This headline is funny for two reasons. One, because I work for a horse magazine. Two, because I really have no clue what to do in an actual saddle.

In an effort to keep up with blogging I’ve freshened up my site a bit. I created a similar but new header image and I chose a new font. I keep looking through the themes considering a complete change but can’t seem to pull the trigger. But we’ll see what the year brings.

Please forgive (or don’t) my absence over the last few months. I always seem to underestimate the busy season at work. Some of the biggest shows happen within the last few months and they all happen together. It means a lot more hustling than normal to get our magazines done.

On top of which, things personally have been a bit of a whirlwind. We lost my grandfather at the end of September and one of my sister’s had her first baby in October. Talk about a bitter sweet time for our family, so much emotion and so much love. We traveled back and forth to my hometown for all the events plus Thanksgiving. It was busy but wonderful!

So here’s where I’m at. I’m still a graphic designer for a magazine, I’m still bullet journaling #bujobasics, and I’m still crazy about my parrots. We’ve also had a lot of rain in our area this year. It’s made for interesting times on our cattle ranch. Muddy doesn’t begin to describe it.

So here we go 2019. I hate to type this, but its not started off great for me. I lost one of my parrots, my caique, Ravi. He died suddenly and under much confusion. I’m still waiting on lab results from the necropsy. His absence has really altered my day to day, “Life as you know it” kinda thing. It was such a shockingly sad event. I’ll write more about it some day. I just can’t do it right now. I still have my two smaller birds and we have our little dogs, so there’s still lots to do. But I miss Ravi terribly. He taught me so much and he was so much fun.

So. Since the intention of my blog is to talk about graphic design and art, I’ll finish off my first post of 2019 by sharing another site I use for learning.

CreativePro.com – I may be a bit behind on some things software wise (sometimes there’s just too many updates and you can’t keep up with all of them), but I learned how to use artboards in Photoshop this week. I was kind of excited about it. Us design geeks and our software, am I right? It’s going to change the way I manage the web ads I design at work.

More later.

Categories: Art & Design, Blogging, Bullet Journaling, General Chatter, Graphic Design, Parrots