Pictures don’t make me happy or sad. I guess I’m not as much a visual person as I thought I was. Even the picture I posted two days ago makes me more content than happy. I’ve had this post page up for three hours now, trying to think of something, anything, that makes me angry or sad.

Pics just don’t do it for me. Now if you would have asked me for a song that makes me emotional in any way, it would have been super easy. Happy, sad, angry, motivated, angsty, lovesick, elated, anything. No problem.

Over two years ago, I asked the question would you rather be deaf or blind? Almost everyone that answered told me they would rather be deaf than blind, hands down. I was the odd one that would rather be blind, and this just confirms it. I couldn’t live without music and sound; it drives my very emotions, so much more than anything visual does. Which makes me question my love of design just a touch, but not overly so.

And on the subject, you should go watch It’s All Gone, Pete Tong (warning: British indie movie, drugs / sex / swearing ensues) which I saw just recently; it’s about a DJ who loses his hearing suddenly and makes me realize that I would go absolutely batshit-crazy without my ears!!

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First off, the people I work with totally love me (and I totally love them as well). They went all out… telling me happy birthday over and over all day, buying me balloons and bringing me silly gifts (some WAY sillier than others…) and just generally making me feel loved.

Someone caught wind of the fact that I’ve never been given flowers before, ever, so someone bought me a dozen red roses. It does pay to have a birthday so close to Valentine’s Day I suppose!

They teased a lot about getting me a stripper for my birthday (this is more funny the better you know me, I’m sure), but they didn’t… but I think my cake certainly reflected this desire (one of the other managers made this from scratch… red velvet cake… mmm).

My family and I went out to dinner after work, which was nice, and then I hung out with some friends from work, which was even nicer. Seriously, by the end of the day I felt so loved and appreciated, I almost didn’t know what to do with myself!

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So instead, I’ll give you one of my favorite photos I’ve come across while existing on the Internet.

According to the photographer, this shot is angled very carefully so you can’t see the sand beyond the “horizon” here on this beach in Tel Aviv. Maybe it’s the fact that I know it was taken in Israel, maybe it’s just because this guy looks like he’s walking on water or in amongst the clouds… or maybe it’s because it evokes such a sense of calm inside. I don’t know. I just know I love this photo and it’s been sitting in my favorites for a very long time now.

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“Where the Sidewalk Ends,” a poem by Shel Silverstein

I absolutely love this poem, and for no real concrete reason. Maybe it’s just the way it flows, or maybe it’s the images it puts into my head… I don’t know, but Shel Silverstein is literally my favorite poet of all time, and this is my favorite work of his. It’s just about the only one I’ve got memorized, that’s for sure.

“Random Shoes,” an episode of British TV show Torchwood

The episode this comes from is told from the perspective of a young man who “wakes up” to find himself dead, unable to be seen or heard by anyone, but trying his hardest to help Torchwood members figure out the mystery behind his murder. In the end, he ends up just appreciating how wonderful life was (because that’s what you do in this kind of situation, cliche or no). And I don’t know, when I heard it, I was tearing up for real. LIVE YOUR LIFE, AND LIVE IT NOW. Such an awesome quote.

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This being said, I go through WAY too many books, and for a book to really stand out in my mind, it’s gotta be freaking fantastic.

Thr3e – Ted Dekker

Ted Dekker, I would have to say, is my favorite author. I grew up reading Frank Peretti, and Dekker is just as good (if not, dare I say, even better). Thr3e is a Christian book without all of the overbearing overtones. It breaks it down into basic good vs. evil. The basic story of this book is that Kevin, a young man with a troubled childhood, is driving home when someone, identifying himself only as Slater, calls his cell phone and gives him a riddle. If he doesn’t solve the riddle, or confess his sin, within three minutes his car is going to blow. It really escalates from there, and just as you think you know what’s going on, your head gets snapped in another direction entirely. Best book of all time.

North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell

Jane Austen is wonderful but a little overrated, just in the sense that everyone claims to love her books in a way that almost makes it a trend. North and South is similar to Jane Austen’s works, but much much easier to read. It follows Margaret Hale as she moves from idyllic southern England into the industrialized North. She encounters horrible factory conditions and hungry workers and labor strikes and, most importantly, John Thornton, a momma’s boy who runs one of the biggest textile factories in the North. It summarizes like just another last-century English romance, but to me, it really has a lot more going for it. The best part is that I got into this book after seeing the BBC miniseries by the same name. Richard Armitage, anyone?

