hawaii

 

 

 

friday favorites - home

I grew up in a valley, surrounded by thickly wooded forests and meandering streams. My parents built our house out of logs they cut down from our forest - kind of like modern-day pioneers. My daddy can build anything, fix anything. He is strong and smart and full of adventure – my hero. Because of him, I always knew what it felt like to be cherished.

We raised chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigs, goats, and cows. We spent hours petting, feeding, and playing with our livestock. And then we ate them. (This was before we became vegan.)

We had huge gardens full of vegetables and sprawling orchards of fruit. We planted fields of flowers in the springtime. We picked wild berries in the summertime and gathered nuts in the autumn. My mom cooked and baked and canned. She cuddled and loved and read us beautiful stories. She taught us to knit, quilt, make our own clothes, and to love the simple things in life. Gentle and sweet, unwavering and so, so good. Because of her, I learned what makes a woman truly beautiful, inside and out.

My two sisters and I grew up without television. Instead, we ruled the forests together as fairy princesses, with kittens and chicks as subjects, flowers in our hair, and eyes sparkling bright with imagination. We knew every tree, every flower. Hours were spent playing, (often completely naked), in the stream by our house. We tripped down hills, jumped off cliffs, raced through prickles, and climbed tall, tall trees. Because of my darling sisters, I have never known a moment without friends.

Daddy, Mom, and three little girlies made five.

And now, the three little girlies are all grown up. Two happily married with homes of their own, and one a globe-trotting missionary. (I'm the happiest of the happily married, btw.) But no matter where life takes us, I believe our hearts will always call our house in the valley home. No matter where we go, the love and character our parents patiently passed down to their three girlies remains.

And home is still one of my very favorite places to be. Only now, Daddy, Mom, three girlies, and two handsome husbands make seven.

And, with a house full of seven, all  my very favorites are in one happy place.

introducing Rebecca Beatrice O'Brien

Today I officially became Rebecca Beatrice O'Brien. (About time, huh?)

O'Brien is a great last name. And, as Becki O'Brien, I couldn't be happier. Tim and I have become we, the O'Brien family.

But I will admit to feeling like I've lost just a little bit of me. Becki Davison no longer exists, really. From now on, everyone who meets me will know Becki O'Brien and Becki Davison will be somewhat forgotten.

I had been Becki Davison for a long time -- 22 years -- and it served me quite well. I always felt that, while Davison was not an especially glamorous last name, I had been fortunate to not get stuck with a horrid or embarrassing or impossible-to-pronounce or dreadfully boring last name. My biggest complaint was that it was always mistaken for Davidson. No big deal.

Becki Davison is someone I know. Becki O'Brien is a new person to discover. I spent years building Becki Davison's reputation and character. I'm proud of the person Becki Davison was, of the choices she made and the things she accomplished. Becki O'Brien still has to prove herself.

So here's to Becki Davison. Here's to that blessed little baby, born into the happiest little family. Here's to the little girl with big brown eyes, who spent her days coloring pictures, and because she couldn't say her "R's", called herself "Webecca". Here's to the shy sweetheart who was loved and kissed and cuddled through her childhood by amazing parents and the very best sisters. Here's to the homeschooled teenager who graduated early and, honestly, truly, never really gave her parents any trouble. Here's to the college kid who worked long hard hours to earn her graphic design degree. Here's to the woman who chose to move to Madison just because the Lord told her to. And here's to the princess who saved her heart and held out for her perfect prince.

The days of Becki Davison are gone, but she will be remembered forever in the hearts of those who loved her. *sniff sniff*

And here's to the over-tired, emotional Becki O'Brien who is mourning the loss of the last name of her birth and desperately needs to go to sleep.

Living Nativity Poster & Bulletin Insert

Created for Faith Evangelical Free Church's first annual Living Nativity.

(Poster)

(Bulletin Insert)

next week.

Timmy: I'm just feeling really frantic today.
Me: Really?
Timmy: Yes. I feel like I'm out of breath. But I haven't been running. I guess I'm just out of breath in my mind.
Me: *Laughs*

Shopping trips, working overtime, design projects, Youth Group, little sister visits, finally getting my name changed, Christmas present planning, cleaning, packing, and preparing to go to Hawaii makes for one very busy week -- and two very frazzled O'Briens. This week.

But next week we will be lying on sand scattered Hawaiian beaches. Soaking up 80 degree sunshine. Eight days in paradise. Completely relaxed and totally in love. *happy sigh*

Sidenote: I have the most darling little sister and she is coming to visit today. Her name is Rynn and she is one of my happiest thoughts.

Photo Shoot

Sunday afternoon was a perfect medley of bright balloons, photography, delightful company, and Timmy kisses.

Tim and I had the amazing opportunity to model for a truly talented photographer.

