christmas shopping

even though i know that sam doesn't really need any more trucks, i'm totally tempted by this one on etsy.

this one is more than we'd spend, but i could totally see him having a blast loading and unloading and spending hours driving it around.

for anyone who doesn't do facebook

i shared these videos of sam on facebook earlier today.

this boy cracks. me. up.

just in case this needs a little clarification, he was listening to "five little monkeys" and singing along.

here he was watching the tractor tipping scene in the movie cars. notice how he tips over his tractor as the tractors in the movie get scared and fall over. also, you can hear him repeating some of the dialogue.

he knows this movie by heart, and often he'll tell us what part is coming up next and he'll recite the dialogue as it happens.

your life better

here are a few pages and spreads from a new project we've got going on at work. it's a series of small books entitled "your life, better" that will take a fun, quirky approach to finding spirituality in the everyday. these spreads are for the first of our four introductory titles, "20 ways to add more prayer to your life."

this is one of the more exciting things they've got me working on recently—exciting because it's extremely rare that i get to work on anything full-color beyond a front cover, and twice as rare to have a budget for this many images. not to mention that they're pretty much leaving all the image choices up to me! i feel like i've struck a bit of a goldmine.

we've already had the sample pages approved, and the titles are scheduled to hit the warehouse in early may of next year, so…there's a lot of work to be done between then and now, but it should be fun. yay!

fairytales & meetings

a few photos from my sketchbook of the things i've been doodling (mostly during meetings). i can't remember why i was drawing the three bears, but alice was inspired by my niece-to-be (i've been thinking about what artwork to make for her), and the three little pigs were inspired by oscar (sam loves to hear oscar tell about the little pig). i think i'll have to keep working on these fairytale drawings, as i seem to have a theme going here.

what to do with your junkmail

for the past few years i've been pulling the stamps off most of the mail i get (both at home and at work).

over the weekend i finally had the chance to sit down and sort out some of the better looking ones. i organized them by theme, and mounted them on some illustration board, and after it was dry, i slipped it into this frame we got out of the discount pile at the local craft store.

easy peasy, and i think it makes a fun display for the table where we normally put the mail for sorting.

my mother doesn't blog

we interrupt project week to bring you this special update:

my mother (despite much poking and prodding by her daughters), does not have a blog. so on her behalf i'm posting a couple of photos of sam's wonderful, gorgeous, fantastic "grandma quilt".

i thought other people ought to be ooo-ing and ahh-ing along with me. feel free to join in any time now.

we went by the house today to pick up dad/grandpa for a playdate at the park, and mom/grandma said we could take possession of the quilt with the stipulation that i take some good photographs. i took many.

now i just need to remember to burn them to a cd for her.

thanks grandma! it will be well-loved and well-used.

photoshop is my friend

here's another example of something i did for work using photoshop.

the headers for our advent series of igniting readers & leaders newsletters were constructed and illustrated completely in photoshop. with this year's illustration, i didn't even bother to scan a sketch, it was all photoshop all the way.

photoshop

photoshop

photoshop

(had to add a few more for good measure there)

if you can't tell, photoshop is my friend.

photoshop isn't just for photos

until i started blogging, i rarely used photoshop for altering or correcting photos. most of the time it was my go-to choice for making illustrations that i needed for projects at work.

this is an illustration i did recently for a new book on our spring list. it may or may not make the cut, but i like the way it turned out (in its comp stage, anyway). we'll see how the review goes in a few days.

project week

in an attempt to prove that my world doesn't completely (just almost completely) revolve around sammy, i'm instituting project week. all this week i'll be posting about things i'm doing that have no (direct) connection to sam. i'll be showing some work things, some stuff i've been doing around the house, some doodles from my sketchbook, that kind of thing.

however, it probably won't be a complete "sammy-free" week. afterall, how could anyone survive that long without sam?