Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Still Estivating... Check Back In 2011

In June this blog unknowingly began its estivation in cyberspace junkyard and it missed the fact that its estivation had expired when autumn set in on September 22 and then doubly expired yesterday on the first of winter.

I'm now trying to summon it back home but it may take a few days, maybe a week or two. I should probably just wait for the new year to start to make sure it's really sick of its extended stay in the cyberspace junkyard.

Just thought I'd let whoever is still out there know I'm trying.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Happy National Doughnut Day!


While at the dentist this morning I was browsing through the newspaper and discovered that today is National Doughnut Day which means... you can pay a visit to Krispie Kreme and get a free doughnut. Dunkin Donuts is also giving out free donuts however you have to by a beverage to get it. And who knows what local bakeries are doing it too!

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Portfolio Has Sapped Me Of All Motivation!

That's my excuse at least! I'm trying to work on school but I have really been lacking motivation this week! And just a few minutes ago I found an entirely new way to waste time while trying to write a paper. (That's right - I'm writing a paper - one of 2 or 3 of my entire graphic design education!) Anyway, here's the new distraction I discovered: The Puppy Shuffle!

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Journey Behind The Journey

Friday April 16th, 2010 was a big day for me. It was the culmination of 100+ hours (possibly 200+) and a bunch of dollars that were used to produce one little book with a big purpose. The book is my portfolio, the purpose is to attain a job in graphic design! I shouldn't say all those hours and dollars were only put toward one little book. Along with my portfolio, I produced a resume, business card, envelope, leave behind and website. Here's a little sampling of the work I did:

Portfolio Cover

Leave Behind Cover


Business Card - Front Side

Although everything you see looks fairly simplistic, it was anything but that! I started working on all these things a couple of months ago but the majority of the work was done in the last couple of weeks - mostly the last week. On Monday the 5th, I was feeling pretty overwhelmed and not very hopeful that I would be able to get done what was needed.

Things began to change dramatically after Grandma prayed for me and encouraged me to stop, pray and then get a fresh start on my day. All of my work did not magically disappear nor were solutions to my projects instantly popping into my brain and getting translated onto my computer. What changed at that time was my attitude. I was no longer overcome with worry about finishing my work and instead was able to think optimistically about it.

In this past week I've been averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night and about 15 hours of school work a day. I got pretty tired and a little cranky at times but for the most part I was energized, alert, able to focus on one thing at time and have a positive attitude.

On Thursday afternoon I was feeling pretty exhausted and starting to wonder if I would get everything done. While I had hoped to have my portfolio printed and assembled by the last weekend, it didn't happen until Thursday afternoon. Of course, mistakes immediately popped off of the printed page. However, cost and time prevented me from making corrections and reprinting. I have never created a book before and that was my next task. Things eventually got wrapped up around 11:00pm. I wasn't overly excited about my portfolio, business cards and resume but consoled myself with the realization that worse things can happen than my work not looking as good as I'd like, my website not being up and running when I'd like and my portfolio presentation not going as well as I'd hope for.

I managed to get about 6 hours of sleep on Thursday night, woke up to a breakfast made by Courtney on Friday morning and arrived at school in plenty of time. I had everything I needed but was a little disappointed with it. Nonetheless, when the presentations began at 9:00, I was able to talk fairly confidently about my work. I wasn't nervous or tired as I had expected and despite the mistakes I saw in my work, I think it was received pretty well by the reviewers.

I know there were many people praying for me during this process because I most certainly noticed! If you were one of those people, thank you so very much for taking the time to do so!

It was so nice to be able to relax after the presentation was done! Mom and I got to go out for supper at a new (for us) restaurant - The Bosphorus Cafe, enjoy coffee at Calvin Fletcher Coffee Co. and watch Alex & Emma. Overall, it was a fantastic day!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Cream Cooled By Means Of Ice... With Sesame Seeds!

Today I was reading Linda's Refrigerator (I discovered this blog a couple days ago - it is a dream come true!) Anyway... through this blog, I learned about sesame seed ice cream today! It is served at Ichiban on the northeast side of Indianapolis (and all kinds of other places).

After learning about this curious flavor, I was of course itching to go to Ichiban to try it out. But then I came across this recipe for black sesame seed ice cream and am now just anxious to make it myself!

Swagbucks is just so nice.

