Category Archives: design

The Creative Urge

Friday, March 6, 2009

I finally managed to snap a few photos the other day. I was feeling inspired by the amazing photographers I showed you earlier. It was mid-day, and I didn’t have a model, so I decided to snap a few self portraits.

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I haven’t had my hair colored since November, so my natural (almost brown) color is starting to take over. I also haven’t worn any make-up in months (since I don’t leave my house all that often). So I through on some eye liner, mascara, and blush, straightened my hair a bit, and put on my favorite black peacoat. I bought this feathery clip at Micheal’s of all places (next to the feathery boa’s in the children’s section!). I thought it would make a great prop when I saw it.

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Don’t ask me why, but I seem to like pictures of myself the best when I’m looking up at the camera??? I thought this one was kinda cool because of the framing and the way it’s set-up, although it makes my head look gigantic in proportion to my body! :)

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This last one I put my hair up and threw on some detail around my neck for some added femininity. The necklace is one I sell in the shop. It’s gold and it brought out those colors in my eyes, but when I started editing I liked it better in black in white. It’s weird how the freckles on my lips show so much in these pictures, I don’t even notice them when I look in the mirror?

I am excited to be shooting again! I have a few shoots coming up that I’m excited about, so I won’t have to show you pictures of me when I feel the creative urge! Including a maternity shoot of my sister, Lindsey!

Happy Friday everyone! Have a great weekend!

Posted in design, our house, personal, photography

Did I forget to mention….

Thursday, January 8, 2009

So, bear with me while I shamelessly self-promote for a moment… but did you see that Romantic Homes Magazine named me one of their “Top Romantics” this year? I was so honored and overjoyed when Jacqueline asked me to be one of them, and it was certainly fun to get to write my own blurb and provide my own photography for the article. Here’s a peek at my article, in case you haven’t seen it:

Top Romantics

I think I still blush a little when I tell my family about it, as I am anything but “romantic” in their eyes. (Especially my husband who I’m pretty sure chuckles quietly to himself every time he hears me mention it). I guess they have some lower standards this year and consider pajama wearing, domestically challenged, computer nerds the latest in romantic crazes…. lol…

Speaking of domestically challenged. I have to share a recipe with you all that I heard of on Oprah… (yes, I tivo Oprah, and watch it late night, romantic isn’t it?)

It is one of the Cristina Farrare’s Roasted Chicken recipes found here: Click here.

Well you know how Josh loves to bbq whole chicken’s for us to eat? (Seen in a prior post here). Well we always seem to get stuck in a rut with the same five or so recipes we always make (I say “we” very loosely here, as “he” really cooks everything in our house). And when I saw this episode of Oprah I knew these easy meals were for us (Uh, I mean “him”)! The episode was about making your budget stretch with easy meals for a family of four. Cristina showed us how to roast a whole chicken and then use the leftovers to make three additional meals for your family. (Chicken Enchiladas, Chicken Pot Pie with Cornbread Crust, and Pesto with Farfalle Pasta with Roasted Chicken). We tried all three recipes with the chicken Josh makes on the bbq and loved them!!!! But my favorite is the Pesto with Farfalle Pasta with Roasted Chicken.

We are having Pesto with Farfalle Pasta with BBQ Chicken tonight, as a matter of fact. Please, please, go to the Oprah site and download these yummy recipes. I highly recommend them, as they are all easy to make and so yummy! The pasta is especially easy if you freeze your leftover pesto sauce, and use it the next time you make the dish. Anywho, I’m terribly hungry now, thinking about all this, so I am off to snack, so I can tide myself over till dinner time.

Posted in design, family, inspiration, personal

New for 2009!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

My design business has been busy this last year and I owe so much of that to all of you, my dear blog friends! Between the magazine features in Artful Blogging, your referrals, and the repeat business, I have installed and designed over 100 blog designs to date, and quite a few websites. I wanted to take a few classes to better my knowledge of web design in 2008, but I never seem to find the time for extra projects these days. Unfortunately I have to turn away a few customers a month because they want design features that I simply do not know how to do.

