Annie Anderson | Blog

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I don’t know about you, but I am picky. Well, with certain things anyway. But as a graphic designer, sometimes that’s a necessary fault. (Being too picky, though, can be more than just annoying to everyone else around you.)

I mean, do you ever *know* exactly what you want and then, you can’t find it? That seems to happen to me on a regular basis with design stuff. I’m thinkin’ that makes me a bit picky. Hopefully not too picky. Just picky enough to be decisive.

With the rising price of gas, groceries and other necessary items, I think we’re at a time in history where it definitely pays to be picky. Whether you’re fortunate enough to be in a spot where money isn’t a huge concern or you’re in a spot where penny pinching means the difference between eating or not eating, being a good steward of your money is important. This means more and more that one must be picky about products and services bought each month.

Because of health (allergies and kids w/ADD) issues, we’ve always been fairly careful with what we purchase but I’ve noticed in the past few months that the those dollars just don’t stretch as far as they used to. I’ve also noticed some manufacturers changing their products. I don’t know if that’s a result of the changing economy, but for someone who has to be careful of allergens, I find myself reading and re-reading labels constantly. Every time I have to change the products I buy as a result, it often ends up costing more.

Now, I try to buy organic products and other items that are all natural, sugar free and the like. (Those items just always seem to cost more anyway.) But in order to be a good steward of my families money, I’m going to have to try some alternatives. Here are things I’m planning to do:

• Plant a vegetable garden
• Buy from local farmers markets
• Buy environmentally safe products that are concentrated (so they last longer)
• Ensure we eat a balanced diet
• Drink plenty of water
• Use coupons (manufacturer and store issued)
• Shop for the best deals overall
• Walk when feasible instead of drive

Are you becoming more conscientious of the products you buy? If so, what are you doing to stretch your dollars? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

In the arena,

Annie

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Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

Last week before the 4th of July, I had fully intended to create and post some special Independence Day backgrounds. Obviously, that didn’t happen. See, my husband was home all week on vacation and instead of working on things like I probably should have been, I ended up helping him build gates for our driveway.

Oh well.

The gates look great, anyway. They’re not entirely finished but they still look good. Hopefully he’ll be able to finish them in the few weekends. At least until then, we don’t have the neighbors visitors using our driveway as a turn around (which was becoming a huge problem, hence the gates). I’ll take a couple pictures of them when they’re finished.

If you’re an American, whether you’re in the US or living or vacationing elsewhere in the world, I hope you enjoyed your celebrations and weekend. We sat outside at my moms house, which overlooks the Puget Sound and Whidbey Island and watched fireworks all around us. It was very loud but my 3 year old managed to fall asleep on his papa’s lap. All in all, it was a good weekend.

In the arena,

Annie

By the way - if this is your first time here, or you haven’t done so yet, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed. You can use any feed reader you wish.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

Yes, it’s true - meatball sandwiches are better hot.

But before I tell you what lead to such a discovery, first, I have a confession to make . . . my 3 year old son (who is going to be 4 in August) is not fully potty trained.

For some unknown reason that my husband and I do not comprehend, he refuses to use the bathroom to poop. Now, he totally *knows* he is supposed to do that in the toilet too. But no, no, he just *won’t*.

So, I’m fixing lunch - homemade mini pizzas for the kids and a turkey meatball sandwich for me - when I notice he’s walking rather oddly through the kitchen with his 7 year old sister following him saying, “Mom, there’s something gross on your bedroom floor.”

Great.

Of course, this leads to me ask said 3 year old “Why are you walking like that?” To which he replies, “Please, mom, don’t spank me.”

Uh-huh. My suspicions are confirmed . . . he’s pooped. In his “big boy” underwear. And I told him a couple of days ago that if he continued to do that, I was going to have spank him. He apparently remembered that just fine. So, why can he not remember to poop in the toilet?????

And yes, the “something gross on the bedroom floor” was indeed a glob that somehow escaped his trousers.

So . . . I spent a good half hour cleaning up naughty child and bedroom floor. And now my meatball sandwich is cold. It really does taste better hot but I don’t have the gumption to go warm it up.

In the arena,

By the way - if this is your first time here, or you haven’t done so yet, please consider subscribing to my RSS feed. You can use any feed reader you wish.

Annie Anderson is a freelance copywriter and graphic designer specializing in the small business and real estate markets. Her tagline “Making your business, my business” means that she’ll take the utmost care when creating words and images for your business - just as if it were her own.

It’s been a while since I posted on this site. Lots of things happening. Some good, some not so good. But all of them have given me a broader perspective and that is a wonderful thing.

You know, I’m generally a pretty private person and even though I have given glimpses of insight into my life, I don’t really discuss myself or my family much publicly. But today, I do want to share something immensely personal that has been a major factor in my changing perspective of late.

And that is something that happened just a couple of days ago on Wednesday.

My 14 year old daughter had a tooth that suddenly became infected a few months ago and as a result, we were referred by our dental clinic to a specialist at the University of Washington Hospital. They have a huge waiting list but thankfully, they managed to get her in last week to begin treatment - a root canal - which they do in 3-4 visits to help lessen the trauma. Her appointment last week went well although she was quite sore for a few days following the treatment.