Meet Laura Zastrow. She often mentions her dreams of becoming a marvelous photographer, but I think she already is one, don't you?

Madison is the perfect place to take awesome urban photography. And Laura sees inspiration everywhere she looks. It was such a great experience to see her look at an old building and love the texture of the bricks or the color in peeling paint or the visual interest of broken glass windows. I felt like I was peeking inside her creative mind, and suddenly, I was looking at the world around me in a completely different way. It's a wonderful ability to see such loveliness and potential in things that others might view as unsightly. So much of the beauty around us is too easily missed. That's why people like Laura are so special. She finds that beauty, captures it, and shares it with others. And not only is she just so talented, but her personality is just so enjoyable, too.

Timmy and I spent the afternoon smiling and posing and cuddling and kissing in the warm sunshine. We carried a brilliant bunch of balloons all over Madison. We posed in parks, on benches, in a telephone booth, in stairwells and a parking garage, against graffiti walls and buildings, by bike racks, and even in bed. (Check out the foot photo! And isn't our new comforter set pretty?)

 I am so in love with my husband. Delightfully, blissfully, head-over-heels. And I think that love really shows in these photos. These five breath-taking photos. I found them in my inbox this morning, and I have had a huge smile on my face ever since.

 

about laundry

In the almost-five months that Timmy and I have been married, we have done laundry three times. Three. It's true.

I think this proves a couple things. First, that we both have way too many clothes. (Don't worry, we never, ever wear dirty/smelly/stinky clothes.) Second, we don't especially love to do laundry.

It's not that doing laundry is a particularly loathsome chore. And we're really not lazy. It's just one of those chores that gets pushed farther and farther back. It's just that we would rather be snuggling  by the fire if we can push off laundry for just one more night.

Tim has officially run out of clean socks. Not me! I could probably wear a different pair of socks every day for at least two months. So, Tim has been borrowing MY socks. This worked nicely for a while, because I do have some boring black and brown ones. But, the majority of my socks are delightfully girly -- pink stripes, paisley, argyle, lace, etc.

On Sunday, we went shopping for new shoes for Timmy. A super cool looking salesman at the Buckle was helping us, bringing out boxes full of potential shoes to try on...

And then Tim took off his shoes. And we all just looked. Looked down at Tim's wiggling, pink striped feet. (And I noticed that his handsome face turned a very bright shade of red.)

After an awkward pause, Tim said nervously, "I umm.. I'm wearing my wife's socks today..."

"Yeah. Cool cool dude, whatever works, right?" The salesman avoided eye contact. (Boys are so weird.)

Me? I laughed. So. Hard.

As we were leaving the store (with the perfect shoes in hand) Tim firmly informed me that "we really HAVE to do laundry tonight, babe."

Well, it is Wednesday, and we still haven't done laundry. Today Timmy is prancing around in pink and purple ruffled knee socks.

And I have been giggling all day just thinking about it.

(I'll post a picture of my ruffled prince tonight, if I can convince him to pose for me...)

friday favorites - christmas cards

I love Christmas cards. I love designing them and I love addressing them. I love stamping each envelope with beautiful holiday postage and I love sending them off to sit in frosty mailboxes until they are happily discovered. And I very much love receiving Christmas cards. I love finding a brightly colored envelope amidst a stack of bills, and for that happy moment, the sight of that card fills my whole heart with pure Christmas delight. (If you're reading this, pretty please add us to your Christmas card list.)


If you're on MY Christmas card list (which you undoubtedly are, if you're reading this), lucky you! Because this is my first Christmas designing an "us" Christmas card, and our us Christmas cards are going to be so, so cool. (Yes, I already have them planned out...) Come December, look for a pretty treasure from us in your snow covered mailboxes.

Christmas 2007 card design 

busy.

So, working on 10 projects at once is what I seem to do best…

friday favorites - cranberry muffins

I love cranberries, and I love love cranberry muffins. Vegan cranberry muffins, to be precise. You can love them, too.

(click photo to enlarge for recipe)

peacock card

 

 

friday favorites (3 days late) - autumn

Autumn is perfectly glorious. I love how it is just so easy to take an amazing photo in autumn, because the trees do all the work. Bursting with color, just waiting for you to notice their beauty. So beautiful and really, there is nothing like the smell of autumn. This past weekend was a joyous celebration of love and autumn.

Friday night came cold and blustery, the perfect kind of evening to stay inside, light the fireplace, and bake a spicy apple pie. I absolutely adore foods that smell like fall, and apple pies are truly autumn, through and through. And nothing beats eating hot-from-the-oven pie in the firelight with a handsome hubby.

Saturday. Bundled up in warm layers, we drove out to Treinen Farm and saw oh SO cute baby kitties and chickens and horses! We had great adventures in the pumpkin patch, and found the perfect pumpkins. And our pumpkin choices really did reflect our very different personalities...

