milestones in life

What a great month it has been! (unfortunately, it has left little time/energy for blogging!) As a pastor’s wife, and worship leader, the Palm Sunday/Easter season carry a lot of responsibility.  It fills me with joy to know that HE LIVES not just on Resurrection Day, but EVERY day.  As a board member of our art association (but thankfully no longer president!), we have made it through another Spring Show without major incident or cancellation.  It was a gorgeous weather day, even though the sales were down quite a bit this year.

Another new website is up and this one is for a local chef who is starting his own restaurant!

I just love getting to birth new babies like this one.  If you ever think it is too late for you to try a new thing, let this inspire you.  This man has been a chef for years always working for others… but he has always dreamed of having a restaurant of his own.  At 60+ years-old, he is now seeing that dream come true!!  So exciting to be a small part of that.

And this happened last weekend…

Another tremendous milestone in our lives …our middle son graduated from College with Summa Cum Laude honors!  We couldn’t have been prouder of his hard work and attention to excellence.  He wants to teach on the college level, so he has quite a bit of school ahead of him – next on the docket is his master’s degree and then doctoral thesis after that.  A lot of prayer went into homeschooling him and his brother and sister. God has answered every prayer above and beyond what we could’ve asked or thought.  We are grateful for all the blessings in our lives!!

Birthing a (virtual) baby

So, I have been as busy as a bee with "birthing" a new website for a dear friend and fellow fine artist.  She is an amazing person, and I am thrilled that she wanted me to design a website to showcase her art.  She and I worked together in the corporate world MANY moons ago, briefly.  Her beautiful given name is Leonora, but her friends and family call her "Nono" and it was only appropriate that her site be titled "Art by Nono."

When I am designing a site, I become immersed in the process and barely come up for air until everything is JUST as I want it to be.  With this particular site, that meant hours of scanning artwork and getting the right images in the right spots.  She has also written a devotional book, which integrates her artwork interspersed with some of her inspirational writing, that I included on its own page.

I absolutely love the design process and the immersive nature of tweaking and coding and tweaking and coding, in order to get everything to behave just as I want it to. This requires patience with the structures that I must work within, as well as knowledge of how to tweak those structures to get the look and feel that I want.  It is always a challenge, but that is where my design juices and determination come to life.  Launching a new site is always exciting, and it is especially rewarding when the client is so thrilled with the result.

Now that I am up for air, I will be visiting in your neighborhoods!  :)

Spinning Right On Its Axis...

So, has it really been three and a half years since I last posted? It's just hard to believe that, but in some ways it seems even longer. With my children grown but not gone, I am still in a very busy stage of life.  Yet, I miss the blog world, my friends made here, and the writing and photos that go along with storytelling.  So, I am going to make a renewed effort and try to not be hard on myself when I go for (what seems like) ages between posts. I can hardly believe that when I started this blog over eight years ago, I posted every day! Whoa, I don't know how I managed that and everything else. But, realistically I know that I have too many things going on right now to post everyday... but I can post sometimes.

Since that first blog post in May 2008, so much has happened in our lives as well as in the world of technology.  We have a lot of visual "instant gratification" these days through Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and all the other social media sites.  Yet, my writer's heart longs for a space like this to just ramble on about whatever is on my heart... and for something that's not here today and gone tomorrow.  I love being able to look back at the old posts here and see what God was doing in our lives then and how far He has brought us and our families.  I am using the word "our" because as I look back at the comments, I was not doing this alone. I have tried to stay connected to a number of you by popping in every now and then to read your posts and comment (sparsely, I know.) I am thankful that some of you faithful ones are still at this blogging thing!  It just makes my world feel that it is spinning right on its axis to be able to go visit your beautiful blog homes on the web.

I am still doing art along with graphic and web design, all of which keeps me quite busy.  I am currently in the midst of a very interesting commissioned piece of art for a young man who is about to get married... the piece will be a wedding present for his bride as a remembrance of the spot where he proposed to her.  It is such fun getting to be in on secrets like that.  I just rolled out a brand new website last week for a local small business in town.  I also took on the role of president of one of our local art associations this year, which has added to my already long list of tasks.  But, it has also given me the opportunity to become immersed in the local art community, to get to know some local artists whose works I have admired, and to learn many, many things about techniques, materials, shows, etc.

For those of you still connected here, THANK YOU for not giving up on me. I have always felt like our blog community was a bit of a "small town" on the internet, as those of us with common interests found one another early on.  For now, I am jumping back into this blog with both feet!  There is so much loveliness to be shared, and I want to be a part of the sharing.  I hope to see you around this great big world (wide web)!

