Slovo

Last October I was hired to design and publish the Czech Museum's Slovo magazine. What was originally going to be a one-time gig turned into an ongoing job, which has been both fun and very challenging. I'm given Word doc manuscripts for the text and then I have to create or gather the rest on my own – photos, illustrations, exhibits info, and store content. It's a ton of work, but well worth it and I'm enjoying this side hustle which gives me an extra creative outlet that I don't often get when working on textbooks.

Here's the winter edition of the Slovo:

The summer edition is in progress now and will be distributed in a couple months.

Granola

O'Brien's Own Gourmet Granola sells their granola in Hy-Vee, Fareway, and numerous other grocery stores throughout Iowa, as well as the Des Moines farmer's market. Their new packaging which I designed will start appearing all across the state in the coming weeks! Some of the Hy-Vee stores in Cedar Rapids have already stocked the granola in the new packaging. When I have a free moment I'm going to stop into a store and photograph them on the shelves.

Here are a few of the 22 different flavors at their store in Center Point:

I'm a big fan of granola and the O'Brien's granola is like crack. Good stuff!

Come What May

Wow, I missed the May update completely. Too much going on to try to recall all of it, but here are the highlights from May...

I designed book covers for a couple self-published authors I know. One for Casey:

And one for Jolene:

I'm also finalizing the design of 15 flavors of granola for O'Brien's Own, which will be sold in Hy-Vee grocery stores and numerous other grocery stores throughout Iowa. It's been a huge task designing 15 different products, but it'll be cool to see them on the store shelves! Not too long ago I shot senior pictures of their son and mentioned that I also am a graphic designer, so they asked me to take a shot at designing their new packaging and it turned out great.

The Quad City Air Show is normally later in the summer, but this year it was early and we had a perfect day for it. Cynthia, my dad, my brother and his wife all went with me and we had a blast! Got lots of good shots. Some of my best so far of the Blue Angels:

I'll add more air show photos in a separate post later.

We celebrated Cynthia's birthday and invited friends and family. The weather was awesome, so we set up in the garage and I grilled out.

I got her a really cool banjo for her birthday, too!

In May we went to the Bicycle Rodeo in Hiawatha and the girls both got new helmets. I bought Emily another bike (since she has outgrown her old one) and Rose is riding without training wheels now!

After a lot of waiting and anticipation, Cynthia and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road the night it opened. It was a blast! OH WHAT A DAY, WHAT A LOVELY DAY! So much fun and it exceeded my expectations. They've been filming it for years and I've been following the news and waiting for it to be released in theaters, so it was pretty exciting to finally see it. It did not disappoint.

The girls' both had artwork that was on display in May at the Cherry building in NewBo. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted the pics prematurely from my phone and only have one remaining:

In May we spent time in the backyard around the fire roasting marshmallows:

I saw these little dudes when I went for a walk during lunch one day – a baby snapping turtle and a toad:

Before school was out, we attended Garfield Elementary's 100th anniversary celebration:

We also went to the girls' outdoor school concert during the last week of school and sang our butts off. Actually, they sang and we did parent stuff like taking pictures and complaining about hearing all the same songs for the 3rd straight year, haha.