And we went home and carved our pumpkin treasures.

On Sunday we drove out to Devil's Lake State Park after church and frolicked, (yes, frolicked), in forests painted with pure autumn delight. The leaves were breathtaking. And my husband has the bluest blue eyes. Autumn is a good season for him, because his eyes simply dazzle when surrounded by fall colors. We took countless pictures, and pretended we were pioneers on a journey to Oregon. Nothing, nothing can beat bright autumn rambles, mysterious and imaginative, with my Timmy's hand in mine.

And when, at the end, I regretted wearing ballet flats to go hiking, Timmy carried me.

One Year.

One year ago today, October 13, 2008, Timmy and I decided to get married. (He did not officially propose to me until December 13th -- but that is another magical story.) We had been dating for four months, and suddenly our relationship became perfectly clear and we both knew. Just knew that when we gazed into each other's eyes, forever was staring back at us.

A year ago today, I began planning my wedding, set for June 20, 2009.

One year goes by so, so quickly... and now I am 4 months married, the happiest I have ever been in my entire life.

Now that the Apple Cafe project is mostly over, I will be putting my efforts back into my freelance design work, and highlighting some of my recent wedding designs.

Apple Cafe - Part Five

We are done.

Saturday, October 10th had been marked for months on our calendar with a huge "REVAMP DAY" across the date. And all of our work and efforts took shape and became something real:

 

 

 

As we stood, looking at our creation, Timmy turned to me and said, "Is it everything you hoped it would be?" And, even though my eyes had already picked up on several things that needed tweaking, I smiled back into his sparkling blue eyes and concluded, "Yes, it really, truly is."

I regularly design logos, greeting cards, wedding invitations, and brochures. Individual pieces of something bigger - it is easy to design a postcard that does not necessarily need to blend into a cohesive theme. But, to design an entire identity. To create a whole marketing campaign. To start from absolutely nothing.

I did it. And now I know I can do anything.

To view all of the revamp photos, go to: picasaweb.google.com/rb.obrien7/AppleCafe#

friday favorites - creating treasures

I love to create treasures for those I adore. I love to create something special out of raw materials - to me there is nothing more satisfying. In my mind, I feel like there is absolutely nothing I can not create, if I really put my mind to it. (This confidence does not, however, extend to baking adventures. I can make anything look pretty, but it may not taste good...)

This weekend is my darling husband's birthday. He loves to wear prettily decorated shirts, so I decided to custom make him one.

I bought a pretty, white collared shirt and a packet of iron-on transfer paper. I designed the front, back, and side graphics in a style reminiscent of his very favorite clothing brand, English Laundry.

I then used the iron on transfer paper to transfer the images to the collared shirt. Iron on transfer paper is incredibly easy to use, and really opens up a world of possibilities! (I desperately want a screen printer, Yudu, but until then, iron on transfers work wonders.)

The result? A very happy husband. :)

(shirt design on back)

 

(design on front and cuffs)

Apple Cafe - Part Four

Marketing
When developing a marketing campaign, we determined our different types of customers, and what message would be most applicable to their lives.

Our goal for the first month after the switch was to create awareness of our "new things". In addition to a new look and a new name, we spent hours creating new smoothies, a new line of iced coffee drinks, new advertising, and new promotions.

New Smoothies
Because the original EN smoothie names had been borrowed from a friend, we had to rename all of the Apple Cafe smoothies. I love naming things, and definitely enjoyed some of the name switches. Now, doesn't Raspberry Radiance sound so much tastier than Raspberry Rave?

Additionally, we created three new smoothie recipes. This is not quite as easy as it sounds. Tim is amazing, and spent hours researching popular smoothie flavors, calculating the perfect blend of ingredients. And the result was well worth the effort:

New Iced Coffee
We expanded our coffee line and introduced three tasty new iced coffee drinks:

New Supplements:
Supplement sales account for a huge margin of our profit. Tim researched and found several exciting new supplements to bring in to Apple Cafe.

In addition to bringing in new supplements offerings, we also reorganized the existing supplements, making room for our "shelf talkers". These small signs sit next to the supplements, catching the customers' eyes, and explaining why this particular vitamin or supplement is beneficial. They are meant to entice and create interest. We kept the design simple and clean, with a larger "headline" proclaiming an eye-catching statement.

New Promotions
We spent hours of time and research, coming up with fresh new promotions for Apple Cafe. Our goal was to generate excitement and create interaction with our customers.

New Kids' Menu
Kids love things that are "just for them." EN Organic Smoothie Bar was not at all kid-friendly. No photos, no bright colors. We realized this was a huge market we had not even begun to tap into. So we created a Kid's Menu and Kid's Pick marketing campaign.