Sometimes I when I really want some swagbucks but don't really need to search for anything, I start asking the swagbucks search engine questions. Like tonight I just asked if they wanted to give me any more swagbucks. And lo and behold, they did (even when I mispelled their name)! Such a deal!

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Haven't You Always Wanted To Be A Swaggernaut?

I spent my spring break in the good old Michiana region. Instead of frying myself on some beach in warm, sunny Florida I decided to go hang out in an office. But not just any office... the iMedia department of Life Action Ministries! Not only did I get to hang out with some great people, I also learned some valuable information that has given me a whole new reason to get addicted to surfing the web! I discovered that while I surf the web to find out all kinds of interesting little tidbits and essential information, I can earn prizes! By simply entering a question, a word or even just a letter I can type my way to electronics, stickers, gift cards and so much more! I hope you all are just dying to know how you can do this too because I am just dying to pass this information along to you!

Here is how you join the excitement - become a member of SWAGBUCKS! But... you should do so by responding to my email message. If you did not receive an email from me, let me know and I'll send you one (I can only send 10 email invites at a time).

Let me give you a brief explanation of how Swagbucks works and why you should be jumping up and down with anticipation to join!

This is what the swagbucks home page looks like:

It's a search engine and so much more! When you join, you will be given 30 swagbucks (sbs). You can earn more sbs by searching, finding codes and putting it into "Gimme," shopping on-line (2 sbs for every $1 spent), playing on-line games, testing products, filling out on-line surveys, asking questions, twittering, inviting friends (when you refer a friend, you receive sbs whenever they do), and who knows how many other ways!

To give you an idea of how much sbs are worth, a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card is 1,250 sbs (this is what I am working toward right now). I'll warn you that swagbucks can be kind of addicting because once you see this image below you will want to see it again and again! (You win sbs randomly when you search, not every time.) And you get to be famous for about a minute every time you win sbs! If you look close enough, you can see my image right below the purple "Shop & Earn" bar.

Are you dying to join yet? If not you should probably call me and I will talk you into it. If you are ready - great! You should do it! And if you want to be really nice, you can do it by joining through the email that I sent! Happy Swaggernauting!

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Happy First Day of Spring!

To celebrate the first day of spring, I balanced an egg during the vernal equinox which conveniently occurred at 1:32pm. (Last year it was 7:44am and in 2008 it was 1:48am). Vernal means "of or pertaining to spring" and equinox means "equal night."

While this whole egg balancing thing may be nothing new to some people, I just recently learned about it (or maybe I just started caring about it). According to Chinese legend, you can balance a raw egg on its end as a result some special gravitational pull that occurs during the equinox when the sun passes over the equator. Now, there are some skeptics out there and here's a little blurp from Urban Legends on About.com:

If you look at it skeptically, however, you have to wonder about the fact that there's an another equinox every year on the first day of autumn — how come there's no talk of balancing eggs in September? Secondly, while it's true that on both equinoxes the earth's axis is perpendicular to the sun so day and night are of equal length, there's no scientific reason to suppose that such an alignment exercises a perceptible gravitational effect on solid objects here on earth. Thirdly, if the equinox can cause this curious anomaly, why doesn't it cause others? Why don't we see people running around standing broomsticks, pencils, lollipops, and foot-long hot dogs on end? Food for thought.

With a few grains of salt

I'm not saying it can't be done — standing raw eggs on end, I mean — it certainly can, but the trick takes patience, eggs of just the right shape, a pinch of salt if all else fails, and — and this is the biggest "secret" of all, mind you — it works equally well no matter what day of the year you attempt it.

But I would just like you all to know that around 1:20 I was just messing around with the egg, getting my props ready and although I was not trying too hard, the egg did not want to balance itself. But then... at 1:32, I pretty much threw the egg up and it landed perfectly balanced on its buttush! Amazing, huh? Mom got one to balance also but when Courto came home around 4:30 she had no such luck. So perhaps there is something special about the gravitational pull at that minute that the sun passes over the equator...


Please excuse the horrendous type issues.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Happy St. Patty's Day!


In honor of St. Patrick's Day I decided to make some green peanut butter cookies. Not sure why they had to be peanut butter but Nealy had the thought to make green cookies today too and she also envisioned making peanut butter cookies. Crazy, huh? They don't look terribly green in my picture so you'll just have to use your imagination a bit!

