, whether their needs are print based, web based, branding, app creation, illustrating, hand-lettering, coding, ect. ect. ect. But I'm starting to get this feeling that it's not really like that, and if you don't have the know-how to do one thing or another, you shouldn't feel bad about it. You shouldn't apologize for it, and if you truly don't have the desire to learn how to do it, then don't apologize for that either.

As a designer, you have to always be evolving. A designer 20 years ago meant something very different than a designer today means, and those that didn't update themselves probably aren't succeeding today. I talked a few months ago about becoming an expert, and I sort of concluded that it's a good idea to become really good at one thing before moving on to learn about something new. I can't say I've become an expert in any one thing yet, but I still think it's a really good idea to loosely follow that methodology.

I wonder if a lot of designers did it that way. I wonder if the designers that seem to "know it all" did it that way. I wonder if I really have the patience to do it that way.

I do know that I need to stop being envious of the designers that have 85 million things listed under their "Skills" page.

I ran into all of these thoughts last week when I was working on a blog design project for this girl. I don't consider myself to be an expert or even half as knowledgeable as any of the developers out there, but I can do simple tasks and build off of templates, and of course there's handy dandy Google. But as I sat there changing the blog around, I felt like I was an imposter. I don't advertise that I'm a developer, and if someone came to me with a crazy development project I would tell them the truth.

I guess my point is that I feel like I need to learn coding (at least basics, if not more) to be a successful designer, but I don't know if I even want to get into all of that. I'm not the tech-y type of girl, I just like things that look pretty, so maybe I don't even belong in that world. Is that how it works for other designers that choose not to follow the developer path as well?

Obviously I have many years to deveop my skills as a designer, and my thoughts and passions may change, but for now I think I'll stick with the designer side of it, and leave the development side of it to the people that can wrap their mind around all of it. For me, if a quick Google can solve my html problem, then it's good enough for me.

With all of that said, I'm going to bring up another side to this discussion, and that's the side where I consider that there might be designers and developers out there that aren't nice and shut out those that aren't up to their standards. I saw this infographic that someone on Pinterest posted a few weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. I don’t really know where it came from or what authority the sources have, but I guess it stung me a little bit. It paints this picture that Developers are better than Designers, maybe because they know this other complicated language, and then there are “amateurs” that are beneath Developers and Designers.

Ok, so maybe bloggers that aren’t into blogging to get followers and sell ad space and all that just need a basic design, so they do it themselves. What’s wrong with that? Maybe a designer is just starting out and trying to learn the ropes of the business. Not really an amateur, but they aren’t an expert in design yet.

There’s this Mean Girls “You can’t sit with us” feeling that I sometimes get about the design industry, and I think I feel like it targets those of us who are teaching ourselves. Those of us who can’t devote 40 hours a week to a design job because we have other day jobs.

Am I the only beginner (possibly amateur) designer that feels like this? It can even be applied to any other profession, so I’d love to hear what you have to say about it!

For now, I’ll leave you with a nice little computer and iPhone background with this great quote that I found over at Creative Mornings, which is a great series of “breakfast lectures for the creative community”. I plan on exploring the site a little more to see what I can be inspired by!

Click here to get it in Aqua, here to get it in pink, and here to get it in black & gray.

And get it for your iPhone!

Click here to get it in Aqua, here to get it in pink, and here to get it in black & gray.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

So Far NOT So Good, 2014!

What you are about to read is a modge-podge of a rambling, and you might not even make it to the end. There are more exciting blog posts out there today, filled with bright, sunny pictures and a life-changing craft or tutorial, I’m sure. This is not one of those posts.

So far, 2014 is not my friend. It’s probably because I left 2013 with a lot of stress, and it’s not like a new year will just wipe that away. So, I won’t go into detail, but I feel like almost every aspect of my life is super stressful right now, and most of that is related to financial stress. It’s hard for me to admit that money is an issue, because most of it is because of poor decisions Dom and I make financially. I’m pretty sure most young people go through it, and we will most certainly learn from our mistakes, but… ugh! Makes me feel like a failure. I just wonder if we will ever get it right or if we will always be behind.