EN did offer Kiddie size smoothies, but the kid creativity ended there. So we created an entire Kid's Menu, full of healthy snacks that parents could confidently let kids choose from. For the Kid's marketing, I put a new twist on our apple logo, placing it upside down and sideways on the page. This adds a spark of playfulness and silliness, an element that appeals to children. Bright colors and crisp photography show off our Kid's Menu offerings.

Additionally, we started a new Kid's Pick program. Kid's absolutely love to choose things for themselves. Even if they only have two options. We created options, included a fun toy, and placed it all at kid's eye level.

And every other Tuesday is Kid's Day.

Apple Cafe - Part Three

Photography
Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words was very, very right. Photographs catch eyes as people hurry by, stirring the appetite and creating a want. Our entire goal is to create that want, that desire for that customer to purchase what we're selling. People may miss words, but they never miss a picture.

And children, well they may not be able to read, but they notice everything. Nothing sells more than children pleading for a treat. But how can they ask for a smoothie, when, to their eyes, those smoothies don't even exist?

We made those smoothies come alive in a grueling 8 hour photo shoot.

When designing the smoothie photography shots, I determined that, to keep a cohesive, modern look, we would shoot the smoothies on a blank white background, with a straight on perspective. Each smoothie was carefully groomed and surrounded by its respective ingredients; strawberries, blueberries, chocolate, etc.

For the rest of the photography, I followed a similar shooting style. Although I did mix up the perspective on some shots, my photography retains the same simplicity throughout.

Sidenote: The best part about food photography? Getting to eat the props. Sometimes I like to pretend that the strawberries and blueberries auditioned for a "fruit modeling" job in my pictures. We picked the very prettiest fruits, shining them up and placing them just so. And sometimes I like to think that these pretty fruit models were just so delighted to live forever in my photographs. Sometimes I think they probably dreamed about this moment their whole fruity lives.

And that is what I thought about as I ate my fruit models.

friday favorites - Paris

Paris is beautiful everywhere. Every building is ornately carved and adorned with statues, every street is lined with cafes and flower stands... and the Parisians are just so, so beautiful,too. It smells beautiful, sounds beautiful, and feels beautiful. The air is heavy with romance and magic, full of a bright expentancy for beautiful happenings. Even their language is beautiful. "Bonjour!" rolls off your tongue so smoothly, like a musical score.

Tim and I spent four beautiful days in Paris on our honeymoon, surrounded by flowers and French. Notre Dame was just as magnificent as the photos promised, and we picnicked on the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower.

In London I felt like a tourist, in Ireland I was a fairy, but in Paris, I was a princess.

P.S. I had been warned that sometimes the French are a tad unfriendly to bright-eyed American tourists. I did not meet ONE unfriendly Parisian. They are perfectly lovely, and beautiful.

rose card

poster design

flatfoot 56 is coming to Prairie du Chien, WI
I got to design their poster. :)

Apple Cafe - Part Two

Logo
When creating our Apple Cafe logo, my biggest obstacle was to find a way to create a new, fresh logo using an often over-used object: the much loved apple.

I solved this problem by forgoing the typical red, and going with a bright yellow-green shade instead. Also, by halving the apple and exposing a scattering of seeds, I found a way to show off the apple in a new, unusual form. When drawing the apple shape, I drew clean, curved lines, skipping outlines and creating deliberately simple shapes. i wanted the apple in our logo to be able to stand alone, without the need for words.

When adding words to my design, my goal was to maintain the simplicity of the logo. I chose a simple sans-serif typeface. Because this will also be the logo of our Apple Nutrition store, I created a logo that will be easily interchangeable between the two businesses. I placed the word "cafe" in small caps, a contrast from the lowercase letters of "apple". I did this deliberately to create a visual separation of the two words. The Apple Nutrition logo will be exactly the same, only with the word "nutrition" replacing "cafe".

And so, after much research, many sketches and thumbnails, the Apple Cafe logo was finally born:

Design
After creating our logo, everything else began to fall into place. We had a definite color palette, a logo, a sans-serif and script typeface, and had established several repeating design elements:

Menu Board
The visual center of Apple Cafe is the menu board, and everything pretty much revolves around that, as the most prominent design piece.

The biggest, most obvious problems with our current menu board was that there are no pictures, and it is very hard to read. Nothing about it says "smoothies", and it is very dark and boring.

My initial plan was to create something similar structurally wise to the existing piece. But, after much thought and research, we decided to head in another direction. And this is what we created:

It was different from anything we'd seen, but very modern and fresh -- a series of wooden hanging frames, painted Apple Cafe colors, and matted with the much loved Arcadia fabric. We wanted to keep the menu boards themselves very simple and easy to read. So, the added fabric would give the entire piece a bit of pattern, texture, and added visual interest. Also, dividing the sections into different frames gives us the ability to switch out new pictures easily as promotions change.

Now it was just a matter of taking all our ideas and inspiration and making it a reality…