This is Serious...

I bet you are wondering, "where did Sara go?"

Or maybe you aren't wondering that at all. Maybe you forgot about me!

I think I might have forgotten about myself. The last few weeks at work have felt sort of like a tornado. Like I was literally inside of a tornado! See, some people from my company went to a trade show, and our sales guy is on fire, and we got like a bajillion new projects all at the same time.

I'm finally getting caught up with the work, but I'm having issues. Time is my biggest enemy right now. In more ways than one:
• Since I commute for an hour and a half every day [both ways], sometimes I feel like  all I do is work. I love my sleep, so I usually don't leave the house until 7:45, which means I usually don't leave work until about 6:00. Get home around 7:00 just in time to eat, and go to bed.
• I'm spending too much time on projects. We are given a number of hours to finish the design on each project, and I just keep going over! I'm having a hard time figuring out how to balance my time. I work with clients directly, and I am slowly learning how to figure out what they want, so I can get it right the first time. But it is so frustrating for me to look at my list of projects and realize that I'm over on every single one! It stressed me out, and makes me feel very disappointed in myself. But I am improving. Slowly... but surely.

Sometimes I just have to take a step back and think about the fact that I have my dream job. I'm getting paid to do what I love. It's fantastic, really, but sometimes I lose sight of that. I need to learn to accept that I'm not perfect. And I have to give myself time to learn.  It's just hard sometimes.

Good news! Remember that one time I told you about how I wished I was a dog, because I had a client that was really, really mean to me about a mockup I designed for them. Well, they needed me to design five slides for their homepage, and they loved them. They only wanted one change, and it had to do with grammar. I totally redeemed myself :)

Here are some photos of projects I am/have been working on:

Remember That One Time I Flew?

A few weeks ago, John and I took a long weekend and went to visit our family in Montana. It was just what we needed! Most of the time we just relaxed, ate, reminisced, and slept. But we did some pretty exciting things too! Like riding motorcycles. Oh yeah, and we went POWER PARACHUTING! It was sorta scary, but also really cool.

Pictures:

We also fed some birds:

And we read some books:

And now, my stomach is yelling at me [and John]. I think that means it's time to go find something to eat! Grilled pineapple, anyone?

Portfolio Redesign

I've been learning all sorts of new things at work lately. And I decided that I want to use some of those cool things in my web portfolio. I like my current portfolio, but I don't feel like it really showcases my web design skills. So I came up with a new design.

I'm interested to hear what you guys think of it. Here is a screen shot of the home page design I have done so far:

Click here to see the site in action! 

[I have only designed the home page, so the links will either take you to the old design, or they will be broken and they won't take you anywhere.]