the pure interest

Here I am in Maryland with B’s family for New Years. I’m up in bed blogging while he sleeps….

While reviewing my life…..  I saw that 2007 has by far been my most eventful, hard, frustrating, emotional, struggling year. I know it could get much worse, but for me and Brian and our lives, it’s been crazy. From going through an emotional spiritual battle to losing a very good friendship, to colonoscopies, to my car being hit, to our house being hit, new medications, fluctuating weights, a vacation to myrtle beach, the loss of a good friend’s child at birth, the birth of many other children, the almost-moving-of-danielle-and-dave, the diagnosis of my grandmother with cancer and her treatment beginning, marriage highs and lows in my family and otherwise, brian and i growing stronger as a couple, learning more about each other, getting a driveway, learning how to fight and how to be best friends and lovers all at the same time, our church FINALLY moving and all that came with that, some incredible worship and sermons, going part-time at my job and developing my own business for-reals, wow… it just keeps coming and coming. I seriously can’t believe this year! I hope Brian and I grow just as much next year as this one…..Thank You Lord for carrying us and others through it. Here’s to whatever is out there in 2008!   

it’s christmas eve! I just made a raspberry trifle, it turned out ok but is still missing the whipped cream. I’m excited to eat it, go to church tonight and worship Jesus on this celebration of the day of His birth. I’m excited that we have a family Christmas tomorrow, and that my grandma is feeling good enough after her first round of chemo and radiation that she plans on making it. I’m excited that it snowed enough last night to make us have a white Christmas. I’m trying NOT to think about how short my hair is and the stylist that butchered me yesterday. It’s hard to not focus on it, but Brian is helping me by telling me how much he likes it. I’m not really ready to share pictures with the public yet on this subject, but anyway. Oh well!

I feel more excited to give my gifts this year than normally. Each gift was so specifically selected for each person and wrapped and decorated with care. I wish I could give everyone everything they ever wanted sometimes.

Merry Christmas!  

I have done a little etsy christmas shopping this year… the handmade notebooks and other things make such cute and meaningful little additions to gifts. Through browsing, i noticed Jennifer Boston’s store… and was blown away by her work. I just love it all!!!! from teeny weeny gift cards to photography postcards and notebooks, she has something for everyone. I especially dig her glass magnets!! She’s also located in Pittsburgh, close to me! I don’t even know Jennifer, but here is her store:

I don’t know if you guys have noticed but I’ve been getting a lot of spammy type comments, so I’ve had to turn on all my comment moderations so that they go through me… Unfortunately WordPress doesn’t have a “captcha” feature that I can find or I’d turn that on too. I hope you guys still comment!!

Thanks for reading the pure interest. Lots of work to do today!!

You probably already saw these in my flickr badge, but here you go anyway….

happy winteryness

kitty enjoys the sun:

Obviously I’m a horrible blogger (and too many of my posts begin like this, so obviously I’m an annoying blogger as well) . . . but here is what I’ve been up to. Through my freelance I’ve gotten to work on some just fun-fun-fun stuff, and I can’t express how awesome it is to feel creative and create things I really like again.

Sorry the business cards are blurry, but I am trying to avoid putting my cell phone and address that blatantly on the internets. Although I’m sure people can find them relatively easy anyway. Oh well. Anyway, I got them printed by Vistaprint. YOu really just can’t beat them for price, and the quality is about 90% (just some small white edges on the solid brown in the cut) but overall I am pleased. For being on a small budget they definitely do the job.

The Christmas cards were a cross between love and hate. I Loved doing it, but I hated that I felt guilty because I spent probably about 10 hours total on the whole project, and I beat myself up saying that I should working. But I got to far to turn back. I’m not sure I’ll do it again next year, I might just have to buy some instead of doing it myself. I love how these turned out but it was exhausting!

The gathering band piece in particular is special to me because they are my friends, I took the photography and designed the post card. There are three other designs and I’m not sure which they’ll pick but that one is my favorite.

Dave Van Buskirk’s CD cover art has been a great process as well. It’s not totally finished, but getting to do corresponding web graphics has been so fun! Another photoshoot I did was for a family in our church, but it is a surprise gift so I can’t post till after Christmas.

It is snowy and icy here…. sort of sunny though, pretty. I will post some pics tomorrow!!

I have to say, I’m glad Apple and Adobe are so prompt with their updates, but then sometimes I’m not. Almost veryday when I come into work, there is either an Adobe update that takes over my computer, or Apple ones that require me to shut down everything and restart. This morning I got here at 8:05, and it’s now 8:45, and my updates all just finished. Usually I can’t see the results of them - I’m probably not attune to the problems enough.

Does anyone else out there using CS3 with Leopard (or any other OSX for that matter) notice a large lag time in between applications, and slow slow, most of the time-force-quitting to get them to shut down. I can handle it - I haven’t had any crashes while in the middle of things (well..maybe once)… but it takes a ridiculously long time for these apps to shut down. Maybe it is a lack of RAM. We have 2GB here on  2.4 ghz iMac Intel, which is more than I’ve ever had before, but our tech guy told us 4GB should be standard for the kind of apps we are running. But to double our RAM was over $700 PER MACHINE. Sometimes, you just can’t ask for that much from your employer, if you want to keep your job. And at home, there’s no way I could afford anymore RAM on my MacBook Pro 2.2ghz.

But, after all that apple busting, I saw this this morning, and it cracked me up so bad and was so dang cute I couldn’t stay mad.

hehe!!

I have some majorly cute stuff to post that I’ve printed or had printed this weekend… yay!

Hey everyone!I have been doing so much photography lately, it’s actually a bit bizarre. I love it though - I can’t wait to share some of the photoshoot stuff with you all. For now, I figured it’s about time I passed on some desktop wallpaper love. I apologize for being so long in between freebies. This photo was actually from early November when it was still fall colors in the air… but it had a very christmasy-wintery air to it, so I just went with that feeling. I hope you enjoy it!!1920 × 12001680 × 10501600 × 12001440 × 9001280 × 10241280 × 8541024 × 768800 × 600 Metacafe went really well. Brian will post some pictures on the blog this week sometime! It was so fun - I wish you all could be in Erie just to share in the “chill”-ness of it. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s so fun to just have your laptop out and hang out, then play some games, eat some cookies, and just all be together.So, how is everybody? I am so busy with freelance and Christmas things, but it is a good thing. A lot of web and photography work…. I miss all your comments. They’ve been declining lately which is probably my fault. Give me a shout out!