Finding Balance

A post of the letter from the Jessie Marie Studio Winter 2011 Newsletter sent on February 17, 2011.

“Life is like riding a bicycle to keep your balance you must keep moving.” -Albert Einstein

There are seasons of life where moving forward is the best course of action. A busy season at work, a new baby in the house or surviving a Midwestern winter. Jessie Marie Studio just exited its annual busy season.

For the past four years I've worked with the Denver Transportation Club to create a printed program, & other marketing collateral for their annual conference, Operation Stimulus. This project coincides with the holidays and Cadence’s birthday. Because of this timing, a magical balancing act has to take place. I don’t bathe in pixie dust nightly. Instead I made a plan, called on support & saw an end.

Make a Plan: Is there a relationship or project in need of your attention & energy? Recognizing where your focus needs to be makes it much easier to prioritize your time.

From previous years I knew the energy Operation Stimulus was going to take. I mentally prepared for the late nights, anticipated project challenges & stocked up on tea.

Call on Support: Do you know someone who will check up on you? Contact them. Tell them about that relationship or project. Talk to them weekly, better yet daily, to keep yourself accountable.

Jarrod is the reason projects like this one always end successfully. He didn’t only support me by checking in, he also did all the laundry, cooking AND dishes!

The End: Locate an end date when there will be time to celebrate. Or at least come up for air.

The end of my busy season is marked by Fat Camp. This year a girlfriend shared this great idea: Mini-celebrations. While working on her Spanish dissertation she feels the end will never come. To feel like she is finishing something she has a mini-celebration whenever she finishes food from her kitchen. A bag of chips emptied. Clapping & cheering! Last piece of spinach salad down the hatch. Hooting & hollering!

Balance is a tricky thing. Even with the best plan, the most dedicated supporters & the celebration of a lifetime planned, things can go array. You can try to take control of life by force. Or, may I suggest, take off the training wheels & enjoy the ride.

Here’s to finishing a mug of hot chocolate!
Jessie Marie 

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Restructuring Habits

A post of the letter from the Jessie Marie Studio Fall 2010 Newsletter sent on November 9, 2010

 

"Because how we spend our days is, of course,
how we spend our lives." -Annie Dillard

 

Pull out your checkbook. Take a look at the transactions from the last three months. Do you see well thought out purchases or unnecessary ones? Now, pull out your calendar. Look at how you have been spending your time. Have you been filling it with family & friends, working late or working out?

Your spending habits of money & time can either help or hinder you from achieving your dreams. Say you want to run a marathon. You can’t just show up on race day. You would die. Okay, not die, but those 26.2 miles would suck. You need to register for the event, buy a good pair of shoes & schedule time to train. In other words, you will need to restructure your current habits.

Reach. Reach. Kick. Kick. With the help of a floating device Cadence can swim. This feat was made possible by restructuring our family’s habits six months ago. We paid for the lessons, bought new swimsuits, and committed to heading to the swimming pool once or twice a week. Not only has Cadence gained beginning swimming skills, we have built relationships with other parents & their little swimmers. And now, Thursday night swimming lessons are a weekly habit.

I challenge you to restructure a habit or two over the next three months. You will probably not squeal with glee like Cadence does when she enters the pool when you first start. We adults are adverse to change & all. But, by the next time you hear from me that new habit will be a sign of you making your dreams come true.

Happy Dream Making!
Jessie Marie

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Uprooted

The empty lot where Pick 'n Save South used to be.

A couple weeks ago my roots were torn out of the ground. The original Pick ‘n Save South building was demolished. A new one is going up next door, but it will not be the same – and not just because it is a new building. The employees of the torn down building had to go through an interview process to keep their jobs. Many of them will not be there when the doors reopen. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back.

I worked in the Pick ‘n Save deli throughout high school & college, my mom, Mary, managed the front-end, my step-dad, Dan, worked in the corporate offices, my sister, Becky, worked in the deli with me, my step-sister, Heather, worked in the salad bar, my step-brother, Josh, worked in dairy frozen with my brothers, Cody & J.P. That’s all of us. All Eight R’s. You can say it was a family thing. Only we didn’t own the place. But then again, we kinda did.

My family wove an interconnected group of friends while working there. Everyone knew everyone. And they still do.

I was in high school when it all began. It was the perfect social mixer. As our group grew we took pride in how many different schools we represented through our lettermen jackets.

Many lessons were learned & memories were made during those years. We worked hard. (Well, most of us.) We loved to dance. We loved sports. Girls & boys dated. And some of us even married our Pick ‘n Save sweethearts. Jarrod is a former bagger, you know.

Do you have any favorite memories of Pick ‘n Savers? Or places from your past that shaped you into who you are today? Please share.

Start to Finish

People have asked us "How'd you do it?" when they hear about our the Ranger Roy book. To answer that question I've posted our timeline below.


2009 - Idea of creating the character Ranger Roy was born. We can't remember exactly when.

07.09 to 08.09 - Jarrod wrote the copy
 

09.09 to 03.11 - Jessie created illustrations
 

02.24.11 - confirmed venue for Boneyard Arts Festival, Follett's Bookstore. A book in a bookstore. Perfect!
 