The Mediator Series – Meg Cabot

You can have your sparkly vampires and boy wizards; I’ve got a latino GHOST. It’s not much of a secret that I love YA fiction, embarrassingly so. I loved Meg Cabot’s Princess Diaries books, so I picked up this book at the library. Let me tell you, they’re great. It’s about Suze, a high school girl who moves to an old house in California, only to be greeted by a (VERY nice looking) ghost sitting in her windowsill, who is shocked that she can see him. Suze is a Mediator, someone who is able to see ghosts in order to help them let go of this world and move on. She ends up falling head over heels for Jesse, who grudgingly begins helping to protect her from the more violent ghosts she encounters. Seriously, amazing series, perfect for some lighthearted reading.

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Needless to say, this causes me to get pretty into the shows I do watch. I’ve managed to narrow it down to four favorites (you should all know I don’t do single favorites on anything!).

LOST

Absolutely my favorite of all time. It actually started the first day I got my iPod video, and I discovered I could download TV shows from iTunes and watch them (at the time, my computer would not play the video files on its own, loser). Downloaded the pilot, having heard of this show and thinking it was some kind of castaway-esque drama. BOY was I wrong! By the end of the pilot, when Charlie asks ever-so-poignantly “guys… where ARE we?!” I was like, heck yes, I need to see more of this show. This was right before the fourth season premiered, and let me tell you, I’m crazy amounts of excited now having seen the premiere of season six just the other day. YESS. It’s gone from a plane crashing on an island to a multi-dimensional time-jumping freaking mystery.

Doctor Who

My parents watched Doctor Who before I was even born. In fact, I share a name with one of his assistants, as does my sister Tegan (for those of you well-versed in their Who companions, my brother would have been named Nyssa if he had been a girl… we ended up giving the name to our cat, who had a kitten, who we named Zoe. I swear I’m going to have three kids [or cats] and name them Rose, Martha, and Donna). As a kid, I kind of passed it off as one of those funky British things my parents tended to get into. It was only after I started watching Torchwood (incidentally, this was the fifth show on my list!) and realized that it was a Who spinoff that I got into the revived series. And boy is it love.

Greek

Funny story with this show; Lonelygirl15 got me into this! Hear me out… the star of LG15 played a minor character in the first season of this show, and then iTunes offered the pilot free, and that’s all it took to get me hooked on this show. I should be honest… it was Scott Michael Foster (Cappie) who really got me hooked, and I haven’t looked back. This show, with their gang-of-friends college antics, fills that hole in my life that Boy Meets World left vacant when they finally wrapped that one up. It’s that kind of show. And for those of you with the fandom know-how, Cappie and Casey are very possibly my OTP.

Fringe

This one, actually, would probably be in the number two slot if I tried to actually put these in order of amazingness. Seriously, I do not know how you could possibly watch this show and not get hooked on it. It’s created by the same guy responsible for LOST and new!Trek, plus Joshua Jackson is there. It’s a little mind-bending and a lot of crazy… about a tiny tiny branch of the FBI that deals with areas of fringe science. We’re talking spontaneous combustion, multiple dimensions, teleportation, regeneration, all those -ions that make your inner nerd dance with glee. Amazing, amazing show.

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I love this RIGHT NOW: The Hangover

Seriously, this is one of the most hilarious movies I have seen in a long time. Yes, it’s stupid funny, and yes, it has its draggy points, but come on, how can you not love it? The basic storyline is that Doug, a man two days from his wedding, takes his two best friends and his fiance’s brother to Vegas. The next thing they know, they wake up the next morning with horrible hangovers, a tiger in the bathroom, no memory of the night before… oh, and Doug is missing. They spend the rest of the movie trying to retrace their steps in hopes of finding Doug, only to realize all of the insane things they had done the night before. It’s one of those quotable comedies, definitely worth a watch if you haven’t already.

Friday night chick flick favorite: Another Cinderella Story

I have a confession. I collect Cinderella adaptations. I don’t know what it is about this particular tale, but I love variations of it: Ella Enchanted, Ever After, even the original Disney cartoon. But I think this one is a personal favorite, and I think it has a lot to do with Drew Seeley and Selena Gomez. Both of them are fantastic actors, and they themselves come across as very normal and well-adjusted people. Plus some of the songs really bring out my inner dance-happy thirteen year old self. It’s a cute movie, honestly.

