I might be in love...

I love Illustrator. It's probably my favorite design related program. Sure, Photoshop is great for photo clean up or manipulation (and I know that there are others out there who can do wonderful things with Photoshop, but not me...) and InDesign is perfect when laying out things like posters, business cards, or other printed materials. But Illustrator... You can create something small in Illustrator, but maybe when you need it, you need it larger. Maybe a lot larger.

And you can do it in Illustrator.

My brother, the photographer

My brother hasn't taken many photographs recently, but I want to take just a moment to show some of the really good ones he's taken of our mom's cat.  I might go through some more of his pictures I have somewhere and show them off later :)

 

Cooking is an art

At least that’s what they say.

I don’t usually cook… large or small meals. It's not really my thing. But there are a few meals and desserts that I love to cook and think turn out really well. At least that’s the feedback I get from my family and friends. :p

The dinner I’m making tonight is Tortellini and Three Pepper topping. Now, I can’t claim credit for this particular meal. I found it on allrecipies.com a few years ago, but I love cooking it and I absolutely love eating it! I’ll add the full recipe as I made it tonight at the bottom. :)

Sometimes everyone needs a peptalk

Designers, just like everyone else, get down. But, when that happens, we need to remind ourselves of a few key things.

As a designer, we will often feel like our decisions to do things a certain way or when giving our ideas and suggestions about a project are correct. This usually stems from either knowledge gained through study in the field of design or maybe even a bit of innate instinct and we can't find the words to express why we feel that way. Unfortunately, unless you are the head designer of your own company and have the final say in every project you work on, I don’t think it matters how much we study our field or grow in our knowledge, because we will always be working for someone, and that someone will likely think they know more or understand it better. And if that someone is paying us, whether a side project or a full-time job, we sometimes have to bite our tongue and go along with the idea that may sit funny in our stomach or make us cringe.