This week, however, she had a severe reaction shortly afterwards and luckily we were still at the UW Hospital when it occurred. Her blood pressure dropped to a dangerous level and she began convulsing.

The staff at the UW is wonderful. They went quickly and yet discreetly into action and managed to stabilize her very fast but it was all so overwhelming for her that she had a mild anxiety attack, which I’m sure contributed a lot to whole thing and probably actually began before the blood pressure issue.

Much to my relief, the doctors are certain it was a result of how much pain she was in at the time and not a medical condition or anything to worry about. Since she’s not the kind to complain a lot even when in considerable pain, it’s often hard to tell exactly how much she does hurt and it seems they underestimated her pain level. Once they administered some ibuprofen after they got her blood pressure back up, she was fine and we were able to walk out of the hospital and head home.

She’s fine now, albeit still a little embarrassed by what happened and still a little sore from the second phase of the procedure on Wednesday. She’s been resting the past few days and is trying to keep up on the ibuprofen and hopefully by her next appointment next week, she’ll be ready.

Now, thankfully I’m not one to get hysterical in these situations although I will tell you I was scared out of my mind. And even though it was MY daughter, I did keep a level head and managed to stay calm.

Until yesterday. When the magnitude of the whole thing suddenly became clear to me.

And that’s what’s caused a few aha moments for me, maybe brought me back to things that are most important in my life.

So, although I will continue writing (and with any luck, I’ll have some great assignments coming up) and all those things I normally do, I doubt I will be posting on the blog every day as I had been. At least for a couple months here while I sort out some stuff in order to head in the direction I really want to go with my writing and music endeavors.

I do plan to post as often as possible and who knows, maybe it will be every day. But right now, I’m just intent on taking things day by day and see where they lead me.

I hope you enjoy your Memorial Day weekend if you’re in the US and I’ll see you again soon!

Until next time,

Sometimes I find it hard to be consistent every week with this blog. And I don’t know if this blog warrants consistency or not, really. It doesn’t have a particular theme, after all. But I do like to keep up here, if not for my own thought process and to keep track of the bits and pieces of my various endeavors, then at least, for you because I know every once in a while you find something useful.

So, where was I?

Well, kind of an unplanned vacation of sorts. The kids were out on Spring Break the week before last and we had intended to actually take a family vacation. But it didn’t happen. We wanted to go down to Seaside, Oregon - about a 6 hour drive from our home near Seattle but nearly everything was already booked. We could have changed hotels every night but that just didn’t sound fun to me for some reason. (How far out to people plan vacations?)

And I had intended to write some posts and schedule them ahead. That, too, didn’t happen. I did, however, make some serious headway on several projects which I’ll update later this week, time permitting.

Oh! And you know what? We had SNOW. Yes, snow. In Seattle. Last Friday. And then most of the weekend. It’s the latest it’s snowed in the Seattle area since something like 1972. Of course, it also rained for most of Spring Break. We had one nice day of 70 degree weather. Then snow a week later. Weird.

I don’t know if global warming or any of those other politically correct environmental issues has anything at all to do with our increasingly weird weather patterns but I’m becoming more inclined to move elsewhere. You know, somewhere warmer and with more sun. Snow belongs in the mountains. And places like Colorado. And Alaska. Not Seattle.

In any case, I hope you enjoyed yourself the past few weeks and got loads of stuff done. Fortunately, I did manage to get a lot of stuff done on various projects as well as on the home front . . . NW Stone Guide should be going live by weeks end, the yard no longer looks like a jungle and the inside of the house is nearly sparkling clean. All except my office, that is. LOL! It is still piled with well-organized, strategic heaps of stuff!
The thing I can hardly imagine, though, is that it’s nearly May! Seems like yesterday was January. My 10 year old son informed me this morning that there’s only 8 weeks left of school this year. Yikes! When did that happen?? Shouldn’t there be another 8 months? At least?

Well, enough of my rambling for now. I promise I’ll post something more interesting one day this week. I do plan to post the Reading List tomorrow. Not sure what’s going to be on yet as I haven’t gotten anything new for a few weeks. Perhaps I’ll dig out the gardening books.

See you again soon,

Just a bit of deviation from my self-imposed blogging schedule today because I’m working on some behind the scenes stuff across a couple of my projects and I have a question regarding setting up a website on my home network. If anyone cares to take a stab at this, please do post in the comments.

Now, I’m slightly above a novice when it comes to setting up networks but I just can’t get this to work right. I’ve set up a website on my computer to share with my family across our home network, but it isn’t available for anyone but me. My husband and daughter both get the standard “page cannot be found” error messages when they try to access it. I’m using MAMP (a server program for Mac) and I’ve set everything up just exactly the way the documentation says to and still no luck.

Any ideas or suggestions from anyone out there?

Thanks!

Annie

I’ve been working on desktop wallpapers for Easter just for fun. These were made for my computer so they’re 1440×900 as I have a widescreen monitor.

Anyway, you may go ahead and download any of them for your own personal use but you may not alter them in any way or sell them. However, please do feel free to share them with your friends, family, neighbors, co-workers or whomever might like them.

Happy Easter!

So, enjoy the backgrounds and have fun!
Speak soon,
Annie

PS - I am available for design projects if you’re looking for a graphic designer. I can also write copy and other materials. Just give me a shout!