heikkinen the forest

there’s no place like home

September 3, 2010

Or so they say. I wouldn’t really know, because nowhere actually feels like home right now.

I’m in East Tennessee for the weekend, to go to a wedding and to visit the folks. Right now I’m sitting in a Borders in Knoxville because I really have nowhere else to go. I have no desire to go to either of my parent’s houses, for various reasons—I’m headed to my dad’s later for dinner, but he doesn’t have wireless so I would be bored out of my mind if I were over there now. I tried to get a hold of some friends prior to my visit, but everyone is either busy or non-responsive. I should be happy to come back to my hometown to see friends and family, but it’s not a very enjoyable occasion. This place doesn’t feel like home anymore.

The sad thing is, Spring Hill doesn’t feel like home, either. That house I live in—it’s just a house. It’s not home. The town itself is very boring, and I have no idea how to meet people. I don’t even know the neighbors, save for one! Hopefully with time I’ll come to appreciate my new home, but I have to wonder, will it ever truly feel like home?

posted in General | tags: life | leave a comment

time flies by

September 1, 2010

Man, September already? Where has this year gone?

Oh, that’s right. To moving into a new house, fixing it up, and working full-time. The past month has been especially busy, since on top of working and fixing up the house (and just doing general house chores), I’ve picked up two CoreCommerce integrations and have been trying like crazy to get more maneki neko amigurumi made so I can open up my new Etsy shop with something of a selection.

I’ve finished up the larger of the two CoreCommerce integrations (here’s the store, if you’re interested), which frees up my time a bit and will let me focus on the smaller job. Unfortunately, the smaller job is turning out to be more time-consuming than anticipated, which is probably a good indication that I need to start charging more for projects. It’s just so hard for me to come up with an accurate quote.

Being so busy has left me with little time to work out and lately I’ve been really apathetic about my diet. Didn’t I post about how I would do so well this year since I did such a good job last year? Yeah, not so much… I’ve done very little working out besides running a few times and playing DDR, which I haven’t even done in months. It makes me feel really gross, and terribly disappointed in myself, but there’s only so much time in the day and unfortunately I have to spend most of it sitting on my ass with my face stuck in the computer. Chris and I did get memberships to the rec center last week, though, so hopefully I’ll be able to make some time a few days a week to go work out. As for eating better, I really have no excuse. I’ve just been craving lots of fatty, starchy things and I’m just so burdened with work that I give in. I really need some self-discipline.

No more progress on the house since the last post. Argh. :(

Still haven’t made any friends, though I did meet up with two girls in Spring Hill who are on Etsy, so hopefully we’ll get together and do some crafting sometime. I would love to have a weekly craft day.

The garden isn’t fairing so well. The squash will produce fruit, but then they just wither up. The whole plant looks pretty unhappy, as does the zucchini, so I’ve pretty much given up on them. Lots of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes, though, and the jalapeno plant is doing well since I potted it. Eggplant hasn’t produced any fruit, sadly, and I’ve only gotten one green bell pepper. The garden has been quite a letdown, but apparently this year just hasn’t been a good year for gardening. Hopefully next year will be better, because I would love a great big lush garden with tons of fresh veggies at my disposal.

posted in General | tags: diet, exercise, garden, life, web design, work | leave a comment

all work and no play…

August 17, 2010

Ack! It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Shame on me. Work takes up most of my time, of course, but I’ve also been busy with side work, fixing up the house, and crafting.

I’ve got a couple of design integrations I’m doing for CoreCommerce customers, which is exciting because it means extra money and more sites to put on my portfolio. One of them has turned out to be a much more tedious project than I had expected, and I don’t think I charged enough, but I don’t mind too much. I love developing, despite the fact that it’s incredibly time-consuming and eats up all my free time.

We got the office painted and have started furnishing and decorating it. I bought a table decoupaged with old dictionary pages to use as a second desk, got a new office chair, and I splurged a bit on a nice big monitor to hook up to my laptop. I’ll post pictures of the room eventually, once it looks a bit more put together. Whenever that’ll be… Still have some more painting and decorating to do in the living room and hallway. And then there’s the bedroom, which hasn’t had any work done to it since we painted it when we first moved in… sigh.

