I finished up another WordPress theme today for EW, this one is brown and green and cool and chic and just a smidge preppy.

Melissa is a really great gal and a good read – so stop by and say hello, and be sure you add her to your blogroll.

Icklebug has been launched – you’ve gotta see this one! It’s so ding dang cute, with the watermelon-y color scheme, and the bunnies you can throw around (boing, I mean.) This was an E.Webscapes project (I’m an Associate Designer, so if you want to order a custom blog design, please do order through EW and feel free to request me if you’d like me to be the one to design for you!). Bex had a lot of specific things that she wanted to implement, like those cute little pixel icons (a couple of those are custom to her design), and a bunch of nifty plugins and customizations, including a special plugin written by Becca just for EW.

Becca rocks!I have to make note of what I think is the cutest part of the design – the comment page. She requested the official comments plugin, so I hooked her up with alternating comment bubble background and then the official comments (registered users, authors) have a solid pink bubble. I really love how fun the comments are displayed, so check ’em out, and leave one while you’re there!

I’m chillin’ on the patio this weekend with my family and my camera, here are a few new birdwatchy photos I’ve added to my photoblog. I’ll add a couple more later today or tomorrow, too.

Hope you’re having a good weekend – Happy Father’s Day to all the (not deadbeat) Dad’s and single Mom’s who do it all, too!

Back in December one of my paintings, Coon, was published on the cover of the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association, or JAVMA. I wrote about it here, if you want to have a look.

The other day, I received a photo from one of my clients who purchased a large print of that painting after she saw it on the cover. It is just too cute not to share!

Meet Rhonda, Flicka and Kismet. Aren’t they adorable? Rhonda gave me permission to show you her lovely self with her babies (thank you, Rhonda!) – and I have to admit, I love seeing photos of my artwork hanging up in their homes around their owners. That says to me “I look at this all the time, and still love it!” I love that. It’s way better than those photos of my artwork in the dumpster with ketchup splattered on the cracked glass. Those hurt, man. (j/k, that hasn’t happened. I swear.)

Rhonda also shared this other photo of her babies, checking for bugs. They’ve grown a bit but aren’t they the cutest little guys? They look pretty darn thorough. She could charge for their services, really. I would hire them in a heartbeat.

I get so mushy gushy when I get the privilege of sharing the love that my clients feel over their animals and pets. It’s a whole different level of love and compassion, I think. One that makes most people say “Huh? What do you care? It’s just a squirrel.” (I’m just sayin’, for example, you know.) It’s a special bond between human and animals that only other animal lovers can really understand. It’s such a cool thing.

< -- This is where you pretend I've gone into a long emotional discourse about the relationship between people and critters, nod and think "yeah, I know exactly what you mean." -->

Sometimes, I really do wonder who I got this retarded gene from, because I’d like to poke them in the eye with a big pointy stick.

I’m sitting here, my yahoo launchcast is cranked up and I’m coding away like a mad woman, trying not to play with the bunnies. Yes, I’m working on a new design for Icklebug, but at the moment, I’m wondering where I put my brain.

I have spent the last 20 minutes trying to figure out why my footer won’t display right.

:rant:

Why on earth can I position the thing, set the parameters, but it will NOT show up?! I’m on the verge of requesting assistance (read: crying like a big baby) when I think maybe I should check to see if I uploaded the background images. I. did. NOT.

:bricks:

/ end feeling like a big dummyhead

My feed was broken. It’s been broken for over a week.

I finally took a few minutes to deactivate and reactivate all of my plugins, and sho’nuff, Related entries for feeds broke my feed. So, if your feed is broken and you’re getting an error like this:

XML document structures must start and end within the same entity

And you’re seeing CDATA is open and won’t close, then you need to deactivate your WordPress plugins and reactivate them one by one, validating your feed until you figure out what broke it.

Life Lesson #5,247 brought to you by the letters R and S.

In this case, being number two out of 1,070,000 ain’t all that bad. heh.

 

check it out.

That was a search term someone used today to land here, I didn’t make that up. And if you take the quotes out, I’m not even close to being in the top ten. So do me a favor? Leave the quotes alone, thankyouverymuch. I don’t know many people who search using quote marks, but whoever you are?

Some of you may have ordered your very own Climby Squirrel t-shirt, many of you have not. Ahem.

Back in March, I had a dilemma (or should I say Dellimma?). I had a few hundred squirrely photos, and not enough room on my hard drive for them all. I decided to back up my photos to CD, but didn’t have a DVD write drive. Enter Dell Dude, who suggested I make apparel with my squirrels. He also really really wanted a free shirt. So because I’m really super awesome (I am too), I procrastinated forever (because honestly, I paid for that DVD write drive, is it too much to hope to get a little lovin’ with the greenbacks in return?). A girl can only pretend to be aloof and forget all about it for so long, you know.

I finally got the shirt sent off. One for him, and one for me. Mine arrived last weekend, so I knew it wouldn’t be long before Dell Dude opened up a strange little package from CafePress and found a squirrel ready to leap off of 100% cotton in hopes of a peanut, or maybe even a free DVD write drive.

I love my Climby Squirrel shirt, by the way. It is so wicked that my kids were pouty that they didn’t get one. My photograph/design is printed direct, which means there’s no wierd transfer paper outline – it looks unbelievably cool. In fact, I wore it to the grocery store and people were looking at me funny. Okay so that in itself isn’t entirely unusual, but I am going to attribute that particular days worth of strange glances to the shirt. It works for me.

In an effort to get all of you slackers fabulous people into one of these cool shirts for the summer, I’m going to give you a little incentive. Click the little button below and send over $25 for the cost of the shirt and the shipping. I’ll do the ordering and have it shipped to me, then I’ll personally sign it with my big fancy relatively famous “L” autograph and forward it on to you for your wearing pleasure.

I’ll just need you to tell me which one and what size. Sound fun? I thought so.

:end shameless begging for cash:

Oh and hey? If you want one of my other photos on a shirt instead? Just pick one.

I’ll hook you up.

Special thanks to Dell Dude for sharing himself with the internet. He’s way better than that guy they have doing the PC dude on the Mac commercials, isn’t he? I think so. (BTW, that’s my favoritest commercial ever, in the whole wide world.)

I’ll share myself getting squirrely just as soon as I get my shirt through the wash again.

Oh and one more thing. I broke down and bought a Maxtor 300Gig external Hard Drive. (Sorry Dell Dude, I had like 1000 new squirrel photos and not nearly enough DVD’s or cases to put ’em in.)

I finished up the week with this super sweet celebrity dog blog design, Celebrity Dog Watcher. This is an EWebscapes client project, so it will go into the EW Portfolio. (Speaking of which, I really need to get my latest stuff added to my own portfolio, huh?)

The CDW logo is super cool, I just love the artwork done by Pop Arf artist Nathan Janes. I used his brilliant color scheme to create additional graphics for the design and get everything flowing together. This is my first 4 column theme, and it really turned out cool, I think!

If you’re into the celeb scene (I try to be. I must admit.), Kym does a really great job dishing some totally informative celebrity doggy gossip. Definitely a great feed to add to the celebrity blog collection! Go have a visit!

:woof: