My Vacation is over...

I've been with the company I work with for 3 and a half years - and other than a few days here and there around the holidays, I've never taken a vacation. I've always been beaten to the punch at snagging a certain week off (which is how I missed my Mother's wedding last year). This year, when the family in New York picked a week for the annual family cookout, we grabbed plane tickets ASAP (ie. back in February). Gadget wasn't sure if he was going to be able to get off work, so I went on my own.

It was a crazy, busy busy week. I don't think I've ever done so much when I've gone away... ever!

I drove up to my Aunt's on Friday afternoon and flew out to NY Saturday morning. It was still another hour (PLUS... stupid traffic) out to my mom's house... and Saturday night was the Nana Cares' Disco Dance Fundraiser. Sunday was the family cookout; we spent the whole day Monday & Wednesday at a cousin's pool; Tuesday was spent 20 miles offshore, fishing on a boat; Thursday, I flew back to MD. I stayed at my Aunt's house Thursday night, Gadget (& SNOW!) met up with me and we went off to Grandma's Friday morning. I had a friend who was having a birthday over on Assateague Island - which is only an hour from my Grandma's - so we were going to meet them there. Well, at the last minute, Gadget changed his mind, and we went home. >sad face<

I spent all day yesterday relaxing, watching Ink Master, Tattoo Nightmares, Teen Wolf, and Tanked. I also went grocery shopping... but that's never very exciting.

Overall, it was a pretty awesome vacation - and I'll wear my crazy sunburn with pride! I got out of the house and did stuff - I went swimming, caught some fish and had a great time with my family. I'll be sharing some more photos as the week goes on of the different fun things that happened during my vacation!

Snow's 2nd Birthday!

Mr. Snow is officially a big boy! We got Snow on my husband's birthday and knowing Snow was about 10 weeks when we got him, that puts his birthday in the middle of June. We (and by we I really only mean myself) decided that we were going to celebrate! It's been a week long celebration, really.

    Definitely be sure to check out my Instagram for lots of fun videos from this weekend!
Snow got to go on a ton of car rides this week, including several trips to the dog park; he got to go to PetSmart, meet a lot of new people and pups, and pick out a toy; and last but not least, he got a small birthday bash on Sunday!

We didn't invite any other dogs over - it was only Snow, Gadget and myself. I put a birthday ribbon and a hat, and started snapping some photos. I was really surprised that he didn't fight to get the hat off. I put together a birthday "cake" - which was two biscuits with peanut butter in the middle and cream cheese icing on top - and of course, a candle!

I bought Snow a kiddie-pool and put a bunch of water balloons in it. It was a bit rainy on Sunday... so it wasn't really hot enough for Snow to get the full effect of the pool. But it's definitely nice to have one at home, since he really loves the one at the dog park. 



Gadget was definitely judging me the whole time, but I had fun - and Mr Snow had tons of fun - and that's all that matters.



Happy Birthday Poop-Face! 

And for a look back at how he's grown up, I've put together a little collage (hope you enjoy it as much as I do!) :

Resolutions : 6 Month Update

I can't believe June is almost over already. I wanted to make sure I'm on course with meeting my 2013 New Years Resolutions this year... so here's an update on how that's going.

I got my License & a Car!!

For those who follow me on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram, you may have already heard - but I got my drivers license and a 'new' car!

I've had my license before, but it expired years ago - and being in college, I didn't need it... so unfortunately, I had to take my permit test and drivers test all over again. I did this first thing last Saturday... then we went off to Grandma and Grandpa's to get my car!!

I've been driving to and from work for 4 days now - and it is A.MAZ.ING! Monday, I was able to lolly-gag at work for a bit, leave, make 2 pit-stops on the way home, take care of all the animals once I got home, change my clothes, walk Snow, go to the dog park for 45 minutes and go back home... all in the same amount of time it use to take me to get home on the buses. >sigh of relief<

I am already addicted to my new independence - and after one trip to the dog park, Snow now assumes that every time we go outside, we're going for a ride. Silly puppy.

A Look into My Recent Creativity

Good afternoon everyone! I wanted to show you guys a little preview of things I've been working on recently - it's mostly design work, but I know I need to start drawing more, so hopefully I'll start posting some illustration work here soon.
From top to bottom, you'll see 1) a painting of a Weedy Sea Dragon Mermaid, 2) a logo for a coworker's tech blog, 3) a laundry label for a friend, 4) a Save the Date postcard, 5) a logo for a friend's blog revamp (which is almost ready to be shared!!), and 6) a logo for a non-profit.

This isn't everything that I've been working on in the last few weeks - but I have some big things to share soon, so I hope you stay tuned!

Sevenly : One Week. One Cause.

I adore Sevenly and everything that they do!

What is Sevenly? Sevenly is a weekly cause activation platform. Some have even called them a cause crowdfunding platform. Every week, they partner with a new non-profit organization, create unique art and limited edition products that they then sell exclusively on their website for 7 days. For every product sold, they give that week’s non-profit organization $7. For example, if they sold 1,000 products, Sevenly would donate $7,000 to that week's charity.

This week's charity hit home - hard. And I cried before even watching their video. (You'll understand if you read the following few paragraphs) This week, they've partnered with 4 Paws For Ability - who enriches the lives of children with disabilities by training and placing quality, task-trained service dogs. This provides increased independence for the children, and assistance to their families. And 4 Paws also works with veterans from recent conflicts who’ve lost the use of their limbs or their hearing while in active combat. In all cases, the results speak for themselves.

