Friday, January 5, 2024

Christmas Card 2023

 In an effort to be more environmentally friendly this year (and because we ran out of time to send anything before the New Year), we have transitioned over to a e-Christmas Card!  And now you get to see more pictures of our beautiful faces (a win, win!).   Enjoy our Bartlett 2023 by the numbers and a few photo favorites.





The kids took up rock climbing lessons this year, and it has been fun for the whole family!  Here we are 'topped out' on the bouldering wall.


The kids have been enjoying their 1st and 4th grade years, its been smooth sailing so far with some pretty awesome teaching staff.



We had our first family ski trip this year, we are hitting a sweet spot with kids enjoying activities that challenge them and us at the same time. 


Eli lost his first tooth!


Our 2023 garden at its peak!


And a new pantry designed by yours truly to showcase our bountiful squash harvest :)

Happy New Year!






Monday, December 11, 2023

Children's Book Illustrations




This past year I had the opportunity to illustrate my very first children's book!  A local couple reached out to me to help them illustrate a story the husband wrote for his grandchildren.  It's a wonderfully sweet story about the grandpa's wayward golf ball and the adventures little forest creatures have with it when they find it. Here are a couple of my favorite drawings from the book.






   

Thursday, May 26, 2022

A Few Favorite graphic design projects from 2019-2021

 In 2019 I was hired on as Communications Manager for a college campus ministry.  It has been a really exciting job as the department I work for has a great need for visual communications in a variety of different formats and target audiences within its ministry.  Here is a sampling of graphic work I did for some of my favorite projects:


SMALL GROUP GARAGE: a training program for college student small group leaders that involved a social media campaign that coordinated with an interactive training interface I created on Miro.




















COVID Bible Study: When college campuses essentially shut down in March 2020, our team had to quickly shift to online content.  Many college students were reeling from the abrupt shift in their college education environment and I helped develop graphics for a bible study focused on suffering, perseverance, joy during hard times and turning to Christ for comfort, support, guidance, wisdom.  These images were from the social media campaign to direct students toward the online bible study guides. 













Online New Student Outreach social media graphics: I was involved in a nation-wide campaign during Fall 2020 to help campus chapters recruit new students during a non-traditional recruitment period. With so many students “attending” university classes online, our organization needed to be creative with how we met new students, as our traditional methods of face-to-face interaction and invitation were not possible in a virtual setting. These graphics were used in the social media campaign for student recruitment.  





There were numerous other projects I did over this time period, but these were some of my favorites and I felt the most connected to the mission of discipling college students.






Monday, February 15, 2021

Monday, May 4, 2020

Coronavirus Clutter Cure

If you are like my family during coronavirus, you are feeling a little antsy and have a lot of pent up energy that isn't being expended in its usual ways.  We find our morning routines slowed way down, less rush, we often don't get out of our pajamas until 10 am (on particularly slow days we don't even change out of them). On bad weather days, after we have exhausted all the fun indoor activities, I find my kids pretty willing to do chores around the house as long as they are presented as a 'fun activity' and not a chore (I get it, I was young once too).


So I thought I'd use the same logic to trick myself into a 'chore' by trying to organize my kitchen cupboards and make it into a sorting game.  That might not sound like a ton of fun, but if you are a visual person like me, the visual calm you get from opening a well organized cupboard is so pleasing. It's the little things, haha.



A good place to start with organizing is to just take everything out (everything) and put into like categories. Next you figure out storage container options.  I pick up some mason jars at the thrift store a while back as well as some larger bulk item storage containers from The Container Store for things like rice/oatmeal/cereal/etc. Since we had been living in our current kitchen setup for a while, I had a pretty good idea of what worked and what didn't in terms of locations of items.  Spices, oven mitts, stirring spoons, etc all belonged over close to the stove, the snack cupboard needed to be accessible to the kids. All the baking stuff could be tucked away near the kitchen island, etc. Then once I figured out locations for things, I put them into the lidded jars and up on the shelves (more frequently used item being near the bottom, less frequently used item near the top).

This new organization has helped a lot with kitchen efficiency.  And it looks so much better than the cluttered, unorganized mess that was there before. Next thing on my list is to get a good label maker for all these bulk containers.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Kitchen Update: Dishwasher + Panel


My dishwasher broke about a week into the Coronavirus crisis and social distancing (ugh).  The dishwasher came with the house and it had been sub par pretty such ever since it conked out on me the morning of our first Thanksgiving in our house!  I have been able to repair it every time, but when it stopped working this time, I just could sense that it wasn't coming back to life with a good lump of cash invested in it. So we bit the bullet and ordered a new dishwasher and I could be more pleased with it. 

I intentionally ordered a panel-ready dishwasher after seeing a number of Instagram accounts I follow install one of their own to match the cabinetry.   With our kitchen being on the smaller side (it if great if only one person is in there, but get 2+ people or kids and it quickly gets out of hand), I thought having a panel that blended in with the rest of the cabinetry was worth the extra time and money. 

I ordered a cabinet front from Fast Cabinet Doors and got started!  I needed some additional lumber to attach to the back of the panel so it matched the cabinetry around my kitchen a bit better. I used an extra door handle so the handle matched the other cabinets (I'd love to eventually update the hardware, but that is for another day).

Overall I am really happy with it!  And it was another easy project and install, so win, win! Oh and the functioning dishwasher is a BIG improvement. 










I will eventually install a toe kick underneath the dishwasher so that it matches the surrounding cabinets, but that is a minor detail that isn't noticed, so it can wait a bit longer. 



I lucked out with how close a match this cabinet was with what already existed. There are some minor details that you notice close up, but otherwise, it blends in really well. 




Bathroom Peg Rail

Ever since I saw The Grit + Polish install some peg rails at their farmhouse (they have them in many locations), I knew this was likely the solution I was going to use for our powder room on the mail level. I have already decided I wanted some kind of shelf there for storage, but the shaker pegs were a welcome detail. The Grit + Polish tutorial seemed easy enough, so I went with it! Couldn't be happier with the result!


The shaker pegs were ordered off of Amazon, but everything else was from my local Ace hardware. So happy to be supporting local businesses right now!


The yellow wall color is Golden Bounty by Sherwin Williams.  I have it in another guest bedroom, its a wonderful shade of yellow (thought slightly hard to photograph accurately).



I plan to store handsoap tablets (I order mine from Blueland for an environmentally friendly alternative) in these thrifted wall baskets and also a broom/dustpan for easy access off of the kitchen.  











It's also a great place to display my artwork...nothing like a captive audience to admire your art ;)








Christmas Card 2023

 In an effort to be more environmentally friendly this year (and because we ran out of time to send anything before the New Year), we have t...