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Humpday Blog Love: Kiss My Broccoli + Wool Eater Wednesday

chimes — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +0000

This week I’m featuring Heather‘s blog, Kiss My Broccoli. Heather’s from Tennessee and has a lot of sass.

Not only does her blog have a catchy name, it’s got some great stuff. Including a LOT of recipes. And pancakes.

I started reading Heather’s blog sometime in the past few months along with all the other BLENDs’ blogs. I enjoy reading hers because she seems to have some of my personality traits.

Those of you who know me, I’m pretty sure you can see it in her profile picture. Um. Yeah. I think we might end up being BBFs (best blends forever … wow that was entirely too punny) after the retreat.

[ via kiss my broccoli ]

For instance can’t you see this happening to me? Her boyfriend went MIA for the evening and the crazy worry wart in her came out in a cleaning fury. This post still cracks me up.

And it seems like she’s always got a fridge full of Chobani. Jealous.

[ via kiss my broccoli ]

I also found out about foodie pen pals through her blog. And am now participating (yay!).

So if you have time, head on over to Kiss My Broccoli and show Heather some love!

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In other news, I finished my Wool Eater Blanket.

Finally. AND I weaved in all the ends. So It’s finished. For realzies.

It’s incredibly scrappy. I used up almost all my yarn. And go figure, the second I finished this thing, I found a big ball of yellow and a big skein of black. Maybe adding another row or two …

But until then, I’m calling it done and using it. Except that Barney has already claimed it as his own. I guess I’ll have to ask permission.

… or open up the windows in the living room so he forgets about the blanket and hangs out in the sun all day. He seriously won’t move.

But, I sincerely hope I don’t walk in on him … um … loving … my newly finished blanket. He has a thing for blankets. I don’t know WHY, but he does. He had his eye on this one before I had even finished it.

Have you finished any big projects lately?

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what is all this craziness?

chimes — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:00:00 +0000

oh hai dere.

You may or may not have noticed that my blog went from pretty bland to freaking screaming pink in about 24 hours.

Aaaaaand you might have also noticed that it’s not “chimesblog” anymore. It’s back to “life + running”.

Whaaaaa? Wait. What?

Exactly.

So this all started when I decided to go to the BLEND retreat in May. My friend Kelly, who goes to the Bloggers in Sin City event [ and holy freaking cow she won a free ticket yesterday ] was all, “Dude, you need to make sure you have biz cards for this shiz.”

And I was all, “Obviously. I’ve got a TON Of chimesdesign biz cards.”

And she was all [ in more words or less ], “Um … might want to consider making one that’s not for your etsy shop / design stuff and one that’s for YOU. A business card that encompasses what you and your blog and online presence is about.”

Aha! So hot pink?

After fiddling around for a bit, I ended up with this design [ and am contemplating letterpress because it's badass, and I'm a graphic designer ]:

So I have business cards [ in theory, they're not printed yet because I'm not sure about ponying up the $$ for letterpress ] … but what about my website? Shouldn’t that match?

Yes.

And I got into Fireworks to create a new header for my blog — complete with drop-down menus for ease of navigation because I blog about a LOT of random topics … whyyy Fireworks? Because I apparently was extremely lazy, when in fact, it was entirely possible to create what I wanted to create directly IN WordPress by putzing around for a couple hours with a theme. But nope, I decided to do this the “easy” way.

So. Wrong.

I ended up with this when I uploaded the HTML/CSS/Javascript files on their own [ not into WordPress ]:

My friend Steph graciously showed me how to put it on my blog … though I had already tried to do it that way, and lo, it didn’t work. Because Fireworks and Dreamweaver puke out shitty code. I know these things.

Instead of working with more pukey code, I downloaded a new theme and decided it would be best to just start from scratch. Found an awesome theme and pinked it up. AND I built my drop down menu using WordPress’s custom menu feature. It’s FANFREAKINGTABULOUS. I think. You be the judge (it’s at the top of the page … check it out!)

OH. And there’s another big thing: The name change back to life + running.

I realized that I’m doing all this work on an identity for something that was essentially a passive-aggressive stab at the fact that I had a running injury. My original blog, runningchimes.blogspot.com — life + running — was started when I decided to run a marathon. Marathon ran. Leg hurty. So I started blogging about my other interests, which you all know are crafts, food, geekery and ranting. So I made a new header and changed the title to “chimesblog … where there is no cohesive theme” [ because obviously bloggers ought to have a theme. my theme was non-theme ]:

And I have no clue why I thought that header was “cool” or decent design. Buuut, it didn’t last long because I moved my blog over here. And I changed my header to match my portfolio website and craft business because I mainly wrote about crafts, and, after all, my blog is hosted on my chimesdesign domain.

