2011 was phenomenal. Insane. Exhilarating. Awesome. Joyful. Busy. Just all around generally incredible.

Probably my favorite year in my <27 years of existence.

Here’s just a few reasons why:

• Marriage – Best day of my life. We did it!! And it was wonderful!! Everything was perfect and beautiful, and everyone had a wonderful time. It couldn’t possibly have been much better. Not to mention our awesome honeymoon in Toronto (blog post coming soon, seriously)!!!!
• Israel – Best week of my life. Adam’s family, the sites, the history, the people, the FOOD!!! Such an amazing experience and SO thankful to have had it!
• Cooking – After returning from Israel and the week long experience of exquisite cuisine, I came back yearning for a healthier, more enjoyable lifestyle. And for me, that started with the abandonment of frozen bag dinners and the purchase of several great cookbooks (which eventually lead to Cuisine Week)!
• Genealogy – In between wedding planning and traveling, I was able to break through a few brick walls, connect with some distant cousins, and I even managed to win the GRAND freaking PRIZE in the Ancestry.com 15 Days of Discovery sweepstakes!! The trip to LA is in just a few weeks!!
• RootsTech – And going along with the genealogy stuff, I had the opportunity to attend the first ever RootsTech conference in February which was an awesome mashup of genealogy and technology. I’m already all booked for the second conference in Feb. 2012!
• CodeMash & An Event Apart (San Francisco) – My first two real web / developer conferences – all thanks to my new(ish) work home – Quicken Loans! These were a lot of fun, a lot to take in, and certainly reinvigorated my profession.

So much awesomesauce in 2011. It’s actually pretty hard for me to imagine 2012 being better than that.

No big life events planned and no super huge crazy travel plans. Just the Ancestry.com trip in January and RootsTech in February – which will both be awesome. After that I’ll be able to actually start conserving my time-off. Maybe towards the end of the year we’ll plan a bigger vacation, who knows what 2012 will bring?!

Time to go work on my list of New Years resolutions!

A good friend of mine is going through a very rough time and could use some help paying off her medical bills, please help if you can.

You can submit your donations to: GoFundMe

It would be the best Christmas gift she could ever receive.

For more on her story, visit: Living Incidentally

Exactly one month ago today, on 9.10.11, Adam and I were married at the lovely Misty Farms in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was by far the best day of my life! Everything (even the weather) turned out perfectly, everyone was happy, and all of our closest friends and family were there to celebrate with us.

And when I say that everything turned out perfectly, I’m sorta not kidding. I don’t mean to brag or anything (ok, maybe I want to brag a little), but we’ve received comments akin to “best wedding ever,” from multiple parties. One relative said that it was the most beautiful, fun and comfortable wedding that they’d ever attended – and these were exactly the things that Adam and I were aiming for all along!

Having visualized and planned nearly every aspect of the day myself, hearing these compliments has made me feel immensely successful and proud. I even have to wonder if maybe I should go into wedding planning one day.

Of course, none of the epic awesomeness that was could have been possible without our amazing team of family, friends, and vendors:

The Venue

Misty Farms was a beautiful location – the historic old barns provided the perfect atmosphere to ensure that everyone was able to relax and be themselves. Kelly, the owner, was a huge help in coordinating the event and offered a ton of great suggestions and services.

Cocktail hour!

Food & Drink

Katherine’s Catering had a wonderful selection of food options – all of which were excellently prepared. Our menu included tasty Michigan berry skewers, veggie lasagna, and pulled pork sandwiches. Katherine’s did a wonderful job coordinating with Whole Foods Market, who provided us with a great selection of Michigan pies and microbrews (Bell’s Amber and Bell’s Lager).

Whole Foods Market, as I just said, provided the drinks and dessert, as well as our absolutely beautiful flowers. We went with seasonally appropriate sunflowers for the bouquets, boutonnieres and corsages, and a mix of red, orange, yellow and green for the centerpieces.

Capturing & Creating the Moments

Kara Purtell Photography did an amazing job capturing the fun and joy of the day. We seriously couldn’t be happier with their work! Kara put together a beautiful selection of her favorite photos on her blog, and also created a lovely slideshow for us.

Wedit.com Videography is a sister company of Quicken Loans, where both Adam and I work, so we were thrilled to use their service. What do they do exactly? Well here’s our friend, Nate, explaining the dea:

DJ Lufru is the son of Misty Farm owner, Kelly Frutig. Luke kept the party going all night long, and maintained the awesome musical ambience throughout the rest of the day. He even played some dubstep (which was totally epic), and later spurred a dance off!

