jen reed

Website Re-Design Donated to Non-Profit Organization

A few weeks back, I saw a posting on the MomPack looking for a web designer who would barter design services.  It’s been so long since I’ve taken on any web design clients and even longer since I’ve donated or did design work pro-bono.  The first websites I ever designed were back in 1996 (yes that means I’m old).  lol!  My first design clients came in 2000.  And some of those I took on as pro-bono sites to help me build a portfolio.  One of those sites (which is no longer up and running) was done for an older woman who created handmade floral craft items.  I took her site on for free so I could learn more about shopping carts.  In the end, I had created a very large ordering site for her that brought her a nice chunk of regular orders and income to supplement her retirement.  It was a website that she could never have afforded.  It was a great feeling.

I’m not sure what spurred me to e-mail this particular lady back.  I have no idea how I even caught the e-mail because I haven’t been actively reading the MomPack list in a long time.  But I did.  So I checked out her current site and saw that it had enough content in place that it would work as a wordpress site.  Having just redid my blog, I thought it would be nice to delve a little more into wordpress.  So I e-mailed the lady.

The non-profit is an Indiana organization run by Christine Martin.  She started it last year in hopes of helping local single parent families and families who have experienced a loss of a child.  It hit a little too close to home.  Having just helped Jeanine get through a nasty divorce and seeing firsthand the changes single parenting has brought to her life, I thought karma seemed to be staring me in the face.  I was going to help this lady if she’d let me.

So after a few e-mails back and forth with her, I started working on the website over the past few weekends.  Unfortunately, I did not take a before shot of her old website. I usually do when I work a redesign but I completely forgot and the DNS switched.  Bravenet – her old hosting – does not allow website viewing of accounts that aren’t pointing to them so there was no way to go back and view the old site using Bravenet’s server domain.  I tried.  So, I have no before shot unfortunately.

The before site was mainly white with text.  It had a menu at the top that linked to all the individual text pages.  It was designed using Bravenet’s website creator and was very basic.

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…it’s obvious that you’re not performing…

I think I’ve been found out… by myself?…hmmm

Today’s Horoscope

You’ve decided to blow the whistle on yourself, Jen! All of a sudden, it’s obvious that you’re not performing as well as you should be. It is time to put the legendary Capricorn self-discipline to work. You may change your work methods, budget your money more carefully, or diversify your activities. Perhaps you’ll reorganize your team at work. All sorts of solutions are available to you.

Yes.  It’s called procrastination and laziness… two of my most favorite words in the world.  lol!

I think I like this one better.

Honor your contract with yourself. Respect your own desires.

Yes.  I need to respect my own desires more.  I know I do.  It seems like the universe is trying to tell me it is time for a change.

My Bathroom Renovation

It has been so long since I’ve blogged…. or designed anything for that matter.   Contrary to popular belief I have not fallen off the face of the planet… lol!  For the past few months I have been working on renovating my two bathrooms.  I got to the point where I just had enough of their current state.  We’ve lived in this house for almost 8 years and have done nothing major to it outside of getting new siding and windows 4 years ago.  We typically don’t put money into the house and that really needs to change.


I actually had a lot of fun remodeling the bathrooms and have learned a lot in the process.  I did the majority of the work by myself (like….98%).  My husband only helped to pull out the one toilet and help demo the sink in the 2nd bathroom and take down the wall to wall mirror.


Here are some photos from the first bathroom that I re-did.  I should have just re-tiled the floor during this but at the beginning of this project, I was a bit tentative and felt tiling was a huge step.  I wanted to “practice” first in the guest bathroom. LOL!  In the 2nd bathroom, I did end up going tile crazy and will eventually come back and put in a new tile floor for this bathroom too.  Installing the floor in this bathroom will be so much easier than what I ended up doing in the 2nd bathroom (but more on that later).  For the short term solution, I just painted the floor because I had to do something about that nasty green.

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About damn time…

FINALLY got some portfolio stuff up for Kristy Valshan… FINALLY!  It’s only been what A FRICKIN’ YEAR?!?!?!

 

I don’t know why I have such a hard time designing my own websites.  I always have.  And all the items that I wanted to originally put on the KV website just made the website grow into a monster before it even got off the ground (sounds like so many ideas I have).  I have no problem with the conception of monster projects… it’s the execution of them I get derailed on.  The project seems so intensive before I even get started that I ended up not doing it.

 

Jeanine and I decided about 3 weeks ago to change the KV site to be very simple and put only 3-4 designs out in the portfolio. You think that would be easy for me?  yeah… think again…  Even a “simple” site took two full revisions and I still was not happy with the results… the shell changed, the design was awful and there STILL was no portfolio out there.  sigh… (you may have seen the one over the past two weeks – the first didn’t stay up past 2 hours)

 

Not sure what happened to me this weekend but I just started working on it… thought we should have a bit of color.  While I really like a black and white design because it doesn’t clash with our designs – we can put any color palette out there and it’ll still match – it really doesn’t matter much without a portfolio now does it?  But my two “simple” renditions were way too blah looking.. Not that what I have out there now is any great shakes… but I think it’s much better… I actually enjoyed working on the site to the point of even adding tracking links for our linked in accounts, facebook, twitter and blogs.

 

So my weekend ended up being devoted to the KV website.  It certainly was not planned that way.  But once I started getting on a roll Saturday morning I just rode the wave… It was the first time in a very very long time that I actually stayed up late to work.  So about 25 hours later (seriously that’s what I spent between Sat & Sun)… we have a nice site with a FRICKIN’ PORTFOLIO!!!  WOO HOO!!  About damn time….

 

EDIT – I will add this though… the KV site had already gone through one big content rendition so this time I was able to just change the design out (keeping all the new content – like bios and tradeshow info etc.) and just add the portfolio section.  Maybe that’s why this was better??  Some of it was already done so it wasn’t completely from scratch… lol!  Just needed to be inspired I guess… or maybe just enjoy it for a change…

Twittering…

Well… Jeanine has got me twittering… I guess I’m the last person out there to try it. lol! I always see these things as a waste of time… a way to procrastinate more than I already do. But on the flip side it’s a good way to network and keep in touch and I am usually so bad at those things. What’s ironic is the average person has no idea that I can ramble more than most people once I get comfortable with you. Typically I do not talk much – I find small talk incredibly awkward and nerve wracking… on the surface I am incredibly shy – most times painfully shy. But get close to me… watch out…lolol! I think Jeanine found that to be the biggest surprise of all… I can really ramble and babble… Mondays is the “Ramble and Babble” day and Fridays is the “Rant and bitch” day – funny how most weeks this formula turns out to be true.

Anyway if you’d like to look me up on twitter  –> http://www.twitter.com/jenreed/