So I’ve seen my blog mentioned places and it’s “chimesblog” … obviously, since that’s the title I gave it. It’s weird and kinda stupid. So I racked my brain for something that fits, but nothing catchy really did, or was already taken. But then I remembered WHY I started blogging in the first place: life + running. Running is secondary now. But I’m still a runner. Or at least that’s part of how people identify me. I don’t consider myself a runner anymore based on my weekly mileage, but I still like to run, and am still competitive about it when I do [ Mark will tell you that I have to win at everything ]. And I am hugely into health and fitness, so why NOT life + running? I checked the internets, and there isn’t another one out there [ there's a Life Plus Running In Iowa, coincidentally ]. I added the tagline “a little bit of running + a whole lot of life” to better reflect the content of my blog nowadays. I can switch that if I ever become obsessed again, but I doubt that will happen.

Also, I’m about 95% sure that my old blog’s tagline was exactly the opposite “a whole lot of running and a little bit of life”. Unfortunately I can’t find any proof. But I’m pretty sure.

AND here I am! Well, also, I’m here too [ you can reach me from a redirect URL of lifeplusrunning.com — easier to put on business cards — didn't want to move everything over / buy more webspace, so domain masking it is ].

I got impatient and went ahead and switched to my new theme. It’s not EXACTLY where I wanted it to be when it went live, but the big things — the header + nav bar — are exactly how I want them. The rest of the bits and pieces are likely going to shift and become better-designed as I blog on. One thing — I’m not loving the hot pink links everywhere. I liked the idea of using ONE color + black so that way I can change the entire blog by doing a find and replace for that color. I could do holiday colors. Or change with the hot color of the season (tangerine tango??). How fun would that be? Or obnoxious? I’m not sure. The footer refuses to mutate to my CSS changes, so ignore the fact that the font is totally effed and that I’ve not actually written the stuff I want in the footer just yet.

Oh, and after the last 20 posts or so … there’s likely not going to be a preview image. I just can’t go through 700+ posts and pick an image for all of them. Well, I could, but I think that it could be a giant time-suck.

Hope you like it and if the pink is giving you seizures, I can tone it down a bit. This is the official “Calee Pink” (TM) as coined by Kelly sometime during our college years.

AAAND SPECIAL THANKS TO NIKI FOR ACTUALLY KNOWING WHAT SHE’S DOING WHEN I TOTALLY ALMOST FFFFED THIS UP.

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Humpday Blog Love: Des Moines Wedding Savvy

chimes — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 11:11:17 +0000

I’ve been working with a local blogger who wanted to launch a bigger and better version of her blog. She curates and posts about local Des Moines vendors that cater to wedding needs. The website: Des Moines Wedding Savvy.

We began talks a couple months back, and after chatting about the creative direction for a while, I decided it was time to build out the site. I love her style and it definitely shows throughout the blog scheme.

So, brides, check her out.

Crafty peeps — she’s got a lot of local vendors (big and small) featured. Want yours featured? Contact her, and she will hook you up. She’s always looking for new and exciting vendors who are ready and willing to cater to her brides. Plus, it never hurts to get your name out there in one more place.

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what up wordle?

chimes — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:22:55 +0000

I remember when the word/tag cloud things were all the rage on the internets. I used one for tags a long time ago on my old blog.

I’m creating a bunch of these for a project for work, and decided to see what words I use a lot on my blog. I’m using wordle.net to do this, in case you’re wondering.

So, here ya go. Here’s words most-frequently and most-recently used on my blog. Enjoy.

Bored? You could create a wordle of your own blog … and send it to me. I would love to do a post of your wordles and would love to see what you’re really talking about.

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I’ve been blogged!

chimes — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 17:13:42 +0000

A fellow craftster just blogged about my gorgeous yellow water pitcher and some of my other ceramics in the craftster.org blog. I’m really flattered. You should check it out!

It’s not often that I get press, so I’m pretty excited about this.

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featured lifestyle blogger on Des Moines Register

chimes — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 19:05:23 +0000

Just thought I’d mention to y’all that I’m now a featured lifestyle blogger on the Des Moines Register. To quote my friend Corey, it’s the modern-day equivalent of having a cable-access show!