Still not sure what happened: The Prestige

Are you watching closely? James got me hooked on this movie, and I had to watch it two or three times before I fully got every little nuance on what was actually going on. The movie is about two magicians who start out as friends but become enemies as they try to out-do the other’s main act. They go to incredible and terrible lengths to be the better magician. It’s one of those fantastic movies where, just as you think you know what’s going on, you get a curveball thrown straight at your brain. And I love that.

Special place in my heart: The Sound of Music

Call me cliche, but I love and have always loved this movie. In my opinion, Julie Andrews is one of the absolute best actresses of all time. Very few people are as classy yet adorable as this woman. Add this to my love of musicals and WWII stories… instant favorite.

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With that being said, here are my current favorites.

Everybody Loves Me – OneRepublic

Everybody Loves Me – OneRepublic

Don’t need my health, got my name and got my wealth
I stare at the sun just for kicks all by myself
I lose track of time so I might be past my prime
But I’m feeling oh so good… yeah!

Hey, I didn’t say it was a deep song… but seriously, give it a listen. It is the most addictingly catchy (yet not annoying!) song ever. I could eat OneRepublic’s entire new CD like it was candy, but this is the song I like to blast in my car every morning to put me in a fantastic mood!

Break – Three Days Grace

Break – Three Days Grace

Break away from everybody
Break away from everything
If you can’t stand the way this place is
Take yourself to higher places

Lately I’ve been really into this style of music (along with, like, 3 Doors Down, Seether, Breaking Benjamin, Shinedown, and the like) and this is the one song that I get caught in my head a lot. It’s got a great meaning to it; if you’re not happy with how your life is going… do something or go somewhere to make it better. Makes me want to get up and do something, you know?

And just as a bonus…

Pants On The Ground!

This is the collective addiction of oh so many people at work!

This post is part of the 30 Day Blogathon! Leaving a comment will surely help me complete this challenge!

Day 01 → Your favorite song
Day 02 → Your favorite movie
Day 03 → Your favorite television program
Day 04 → Your favorite book
Day 05 → Your favorite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobby of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy

I give it two days. :]

1. Cleaning up my room and my desk. I try to be an organized person, but I don’t always have the time to be. It’s hard to be creative in a messy space, so I’m going to do my best to get everything organized. Seriously… my desk is a mess.
2. Finishing the book I’m currently reading. I can read three books at once without really getting them mixed up, but throw my own novel into the mix and I start either getting confused or subconsciously copying things I’m reading.
3. Adding to my “Writing” playlist. I don’t know what it is, but the best music for noveling is soundtrack music. No, not the singing and dancing soundtrack, but the actual score from some of my favorite movies. The best for writing is Hans Zimmer (Pirates 3, to be exact) and Murray Gold (Doctor Who and Torchwood). Currently my playlist is five hours long; I need it to last a month.
4. Constantly thinking about the story I want to tell. I can’t work on the actual writing yet, so I just do a lot of planning and thinking. I  have to keep asking myself questions about the plot of my store… like, why did the whole thing start out this way, what causes this character to react a certain way, how can I bring it all together at the end? I put myself in the shoes of my characters and ask myself how I would get out of certain situations; this helps a lot when it comes time to sit down and write.
5. Downloading an app for my iPhone. Yes, don’t laugh. My iPhone comes with me even when a purse or a notepad may not, and so I find myself wanting to write a couple of paragraphs out when I find myself with a few extra minutes, or on break at work. “Notes” just wasn’t doing it for me, so I downloaded “Notebooks,” which not only has more features, but allows me to sync my .docx file to my phone so I can see exactly where I left off in the process of writing. Nerdy, but true!
6. Keep hyping myself up about it. I know myself, and I know that if I don’t get excited about something, I’ll forget about it. I’m planning on keeping you posted the whole way through; not necessarily for your benefit, but for mine.

Some of this stuff seems silly, but if it works, it works! I’ll keep you posted!

I think that’s all. I have WordPress on my iPhone now (heh heh heh) so my blogging should come WITH me from now on.

Today I was doing a bit of rampaging. There was a couple of things that were really bugging me, and I was getting through it by just putting my head down and working hard today and not letting anything else get to me. I had two people notice that I was in a bit of a funk. One kept, every time I went past, asking me what was wrong. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

The other just tried to make me laugh, and you know, it worked. By the time I was done working with this particular person, I was laughing and talking and I wasn’t really worried about what had been bothering me before.

Would you rather someone try and find out what’s wrong, or just help you treat the symptoms?

