GETTING ORGANIZED: Finally, another 'unveiling' \o/

Do you ever have so much on the go that you have troubles knowing where to begin? Or you seem to be crossing things off of your list, but the list never seems to end as things are added faster than they are removed?

I feel like that pretty much every day these days!

But at least I know I AM accomplishing things, even if the pace isn't as quick as I'd like it to be right now. It can be very overwhelming, but as long as I keep the ultimate goals in mind, I somehow keep moving ahead.

There is so much to catch up on and so many things to sort through.

You may recall when I announced my new logo back in November. Lara Vujanic worked on my design and I was so excited to share it with everyone. :) Well, a few weeks later she finished a web banner for me. I've been waiting to try and make updates to my overall colour scheme, etc. for my blog and web site before I launch the banner, but I decided last night that I just can't wait any longer! I decided that I just have to move ahead and put it up and sort the finer details out as I go.

So if you look up at the top, you'll see the new banner. :)) Thanks so much Lara for the awesome design. I LOVE it and how it ties in with my logo!!

Here's a version of it for this post:

I'm actually going to also be creating a physical banner with the same design for something I have coming up in March. I'll have a blog post soon about that exciting little event, but if you follow my facebook page, you should already know what I'm referring to. ;)

So thank you again Lara! And if anyone is looking for design work, I can put you in touch with her. :)  You can also see some of her work here.

You may have also noticed that I expanded the width of my blog.  I wanted to be able to display the photos in a larger size, so from now on you should hopefully be able to see the photos better right here on the blog :)

Thanks for looking.

-- Lisa P.

{I usually try and keep things pertaining to only one label, but I can't decide if this is about "Getting Organized" or if it's more "On The Business Side". So I'll title it about "Getting Organized", but I'll label it with both labels since it does have a hint of Business. ;) }

GETTING ORGANIZED: 'Final' Site Customizations

I've finally gotten my customizations done for my new site. Of course, the Picture Your Life Photography web site will always be evolving, as I can never keep things the same. I have a few tweaks here and there that I'd like to do, but for now, I'm happy with the overall set up and I'll tweak those things over the next few days.

The DGRIN customization forums are where I've lived the past several weeks and I especially want to thank Allen and John for helping me over the past couple of days to sort out some of the finicky things. This stuff is enough to drive anyone crazy I think. Here are the link to their sites. Not only are they amazing at helping us all on our site customizations, they're great photographers too!! Check out their sites.

Allen's: http://www.photosbyat.com/
John's: http://jfriend.smugmug.com/
Anthony's: http://www.brandolinoimaging.com/

So check out the site. Just click on the 'Home' button up top. Feedback is always welcome. Leave a message in the guest book. Click click click!! :))

I've also created a Facebook page. You can find that here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/pages/Tottenham-ON/Picture-Your-Life-Photography/68608509154?ref=ts

The scarey part of all this is that I might even know how some of these CSS and HTML codes actually work now!! ;)

GETTING ORGANIZED: More Customization

I've been working on site customization forever! OK, OK. I guess it hasn't been forever, it's been a few months now. It just feels like forever.

My problem is that I'm very stubborn and I want to do it all myself! haha I know I can ask for help on the DGRIN customization forums, but I really don't like to bother people unless I absolutely have to and there is so much information there just waiting for you to search for it. So search for it is what I did.

I had done a bit of customization a year or so ago on my personal smugmug photo site. And up until recently, I was using that site for personal as well as business photography. But late last year I knew it was finally time to separate the two.

I've spent hours, days even, searching the DGRIN customization forums and smugmug tutorials. I'm no HTML or coding specialist by any means, but I'm pretty good at following instructions and I'm good at 'copy & paste'. :) One of the most exciting things was matching up this new blog to have the same look and feel as my site. (Thanks Denise!! http://denisegoldbergplays.blogspot.com/) I also found a few neat 'gadgets' and things on Sheba Wheeler's blog (http://www.pictureyourworldphotography.blogspot.com). I love reading through Sheba's blog. She's a great writer and is always posting useful info.

I'd like to thank everyone on the DGRIN forums who contributed to the tutorials as well as thank those who help the people like me who are attempting to make their sites their own. Even everyone who asked the 'how do I...." questions helped me out, as I was able to find answers to my own questions quite easily most of the time.

I searched for a few things of my own and added them as well. I really LOVE the internet. It's so easy to find things. I couldn't imagine doing what I'm doing way back before the days of the internet. I'd be more exhausted than I am now and not as far ahead!

This weekend will be spent rearranging a few things on my main site. I'm very picky, and I always want things to be 'just perfect' before 'showing them to the world', but I've discovered that if I wait for total perfection, I'd never have moved out of the starting gates. ;) And since people already have business cards and contact information, I'd better get moving and 'finish' the main things I want to finish.

Finish is such an interesting term, as I don't think I'll ever be truly finished. This blog will be forever evolving with each post I make and my main site will hopefully grow in content as well.

On the surface, if you look at my workspaces (ok...don't laugh those of you who know me), I really don't appear to be very organized. But amongst the chaos is my sense of organization. I wouldn't be sitting here writing this entry right now if I wasn't organized. So for that I'm pretty pleased. :))