I’ve been trying to work on making more of my maneki neko amigurumi, but each one takes several hours and so it’s a slow process. Once I have a few more made, I’m going to open up a new Etsy store called Lucky Cat Crochet. I feel like the name is more applicable than Kaleidoscopic Crafts, since all I’ve been doing lately is amigurumi and that’s not very “kaleidoscopic.” I’ll still keep that store open, as I’m hoping to work on more non-crochet crafts and some non-amigurumi crochet projects, but considering my lack of free time, there probably won’t ever be a very large inventory. Unfortunately, I don’t make enough money off of my crafts to make a living out of it. People will only spend so much on little crocheted cat dolls.

So, there’s an update on my life. It consists of a whole lot of work and not very much play. Chris and I are planning on going to the Wilson County Fair this week, as long as the rain holds off, so hopefully that will be fun. And then there’s a wedding this weekend, and another in a few weeks, which… well, I don’t expect they’ll be much fun, but at least they will get us out of the house and socializing with people. So, that’s something.

posted in Crochet, General, Graphic/Web Design | tags: Interior Design, life, web design, work | 2 comments

new blog design!

July 30, 2010

Apologies for not posting in a while. As you may notice if you’re reading my blog directly, I’ve been a little bit busy with this thing…

After months of using some random theme I picked from WordPress, I finally got around to designing and creating my own. I felt a little silly using someone else’s theme, considering that I’m trying to jump start my career as a designer and developer. It was also a rather boring (though nice and clean) design and I wanted my blog to have more personality. I figured that since I’m using the somewhat silly name of “Heikkinen the Forest,” I should probably have a forest-themed design.

The design itself is kind of cutesy, but I think it works with the name. I tried to go for a scrapbooking kind of style (though I’m not really a fan of scrapbooking) with some letterpress elements thrown in, and all I used were Photoshop brushes and textures. As I said before, I want to at some point try to do some illustrations, particularly of animals, and use those in the design—but for now, this will work.

This was my first time really customizing WordPress, and I have to say, it was actually a lot of fun. It was frustrating at times, of course; but using PHP can really simplify things and having all sorts of widgets and plug-ins at my disposal gives me endless possibilities of what I can do with a site. Now that I’ve worked with WordPress and gotten a feel for it, I’m definitely going to use it as a CMS in the future.

Personally, I’m pretty happy with it, especially considering it’s my first attempt at a WP theme. I’m sure there are some little adjustments I’ll need to make, as I’m still exploring the world of WordPress and have very likely overlooked some things. If you notice any major problems, please let me know so I don’t look like a complete doofus. If you’re using an older version of Internet Explorer, then it will almost definitely look wonky, in which cause you should do yourself and the world a favor and switch over to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

So what do you think?

posted in Graphic/Web Design | tags: blog, graphic design, web design, wordpress | 2 comments

garden update

July 19, 2010

In happier news, our garden is doing… well, decently. It’s definitely grown quite a bit!

The squash and zucchini are taking over, although unfortunately, they haven’t produced any fruit yet. So far, the only edible fruit we’ve gotten are a couple of cucumbers.

The tomatoes on one plant are starting to redden, though, and some fruit has finally started appearing on the other tomato plant.

The eggplant, jalapeno, and green bell pepper plants don’t seem too happy, sadly. I ended up taking out the jalapeno plant and potting it, and I might do the same for the bell pepper. The bell pepper is getting overtaken by the squash plants, and the eggplant probably will be soon. I may just go ahead and add another row to the garden. In retrospect, we really should have done that in the first place. The plants are just a bit too crowded, mostly because of the squash.

Ah well, it’s our first garden, and we didn’t do a whole lot of planning or research, so I guess that’s what we get. We’ll know better next time!

posted in General, Living Green | tags: food, garden, plants | leave a comment