First Day of School

HAHA just kidding!!! :)

First time in a long time (18 years to be exact) I don't have a first day of school!

Finally got this in the mail last week (it only took them 3 months)

Now I can sign my name as Heidi Beutel, BA

;)

I've had many mini trips this summer (with a few more to come). I went on a sister's trip for 4 days a couple weeks ago (pictures to come eventually), this past weekend I was in PA with 11 other people, this weekend I fly to IA with a few other people, and I'm going to Boston for 1 night and then watching the Spirit of America show the weekend of the 13th.

Just using up my days off!

Graduation Party

Last night Mom & Dad had a small graduation party for me. Before the party, we went out to eat with my Grandpa & Grandma Gerber, Dan & Dorothy, Jay, U. Richard & Mariah, Mom, Dad, and us 3 kids. At 7:30 people came over for cake, ice cream, and smores. Dorothy made the cupcakes with the letters on them.

And since we are on the topic of graduation, here are some of the pictures that I got from the photographer that was at the graduation ceremony. We had our picture taken a few times as we walked up to get our "diplomas" (Still haven't received it in the mail yet....I think I graduated ;)

There was about 1200-1400 graduates.

Shaking some lady's hand...not sure who she is.

Graduation!!

I am officially a CCSU Alumni!!

Today was graduation at the XL Center in Hartford. The graduates had to be there no later than 9:15 am. Dad, Mom, Dorothy & I went out to breakfast before heading to the XL Center. Stupid me... I didn't think to charge the batteries of my camera so before I even walked up to receive my "diploma" both the batteries were dead! :(

Thanks to Kim & Christy we were able to get some photos afterwards outside!

Some of the design students before walking in

Kristen & I during the ceremony

Walking in. It didn't take too long to spot Mom & Dad. They had good seats...only a few rows from the front.

At the end a bunch of blue and white balloons with CCSU on them dropped from the ceiling

Pictures outside in the street after the ceremony

And I'm ALL DONE!!! :)

And....I'm DONE!

School is officially over for me! It's been a long 5 years but I'm glad my advisor at Asnuntuck steered me in this direction. :)

Now, I just have to wait for graduation on May 17th to make it official!

Photo credit: http://www.graphios.com/poster-printing/

^^ So true! ^^

It's Up!

I just had to pop in and say that my website is officially up and running! Yahoo!

Check it out here: www.designbyheidi.net

Almost Over FOREVER!

Next week is my last day of classes!! AAAAHHHHHH! :)

Then finals week after that and I am done FOREVER!!!! My finals consist of giving a presentation and uploading our 4 projects to YouTube or Vimeo and sending the links to the teacher. 

May 2nd, we have a Senior Design Showcase in the library at school from 4-8 PM. All the students in the senior design class pick some of their best work and put it all on a board to set up at their station. We had to brand ourselves and get business cards printed. I just heard my business cards are ready today, so I'll pick them up tomorrow!

This is my new logo:

We also needed to create a presence online to showcase some of our work and so that people could find us. I bought the domain designbyheidi.net but as you can see, there isn't anything up yet :) Hopefully I'll have something up by next Friday!

Opening Credits for the Movie RV

Lately all I have to post are videos! :) I do have pictures to post but I don't have them on my computer yet.

The following video was project #3 for our class. We had to do the opening credits for any movie. Since I don't watch many movies I only had a select few to choose from :) I chose to do it for RV. It's a pretty funny movie where a dad decides he is taking his family camping in a RV. They meet another family and by the end they end up becoming friends. (That is a very simple description of the movie - they have many funny mishaps along the way.)

In the opening credits we had to include elements from the movie. The first RV you see is the one that the main family drives. Before the dad even gets it down the road 20 feet, he runs over a garbage can and knocks both stone lights over at the end of their driveway. The red bus is what the other family drives.

Turn your sound on because my favorite part is when the garbage can gets run over. There's sound to it! :)  You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a metal smashing sound for free online! Took me a while to find one.

Enjoy! :)

And don't forget to watch my CCSU video to give us views!

CCSU - Not Your Typical Business School

Today I'm asking a favor of you...we had to create a video about CCSU's school of business and try and make it go viral for my Social Media Marketing class. So, we have our video made and now need to make it go viral. I'll be honest....it's pretty boring to watch but if you could just click the link and watch it, that would be amazingly nice of you! :) If you're feeling really generous you can click through a couple times. Or you can just refresh the page instead of clicking replay when the video is done.

Here's the link: CCSU - Not Your Typical Business School

Thanks so much! :)

My first two videos

In one of my design classes this semester, we are learning to use Adobe After Effects. It is a movie making/editing software. It is kind of interesting but definitely not my favorite.

Here is my first project. We had to watch three vieos that she gave us and then create something of our own that was similar to one of the three videos.

