SQUIRREL!!!

So since I’m hoping to write this book for my friend about a squirrel getting ready for christmas/winter, I’ve been doing a little bit of research about Squirrels: AKA: Last night I read the wiki on American Red Squirrels.

So last night I read this on Wiki, and it kinda creeped me out a bit:

The hind limbs are generally longer than the fore limbs, and they have four or five toes on each foot. Their paws on their fore feet include a thumb, although this is often poorly developed. –WIKIPEDIA

Squirrels sort of have opposable thumbs!?!?! No wonder they’re taking over our cities!

Normal little American Red Squirrels are cute. My mom usually has a few in her backyard during the year. Last year we had a pair nest in the big spruce tree in our backyard and raise their babies. So we had like 5 squirrels running around the yard all year. This year I think we only had 1 or 2. They are kind of annoying because they make a bit of a mess under the bird feeder, but they’re still pretty cute.

We have two decks, one on the main level, and then one off the master bedroom on the upper floor, and they are connected with stairs. So my Mom puts peanuts out on the stairs for them a couple of times a week, and then they sit there and eat them/cart them off to stash, while my Mom sits out there and eats breakfast. They chatter at her the whole time. 

They run along the railing of the deck to the big bird feeder and jump into it and sit there and eat and chatter, its pretty cute. 

The squirrels we have in Calgary, not quite so cute. They’re twice the size, black and scraggly and not as friendly looking. I know we have pictures of the squirrels at my Mom’s house so I’ll have to find them and post some.

And heres an obligatory google images pic of a red squirrel, just you know, for kicks 😀

If you click on the picture it should take you to the WAZA site where I borrowed the picture from 🙂

 

Cheers!

Bri

 

Books

This idea of writing/illustrating children’s books keeps coming up in my life. 

I’ve always been a decent story writer. In grade 7 (I think) I was attending a really tiny school. By really tiny I mean really tiny, 3 classrooms, a kitchen, a gym, bathrooms and an office. The school covered kindergarten to Grade 9. We had a total of 30 students. Kindergarten to grade 4 in one room, Grade 5 to 9 in the other. We’d split the 7-9’s out into another classroom for Math and Science period. So we had like 2.5 teachers basically. 

Anyway, the teacher of the Kindergarten to grade 4’s asked me to write children’s stories. I think I did a few for her.

My favourite english teacher in high school told me when I graduated that she someday wanted to read a book I’d written.

So… lots of people have told me to write books. And I keep feeling like I should. 

A friend of mine had a baby last year, and she is having a first birthday party for her daughter at the end of September. She has requested that instead of a card, if people are going to bring a gift, bring a favourite book and write something inside of it so Brooklyn (baby) can keep them forever. 

So… I kind of feel like I should actually get down to business and write/illustrate a little story for her. End of September is pretty close, so who knows if I will actually get it done, but its an idea that is swirling around in my head all day today.

Wish me luck! Leave me any ideas you have as well!

Portrait Photography

In a few weeks I’m doing some family photography for my cousin her adorable girls. 
I’m excited, but I’m also a little nervous. I haven’t shot people in a long time. I think I need to do some studying. 

My favourite site for tips is DPS

DPS has tons of real life experience tips from all kinds of photographers.

Also, Scott Kelby. He has these books, The Digital Photography Books, they are awesome. They are super helpful. 

So I’ve definitely got some studying to do, and some practising to do.

INCIDENTAL COMICS: Stray Books

INCIDENTAL COMICS: Stray Books.

This comic THOROUGHLY amused me this morning. I came across it on my tumblr and I had to post it here.

Me and my sister are notoriously bad for shopping at bookstores and constantly buying books. We actually have this habit, where every weekend that I go home to visit, if she is around we go to Red Deer on Saturday morning, get Starbucks, and browse through Chapters/Indigo. We don’t always buy more books, but its not uncommon for us to find something really cool on one of the discount tables and take it home.

My mother is constantly getting after us for buying books. Right now I wish that I was in at home so that I could take a picture of all my sisters bookcases and show it to you. She has sooooo many books. Its actually pretty impressive.