Which reminds me of some of my favorite SNL sketches … and best movie to spawn from SNL characters.

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Giveaway #4 Winner!

chimes — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:22:39 +0000

… and the winner of the marker set is:

KIM! (comment #21)

Okay, so with so many comments on this giveaway, I kind of felt guilty that one of my friends won these. I felt so guilty that I did the random number thing TWICE and it picked #21 BOTH times. Now how’s that for random? Crazy.

Anyway, thanks to everybody who participated, and I will be doing another giveaway soon. Just have to cook up what I’m giving away.

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Featured on Things We Make blog

chimes — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:44:54 +0000

I was featured yesterday on the Things We Make blog. I love it! I feel so famous when people blog about me!

I met Amy Palanjian a couple months back when I did Market Street Media Foundry’s Market Day. She’s on staff with ReadyMade magazine here in Des Moines, so I felt pretty special when she interviewed me (but I’m sure she interviewed all the crafty people there at Market Day).

Anyway, I got an e-mail from her yesterday letting me know she did a write-up on me on her blog. She featured my tea cup I made for my friend’s mom’s benefit, my lava flowers cup/saucer set, my white musical flowers fiestaware set, my green pyrex birdies and coffee set and my musical flowers on pink plate. Oooh ooooh… and my wonderland quilt.

eeeee!

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Giveaway #3! Ends July 15th

chimes — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:01:10 +0000

Time for another giveaway!

This is the 3rd one I’ve done, and I’m loving it! I gave away a Birdies Plate and a Mermaid Bag.

Up for grabs this time is a Manifesto Poster from Lululemon Athletica in blue. I acquired this from my co-worker when she left last week to embark an a new life adventure, and I don’t have any room for it in my cube! It’s a really cool design, and it’s got a lot of great pieces of inspirational text.

Here’s a picture of the poster:

To participate, just leave a comment (of any sort) on this post. I’ll use random.org to pick a winner on July 15.

Good luck!

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Sunday Sunday Sunday

chimes — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:18:20 +0000

I spent the whole weekend in Ames since it was graduation weekend and the BF FINALLY graduated. We went out Friday AND Saturday. I managed to squeeze in an hour-long run/walk yesterday while he was doing the big graduation ceremony (I didn’t go since I couldn’t sit for that long)…and we went to Applebee’s with his family for supper (mmmmmm huge ass apple walnut salad!)…and then we watched StepBrothers until super late last night. I got up early today but wasn’t very productive at all (it’s after 7 PM!!).

First, I spent most of my morning putting together a 5K training plan for one of my BFFs, Adria. I convinced her to run a 5K with me in September or October and she’s up for it. Updates on that will follow. I’m finishing up the program and will be hopefully sending it to her tonight so she can start on it.

Secondly — the obvious — I spent most of my afternoon moving my blog (formerly runningchimes.wordpress.com) here and doing a quickie design that will suffice for now until I get time to do a real design and redo my portfolio. I’ve been paying $10 a month for this domain, I might as well get SOME use out of it!

Finally, I spent a lot of the evening listing some things on my etsy store, re-figuring some prices and retagging some items. I’ve got quite a bit of design up. My store got some traffic the other day when I posted that black prom dress that I’ve decided I’ll never be able to squeeze into.

Unrelated: I had decided not to work out today, but then re-decided that I should. AND if I do, I get to eat the ice cream that I have in the freezer. Don’t worry — it’s just a single serving. I plan to do a half hour of biking since I haven’t biked for a while and then some strength training and stretches. Maybe 45 minutes of biking. We’ll see. I plan to go at 8 PM. That’s later than usual, but I’ve got a new rule: something is better than nothing! I have a hard time working out late, but I figure biking easy for 30 minutes is better than sitting on my ass for 30 more minutes.

Anyway, that is all. I shall be posting more crafty stuff hopefully and more running stuff. I need to take some photos of my crafts and post them here, facebook and on etsy. Also, I’m going to probably start using the nike+ again this week since I can run 1 mile consecutively. I’d like to know what my pace is…just for s&g’s.

Finally: Shout out to PerpetualSpiral (whose real name I don’t know…which I feel bad b/c she’s pretty awesome) — fellow craftster and twitterer. She’s always got some kind words and praise for me! Yay for tweeps that I’ve never met in real life.

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