This is the project that I just created today. We had to come up with something that we could create a stop motion sequence with in After Effects. This is what I came up with! Sorry it's a little fast....I don't know how to change that part.... :)

The Homestretch

Tomorrow I start my last semester of college! Like I told a co-worker today, you gotta start in order to finish, so let's get the ball rolling! ;)

My schedule isn't too bad:

work on Mondays (all day), 

2 classes on Tuesday: 8-9:15 & 3:05-4:20 (gotta love a 6 hour break!), 

3 classes and work on Thursday: 8-9:15, work, 3:05-4:20, & 4:30-7:10, 

and 1 class on Friday: 9:25-1:30.

And I get Wednesdays off! :)

I'm headed to AZ during my spring break. Meeting up with David, Heather, & Andrea at my great uncle and aunt's place. So, when that comes that means the semester is about half over, yippee! :)

Officially Done!

I am now officially done with school until January 10th!! Because of the snow that we had on Tuesday, the college closed at 4 PM so my exam time was postponed until today at 4:30 PM. After my work holiday party I drove down to school, dropped my CD (with 4 pictures on it) at my teachers office and drove home again!

Although I have no homework I am sure to keep busy with all the stuff that Mom says I have to do :)

Two Sunday's ago we had the Gerber Christmas at my aunt's house so pictures from that to come soon!

Almost done

for the semester!!

Today I emailed my last paper of the semester (thankfully!!) to my teacher since she won't be on campus tomorrow during the exam time. Also tomorrow, I have to turn in my final project for my 3D class. I get to drive all the way there (40 min) to turn in a CD with 4 pictures on it and then turn around and come all the way home! Oh well, that's ok, because once I get home that means I'm done until January 10th!! :)

Here's a sample of my final project

 In this class we learned how to use the software called Maya. We created our coffee packaging project from last semester. It's neat stuff but not something I really want to do full time. It's intense and requires a lot of memorizing how to do things.

To view my first live site, go to beutel.ccsudesign.com. Our final project in web 2 was to create a portfolio site for ourselves and then put it on the server. Not sure exactly what happened when it got put on the server, but somehow the image links got broken so not all images will display a bigger image when you click on it (in the portfolio section). If you are interested you can "contact me" and let me know what you think. The contact form actually works! If you fill in everything and hit submit, I'll get an email. No dumb comments please :)

This Past Weekend

This past weekend I was privileged enough to get to go out to Ohio and see my friend Amber (and her husband too:)! We left early Friday morning (as in I got up at 4:30) and we were on the road about 6:15. I went out with Amber's parents and her sister & brother-in-law.

We got out to OH around 3:30ish and were able to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening at Bryan & Amber's house. Friday night we all played a round of Monopoly and went to bed about 12:40 am on Saturday. 

On Saturday after breakfast we brought the decorations to the Fellowship Hall so Bryan's mom & sister could set up for the reception that night. After that, we drove around Amish country for a while and stopped at a couple stores.

The reception was from 5-7 PM and I wore my outfit for the last time! After the reception, we went back to their house and they opened presents.

Sunday was church and in the afternoon my friend from Smithville came to Rittman for the afternoon service so that I could see her at least a little bit. After the afternoon service was over, we changed clothes and hit the road again! I got home 12:30 this morning and went to bed! :)

I shared a room with this furry fellow:

I slept in Cheyenne's room and that is her pet tarantula. Thankfully there was a cover on the cage, so it didn't come visit me during the night :) She also has a crab in another cage on the floor.

Overall a very nice weekend!

An update on the last post:

I don't know if any of you heard/saw it, but the guy on campus was dressed in his Halloween costume. He got charged with breach of peace and had orders to not go back on campus until he talked with some Director of something. Instead of doing that, he went back on campus on Tuesday and got arrested again! Smart fellow! NOT!

Not your average Monday...

Well....today didn't go as planned, that's for sure!

I got to school and ate my sandwich in my car. Around 12:00 I got out and started walking to class. An announcement came on outside saying, "Get inside and stay away from all doors and windows." They said it twice, so I figured they meant business. Although, no one else seemed to be in a hurry.

 When I got to the building that my class was in, I was walking up the stairs to the second floor, and one of my classmates was coming down and asked me if I had heard the announcement. Yeah I did and I didn't really care to go back outside! :) There were a few of us standing at the end of the hallway (by a window!) since when we got there, all the classroom doors were already shut and locked and then noticed at the other end, there was some more people, so we went over there. From there we could see the top one or two floors and the roof of the building where the guy was.

From what I heard, the guy was dressed in camo pants, a SWAT bullet-proof vest, knee pads, with a sword strapped to his back, caring a full duffel bag, and had a handgun.