Anyhow, it’s called Alternate, and the basic premise of the story is that a girl named Elsie Jordan wakes up one morning to find herself in an alternate dimension, where everyone 20 years old and younger has been born the opposite way. Her best friend Bethany is a boy, the guy that follows her around drooling is a girl, and so forth.

The thing I like the best about it is that Elsie has such a unique voice; much different than other characters I’ve worked with. The story is in first-person, a point of view I don’t usually work with, and she tends to ramble.

I have come to the conclusion that I live in a very backwards town. It’s not the fact that we have no mall, no theater, no Wal-Mart, or no McDonald’s. It’s not the fact that, though the town’s population is fairly large, they update it by hand every Friday afternoon, on every sign leading into town. It’s not even the fact that, instead of a normal school district, we have all twelve grades using an old college campus downtown that sprawls for blocks.

No, the backwardness of Everglade was given away by a smaller detail that not even the name (Everglade is in Pennsylvania, not Florida, believe it or not) could convey: the ice cream trucks.

Winter in Pennsylvania is no laughing matter – at least in Everglade. It generally involves a few feet of snow, some ice, more snow, a weekend of melting, and then a grand finale of three-foot-deep frozen slush.

But through wind and rain, snow and sleet, blizzards and stock market crashes, the ice cream trucks are there. Everglade has a legion of yellow and white ice cream trucks, very much on schedule and very much all year round.

The truck that comes through my neighborhood does so between six and six-thirty a.m., without fail. At a quarter after six, the truck passes in front of my house, thus waking me up in time for school.

Who needs alarm clocks? Nobody in Everglade.

And my truck, just like every other truck in the ice cream regime, has a very distinctive (read: obnoxious) tune. It starts off sounding quite a bit like the “little Indians” song from preschool. But right before it gets to the tenth little Indian, it hiccups and blurts, “Pop! goes the weasel.”

After seventeen years, though, you get used to Indians popping weasels in the head. It becomes an ignored fact of life.

At six-fifteen on Monday morning, the fifth of October, the tenth Indian and his weasel woke me up, just in time to get ready for school… just like every morning.

This is, by the way, the very beginning of the story. It comes in five parts, Monday through Friday. I can’t wait to get really moving on this. You know, in all my spare time.

I’ve since told everyone that there is no way they’d ever be able to drag me on another, no matter how convincing they are.

This year for Leigh’s birthday (happy birthday, Leigh!), she and Tegan and I ended up going to Frontier City, which is Oklahoma’s only theme park. It used to be owned by Six Flags, so it’s not too lame. I informed the other two (who are 13 and 17, respectively) that I would not be going on any rollercoasters, in any way, shape, or form.

Frontier City has four coasters: the Steel Lasso, the Wildcat, the Silver Bullet, and the Diamond Back. Not insane coasters, but better than the previous two I’ve ridden. I’ll have you know I rode every single one. At least twice. And I rode the Diamond Back three times in a row without getting off, right before the park closed, and left with an insane headache but not scared.

Brave New Me is now a monster that has been unleashed. I. Love. Roller coasters. Bring them on!!

Of course, now I’m just a wee bit older, but the concept is the same. When I want to sleep, there’s certain music I listen to.

• Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. This is the music Dad put on SO, so often to get me to sleep, and just listening to the end part in the video I’ve linked (the song itself is ridiculously long, but it’s the ending I like the best) makes me want to curl up and sleep.
• The album “O” by Damien Rice. All of his songs are so mellow and relaxing (Amie and Cannonball being my favorites) that if I were to listen to them in the car, I’d be in trouble.
• The soundtrack to Pirates of the Caribbean. Especially the third one. And if I fall asleep early enough, my dreams all have an epic quality to them. Avast!!
• The album “Jesus Freak” by dcTalk. I think I went to sleep to this album for three years straight as a kid. It’s upbeat, but it doesn’t matter; I’m still sleeping like a baby by track five.

But at 5:15, when my boss picks me up (they both have issues with me walking in the dark, even though I love it), I was still running around my room like a crazy person, looking for my belt, my keys, my card, my headphones (yes, these are necessary) and tape for my bandage.

My room, I have come to the conclusion, has reached disaster area proportions. It’s time to clean the room.

I wish I could take before/after photos, but the truth is… the before pictures are rather embarrassing. It’s just really really disorganized and I really need to put my clean laundry in the actual drawers, rather than leaving them in the laundry baskets, and all these papers here need to be filed or thrown away, and oh goodness, that’s a rather messy bunch of cords.

Wish me luck! I’m diving in!

