Reading Program Logo Design

A few years back the company I work for created a reading program for schools to help children with vocabulary and comprehension. They asked me to come up with the logo design for the program and called it e-Read and Report. In the program the teacher assigns an e-Book for the student to read and then they take a test, the program scores how the child does and stores the scores. The program is designed so that the scores follow the student as they progress and move up in grades.

I have to admit sometimes I struggle when it comes to designing logos. This one actually came pretty easy to me. I had a bit of fun with the fonts I used.

Happy New Years 2016

I know I am a little behind on this, but I hope you had a wonderful New Years. This is my yearly update post with a Year in Review for 2015 and my goals for 2016.

Creative: We will start off with my creative accomplishments for the year. I completed 4 original pieces of art, and showed the 2 Halloween girls in my first gallery show. The clay sculptures are a new adventure for me, and something I am looking to continue into 2016.

I was able to complete 9 more of the LifeBook Lessons from 2014. I think I am close to the halfway point on this. I enjoy this program but just can't seem to find the time to complete all the lessons. I am determined to finish these before I take another online class, and there are a few I would like to take.

Reading: On to my book challenge for 2015. I was able to finish 13 out of the 30 books I pledged to read. Those Outlander books are huge though!

Health: I didn't meet my Health goals. I was able to maintain the 10lb loss for most of the year. We stopped going to the gym a few months ago and I only gained a couple pounds from that. We plan on starting back at the gym this week.

Travel: We were able to do a little bit of traveling this year. We did make it to New Orleans but not until Christmas time (I wanted to go for my birthday). We also made it back to St. Augustine in February and went to Orlando for a weekend in May.

Home: As far as the house goes we did get to remodel the master bathroom. It is beautiful, and amazing to finally take a shower in my own room.

Personal: I set a goal to basically stop over-analyzing and enjoy the moment/process. I think I have done pretty well with this. I felt a bit calmer towards the end of the year.

Some of my favorite things from 2015:
Movie: Jurassic Park and Song of the Sea
Music: Chvrches
TV Show: The Walking Dead and Marvel Agents of Shield
Book: The School for Good and Evil
Colors: Purple, Blue, and Lime Green (This hasn't changed from last year)
Podcast: Transgression (If you are an artist and love beautiful paintings check this podcast out.)

This past year wasn't all that bad. We were able to accomplish most of the things we wanted to do.

Looking forward into 2016...

Word of the Year: Perseverance

Creative: I want to create more original artwork. I want to continue learning about sculpting with clay. My goal for this year is to build a body of work so that I can become a vendor at some small events in the area.

Reading: I backed my book challenge down to 15 books for the year. I had set it at 30 for the past couple of years and never even got to the halfway point.

Health: I am going to try again for the 10lb loss and get back to the gym.

Travel: The one trip we have decided we would like to do is stay at the resort in Missouri during the fall to see the fall foliage. I want to take lots of pictures and go hiking. We are possibly planning another trip but haven't figured that one out yet.

Home: We put a lot of money into the remodeling of the Master Bathroom last year that I think we are going to take it easy this year on any big plans for the house. Although I think some new furniture is needed, because the leather is peeling off.

Personal: My personal goals are to continue enjoying the process and staying as calm as I can. I would like to work on my procrastination when I am at home. I don't tend to procrastinate at work but when it comes to getting things done around the house or getting to work on my art I tend to get caught up in other things.

Blog: For the blog I think I did better than the previous year on posting once a week. I did miss a few weeks throughout the year. I want to work a little better at that this year. I have also been thinking of a small redesign and possibly moving to another service (maybe Squarespace). I am still working out the details for that.

I want to thank you for reading this little blog of mine and hope you have a wonderful 2016!

December Adventures

December usually goes by so quickly. We don't even celebrate the holidays and it still goes by super quick. 

The beginning of the month I entered my Halloween Girls in a small gallery called Art Mundo.  It was really exciting to see my work hung up next to other artists.

I took a class with Chris Cozen at this same gallery. This class was fun and I was able to learn to let go a little.

I took a couple weeks off from my clay class at Peacock Clay Collaborative. I plan on starting back up this week. Here are some of the projects I finished and I am working on right now.