While we were watching (we could see a couple police/SWAT people running around with their guns) some more people came over and were standing with us. One of the people was the guy who called 9-1-1. Apparently, the guy was on a city bus from a Taco Bell to school, and no one called the cops! He got off the bus at school and was walking on campus towards James Hall. The person that called 9-1-1 noticed that he had the weird garb on, plus the sword. When he saw the gun he knew something wasn't right. And the rest is history....

Here's a map of where I was compared to James Hall: 

(Click on the image to make it larger)

After we heard that they had gotten the guy (along with 2 others) everyone pretty much booked it out of there. We went out the other end of the building so we were not near the activity. There were a couple cops in the parking garage but no one stopped us from leaving. Those that were in buildings closer to the activity didn't get to leave quite as early and then got stuck in the traffic of everyone trying to leave.

I left around 3 PM. So, basically I went to school to sit in the hallway for 3 hours....fun! Oh well, glad that I'm home safe and no one is hurt (that I'm aware of anyways)!

More information and pictures

My Last First Day

Tomorrow is my first day of my last year!! In some ways I just want to start and get it over with but on the other hand I just plain don't want to go to school. I'm sick of all the homework (Mom is too :) and would rather just stay home and goof off go to work.

Oh well, I guess I can't complain considering the fact that I only have school Monday-Wednesdays. So that means this week I only have school tomorrow and next week, since we have Monday off, I only have Tuesday & Wednesday :)

Two days!

Two days left until I'm done with school for the semester!!!! :)

My last exam is done on Tuesday at 10 AM and then I'll be a free woman after that! ;)

Then on Friday I fly out to IL for the weekend and drive home with my brother. And that's a start to a busy summer! :)

Create a favicon

For my web design class, as our last project, we had to create a website for ourselves to showcase all the design work we have done. Below is the design that I ended up going with

We also had to create a logo for ourselves. See mine below:

On the website I added a little bevel & emboss and a drop shadow to it

Now to get to the title of the post, a favicon is "a 16 x 16-pixel icon associated with a particular website, usually displayed before the URL in a web browser" (from dictionary.com)

Example:

So for mine, I just used the logo that I made, made sure it was square and less then 100KB.

Next you go to your blogger dashboard and go to the layout section

Select the edit button in the favicon section and this window will pop up:

All you have to do now is click choose file and browse for your image and then hit save

Now when your blog is open in a tab, that image will show up like I showed in the example. It will also show up next to your blog on someone else's blog list.

Just a fun little tidbit, if you have a blog, to make your blog more personal and more "you".

Cup A Kope

For design class we had to come up with a package design for a coffee company. To start, the teacher gave us the name "Coffee Break." We could pick a different name once we knew who our target audience was. I chose to target those in the age range of 20-50, and I forget what else (I don't have my paper with me). Something to do with people who want to go to Hawaii but don't have the time and money right now. :)

These pictures are from when I put them together. My teacher is a stickler on making sure the quality of the assembling is 100%.

To start, I used a straight edge and x-acto knife to cut the straight edges. Then I glued everything together and used clothes pins to hold it together until the glue dried.

Now comes the hard part...cutting the curved part. I was really nervous because the teacher wanted it to be perfect. I used a scissors and went really slow. 

And they turned out better then I thought they would! I was super excited!!! :)

A close up of the logo that I designed for it. The little hut I made in Photoshop.

The sides. The image on the front wraps around to the right side of the package.

The back. We had to include the ingredients, brewing instructions, and a few organic/natural logos.

And the front of all three (from the top)...

Hawaiian Delight

Chocolate Raspberry

Vanilla Macadamia Nut

My photo shoot setup...the kitchen table with black boards :)

I'm back!

Betcha didn't even know I was gone did ya? Cause I post so often on here ;)

This past Friday, I headed west to the wonderful state of OH with my family. It was invite a friend and invite a couple. I had a blessed weekend and was sad to come home! I came home Sunday with 3 other girls while Mom & Dad & family stayed Sunday night. They are on their way home right now and I'm at school. Lovely! :)

I have a quiz to take online, but I have to read the chapter first, so I guess I had better hop on that! 

I do have pictures to put up (from this weekend and from lots of weeks before :), but since I'm on the wrong computer, that won't be happening right now! I will sometime though.....

And since I don't have anything else to show you, I'll show you a website that I'm working on for my web design class. This is the home page:

NOTE: this is not completely finished yet...as in some fonts are missing

The lower level page is designed but not presentable in Dreamweaver yet, so I'm not showing it! :)

These are a few of the pictures I took for the site. I'm actually headed here for lunch in a few...

This is the "One Hot Guy" sandwich

 

Chicken Caesar Salad

The "Stoopish" sandwich

Hungry yet? I am! :)