The basic premise of this show is that there is a young paramedic in Toronto, Toby Logan, who has a gift. Or a curse. He can hear other people’s thoughts, as if his brain was powerful enough to act as a radio reciever. Through the years, he’s learned to block it out, but one day he gets a burst of thought so intense it literally shakes him. Intense emotion, as it seems, breaks right through his barriers, and he “sees” a young woman in a car accident.

When he actually encounters her overtuned car, Toby and his partner Oz help her and get her to the hospital. After reading her thoughts and emotions, he realizes that not only was there another person in the car, her young son, but that there was a man trying to kill them. Using his gift to track down the man, he catches him just on the brink of murdering the young woman and realizes that his gift really is a gift after all.

View a promo video on YouTube.

This show is surprisingly good. Toby is a completely believable main character; he has a mysterious and confusing past, but he doesn’t dwell on it. He has a good sense of humor and really does act like a twenty-five year old guy. He can’t seem to get the girl, even though he can read her mind, and he manages to rile up the local detective on a daily basis.

His “sidekick” Oz is endearing as well. He’s Toby’s best friend and is the only one who knows about Toby’s gift for quite a long time. I wish they’d do a little more character development on him, though; we didn’t really know much about him until we met his family in a more recent video.

The show is mostly “monster of the week,” with a common theme of Toby’s past tying each episode together. I think it’s refreshing how they don’t dredge up his past every couple of minutes or on each and every episode; I guess the shows I’ve been watching as of late (Lost, Fringe) are so constantly fixing on everything that happened in the past that it’s nice to just touch on these things every so often. Just enough to tease you… just enough to keep you interested.

I think this is a great summer show. Not heart-stoppingly amazing, but it’ll get me through to the fall season with some good-looking and likeable characters and interesting storylines.

I’m a huge iPod listener; I don’t go anywhere without it (and now that I have an iPhone, that is seriously compounded) and a set of headphones. My problem is that I’m a compulsive skipper. Even if I have a playlist called “My Absolute Favorites,” I still will skip through until I find the song I like. I noticed, though, that there are certain songs as of late that I just won’t skip.

• Human by The Killers – I don’t know what it is about this song, but it makes me want to get up and dance around and just be happy all of the time. Not only do I not skip it… I tend to go back and repeat it. – Give my regards to soul and romance; they always did the best they could.
• Get out Alive by Three Days Grace – I saw this on a youtube video and haven’t gotten over it. It has a catchy melody, and it helps that the video was really awesome and totally fit the TV show it was made for. – Don’t put your life in someone’s hands, they’re bound to steal it away.
• All Fall Down by OneRepublic – The first time I heard this song, I thought it was annoying. Pretty soon after that, I loved it. To me, it carries this really awesome message of hope, of someone that is always there. – Everyone’s the same, our fingers to our toes; we just can’t get it right but we’re on the road.
• Til Kingdom Come by Coldplay – I only recently got X&Y in its entirety, and I completely latched onto this song. I don’t know why; I just sort of really identify with it. - I need someone, someone who hears; for you I’ve waited all these years.
• Life in Technicolor II by Coldplay – Maybe it’s only because I was raised on Rich Mullins and his hammered dulcimer, but this song is AWESOME… and version II twice as much. It’s my ringtone and my absolute favorite. – Gravity release me, don’t ever hold me down; now my feet won’t touch the ground.

And there you have it. Five songs that I’ll never skip… until something else comes along. What about you? What are the songs you just don’t get tired of?

Anyhow, it’s been a LONG time since I’ve done this. In fact, before Enamored With Israel (which took me a ridiculously long time), it had been a year or two since I had really even touched a design project. For that reason, I would really like some feedback!

I remember being so much more creative, back before I started worrying about making everything standards compliant and all that, so I decided to dip back into my old archive folders for a little bit of inspirations. I came across some layouts that were absolutely horrendous… I can’t figure out how I ever passed some of these off! But some, I’m still proud of, months and years later, so I thought I’d share eleven of them with you.

01: Anachronism (Unwritten)

Back in the day, when I had a subdomain on someone else’s site, this was probably the first worthwhile layout I ever created. It’s horrendously coded and probably held together with prayers and e-duct tape, but man I was proud of it at the time! The coolest thing about this layout is that it sparked a friendship (yes, I’m looking at you, LB) that lasts to this day, even if we’re both busy ALLTHETIME. It’s not even really my style, but I love it.

