At the last minute, a group of exciting wedding vendors got together to talk about our first Erie Wedding Professionals meeting. I am honored to be a part of the group, especially being new to this particular industry. Luckily, what I’m not new to is creating graphics for websites With the help of Heather Mencer and Heather Neckers-Kinal we had a crash session and came up with this concept which I worked on Sunday night for MyErieWedding.com, run by John Gallagher. I hope to help translate it’s modern feel to the rest of the site in the future.

What else is new? I’m winding down to 13 days left at my 5 year art director job. There are such a mix of emotions at this stage in life. I’m sad, but so excited to stop juggling so many things and be able to focus on one thing (well many things, but with one focus) It’s weird how *aware* you are of the time running down.

Can’t wait to post about the important people’s birthdays coming up at the end of the week.

Anyway not much longer to keep up this pace, and I’m ready for it to be over….

Other randomness:

• I finished the Host, and it was sooooo good. I mean, it’s no Twilight saga, but it is a really really entertaining and page turning piece of fiction, and I really loved it.
• It is so cold here right now, but not a lick of snow
• I am totally behind on LOST this year, I’m trying to catch up
• I’m trying to figure out how to transition out of the job I’ve been in for five years… it’s going to be interesting
• I tried taking a multi-vitamin a few weeks ago and I felt terrible from it. This does not bode well for me lol
• March is the “MONTH OF BIRTHDAYS!” Kristin Hesch, Kristin Lynch, Lexi, Danielle (30th!), Amy (25th!), Biz, my cousin Michael, my cousin Kaitlyn …. and my 27th isn’t far behind coming up April 2!
• Our worship band led by my wonderful husband has an actual out-of-town gig coming up! It’s going to be exciting. Although I just realized that I’ll have to miss the Twilight DVD Borders release party on the 21st.
• My sis is growing spiritually like leaps and bounds lately, and I am so honored to be part of her life and watching it all happen. I don’t know where all this will lead, but I can see the hand of God in the situation and I trust He will lead her down the right paths.
• I know a few people who’s jobs have either downgraded or laid them off and its a very scary time. All we can do is pray and wait, its going to be a while before the country gets back on its feet. And I think we all need to stop being so scared . . . I pray that I can do the same.

And lastly, if you are a reader, please leave a comment and say hi, I’d love to know who’s out there. Thanks

My awesome friend Danielle, Communications Director,  has done a three part series on what twitter is. Check them out if you’re one of those people going “well…what is twitter anyway – and is it valuable to me?”

Check it:

What IS Twitter, Anyway?, Part 1

Twitter: An Insider’s Guide, Part 2

Twitter: An Outsider’s Guide, Part 3

In other news – YAAAAY FRIDAY!!! It’s been an intense week I think for many. Let’s pray for God’s grace for the weekend and the week following!

Oh – and you can follow me on twitter at my username – puremotif.

Also in my mind… after feeling shame and regret about a situation in life to the point of obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and after profuse apologies, God hit me at The Tuesday Night Thing. The church is broken, we are broken, we are parts of the whole. God’s love is over us, and is why we can have change and love still between these broken people.

“I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way He loves us…

He loves us.”

Yes, struggling-to-define-your-identity, straying-from-your-faith, you.

Yes, processing-a-loss, going-through-chemo, healing from a broken heart, you.

Yes, dealing with hard-times, feeling worthless, hurt-by-others, yet so beautiful inside, you.

And yes, silly, sinful, selfish, self-promoting, speaks-before-she-thinks, slightly OCD, sometimes-feeling-lonely, overly-dependent

me.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY!