I finished the Moon Plaque and you can read more about that here.

I prepared a canvas and got the sketch down ready for paint.

I only completed 1 work doodle this month.

I didn't get any sun pictures this month, but I was able to get a couple interesting pictures.

We also took our Christmas vacation this year and went to New Orleans. You can read about them here, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

That was it for December. I do plan on doing a look back at 2015 and a look forward into 2016, so look forward to that soon.

New Orleans Adventures - Part 3

Here are the pictures from our last two days in New Orleans. We decided to check out the New Orleans Rum Distillery.

This is a holding tank for the molasses they use for fermenting the rum.

This picture shows the water line after Hurricane Katrina. This line is 8ft tall. They lost a bunch of there rum and it took them over a year to get back in production.

These show the different stages of distillation. Of Course the first bottle is straight molasses.

This is an old style distiller. The use this for testing new product mostly.

These are the distillers they use now.

They make this product called Gingeroo. It is an alcoholic ginger beer. We liked this one the best and bought 3 bottles of it.

They had this in the back just to show how the sugar used to be processed to make the molasses and caramel.

They had a graffiti artist paint this emblem of a the tops of the sugar cane.

I loved the colors of all the leaves on the ground.

This is their 20th Anniversary blend.

After we got back from the tour of the distillery. I wanted to find the LaLaurie Mansion. You can't go in and tour the building but it was neat to walk by it and take a picture.

As we were walking around all the residential buildings were beautiful.

Here was an impromptu parade that went by as we were looking at all the buildings and art galleries.

This was in one of the funky little art galleries. It was so life like and was made from silicone and human hair. His head was as big as I am.

This is the St. Louis Cathedral, it is a beautiful catholic church. It wasn't open so we couldn't go inside and check out all the stained glass work.

The next day was Christmas Eve and I wanted to hit up Cafe Du Monde one more time before we headed home.

We mostly just walked around and checked out some of the smaller shops and galleries. We ran into this dog just lying there. I was so impressed with how patient this dog was, he laid really still while everybody walked around him and took pictures.

We ended up back down by Bourbon Street and ate lunch at this little restaurant below a hotel called Desire. The food was really good there.

I was shocked to see a Peaches Records there. I haven't been to a Peaches since I was a teenager.

We headed home on Christmas Day and got home pretty late. Here is a picture of my stash of VooDoo dolls I purchased.

We had a really great time. There are a few things we didn't get to see but we enjoyed what we did see. If we ever end up back there I would like to tour some of the other cemeteries.

New Orleans Adventures - Part 2 - WW2 Museum

While we were hanging out at the hotel, I was looking up places that I thought the boyfriend would like to visit. I am more into the spooky and spiritual history of cities, he likes the spooky but leans more towards the military history. As I was doing my research I found the WW2 Museum. Tuesday was another rainy day so it was the perfect time to spend the day indoors. We walked over thinking it would take a couple hours to walk through. This place was huge and full of information, it took us most of the day to go through. After we bought our tickets we were given a plastic dog tag. They have you start off on what looks like a train to explain the dog tag. They pick a WW2 Vet for you so you can follow their story throughout the museum. They had these stations that you would wave your tag above and it would tell you a little history about your chosen vet. You can also collect items to look at later on their website. This was a super cool interactive addition to the museum. I don't have much to say about all the pictures because I do not remember what everything is called, but really liked seeing all the old vehicles.

We had a vet stop us before we headed to the next exhibit and he explained a couple of things to us. I found this part really neat the way they portrayed it. Each of the flags below has little soldiers lined up in them, each soldier represented 2,000 soldiers that fought in the war.

I took a picture of this bunk bed because it reminded me of the bunk beds we had growing up. If I remember correctly they actually had US Army imprinted on them.

This building had a bunch of the vehicles and planes used in the wars.

As we were walking around I got some pictures of the city skyline.

After the museum we ended up back at the outlets, then back to the room. For dinner that night we ended up a Bubba Gump's, it was pretty good. The server actually had a few trivia questions from the movie, which the boyfriend knew the answers to all but one.

I didn't want to make these blog posts to long so I have one more post to come. Hopefully I can get that one up tomorrow.