I just want to keep exploring.

This is from the other day when we went to Daniels Park. It is hard to capture without a panorama, but the view is so expansive from these bluffs that the mountain range seems endless. You can see three of Colorado's major peaks from here, but the smoke from the wildfires along with the thunderstorms rolling in were making them hard to see. When we were driving back into Denver we accidentally took the wrong way but it ended up being the most whimsical drive as we passed dozens of ranches nestled away in the mountains.

 I absolutely cannot wait to come back to this spot and watch the sunset behind these mountains, I simply cannot think of anything more romantic.

When a few minutes turns into all night.

I really didn't mean to spend this much time on this blog, in fact, I really didn't mean to work on this blog at all. Then I sat down at the computer and thought I could at least organize it a bit. Then I thought, oh what the heck, why not make a quick little banner to spruce things up. Then bing bang boom one thing led to another and all of a sudden it is 6am and I am still a wide eyed working Wendy.

Just as a side note, I don't know if it's the time of day or because we were gone for a week but the cats are all over me and the desk at the moment making it extremely difficult to type. So to be short and sweet I will just say that this blog still has a long way to go before it is what I want it to be, but it is indeed on its way. Hoorah!

Also, another hoorah for not getting sick on the plane while on the way back to Illinois from Colorado this afternoon (oy vey.) I am glad to be back in our own home, but after looking at apartments in Denver and knowing how tiny our apartment will have to be, it makes me sad to come back to our lovely and spacious home knowing we will have to give it up. I just wish we could transplant this apartment to Denver, they do that right? I have yet to convince any of our friends to move with us, so can't I at least have our beloved home? No? Le sigh.

Anyway, we heard back on our applications for an apartment building we liked and were accepted, yay! Now we are just waiting to hear back on which apartment will be ready and available for us by the time we are out there (and if one will be opening at all, eek!)

I promise that pictures will come, I feel like this blog is so very ho hum without any pictures to help tell the story, but be patient friends! They will come.

If only everyday could be so free.

Today we went to Daniel's Park. I was hoping for more of a hike but the view from the bluffs was so amazingly wonderful that we were fine with just sitting there taking in the fresh air and listening to the sounds of a whimsical little hummingbird that was zipping around like nothing in the world could make it happier. We looked for grazing bison but they were hiding from us today. We did, however, see a little prairie dog running along the side of a dirt road who brought big smiles to our faces. Jeremy took pictures of wild flowers and cacti and we smelled all the different flowers and they all smelled so good. When we got back into town we revisited Jeremy's work and sat down for tea. We walked through downtown toward my work and my love for our future city grew and my heart filled at the thought of being able to make that delightful walk every day. I am ready to live here.

Visiting Denver: Our Future Home

Well, I had written a post on the plane on Tuesday and somehow lost it :( so here is a basic breakdown of what it was about:

As I sat on the plane on the way to Denver, I couldn't help but to let the feelings of anxiety begin to well up inside of me. Don't get me wrong, I am super excited, ecstatic even, to move here. I can't even begin to tell you how happy it makes me to know that I am near the mountains with countless adventures awaiting us. I am ready to live in a city with more opportunities for us as a couple and for me as a graphic designer than what Central Illinois had to offer. However, I am not that great at making friends. I love people but it is hard for me to truly invest in relationships outside of the ones I already have because I have always been the type of person who preferred a handful of deep relationships over a multitude of friends. Friendship has always been a top priority in our marriage and the relationships we are leaving behind in Illinois are so near and dear to us that the idea of creating a similar community in a new city seems out of reach. In my heart I know this is not true, especially since we already have friendships in place in Denver, but my mind over thinks and gets thoughts like "What if I don't fit in?" "What if no one likes me" "What if we never make friends?" etc. 

However, I know in my gut that this move is right for us. Especially after coming here and finally seeing our new city for the first time, we just know this is where we want to be.  I just have to trust myself and my instincts and trust that when we move out here we will build that community again as long as we remain patient and continue to be true to ourselves. I fully believe that as long as we do that we will meet people who like us for us and who we truly feel a connection with. It's just being patient that is the hard part. 