What are you, 43?? Love you tons, you are the best father I could have ever asked for.

other updates:

• It’s cold
• we have so much snow in the driveway i have to do a complicated turning radius to get in
• things are busy
• american idol started again
• brian got a new computer and i’m so happy for him
• he also finished reading book 1 of twilight
• i made my gramma’s spaghetti sauce on monday which was quite a triumph
• gave a meal to some friends who just had a little one
• i have 7 bridal consults in the next 2 weeks, and i’m happy + overwhelmed but managing better every day as I put it in God’s hands
• the weirdest part about it is how i’m suddenly looking 4 – 18 months into the future and evaluating everything and where will i be then, how will this work, etc. i’m not used to such a long-term outlook.
• a few of my friends have been so supportive during this time and i can’t thank them enough. i know i can be needy and when my friends see it and are there it just makes it all easier.

here are a few pics of my booth from the bridal show, plus a model who had really pretty hair. I have all the materials stored in my basement all wrapped and preserved so I can re-use them next year!

Now I’m just going to keep plugging away and stay warm!

I was a bit disturbed that the first one has business so huge, which means I say “mmmyyy businessss” a lot which is really annoying and self-centered, so I’m sorry about that. OR it could be that the first wordle only took from the last few posts which could also explain it. But what I loved about it is the word LOVE and it says in the “O” “life” and “art” . . . I thought that was fun

This one was probably a bit more cute, but I’m not sure where it’s drawing from. I liked that family was in there, I did not like that WORK was bigger than family And the word “time” … so big? Am I so concerned about time? I need to get my priorities in order!

For example, with my day job, EO work:

• I am slow, then slammed, then slow then slammed. I haven’t archived files in months (which is bad, but also good cuz it just takes up agency time)
• I haven’t gone through my work email and filtered/deleted since September, meaning 930+ to sort through, and home since the same, so probably even worse as all my gmail and puremotif goes there.
• I have 2 important projects I’m in the middle of, but right now, they are on hold so I’m twiddling my thumbs. At any moment though, they could break out and go crazy.

And with freelance and my business:

• I had one wedding this past Saturday which was beautiful and another at New Years. After that I have no weddings until May, (when there are THREE!)
• I do have some family photo shoots coming up, but not a whole lot of graphic design work.
• I have an album I’m waiting for the couple to decide on images for, so that will be some time when it comes
• I’m really in a place where I need to say yes to any and everything that comes my way freelance wise, so I book up enough work to tide me through till weddings begin in spring.
• I will soon need to spend some time compiling and organizing everything tax-wise for the 08 year. I did oK keeping it organized, but still not good enough.

And at home:

• I had the ambition to do Christmas Cards this year, but it’s not going to happen, I just don’t have the manpower/time and I can’t afford the ink/paper to print them. I’m really bummed about this.
• I got my wonderful new elliptical for Christmas already and it is set-up, I had time to workout 3 days last week, then no more. It’s not that I don’t want to, I really want to. I just can’t get to it!
• The house is an absolute and utter mess.
• This is a problem, because my in-laws and brother-in-law and his girlfriend are going to spend Christmas with us for four days.  That’s 6 people in a small 3 bedroom Erie City house, with ONE BATHROOM. Count them. ONE. So, that’s going to be really really interesting. I’m so excited to see them, but to get my house ready for guest useage is going to be a lot of work. I’m really praying this week and weekend affords time to do that.
• I am however done with all my family Christmas shopping, couldn’t do friends this year, and most of the wrapping, except for one of my presents for my hubbie that got messed up in shipping
• Wrapping presents and doing tons of laundry last night took me like 5 hours instead of the 2 I was hoping for.

And in general:

• I am always 3-8 minutes late for everything. I don’t know why
• But today, I was 10 minutes early for the presentation at the Manufacturer’s Association.
• I say I’m going to go to bed by 11, but last night I don’t think I closed my eyes until 1:30am, and this generally happens to me.
• I want to be blogging more.
• Brian and I had another little tiff about our schedules and conflicts and life and expectations last night. It ended wonderfully with laughter and teasing, I love that we can take our fights and turn them into jokes… but still, it will always be an issue I’m sure.
• Snow makes everything take longer.

That’s all. I guess this post was more for me. ha.