I also painted my nails green and am listening to some Irish tunes as I eat some green ice cream!

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Living In Phantasmagorical Days

I'm quite a fan of dictionary.com's word of the day for March 10, 2010:

My School Hiatus

Last Friday afternoon I headed out to begin my little spring break adventure in Michiana. As I drove north on U.S. 31, I pulled over to take a picture of this roadside restaurant signage. Not so sure if I'd like to stop and eat there...

I arrived at the Life Action Camp shortly after 5:00 attend a retreat that Carrie was speaking at. I ended up being able to stay in the new cottage with Carrie, Katie and Joy. The next day we had some delightful snacks during our session. These veggie fry/chips express pleasant time we had at the retreat.

As soon as the retreat was done on Saturday, we flew into wedding mode planning/shopping. While at Office Max I ran across these amazing erasable pens and highlighters. They do a top-notch job.




Carrie has a Bible study on Monday night and invited me to come along. We had a bit of time to kill before the study started so Joy and I ran to McDonald's and got a Shamrock shake!


On Tuesday I got to go to one of my favorite places in Niles, MI - The Paris Soda Shop! Joy, Maggie and Gideon joined me and we had a splendid lunch!


I got a chocolate phosphate and a rueben sandwich. (Popcorn is a free precursor to all meals.)


Carrie and I did the very exciting task of grocery shopping on Tuesday night. I don't think I've ever had a hen and I've never noticed how cute they are - they're like little individual turkeys. I can't wait to make one sometime soon!

Today I managed to complete one of the fastest and most successful parallel parking attempts in my entire driving career. Parallel parking is a very intimidating activity and I've tried to avoid it ever since I started driving. But in the last couple of months I have been entering situations where this is a required skill. I've noticed Niles has rather long parking spaces and their Main St. isn't too busy. So I thought I'd give my parallel parking skills a bit of practice. I was so proud of my speed and accuracy! You would appreciate it a lot more if you got to experience it with me, especially since my picture makes it look like there was no car behind me. But trust me - there is!


The reason I parallel parked was to visit a little book store in Niles. It of course had some nice things since it is filled with books! I almost purchased the book below because I like the illustrations... and I like pancakes!

Friday, March 5, 2010

Wishing You A Non-cornball Day!

One of the things I love about graphic design is that I get to research. And when research happens, wonderful tidbits are learned! Like today, I am doing some research on the classic game of jacks (I'm working on a packaging design) and I came across these words: platitudinous and cornball. Please try not to have a cornball day by saying platitudinous words. I recommend paying a visit to dictionary.com just to listen to the pronunciation of platitudinous.

My post was looking a little bland so I decided to put a picture on here for you all. When I typed in "platitudinous" and looked at images, Obama's face appeared. Perhaps he says too many platitudinous things.




Friday, February 19, 2010

Elephantine Self Control

The last couple of days I have visited many of my favorite shops - multiple thrift stores and two antique malls. I am on a mission to find a little suitcase for my graphic design portfolio. And of course thrift stores and antique malls are a great place to go for this item. It's been a wonderful yet painful time visiting these superb shops. I have had to exercise some major self-control in a couple of ways. 1) Not allowing myself to get caught up looking at the entire store - focusing on the luggage section and baskets/knickknacks (which fortunately lets me cover a decent amount of ground) 2) Not buying all the exceptional items that catch my eye as I scope the space for suitcases. Displayed are some of the temptations I've come across. And mind you, these are only a few of the tantalizing items I came across. Just for a scintilla of clarification -the navy and red bag is a shoe carrier and the chair is a swivel chair that is quite comfy! The last picture is a bike basket that would probably be perfect for my J.C. Higgins cruiser.




Wednesday, February 10, 2010

A Bit Of Apple-Pie Ordering For My Room
















I like having a clean room but somehow it always becomes a bit of a pigsty. And whenever I clean it I always have hope that I will change my ways and keep my room in an orderly fashion. I don't know if my room will ever remain clean for longer than two weeks but since I just finished cleaning it I am going to continue in my hope that this cleaning will motivate me to keep it clean for months to come! But for now at least I will enjoy my freshly decluttered, vacuumed and dusted room!

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Amazingness!

I'm doing some research for a school project right now and I ran across this image. Apparently a professional card stacker (didn't even know there was such a thing) created an entire hotel out of plastic key cards. I didn't read much more but if you all would like to educate yourselves on toilets made out of plastic cards, you can visit this site.