Dance off starts at 0:20

Want some more party footage? How’s 20 minutes of dancing? :)

The Details

Encore Studio did a great job of helping all of us ladies look our fabulous best! Their professionalism and calm nature kept us all staying chill and having fun!

Don Hare Transportation did a great job getting our guests to and from the ceremony and hotel. From what we heard, the shuttle ride back to the hotel at the end of the night was a pretty good time! They also chauffeured Adam and I back to the hotel in my convertible!

Etsy.com!! I got SO much of my inspiration and many of our supplies from various awesome Etsy sellers. [here's a bunch of that stuff]

A Few More Pics & Vids

And the whole ceremony:

OMG We’re married!!!

Honeymoon post coming soon!

My 1993 Pontiac Grand Prix.

The Prix has seen her share of good days and bad. From road trips to roadsides, I could always count on an exciting time. She’s come quite a far way in her lifetime of 18 years – rolling in at just over a quarter million miles!

And although she’s had her troubles over the past few years, she’s continued to press on well beyond my highest expectations! In fact, I’ll be taking her on her final hurrah this evening – a five hour, 300 mile drive to Illinois. At this point, I’m about 75% confident it will be smooth travels – so wish us luck!

Farewell, old gal. You’ll be well cared for where you’re going.

Lovely theme, eh? It’s called Color Paper and it’s FREE from Smashing Magazine.

That is all for now… stay tuned – cool things should start to happen soonish ;)

Very nice. Had to save this one :) Get Your Cyborg Name

Well, maybe I’ll go for more of a tumble log type setup – that way I can be short, sweet and simple.

Then again… how would that be any different from my Twitter account ?

Well, maybe I’ll post soon… maybe not. I make no promises, but I’ll try harder.

Ciao

Well, since I don’t really have a lot of time to write more than one blog post per month, I figured I’d link you all to my Twitter page where I have the chance to post once or twice a day.

You can find me at twitter.com/jewlofthelotus. Add me if you’re a Twitter-er (?), too. :)

I don’t tweet too often and I don’t necessarily tweet about what I am doing. But if I have something meaningful to say in less than 140 characters, I’ll tweet about it.

And so I give in to this Twitter thing.

Jewls

When I came to MSU, I thought that the music industry was where I belonged. I knew performance was definitely not the path for me, so I took the production route. MSU offers two courses in audio production, both of which I passed with flying colors, but neither of which left me with a strong sense of confidence or inspiration to jump into the business. This was not the fault of the professor. It just turns out that I’d rather just listen to music and appreciate it, than create it on my own and push it into a market that I won’t waste time critiquing at this time.

Last spring, after finishing both audio classes, I spent a lot of time worrying that I was headed down the wrong road. As I finished up my last audio class, I watched my boyfriend, Adam, code away and make websites. I liked his freedom and I liked that he was making something that people could use. With music, people can absorb it – listen to it, dance to it, appreciate it. With the internet, you can interact – with people and with applications. It only became clear to me recently, but interaction has always intrigued me. I guess this comes from my fascination with determinism – I enjoy observing interactions and the effects of those interactions. Human interaction is particularly interesting. In my interactions with people, I’ve always liked to play a mutual role – lots of different groups of friends, never taking sides in a fight. I’ve also always enjoyed entertaining people – throwing parties is one of my specialties, you know. I like a lot of different types of people, I don’t like fighting, and I like to make people happy. Plus, I enjoy interaction. So, how do I make a career of this? Well, I had a whole summer to figure things out. So, I headed to Europe and forgot about the future. I also signed up for a few web-related classes before I left.

As you may have heard, Europe was incredible and completely life-altering. I came back to Michigan eager to do something enjoyable with my life (as well as, return promptly back to Italy). So, I gave into Adam’s praise of Ruby on Rails and spent the rest of my summer working through RoR tutorials and reading Agile Web Development with Rails. When school started back up, I had a Computer-Mediated Communications class as well as an Interactive Media class. From there, I built ExpressiveConnections.com for my Interactive Media class, and learned a lot about online interaction in the CMC class. It was a good semester.

My Scripting Web 2.0 class this semester is great. My “Is God Dead?” class has allowed me to explore determinism among other things more. And the other classes are, well, okay.

