In December or so I realized there was something not right and in January I finally made a doctor’s appointment. At the end of the month I found out it was a tumor in my ovary and had it removed. That surgery was probably the worst experience in my life, and I wish it on no one. It changed my life in a few different ways, but mostly negative. I’m not fully healed yet, but I’m to the point where I feel pretty normal most of the time. I’m getting back into design work and other things I used to enjoy.

If you happen upon this site, please leave me a comment and let me know you were here. And I’m looking to get back into the swing of things, so I’m offering some incredibly low priced and/or bartering services. If someone wants to trade me advertising on their site for some web design and coding, send me a quick message. Not all the pages are up yet because I got sick in the middle of creating the site, but the contact form should be ready. If you want examples of my work and they’re not up on the site yet, just let me know.

I currently only have one design client I’m working with because of my hiatus in the online world, so I have time for some projects. Just let me know if you need me.

I’m sorry I haven’t been available lately, but I’ve had a few content ideas and I’m going to finish the portfolio and order sections of the website in the coming days. I’m looking forward to taking on some new work and working with some fresh faces. If you know me, or would like to get to know me, please friend me on Facebook. At the bottom of the sidebar there’s a section to follow this blog on Facebook, too, so please check it out.

I found a brand of clothing, Lucky Brand, that has quite a few inspirational pieces. They’re not just great clothes, but their retro style gave me some great ideas for new designs. They’re an American brand with a strong influence from rock ‘n roll music. Personally I have to say that’s my perfect style.

Clothing isn’t the only spark of inspiration I’ve gotten from them. Accessories also give me some great ideas for layout accessories. The current design on Radkitten has a ‘necklace’ of its own with the stars at the top linking to my sites (color coded to match the designs on those sites).

I’ve grown up loving vintage, hippie-style clothing and I really wish I’d found this company sooner. I’ve got a real soft spot for the great design style they’ve produced and I like to reflect that part of my personal on my sites and in my designs as well.

Have you ever been inspired by clothing (without actually using the clothing in your creation) in your own creative designs, ideas, etc? Tell me about it in the comments.

When I’m creating a Wordpress them or editting one, I usually clip out snippets of coding and paste them into notepad incase I’ll need them later. You never know what you’re going to mess up or why, so it’s good to have the original coding to be able to slap back in whenever you need to. Sometimes, I want to keep that coding and saving notepad files in random places around my desktop has worked, but it’s not extremely efficient because when I save them I save them as the date I made them, and if I don’t know what the date was when I saved the clip I need.. well, you get the picture. So what I’ve started doing is saving notes in my wordpress theme. It’s easy to do without a plugin (though it’d be nice to have one).

• Open notepad and save the empty file as notepad.php
• Open your theme’s folder in FTP
• Upload the notepad.php file to the same folder as your other theme files
• Go to your Theme Editor and click on notepad.php
• Paste in your code with some guides that will explain to you what the code snippets are about

So it’s extremely easy and truly has been a life saver at times.

So then I realized, ellipticals are expensive. They ranged from $300 (crap) to $3,000. I really don’t have the money or credit right now for something like this, so I’ve been putting it off. The other day a Bowflex catalog came in the mail and I found the one that was made for me. We have a Bowflex card,  so we jumped on it. They also had free shipping and a free gift (if you add $19 shipping) that includes a towel, a yoga mat, a heart rate monitor watch, push up bars, and an exercise ball – all for just $999 (or $15/mo on Bowflex card). I really feel like I got a good deal on this.

I’m always a little weary of buying things I can’t experience first, but I did read some reviews and everyone gave it either 4 or 5 stars. I feel a bit more confident about that.

Exercise is so important when you have a job that can put you in a chair for 12 hours straight. I think this was the best option for me to help keep up with my fitness goals while also keeping up with my productivity goals. I cleaned up my office and I have a nice space for it when it arrives. Hopefully, that’ll be soon.

Anyway, so they’re gone for the week and I have a lot of work ahead of me. I have a lot of house work to get to, and a lot of computer work I’d love to get done. The entire  house needs work, inside and out, and I always work best alone. If I can avoid getting so lonely that I start leaving the house to spend time with other people, I can accomplish a lot. I want to start with Michael’s room because it’s completely out of hand. The boys used to share a room, but I split them up, giving Corey the ‘play room’. Most of the stuff ended up in Michael’s room making it a huge mess. I don’t blame him for it. Corey’s room has been neglected lately, but I want to try to rearrange it, too.

I’ve also had a lot of ideas for a lot of sites come to me lately and I want to utilize them all. One of them being this site, which is why you see it up again. I really have a lot of ideas but I’m having a little trouble putting them to use. I’m hoping I can do all the things I want to do. I guess this week I’ll find out if the boys really do hinder my productivity, or if it’s just me. I’m such a procrastinator.