Okay, I just went back and read the rest of the article and I am ready to go to New York! But for now... back to school.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

A Little Art For Your Day

Every day I have a different piece of artwork shown on my Google home page. This little wall of glass jars with the butchered tree limb inside was for today. I thought it was rather nice!

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Just A Bit Of Research

I'm doing a little research on logos tonight and I came across a little quote about research from this book called Design Matters: Logos. I thought it was kind of clever. But I'll let you read it for yourself so you can make your own opinion.

"Once upon a pancake, people insisted the world was flat. Then someone did a little research. With just a whip of curiosity and a dab of exploration, the world swelled into a rotund, complicated, souffle of possibilities. Research, it seems, literally made the world go round."

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Yummy In My Tummy

I am in my third year of BSF but today I joined my sixth group! Nealy has joined me for the second semester of John at Post Road Christian Church on the east side of Indy. The picture above is of Yummy's Grill which is right by the church. It's a pretty sweet looking place... sorry you can't really see that, this was all I could manage to get before the light turned green. I'm thinking we're going to have to try this place out sometime after class!

Sporting My New Gear

Last week we got a nice dumping of snow and I got to wear my sweet new boots while shoveling. They kept my feet nice, dry and toasty the whole time! I happened to have my new matching fleece on too. After Nealy and I finished shoveling the driveway I drug Courto into the cold to have a little photo shoot in honor of Sonya. Thanks Matt and Sonya for my new boots!

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Happy Feast Of The Epiphany!


How many of you knew that today, January 6th was the Feast of the Epiphany?? I feel sorry to say that I am in my 23rd year of life and am just now learning of this holiday. I am in debt to my new 2010 planner that I purchased a couple days ago. I was having quite a frustrating time finding a planner that I liked until I remembered that I had a gift card for Barnes & Noble and thought that I just might find something there. I was thoroughly excited to find a nice selection of planners all at 50% off! As I was admiring my planner that evening I saw that today was the Feast of the Epiphany. I wondered how I have never even heard of this holiday and what it could be about. Nealy and I decided maybe you just have a big gathering and share epiphanies! This sounded pretty interesting to me, especially if we got to eat some good food to help stimulate the epiphanies. However, I didn't have too much faith in my speculations so I decided to do some research on this holiday.

And here's what I've discovered:

The Feast of the Epiphany is a celebration of God's revelation of Himself to mankind through the Person of Jesus Christ. Sounds a lot like Christmas, huh? Well, it should because apparently it was and may still be celebrated instead of Christmas in some places. It is called Little Christmas by the Irish, Befana in Rome, El Dia de Reyes or Pascua de Negros (Blackman Christmas) by the those in Spain, Cuba and some Latin American countries and who know what else by all the other people of the world!

Not only is it all of those other things, it is also the Twelfth Day of Christmas! That's right, the 12 days of Christmas are after December 25th which means that we have still been in the Christmas season the last 12 days! The reason for the 12 days of Christmas is because it is believed that the wise men followed the star for 12 days to find Christ.

And to celebrate this holiday, you have to have a King's cake.


The King's cake is round to represent the circular route that the wise men took to avoid going back to Jerusalem. A plastic baby is hidden inside the cake because Mary and Joseph had to hide baby Jesus to protect Him from Herod. Whoever gets the piece with the baby in it is the one who brings the King's cake to next year's celebration.

The bottom picture is the King's cake that I made. As you can see, it is not in a circle and the reason for that is because it wasn't forming into the circle as easily as I wanted so I just threw it down in a rectangle. I didn't learn of the significance of the circle until after making it, otherwise I may have tried harder to get mine to work properly.

I have no idea if this thing will taste good but I am anxious to try it! It has a cream cheese filling and lemon flavored icing that sound absolutely delightful!

There is so much more about this holiday that I have yet to learn but I'm beginning to think it just might become my favorite holiday. To think that I have lived every other sixth day of January not knowing of the wonderful time I could be having! I tried having a big Feast of the Epiphany celebration tonight but the short notice made things a bit difficult. So it will just be Courto and I. But next year, oh man, it will be quite a wonderful celebration! You may want to save the date and start a travel fund if necessary!

Here are a few links if you all care to learn a bit more about the Feast of the Epiphany.