03.05.11 - Illustrations finished
 

03.07.11 - Started setting up book in InDesign to www.lulu.com's standards. Bought ISBN number from www.myidentifiers.com ($125.00)
 

03.09.11 - Bought font, Sharktooth ($60.00)
 

03.10.11 - Took illustrations into the photo studio. Cara Vetter photographed them using awesome lighting techniques.
 

03.13.11 - Prepress work for www.lulu.com. Put illustration photos into InDesign. Started to typeset Jarrod's copy.
 

03.15.11 - PUBLISHED through www.lulu.com!! for the first of three times. I had many issues following lulu's instructions to get this far. Wanted to switch to blurb.com, however I made the illustrations the proportions of a book size on lulu & not on blurb, so I was stuck with lulu.
 

03.16.11 - Ordered first proof (apx $15.00 per proof).  

03.17.11 - Two people bought the book! This is the moment we realized we created something that other people really wanted to buy. Wow.
 

03.20.11 - Got first proof. It had been rained on while out on our front step. After opening it we found all of the pages off by one. I hadn't accounted for the back of the front cover to be blank. Color looked awful. Dark & dingy. Found out who had bought the two books. Warned them of problems. Figured out how to make book private on lulu.com so others couldn't buy it until the actual book release date (04.07.11).
 

03.21.11 - Made needed changes. Added front title page & made color corrections (magic photoshop curve #1). Bought second proof.
 

03.24.11 - Got second proof. Much better, but the perfectionist in me wanted to make one more color adjustment. Plus, Jarrod found some small copy changes he wanted to make. Even with these changes in mind we CELEBRATED!
 

03.29.11 - Made final changes (magic photoshop curve #2 did the trick! I really should sell this curve to lulu customer's to fix the yucky printing! Ordered 10 copies of the book for the upcoming show. Also ordered 4 photos from mpix.com of the illustrations we framed for the show.
 

04.02.11 - Got books & mpix photos. Created "live reading" video for facebook of "Ranger Roy" aka Jarrod's dad reading the book.  

04.03.11 - Set up marketing email in Dreamweaver
 

04.04.11 - Finished marketing email & uploaded it to campaignmonitor.com. Set send time as 04.05.11 at 6AM. Matted & framed illustrations. Final touches on lulu.com (created final preview image & made book public). Created "stuff" for the show. Enter to Win box, cards with tinyurl on them for people to order book online when I'm not at the show, etc.
 

04.05.11 - Set up the show at Follett's Bookstore!
 

04.07.11 - Jarrod & Cadence bought trail like refreshments for our guests. BOOK RELEASE CELEBRATION! 5PM-7PM

Book Reading by Ranger Roy

Enjoy a "live" reading of Adventures with Ranger Roy: Acadia National Park by Ranger Roy himself! 

On Thursday, April 7th, as part the Boneyard Art Festival, Jarrod & Jessie will be officially releasing their very first children's book, Adventures with Ranger Roy: Acadia National Park. Join them in celebrating from 5PM-7PM on the second floor of Follett's Bookstore on Green Street. There will be live readings, plus framed illustrations and signed copies for sale.

The display will be up during the following store hours:

Thursday, April 7th: 9AM-7PM

Friday, April 8th: 9AM-7PM

Saturday, April 9th: 10AM-7PM

Sunday, April 10th: 11AM-6PM

If you can't make it during the Boneyard Arts Festival please check out the book on lulu.com.

Create: Space

Branches on Hill Street

Space intrigues me in both art & life. You have positive space in art, like the tree branches in the above photo. And positive space in life, like the work you need to do when you are done reading this post. The counterpart is negative space, such as the blue sky above or time for rest throughout your week. 

The balance between positive & negative space is one of the things that makes a photo or painting successful. I have found the same to be true in life. The balance of work & play brings a calming rhythm to your life, even when the work part is hectic & stressful. 

Interact with Space

#1 This week grab your camera and take photos that represent interesting negative space (such as the one I took above). I always find it an interesting exercise to focus on the negative space rather than the subject you are photographing. 

#2 I also challenge you to attempt the Soul Training exercise from chapter six of The Good & Beautiful God, by James Bryan Smith. He states, "We add so much to our schedules that we have no "margin," no space for leisure and rest and family and God and health." 

 This week try to do one of the following:

• Get up ten minutes earlier & create a space for silence before you begin your day.

• Cut out unnecessary entertainment activities.

• Explore scaling back some of your commitments by asking, "Is it essential?"

• If you do something often (for example, spending time with a friend), consider reducing the frequency without cutting that person out of your life.

{Day 80: EIGHTY! wow. I'm not going to lie I've been craving a brat off the grill like mad with the beautiful spring like weather here in Champaign. I really don't know if I'll be able to make it all summer...}

Two Years in the Making

On Thursday, April 7th two years of hard work & dedication by Jarrod & Jessie will finally be completed. The children's book that we have been working on since we got back from Maine, in 2009, will officially be released! It will be on display on the second story of the eFollett Bookstore on Green Street as part of this year's Boneyard Arts Festival.

If you want to buy your very own copy you can do so here. I just ordered my copy tonight, so I can't promise that all the kinks will be ironed out. Enjoy some of the inner illustrations that will be on display for purchase during the show below.