Birthing Another New Website...

I am in the process of birthing yet another website for another very creative lady. This one had a very good job working away from home, but in recent days has quit that job in order to pursue her "bliss" in the paper and printing business. (I will share more once we launch her site, but the new logo I created for her is below.) I can recall those Victorias that contained features about women pursuing their "bliss" in regard to their careers or work. There is even a book I have, published by Victoria's editors, called The Business of Bliss which tells the stories of a number of women who did this.

This is something that I have also had the opportunity to do. When I graduated from college with a degree Advertising and Graphic Design many moons ago, none of the layout work was done on computers. It was all meticulously hand-done with rub-on lettering or movable typesetting and gum paste. These days, it seems everything is done via computer. It is really an amazing thing to think about. I have had the opportunity to learn all of this amazing technology as it has evolved. It has gotten incredibly sophisticated through these recent years, and the software will do almost anything that you can imagine.

When I began building websites over 10 years ago, it was all very new and primitive. Since I am a very VISUAL designer, the "coding" required to build websites then was very off-putting to me. But the newest software is so friendly to those of us who are visual designers that it is truly a pleasure to be a web designer this current environment. It is almost like completing an unbelievably large painting, (except that it almost feels like you are never really finished.)  There is always a change here or a tweak there that will inevitably have to be made.

In that past few years I have also had the opportunity to learn to incorporate these new and very popular methods of "quick communication" -- now so affectionately known as Social Media -- into the design of these new websites. I have customized backgrounds and logos and color schemes for Blogger and Twitter, and I have become co-administrator on many a Facebook page.

I am thankful for being able to pursue my bliss and being able to do that from my home. I do not take lightly the privilege of being with my precious family each day, and I am asking the Lord to keep me busy doing what I love, whether it is drawing someone's home, creating a painting, or designing a website. Since these are hard economic times, I must also be wise about what financial contribution I am making in our family. But for now, I am so thankful to be a "worker at home"...

Titus 2:5 "...to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored."

November? Really?

I can't believe it was November when I last posted. Since that time we have had Thanksgiving, Christmas, lots of snow (yes, even this far south), and now Spring has officially arrived. I have been painting away, along with building websites and trying to make improvements in our massive yard. I will share a few pictures below of what has been keeping me occupied. That way, at least, you will know I haven't just been goofing off these past few months. :)





I have an art show coming up this weekend and have been getting ready for that in the midst of all else that is going on.





So far this spring in our yard we have planted irises, azaleas, phlox, clematis, yellow jessamine, bronze ajuga, hostas, daylilies, 2 winged euonymous bushes, a lorapetalum, a cleyera, and petunias in pots. We have also transplanted three large crepe myrtles. We also have planted a veggie garden with lettuce, potatoes, cabbages, baby tomato plants, peas, and peppers. So far, everything seems to be doing well, and thankfully we dodged a frost last night by a few degrees. The birdsongs are keeping me quite entertained each morning. I have seen numerous redbirds, robins, and even a bluejay or two in our yard. The gentle harbingers of spring never disappoint.





I am also keeping quite busy with a couple of new websites I am working on ... more to come on that in subsequent days. For now, I am just glad to be back. I would love to know what is going on in your part of the world!

Whew... I can breathe again!!

For the past four weeks, I have literally worked day and night on my newest website design. I can honestly say that many days it was 9 am until midnight. I am happy to announce the birth (and in some ways it indeed did feel like childbirth...lol) of

NancyGordonMusic.com

Many of the graphics I "drew" on the computer, including all the little banners, buttons, and of course the background wallpaper. Her logo is designed by a very talented visual artist, Julia Azar, and she wanted her website to feel very much like her logo... a bit free, hand-drawn, and very welcoming.




So that was the look for which we were aiming. I incorporated a Blogger Blog, a separate "Gratitudes" (devotional) page, a Prayer Request page, and a Shopping Cart.... on top of the other five main website pages (Music, About, Contact, and Stories) . I know a lot of web design companies have different people in charge of doing all those different tasks, but there is only one of me. Which means, I get to do it all. Design is such fun, but it is not easy. There were times of extreme migraine and then times of delight. But, here we are with our new "baby" to share with the world (wide web).

I tell a short story about my relationship with Nancy and how her music has personally been a blessing in my own life HERE. Years before I knew who she was, her music was impacting my famiy. I would love it if you -- my wonderful blog friends -- would take a look around the site. (And while you're there, if you see anything that's not just right please let me know!) I hope that you'll be blessed because you visited.

Now it's time to get back to the drawing board.

Blessings,
Christi