a blog beautification & trying new things

Hey hey!  Look who got a face lift this weekend!  Hahh.  Thanks to the amazing design talents of Bailey from Let Birds Fly - my blog has finally taken a step in the right direction for ease and simplification.  I have been wanting to do this for a long time and I'm so happy it's here and looking beautiful.  Thank you to Bailey (who recently found out she has Chronic Lyme Disease so please send some positive wishes her way).

Getting my blog overhauled has been something I've been meaning to do for a very long time.  I unfortunately do not have the graphic design nor web application chops to do it myself - so I was pretty intimidated for awhile.  It was a huge help to have a professional help me and give me guidance on what I wanted, needed, and how to get the things I have been meaning to get.  It was really first about pushing myself into trying something that I had absolutely no clue about.

This seems to be a current theme in my life since I am working on climbing a very steep learning curve for our secret project.  In the past few weeks, I've learned about bleed lines and how to use Photoshop, how to convert images from RGB to CMYK (and what that even means), increasing dpi, and saving jpgs as PDFs.  It's been an uphill battle, but I think I'm in the final stage of 'I-don't-know-what-the-hell-I'm-doing' phase, so that seems comforting.  You know what they say, 'It's only impossible until you do it.' So, I'm pushing through it until I can finally say, "It's Done!"

the face I apparently make when I'm about to take a leap of faith

I'm also trying to use that philosophy (the get to the 'It's Done!' moment) with a few other things in my life including writing my novel and finishing our family yearbooks.  My novel writing has been going awesome (big thanks to Jessica, my instructor in my writing course - seriously check it out for next time if you're a mum who can't find a balance between writing and ya know, keeping humans alive).  I have been pounding out pages for my book and I just keep telling myself - get to 'It's done!' and then you can go back and clean up the writing/grammar/problemareas.  I just need to get to the end.

For our 2011 yearbook, I've made it to October2011, which means I am almost done.  I'm hopeful to finish it before the end of November so I can get a start on this year's book for 2013.  Almost there!

Basketball season is nearly here which is both exciting and terrifyingly new for us.  We have fundraisers to prepare, "I <3 and="" br="" coach="" create="" creative="" family="" get="" in="" it="" make="" nbsp="" one="" our="" piece.="" plans="" scheduling="" through="" to="" tshirts="" xciting="">

So, the point is to say - we are trying all sorts of new things here at the Team Studer.  What new things have you been trying?