So, I’m enjoying the internet. I really enjoyed making Expressive Connections. I want to learn more, and I want to be really good at it all one day. I’ve only been doing this web thing for eight months, though. So, I feel like I have a ways to go. I also feel like I missed out on a lot during the first three years of college….I could have been taking programming courses and database classes. (It especially irks me that when I was in high school making websites for rock bands (the faces of greenwheel) and templates for Diary-x journals, or Freshman year of college when I made an online portfolio, that I didn’t recognize my interest in the web then. I guess I can excuse myself in high school since the characteristics of today’s “Web 2.0” (like interaction, participation, customization, and collaboration), weren’t quite there yet. I didn’t see the full potential of the web, then. And, I guess I can excuse myself for Freshman year because I built my portfolio site using Adobe GoLive and it was a frustrating experience, to say the least. However, looking at the old source code today gives me a good laugh.)

So now I’m going to graduate and need to figure out what I’m going to do with myself after that. I think I’ve almost come to some sort of clear rational decision, but I’m not there yet. Here are some things I’ve been thinking about:

1. Grad School – Human-Computer Interaction at U of M
2. Freelancing…
3. A real job somewhere…

I like freelancing because I can be my own boss and work on my own hours. I’m hesitant about getting a “real job” mostly because I have only been doing this 8 months. I barely have a relevant resume. And, I feel like there’s a lot more that I should know before going for a “real job.” Finally, there’s grad school. Honestly, this program at U of M sounds perfect. And applying is 90% positively in my near future, however, before I apply – I need to get Michigan residency. No more of these Out-of-State fees, thank you. When I am able to get residency, though, will determine which semester I am able to apply for. If I wait to get a place in Ann Arbor after graduation and then get residency, the soonest I could apply for is Winter admission. So, then I’d need to find something to do on a full-time basis between May and January. Whether that would be freelancing or a job or an internship – I have NO IDEA.

Sigh. But that is where I am now. Trying to make decisions. Excited about the future, unsure of how I’m getting there. I’m good at planning, though. So, hopefully it will all come together soon.

If you read this far, please leave a comment so I can bake you a cake.

Jewls

• TC448 – Scripting Web 2.0
• ADV456 – Interactive Advertising
• REL491 – Is God Dead? Pantheism, Nihilism, and the Pursuit of Divine Knowledge
• PSY330 – Personality from a Psychoanalytic Perspective
• CAS380 – Job Search Strategies

Two of my classes are relatively related to my field, Scripting Web 2.0 goes over Ruby on Rails, MySQL, and Apache, and is taught by Kurt Demaagd, co-founder of Slashdot and board member on the Perl Foundation. So, needless to say – I’m pretty excited about that one.

The other class potentially beneficial to my future is Interactive Advertising. The class is centered around a group project in which we have to develop a predominantly online advertising plan for a local business. My group is working with John Kodeski of Relish Culinary Boutique. Now, if you visited that link – you’ll see that the site could use some work and this is where our group comes in with a plan (and also where I come in with my web skills – if he likes our plan, maybe I’d be the one to redesign the site, eh?).

The “Is God Dead?” class, is one of my more enjoyable courses. We’re currently discussing the viewpoints of the Dutch philosopher, Spinoza (Pantheism), and the German philosopher, Jacobi, who argued against Spinoza’s views. It’s pretty interesting stuff, if you’re into deep philosophical thoughts of God and the freedom of man, that is.

Next, there’s Personality from a Psychoanalytic Perspective with Bertram Karon. Pretty smart guy, pretty interesting stuff – however, I had him before in Abnormal Psychology and already I’m hearing the same stories . Still, interesting stuff.

And finally, Job Search Strategies. I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do.

Additionally, I’m taking introductory yoga classes at Center for Yoga in East Lansing. Those are pretty nice. Good stress relief.

Between all of these classes, I have been working on the site – which will probably be in some sort of alpha mode within in the next few weeks. Once finalized, I’ll of course post it here. I’ve also been working on a portfolio site for myself, once that is up – I’ll post it here, too. And on the weekends, I spend time with Adam. And that’s pretty much life.

Some other random thoughts over the last month:

• iPhone is AWESOME.
• I should have said this back in November but Incubus’ new album – Light Grenades is AWESOME.
• Going back to Europe in July will be AWESOME.
• And if you’ve read this far into my post, YOU ARE AWESOME.

I’ll stop now.

Take care now, bye-bye then.
Jewls