Well that brings me to a very exciting announcement I wanted to make: a new partnership I made with the very talented Leila of Lightning Bug Designs. Leila has the design skills that I am lacking, and she has agreed to take my designs and implement them into a Zen-Cart website for my customers. Zen-Cart is a great shopping cart system that has many features others don’t. You can view a full list of those features on the Zen-Cart website.

Many of your favorite websites are already using Zen-Cart; including the gorgeous websites of my dear friends Carol and Heather. (p.s. their sites were not designed by me).

While I plan to offer custom designed sites for use with Zen-Cart, I will also be featuring several “Ready to Glow” websites that are pre-designed and ready for implementing! Each website will only be sold once, to assure that every customer has a one-of-a-kind unique web design. As a matter of fact, I have five websites designed and “ready to glow” now! (Please allow poor Leila a week or so to get them on her website and ready for purchase, as they will only be sold from her site exclusively).

Here’s a sneak peek:

Sadie Olive "Ready To Glow" Designs

Sadie Olive "Ready To Glow" Designs

I will continue to offer template designs for use with Pappashop, Merchant Moms, and ShoppePro, for those of you with a smaller budget, and of course, blog designs, business cards, postcards, address labels, stickers, blog buttons, etsy banners, etc. You can purchase any of those items on my website here: Design Menu

Now it’s off to work on the rest of my “to do” list….

Pumpkin Peach Logo Design
California Sales Tax Return
Quick Books Data Entry
Reconcile Accounts
Add New Products to the Site
Evening Walk With My Husband
Eat Some Dinner
Take A Bath

My life is certainly not glamorous…..

Posted in design, personal, shop news

Something fun….

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I received my issue of Artful Blogging magazine today (Autumn 2008 issue). This issue is beautiful and filled with inspiring blogs and many of my friends! Carol at Raised in Cotton, Tammy Fischer, Amy at Inspire Co, Cari at What Should We Make Today are all mentioned or featured in addition to many, many more fun blogs.

I was interviewed for this issue and provided some examples of items I have designed for my customers. I am thrilled to be in such good company and was delighted to share some blog design tips with Artful Blogging readers.

If you haven’t checked out this magazine yet, please do so. It is so worth the money! They even offer a quarterly subscription at Stampington & Company.

Artfulbloggingft

This article has been reproduced with permission from Stampington & Company.

Copyright: Stampington & Company 

Posted in Uncategorized

Perspectives

Saturday, July 5, 2008

I’ve been slowing trying to snap some new photos of my house to share on the blog again. It’s always such a mess, it’s hard to get motivated to clean up around here just for picture taking… (lol)…

I know you probably have seen my dining room before, but I took these two new photos this weekend and I liked the room from this perspective… I think it gives you a better sense of how my house is actually laid out…

Diningout

I love that you can really see the tin ceiling in the dining room from this angle… as well as the built in bench and cushion. The room in the background is our front room (kind of a more formal living area) and off to the right is the kitchen. The kitchen is actually in the center of our home. 

Overall

The dining room steps down into our family room (the more casual space where we watch t.v.). This room was actually an addition one of the previous owners did many years ago. The owners just before us added a faux finish to the walls and took out a window, added a huge built, in and paved the floor in red Mexican tile. Josh and I basically gutted it and started from scratch as it just wasn’t the style we were hoping for.

Many of you asked about the floor covering before… it’s seagrass carpeting. I chose it because it’s rustic enough to compliment the wood floors that most of our home is done in, and it also stands up great with spills and pets!The wine fridge and cubbies we built in ourselves to house Josh’s extensive wine collection. 

During our construction phase… some of the workers were vibrating the walls behind the dining room so heavily when working that a magnum size red wine bottle shimmied out of the wall and broke on our freshly installed seagrass carpeting…. amazingly the red wine came completely out of the carpet, with not even a spot left… but the wool rug unfortunately did not fair so well… we had to spin it around so the stain is under the sofa (shh! don’t tell anyone!). 

Posted in design, our house, photography

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