On a lighter note: I LOVE DENVER. I love being in a city and I especially love being in a city near the mountains. We got here Tuesday and are staying with our good friend, Dave, and his wife, Hannah. Tuesday night we went over to one of Dave friends house for a cookout. I tend to close into myself when entering a situation where I don't know anyone, but it ended up being good since I was able to connect with Dave's cousin's girlfriend and talk with her for a while. 

Wednesday we went to our new Starbucks locations and we are both in LOVE with our stores. Both of our stores are located in downtown Denver and will be very different from where we work now but we both got along well with our managers and are very excited to start working in August.

Today we looked at a few apartments and weren't super excited about any of them. We have a few more places we will be looking at so fingers crossed that one of them will work out! 

Back to the drawing board

Today I opened Illustrator for the first time in a month. I felt excited and giddy and felt like I was in a home that I forgot I had. However, once I scanned in some sketches and began to work with them, I realized that it wasn't really what I wanted. I tried going a little further but had to stop myself in my tracks and go back to my sketchbook. I spent a couple hours redrawing my design, but I feel like I accomplished way more than if I would have stayed in digital production and tried to make what I had work when I knew it simply was not what I was envisioning.

When I started my design education 3 years ago, I stayed as far away from pencil and paper as possible. I was so eager to get to my final piece that no matter how messy and complicated things got, if I was in digital production mode, I was there to stay. I took my non-sensical and barely existent sketches and tossed them aside once I got on a computer.

However, as I mature in my design senses and continue to learn my own personal techniques, I have finally come to an understanding that if I want to succeed, it is absolutely imperative to put as much thought and effort into the preliminary stages of design as possible. How can I expect myself to execute an idea to its fullest extent if I don't try and make sense of the mess of ideas that swim around in my head? The only way for me to begin to make sense of it all is to jot down every single idea I have in every way that I can think of: brain storm lists, mind mapping, thumbnail sketches, free writing, etc. Once I have pages of nonsense written down, I can finally clear my head knowing that it is all on paper and there is no longer a need to try and grasp at mere ideas. I can look at physical evidence of my thoughts and finally begin to narrow them down to the single idea that will carry me forward.

Sometimes when I am in production mode, I feel so limited by my tools and by my lack of knowledge in those tools. I get to a point where I don't even know what my questions are and much less, how to get the answers. However, if I take an idea and form it into dozens of thumbnail sketches to be turned into a handful of deliberate sketches to be turned into a finalized and tight drawing, it is then and only then that I can begin to think about digital production and what will have to go into that process. It is only then that I no longer feel limited because I know exactly what I want even if I don't know how to get there. I can easily educate myself because I will have specific questions to ask.

Even as I begin working in Illustrator, I may not be done with "the drawing board." If something is not working the way that I think it should I can easily scrap it because I no longer feel bondage to the computer and the feeling of anxiety I used to get at the idea of starting over. I used to feel like if I invested hours into a piece, I owned that piece and it was my duty to keep working on it until it was what I wanted. I felt that if I couldn't do it then I was a failure as a designer and did nothing but waste my time. And let me tell you, this led to me constantly feeling like I was failing.

However I am learning that every hour spent on design is a learning experience and it all contributes to my design career as a whole if not to a particular piece. I am learning that spending multiple hours on something that is simply not working is not worthless if I can let my pride take a step aside to allow myself the chance to reevaluate my process. It is only through trial and error that I am able to understand what I need to do to be successful. It can be frustrating and difficult to do, but I would much rather spend extra time in my sketchbook to get a successful piece rather than trying to push through muddy waters to only come out with sub-par design.

So my encouragement to you, whatever your medium may be, is to plan ahead and not be afraid to let go. Do not hold any piece of work you do in such regard that you can't bare to set it aside even when you know it is not what you wanted. Allow yourself the freedom of taking a few steps back, reevaluate, then proceed. Know what you want and do whatever it takes to get there, even if that means going back to the drawing board.

Humble beginnings

I have been wanting to start a blog for quite some time, about love, about friendship, about homemaking, about design, about all those things that are important to me. I've been putting it off because I have yet had time to design a blog and make it pretty. But all too often I get these thoughts I want to write about and have to hold myself back because of not actually having a place to put them. Well, that is no longer the case. Here it is, completely bare with nothing but my thoughts, but is that not all a blog needs to call itself a blog?