Guess who got contracted to decorate the Barbie Dream House?

Okay, well not really, but that's what these little color chips made me think of. They are actually for The New Munsell Student Color Set, which pretty much any art/design student has to make themselves familiar with at some point. This assignment sounds deceptively easy enough; separate the color chips, organize them into values and chromas and affix them on the sheet.
Well, the first few pages are actually really easy, but let me tell you, when you get about half way through the book, your eyes start to blur so bad that the colors all look the same. That, and if your anything like me, you start to get studiotac built up on your fingers, and the chips start adhering to you. Not fun! (**Side note- I still recommend Studiotac over glue for this project though. The chips stay put, but if you need to move them around, you can easily pop them off the page. That and it lacks the nasty glue smell.) In other news, I just had my midterms and I'm a little less than thrilled. I have an "A" in my drawing class, but a "C" in my manual drafting class. Luckily the "C" can be easily raised by editing some of my previous work, so I'm not too worried, but I still can't stand knowing that I have lower than a "B" in anything. I can't wait until we can start CAD and I don't have to deal with trying to sharpen my B pencils every five seconds just to keep my line weights even. I'm also excited about being able to get a job in the field soon. I really want to get my NCIDQ certification (its like the bar exam for interior designers) as soon as I can, but you have to be working under someone that has the certification for at least two years. So, pretty much if I get a job now, by the time that I graduate, I will be ready to enroll in the prep classes and then on to take the test. Yeah, having to take classes after you graduate.... gotta love it!

Has it already been a year?

Tomorrow marks our first year as man and wife. Its crazy, before our wedding, time couldn't drag its feet any harder and now, its flying by before my eyes. Its crazy to think of how much we have changed as a couple over the years. I still remember a few years back when I was a

bridesmaid in Nicki's ( Jamie's sister's ) wedding. We had been dating for about three years at the time and marriage couldn't have been further from my mind. Everyone, of course, was asking me if I was going to catch the bouquet, so I made sure to let Nicki know that if she threw it at me, I would let it hit the floor. It was that night that everyone learned how stuborn and true to our word us Marks women are. I was forced to take the bouquet later that night, but they got a priceless photo or Erin and I avoiding the flowers like the plague. Its crazy to think that only a few short years later, I couldn't imagine not having the privelage of being Mrs. Jamie. I know it sounds super cheesy, but I really did get to marry my best friend and there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not thankfull for that. Oh, and speaking of thankfull, I can't tell you how happy I am to not have to deal with planning a wedding! Really, I don't see how any woman can take pleasure in that... unless you have the money to get an amazing wedding planner like Mrs. Kim ;) You never realize how many little deatails go into a wedding until you're knee deep in color swatches trying to find the table linens that best match your dinnerware that you had to have because it best represented the tone of your wedding. Oh, and its such a slap in the face at the end, because you spend all of that time trying to make every detail perfect for this one day, and once it gets there, its over in a flash. Honestly, for all of the hours of planning that I logged into my wedding, it should have lasted at least a week. Okay, maybe not that long, but for sure longer than 8 hours! I guess I can't really complain , even though no one else appreciated my centerpieces or my choice of silverware quite as much as I did, we all still had a great time. Just for fun, here are some more pics from the wedding... and if you could... please take a moment to bask in the glory of my centerpieces.

I passed!

I got an A+ (99%...whats up?) and a B+, which I think puts me at about a 3.7 or 3.8 for my GPA. Hopefully I can raise it up even higher next semester. Until then, I'm going to enjoy my week off before I have to go back to school and start kickin some ass again. :)

Just for fun, here is the link to my favorite design product. I used the mother of pearl tiles for the accent wall on my final project. http://mayaromanoff.com

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

Yup, this is totally my life right now. Finals are coming up next week, so I have been living, sleeping and breathing drafting. Wish me luck!

Happy Birthday to meeee!

So, it used to be that having a birthday made me feel more mature and grown up, and now days it seems like all that my birthdays are doing is making me feel old. Even just a few short years ago, I remember calling up my friends and planning out what bars we were going to hit up to celebrate, and of course, I always made sure I had the day after off of work. Not so much because I needed to recover, but more because the party typically ran over well into the next morning. As the years have gone on, however, birthdays have become less of a thing to celebrate and more of a thing I try to ignore. If it weren't for my car insurance going down every year, I think I would just skip them all together. I'm so not ready to be turning the big 30 soon!

How fast they grow!

I got to see my neice on Easter and I can't get over how much shes grown since I saw her last month. Not only is she bigger, but she is starting to look less like a baby and more like a little girl. She is reacting to things much more than ever before. She has been a very expressive baby from day one, but now that she comprehends things more (or atleast tries too) you can't help but keep your eyes glued to her to see what funny thing she does next. Its strange, I guess I had never paid that much attention to babies before, but it is so amazing to watch them try to take in everything and sort it all out. I can't wait to see her grow even more. I can already see she has a lot of the great qualities that her mom has that make her the amazing woman that she is.

Knowing both of her parents, I'm pretty sure its only going to be a few years before she starts trying to help birds with broken wings and builing huts for the bugs in the backyard to live in. My nephew has been sprouting like a weed too. He is coming up on his first birthday and already seems like he is ready to take on the world. We took him to the zoo the other weekend and I was pretty sure that he wasn't going to have any idea what was going on. Much to my suprise he was wide eyed (well, for most of the time) and wanting to explore everything. He was also kind enough to share some of his rice snacks with me. Granted, by the time that he handed them to me they were so covered in drool that they were mostly mush so I had to decline. None the less, a very nice jesture. He seems to be becoming very empathetic. I swear it was only last week that he was a newborn, unaware of the world and the people around him. I'm not going to lie. Part of this whole thing makes me excited to have kids some day and another part of it makes me scared to death to have children of my own. They grow and change so fast, I don't know how I would ever be able to keep up with that! Well, as for now I am content to just watch from the sidelines and try to take as many notes down as I can before I have to take the field.