The last few weeks have literally flown by in the blink of an eye. Some highlights:

• I for real ran out of hard drive space.
• My dvd burner is broken so I asked Brian to get me a new external harddrive. He got me this Passport portable 400gb in a deep red, almost suede texture, and I love it, SO cute and fast.
• The snow has been unbelievable already and it’s not even December. It feels like the dead of late January. I totally missed the window to pick up leaves. At this point they’re staying till the spring.
• Some of my main favorite people in my life all have the same name. Kristin H., Kristin L., and Kristin U., Christy B., and Christa P. It’s… A LITTLE BIT TOO MUCH people.
• Day-job work has been busy
• I am behind on my freelance and photos. I have a few in need of editing. I Hope to get some work done over break!
• I have 3 weddings scheduled within 2 weeks of each other for May of 2009. I am psyched.
• I am officially taking off all the time in between Christmas and New Years from said Day-job. This is the FIRST time I’ve ever done this. I am so excited. The hubs is also off, so this makes things wonderful.
• When you’re least expecting it, things go wrong in your home/car/etc. so, it’s essential to have an emergency fund set aside for when your car just needs an oil change but it ends up costing $200 for other problems you’ve been putting off, and/or you accidentally clog the drain/disposal with angel hair pasta for $369.
• I’ve seen Twilight/movie/twice. I’ll restrain from any opinions on it. All I know is I want the boxed set for Christmas and I’m now listening to podcasts about it on TwilightSource - the mugglecast peeps!! Also the soundtrack for the movie is haunting and addictive.
• I’m not sure why I feel the need to clean and vaccuum my house from top to bottom before I go out of town. It’s some weird OCD thing. 
• I have no idea what I’m going to get people for Christmas. I almost want to tell everyone they are all getting gift cards. LOL!
• Google picassa updated it’s desktop software, which I’m glad bout because I use it to organize all my originals and backup copies of photos, and it was getting really really clunky.
• I’m wide awake even though it’s 12:31 am and we are leaving at 7:00am tomorrow to drive to Maryland to be with Brian’s family for Thanksgiving! I’m so excited to see them all and have some good away-from-Erie time. 
• The cool thing about this trip is that we are combining the drive with some great friends which hopefully will make the trip go fast and more fun, and save resources and wear and tear and money. They will be continuing on to Myrtle Beach after leaving us in MD.

Happy thanksgiving people!! ]]> http://puremotif.com/2008/11/thanksgiving-away/feed/ 1 http://puremotif.com/2008/10/a-little-disturbing/ http://puremotif.com/2008/10/a-little-disturbing/#comments Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:21:19 +0000 Rachel http://puremotif.wordpress.com/?p=628 I have vowed to not get political on my blog because there are plenty of other voices out there doing that with stronger opinions then mine. And this came from an unlikely source, one of the photography blogs I read. But this really made me angry, and also frustrated at the people who maybe could have shielded him from it with a little more knowledge about the lighting/photography & the media perceptions, and caution about the photographers perspective.

Oh well, I guess he’s a big boy, and it’s no secret he looks old. I mean we’ve been watching him debate in HD now for months. But it’s just too bad because they hired that photographer to do her speciality, retouch and make photos look dream-like. And instead to suit her own political agenda, she did the opposite. And, if you do a little more searching which I won’t link to here, I’ve seen even worse and terribly offensive images that she DID choose to retouch for her “outtakes” on her website on American Digest. I believe she’s removed then from her site now. But regardless, just awful.

I don’t care how you feel. 

Show. some. respect.

Last night was rough with self-confidence, doubt, anger, frustration, and general overwhelment and loneliness. Trying to figure out your passions and how you should be spending your time best, where you belong, where you should move on from and where focuses should be is an intense task. Thankfully a friend stopped over and that helped, then my hubby came home and was wonderful. He even said “you know what? We’re having a great night. There I said it. I’m deeming this a great night.”  It turned from awful to great within an hour or so, and that was spectacular.

Anyway I’m just trying to take it one thing at a time. I needed to blog to get it all out of my system. Thanks for thoughts and prayers. Love.

I’ll leave you with my cousin Paul’s myspace. I’ve been enjoying his old-school style of raw music, fun, entrancing.

Also, here’s two really awesome pictures of Amy taken on her moving day, helping me prepare for Bekah’s senior pics