02: Texturized (Autumn-Sky.org)

I recall this layout being somehow related to a paper towel… and looking back, I think that’s probably the texture I used for the header. It’s Hitherwood red and tan, and it’s probably something I’d never do again, to be honest. All that red! But it’s square-y and aligned and I loved it at the time. It was my first time not trying too hard to conform to what everyone else’s website looked like at the time.

03: Anachronism II (Autumn-Sky.org)

The only thing related to the first layout, really, is the title. “Chronologically Misplaced” is the tagline, and it’s a phrase I sometimes like to use for myself when describing my old-fashioned side. I swear, if I could take my iPod back two centuries, I would go in a heartbeat. Maybe. Anyhow, this layout  makes me happy, to this day. All those cute little icons!

04: Reflection (Autumn-Sky.org)

I’d say this is the height of AutumnSky in its glory days. I got the most rave reviews off this particular iteration, and it was the one I submitted to many, many website review sites. It was a second try; the first time around, it was dark and gloomy. Way too much grey. Instead of getting discouraged when people complained, I took their suggestions into mind and came up with this cheery layout. Sometimes I still think I could revamp this one for now… but I don’t think it would ever be as good!

05: Etwas Technisch (Melilyn.com)

“Something Technical” is what this German title says (although, my German’s gotten a little rusty, so the grammar might be a bit dodgy), and you probably can’t see it from the thumbnail, but it stems from a lot of techy-looking brushwork in the header. Even though I had my “design” blog, Autumn Sky, I really wasn’t designing for my personal blog at all. This is one of the first time I deviated away from an out-of-the-box theme, and I still love the results. Okay, the paper clips are a bit twee…

06: Diamond (Melilyn.com)

Just to clarify; this was never actually “published.” It’s sitting in an idea folder somewhere in the dark reaches of my computer. I guess I had wanted to try something new (no sidebar, and a red/brown color scheme). I may have used it, if it didn’t occur to me halfway through that the diamond itself looked like a blood-stained plumbbob. Which is kind of creepy. So I scrapped it.

07: Folio (Autumn-Sky.org)

At some point, I decided that having two separate blogs was silly, so everything bloggy went to Melilyn.com, and Autumn Sky became my portfolio. I went through about ten different ideas in the process of getting everything together, and this was my favorite by far. Alas, the folio never became a reality; I went to a new domain and gave this one to LB, who made it far more awesome then I ever could have. I still love this design. It’s definitely in this list so I can use it again sometime, though I think I’ll tone up the brown so it doesn’t look… so… yeah.

08: Sterile (Melilyn.com)

I don’t think I ever came up with a proper name for this one, so I just called it Sterile. Just now. It’s rather bland, isn’t it? But it’s clean and it’s soft and there’s a lot of attention to detail. I put a surprising amount of work into this, boring as it looks, and I think that’s why I still consider it one of my favorites.

09: Bookends (Chartreusian.net)

First of all, I had a LOT of trouble getting Chartreusian (Autumn Sky’s successor) running. I had it up and running and beautiful and shiny and I was so proud of it, and then I got accused of plagiarism. I was seriously crushed, and it seemed as if all effort to get that site running was halfhearted at best after that. This was my last attempt that never made it live. Second of all… I’ll be perfectly honest, I’m looking at this with the shifty eyes of a vulture. This may be an inspiration… it depends on how the coding is on the backend. I’m a finicky coder and I hate bringing things up to date. But this… oh I wish you could see the details. I still love this one. We’ll see.

10: Paisley (Melilyn.com)

Hands down, this is the most popular layout I’ve ever created. Hands down. I’ve gotten rave reviews, I’ve gotten people begging me to release it for them to use, for me to release versions in other colors, you name it. This is one I could easily adapt for just about anything else. But due to its popularity, this is definitely one of my favorites. And maybe someday I’ll get around to releasing it.

11: Hibiscus (Melilyn.com)

Of all of these, this is probably my own personal favorite. It took a LOT of work. It caused massive headaches and I almost swore off PHP. The footer is amazing in and of itself. It’s bright and white and open and unfortunately was the last iteration of Melilyn.com as it was before.

Now I have a pile of inspiration; I’ve got my Coldplay on shuffle and a huge bottle of ice water and a brain-wrenching case of designers block. I miss this; I feel like I’ve been away from it far too long. I’ve got to start looking towards my future, and I really do believe that web design is in my future if I work at it hard enough. Wish me luck, and if you’ve got any thoughts on which direction I should go, please let me know! I’m stuck!!