In other news, we’re moving! I’m so so excited and I’m 100% sure we will be much happier in this place than our current one. We move February first, and I’m excited to say that this place is worth showing pictures of, and I won’t be embarrassed to have people see it (as long as we can keep it tidy…). Unfortunately, the move is also the source of our stress in many ways. Mostly because we have so.much.stuff. and we are dreadinggg the actual moving process. Also because moving isn’t usually free… we’re going to have to get a moving truck for our furniture, probably paint two of the rooms, and, obviously, come up with the security deposit and first month’s rent. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that we get our security deposit back from our current place, which will really help a lot.

So, that will be exciting!

When I get stressed and start to feel the weight of everything on my shoulders, it’s all I can think about. I become obsessed with it, and I almost wish I was the type of person that could just say “well, it’ll all work out somehow”, but I’m not. Dom is, and I hate him for it. I wish there was a way for me to de-stress and think about things with a more optimistic approach. It doesn’t help that I don’t have any sort of project going on at the moment, which would distract me a little. I should probably create my own project, or try to learn something new.

I also have a Marshall’s giftcard, so maybe I’ll go shopping. But that’s not a good habit to get into when you have money problems, is it?

Well, hopefully when we finally see the light at the end of all our stress (so, probably never) there will be a lesson learned or a moral to the story. Hopefully we will have learned some things about financial responsibility, or even just coping with stress. One of my goals for this year was to become more financially responsible and to set myself in the right direction in that area, but so far it’s not looking too hot. But, a lot can happen in a year, so I won’t judge you yet, 2014.

I think one of the things that might make me feel better is to start focusing on getting my body healthier and something that I’m proud of. I think Dom and I are at that stage of getting comfortable and we’re forgetting that it still matters that we look good, but it might just mean something sort of different. Before, we were trying to look good to impress one another, but now we have to focus on looking good (and feeling good) for ourselves. So, in celebration of me, I’m getting a gym membership tomorrow (plus they have a deal going right now that I can’t pass up), and I’m not even going to feel bad about the small price to pay. Hopefully it’ll make me feel so good that I stick with it and see results.

So there- that’s my modge-podge of a rambling! Happy Wednesday!

Recent Projects

I didn’t really take any breaks from design work for the holidays, mostly because all of the projects I work on are things that I really am excited about. I feel lucky to love all of my projects, and I know that as I continue in my design career, that won’t always be the case.

Anyways, I was up late almost every night over the past few weeks, mostly working on a new blog design/branding project (but also staying up all night working on my New Year's Greeting!) for a fellow blogger who also happens to be a co-worker of mine at Boyle & Anderson. We first worked together with some very basic designs and branding ideas back in September, and it was definitely time to take her blog design to the next level.

So I began to work hard at showing her my ideas and putting together a moodboard, and before we both knew it I has completely re-designed her blog! The new look should be in place later tonight, so be sure to stop by her blog tomorrow, once all the kinks have been worked out.

I’m super proud and excited, because this is my first blog design project, besides my own, and although it took very basic coding knowledge, I did it all by myself and all of the designs are, to my knowledge, completely original and based only on my visions!

So, here is the moodboard and the branding board for Felicia's new blog design! You'll be able to see the full design on her blog and on my portfolio site by tomorrow morning!

Another really great project that was recently completed was a birthday party invitation for a sweet little girl who is turning 1 this month. her mom, Nikki, came to me with her vision of a Mad Hatter Tea Party themed party, so I got to work thinking of the funnest way to convey the theme while still keeping in mind that the party is for a baby girl. It came out amazing- definitely a one-of-a-kind design!

In my opinion, invitations to a party are what sets the scene. If you want to throw a great themed party, having well-designed invitations is like putting a key into a door (which sort of reminds me of Alice In Wonderland haha!). Your guests will know to expect high quality at your party! Some people won't appreciate your effort, but a lot of people will, and it's an amazing feeling to recieve those complements!

These two projects were both a really amazing way to end 2013 and start 2014. I can't wait to see the party that Nikki puts together for Elli- I know it'll be amazing- and I can't wait to start working on putting Felicia's blog design into place tonight! Stay tuned for the final peek at that!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!! Dom and I rang in the year together with good friends, good food and good drinks. It was a fun night but now I'm feeling super lazy today, even though I feel like I should be productive for posterity's sake. But the day isn't over yet so who knows!

I'm still thinking about possible resolutions and goals for this year. Since last year was such a huge year for me, I'm really curious about the year ahead and what it will bring for me and my family. 

So while I'm busy being productive and thinking long and hard about all the possibilities for the year ahead, I leave you with a New Years greeting!