I haven't talked about it much on the blog, cause it wasn't ever pertinent - but I have epilepsy. Not severe epilepsy, but epilepsy with no discernible cause or cure (or even medication that helps). I've undergone testing off and on my whole life, and the doctor's have never been able to tell what the cause is. I'm fortune though - I don't have them frequently, and I'm part of the 1% of epilepsy sufferers that is able to tell that one is about to happen. For this reason, I've never needed a service dog - and with all the animals that we've had over the years, we've never had an animal that even seemed to notice something was happening.

Enter Snow. Snow was not trained to be a service dog - he's far too energetic for one. Like most animals that are close with their people, he's very in-tune to our emotions and knows when something is bothering us. A few months back, I started to have a seizure and got to the floor before I could fall. Snow KNEW something was up - whether he could hear or smell it, he knew something wasn't right. He came over to me and calmly laid on top of me. That's not like him at all - normally, if you lay on the floor - he's going to be licking the crap out of your face. It was an eye-opening moment, and I fell in love with him even more that day. I had the seizure, and when I came to, he was laying on me, just watching me.

Remembering that moment is what caused me to cry when I saw their cause this week. Like I mentioned, my seizures aren't that frequent - not like some children out there who have 50 seizures a day - 99% of who have no idea it's about to happen! I can't imagine the terror of that. I'm fortunate to have the ability to sense them coming, and to have Snow who is apparently tuned in to it. This is where I beg you, please buy a t-shirt this week.

Help a child. Help a family. It's worth it.



I'd like to mention that I was in no way contacted to write about Sevenly and their cause of this week. I was not given any money or product in return for this post. All comments above are true and shared because I care about this cause.

May Wishlist

I can't believe May is almost over! It's a little late this month, but I wanted to share a little taste of what has caught my eye over the course of the month.


A // B // C // D // E // F // G // H // I // J
I did not intentionally make this month's wishlist all blue... but perhaps that was a subconscious extension of my overhaul melancholy mood from this month?

But honestly, how great are some of these pieces? I want to venture into more patterned tights, I want more open shoes (even though I have a thing with my feet), and I just REALLY love that clock and that mug!

Another idea for a new layout!

Howdy everyone! I started sharing this the other day, but Gadget and I were talking about it and more changes were made - but I'm going to share with you guys what's been developing with the design of my new blog layout.

Off the jump, you'll notice a huge difference between these two and the two that I shared a few months back.

There's a lot going on right now, but you'll notice that this is a HUGE redesign - from the ground up! So far, I'm super pleased with how posts will look - but that sidebar/header is making me really indecisive. There's a lot of duplication of buttons because I was testing how hover & active states will look.

With this first one, I had the big header at the top... which I'm going to be moving away from.... and I know I want to show off some artwork, but I don't want to take away from the blog content, so I'm going to go with a faded lineart.


With the second one, I put the header title IN the sidebar, and pushed the main content to the top of the browser.


This third one I feel is moving more towards the right direction. I removed all the extraneous hover state buttons to eliminate confusion (for both you and myself, haha!) I adjusted how the photo & about me info is displayed so it doesn't clash with the lineart in the background. Speaking of background lineart - I'm going to make it bigger like in the 2nd version above.


My ONLY gripe right now is that I didn't make the content wider - in fact, I somehow went narrower...
But I am pleased with how this is going thus far!! I'm trying to solidify a design by Memorial Day (Monday!!) and get started on some code!

Date Day: Air & Space Museum and Star Trek!!

This past weekend, Gadget and I went out on a Day-Date. We KNEW we were seeing Star Trek - when and where were the only questions. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are Trekkies/Trekkers. He got me into Star Trek when we first started dating, and has had me watching it every since. We went and saw the 2009 Star Trek movie together (and then I went with a friend to see it again as my very first IMAX movie).

I knew this movie was going to be epic, and it's definitely one of those movies we were willing to pay a extra couple of dollars to see in IMAX. There is an 3D-IMAX theatre really close to our house, but I wanted this to be my first TRUE IMAX experience - you know, the SUPER GIANT screen?! The only one close to us is at the Air & Space Museum out in Dulles, VA - which isn't too far away (and apparently, it's the biggest projection screen in Virginia?).

We made a day of it - we got to the museum early, grabbed our tickets and walked around until the movie started. After the movie, we went to Boston Market and headed home. (It was my first Boston Market experience too!)

I won't give any spoilers, but it was EPIC... we loved it, and we're definitely going back next weekend to see it in 3D IMAX.

Here are some shots from the day - half of these are from my iPhone, the other half are from Gadget and the Canon.



Anyone seen Star Trek Into Darkness yet? What did you think?

My Artwork & Designs - Now on Dunked!

I've been working on getting some artwork and design work together for presentation purposes and my portfolio site is taking longer than planned. I've just had so much on my plate - I'm slowly clipping away at the ever-growing to-do-list.

In the meantime, I posted my artwork on a brand-new portfolio sharing site called Dunked:

Click here to visit my portfolio on Dunked!

It just came out of beta and opened to the public on May 1st. I'm thoroughly impressed with what the small team behind Dunked has done.
It's a completely free way of creating an online portfolio without knowing any code. For now there is only one template (that you can customize heavily with CSS) that is completely responsive AND retina-ready! Even if you don't know code, you can take control of fonts, colors and more with their admin interface. It's also super easy to add projects, edit images and move things around with drag & drop capabilities.

I am loving Dunked and highly recommended it to anyone looking for a simple, clean and FREE way of displaying their work online!

Has anyone else tried using Dunked? I'd love to see some new portfolios!