We are big fans of children’s books too. I love childrens books, half of me still wants to write and illustrate them. Someday maybe I will. 🙂

We usually make a quick stop in at Petland across the parking lot from Indigo to look at cute kittens. I DO NOT endorse buying pets from pet stores like that, but it is nice to go in and look at the cute animals. I would definitely go rescue from a shelter or the SPCA if I was going to adopt an animal. 🙂

Please click on the title of this post, or on the comic itself to view more of Grant Snider’s work, he does awesome stuff!

Cheers!

Bri

Minimalist Quotes: aberMinimal | The Minimalistas

Minimalist Quotes: aberMinimal | The Minimalistas.

This is kind of my philosophy on life.

HTML Refresh

So, in my younger years (26 is damn old, ya hear?!), I taught myself HTML. Granted I was never a complete HTML genius, but I was pretty good at it. I have long since forgotten anything about programming or coding or building websites. Until I got back into school that is. More recently I’ve started to realize WebDev is probably going to have to be an important part of my freelance design business in the future. I’m also picky. And I don’t like to use other peoples themes or have to stick within the frames of someone else website code because I can’t change it. Also, I’m cheap, but we’ll get to that later.

So I decided that this summer I needed to refresh my knowledge of HTML, and put a concerted effort into become HTML5 fluent… Well, its now the 18th of August, so I thought I should probably get started on that, you know before school starts in 18 days!

Last year in school we did a basic programming class. As hard as programming is, I was surprised how when it did come back to me, I was like “oh yeah! I used to understand that!” I also remembered how knowing how to code gave me a lot more design freedom. Also last year in school, I used Adobe Muse to create a website for my class. Well, since school has ended Adobe Muse is no longer in beta, and therefore it is no longer free. So, since its not free, and I don’t like to pay for things, I figured I’m better off learning HTML on my own, and working within the software I already own. It might be more convoluted and less organized to teach myself HTML than learn it in a class, but lets be realistic here: I sleep in classes. So really, I would end up teaching it all to myself in the last 5 hours before the exam anyway.

So, I purchased a domain name today. I am going to start doing my research to find a more permanent host, and in the meantime I will be working on building myself a site.

I was watching a Lynda.com (love that site!) video tonight on HTML and XHTML. And then I got distracted and decided to create a new blog about learning HTML. Anyway, before I got distracted, I learned a little bit!

I learned that html is still pretty damn familiar to me. And I learned that XHTML is more consistent in display across browsers. I learned that this bit of code is required at the beginning of every xhtml document (ie: I’m lazy, and saving this here on my blog so that I can always find it!)

< ?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″? >

< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN”

“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd&#8221; >

< hmtl xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml&#8221; >

And that you can work in transitional or strict (I think thats what it was called?!) and that transitional is a little more flexible. I think.

So. I learned that. And I learned a teeny tiny bit about Tables. I will discuss that another time since I actually know nothing about tables, except that there was one in the main code of the Lynda.com tutorial, and I played with the size of it in my html document.

So, now that I have learned something today, it is clearly time for me to go to sleep! I have been damn productive today!

1. Fed Myself! (and the dog and bunnies)
2. treadmilled for ONE whole hour!
3. Got a Kobo giftcard to buy my Kobo textbooks!
4. found a domain name that was available!!!!!!!
5. walked the doggie
6. brainstormed about starting a “Twenty-Something Grannies” club with Destiny
7. Started a new blog, WEEEEEE!!!!
8. learned something!

Clearly I  have been far too ambitious today and should really take a break!

Promise that forever…

…we will never get better at growing up and learning to lie.

Hi! I’m back…

Only like… Over a year since my last post on my other blog here. That is old news. I had a school project blog for about a month in between now and then as well.

Anyway, this blog, is going to hopefully knock on wood chronicle my adventures of building my freelance business, my new website, and at the moment, learning HMTL5.

As of today I have purchased a domain for my freelance design business, and so in the next few weeks I will hopefully be getting at least a basic website set up there! My goal is to teach myself HTML5 so that I can effectively code in it completely from scratch! Its not that I seriously LOVE coding, but I think it is a seriously necessary skill for my career, so I might as well start on my own site eh?

Eventually I hope to have a wordpress.org powered blog set up over there as well. So, once I’ve gotten myself a basic wireframe up, I will link the shit out of it on this blog here and look for feedback!!!

Cheers!
Bri