this is your life

saw this today and I want it on my wall. love.

Buy here at Holstee

Duvet...Hooray!

Today we spend the entire afternoon at the laundry mat getting all of our laundry done. We had to wash our old comforter, a bunch of sheets, new brown sheets, and lots of blankets and clothes, so we went to the laundry mat to get it all done at once.
When we got back we broke out the down comforter (that Joe got me like 10 years ago!) that I have been waiting to use when we found a nice duvet cover. Well I finally found one I liked (the one Joe got me for my b-day). I am so excited, it looks really good! We have a had the same comforter for 10 years, so it's nice to see a new one on there! Even though the new duvet cover is little bigger than the actual down comforter, I think it will work OK. We also put our new tan/brown sheets on and they look great! I'm excited to get in the new comfy and cool new bed.
The picture on the left is the duvet cover. I got plain brown sheets to go with instead of the pattern so ours will have less of that pattern than what is shown in the picture, but I really like it. It's from Crate and Barrel. LOVE. I want to re-do the whole room. I want to paint, but I will probably hold off in case we move. Now I just need a new rug, new art, lamps and accessories to finish the room! Ha-ha. I wish. Eventually we'll get it all together!

STITCH 2010

This year I participated in a fun industry event called, STITCH. Myself and 6 other Harrington Alumni worked together to create an awesome entry for this years show. We were asked really late in the game by Kimball Office, an office furniture company if they could sponsor a team of alumni for this event. We accepted the challenge and met multiple times in only a couple weeks to conceptualize, design, and finally sew and create the dress. It was SO much fun. We had a great team! Our dress came out SOOO neat and our makeup and hair concept was just perfect. We got so many compliments on our entry, ours was clearly one of the most well-made and interesting garments on the runway. We found out later that we were only ONE point away from winning the coveted "Best in Show" Award. Oh well! We knew who the real winner was! Ours was AWESOME!

Here's the scoop on the event...
STITCH is IIDA-Illinois' biggest event that pairs Chicago's most talented Designers with industry manufacturers to create one-of a kind, wearable garments for the runway show of the year. The theme this year was "A STITCH in Time: Design for a Decade." So the idea was to take any time period or decade and create a conceptual (not literal) interpretation of anything from that decade or representing the entire decade.
The Harrington Alumni team created a wearable garment for our model out of Kimball Office's exclusive Maharam fabric.

Our official concept was:
Victorian Illusion. Inspired by illusion, transformation, and 1880's Victorian style.
Magic makes something out of nothing -- it transforms,
Transformation is mysterious -- or is it simply an illusion?

More about our design... Victorian fashion was characterized by large collars and bustles, corsets, tiny waists, and the use of birds and feathers in their hats and hair accessories. Magic was also experiencing its "golden age" due to the advancements in technology. many magicians created the illusion of pulling things out of their top hats or making birds disappear. Our model, Enza, emerged from a large magicians top hat (which we also created), she revealed herself by pulling the hat down. She emeged....a modern version of a Victorian "bird", complete with feathers in the hair, on her eyelashes, and feather-like pieces of fabric on the skirt of her dress. She walked to the song, "I Can Transform Ya" by Chris Brown

Here is the video that I made out of all the photos and video that myself and everyone else took. It was SOOOO fun!  You can watch it here (small) or click the link below to watch it large! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sul5f3qAnY Turn up your speakers and watch in 480p for best quality!!

Boys Coming + Office Re-do!

I am very excited for Joe's brothers Ben and Andy to visit us next week!! I love having visitors! Andy arrives on Sunday night from Omaha and Ben arrives on Monday night from Las Vegas, where he is currently working with the Air Force. We have a kayak tour on the Chicago river planned for Wednesday night, which is also Ben's birthday! I am SO excited for that and I am praying that the weather is decent. It has been GORGEOUS weather all this week - and next week they are saying storms starting on Monday through Wednesday, which is when they will be here! Crap! I hope it doesn't storm all day so we can go out and do fun things, and of course, we don't want our kayak tour to be cancelled! Cross your fingers!

Joe and I decided to do a major overhaul of the office/2nd bedroom in our apartment, and of course we waited until right before the boys come to start doing it! This past weekend we got a new twin bed which will be a nice addition to our 2nd bedroom. Even though a twin is small, at least it something other than the sofa or air mattress! Then, after searching for weeks I finally found a decent twin comforter set that wasn't super expensive or super ugly - at Target no less! I love you, Target!  I was surprised at how hard it was to find a decent twin set. Everything we liked wasn't available in a twin...I guess that's because usually twin beds are for kids. ;-)  Our thought was that this mattress can be used for our future children too, and for now be a nice extra guest bed.
So I spackled the holes and cracks and taped earlier this week and yesterday we went and got paint and started painting. We got about 1/2 way done with the room and it looks SOO good!! I am loving the color - a very light gray.  They never painted our apartment in between tenants before we moved in (FOUR years ago) and so the walls were pretty dinged up. Plus, the color is your typical yellowy white...forgiving for apartment walls, but just plain ugly to me. Joe and I didn't ever want to paint our apartment because we don't own it, so it seems wasteful, and because we might have to paint it back before we move out. But having painted just half of the room now makes me wish we had painted the whole place RIGHT when we moved in! I can't tell you how much better it looks! I might have to just live in that room 24/7!
I will finish painting tomorrow and put everything back in the room and reorganize it. Then we have most of Saturday and part of Sunday to clean and get ready for the boys' arrival. YAY! So excited!
:-)

Saturday I am also doing TurboKick on stage at the Taste of Chicago with my turbokick instructor from TEAMiFIT. We are only doing half of one round of Turbokick, which is about a half and hour. Wish me luck!

D4D - Garden Planting

This has been a busy couple weeks of volunteering for me! On Friday I volunteered to help plant a garden with Designs for Dignity at the Madonna House. D4D is a local organization that provides interior design services to area non-profits. With the support of manufacturers, vendors and volunteers they are able to transform environments for those in need.

I signed up to help plant from 10-2, but when I got there at 10, they had a lot done already. I still helped plant a bunch of day lilies and also helped spread mulch and clean up a bit. I ended up being done by about 12:30 or so. In total they ended up planting a bunch of perennials and several trees in the backyard and creating more of a landscaped yard which was only grass before.

The Madonna House is a place for women and children that's affiliated with catholic charities. Recently D4D redesigned the interiors for them. They created a video showing the interior project as well as a couple other projects they have done... I LOVE the video, seeing it inspired me to get involved with them. This was the first thing I have done for them, but hopefully I can do more in the future.

I am posting the video below...the music is perfect and the designs that they did are amazing because they work only with donations. Watch the video and be sure to turn your sound up! :-)

5 Minutes of Fame Continues...

More of my 5 minutes of fame...
Harrington College of Design has a blog where they feature important news about things going on at the school, alumni, general design stuff. Well, they asked if they could write a story about me winning the IIDA Logo Contest for their blog....and here it is.....enjoy. I promise I will quit bragging after this! Ha-ha.
http://myharringtoncollege.com/2010/04/01/harrington-alumna-mindy-zimmer-wins-iida-illinois-logo-competition/

I WON!

 A couple months ago submitted several logo designs for IIDA Illinois' logo contest. The board narrowed all of the logos down to 4 finalists that all members of the Illinois chapter were going to vote on. Two of the designs were mine, so I had a good chance of winning! Shortly after the voting I found out that mine was winning but that they had gotten some comments from downstate members that the designs only represented Chicago... So after many adjustments working with the board we finally got down to the final design! IIDA sent out an email this week announcing me as the winner! Yay! See the flyer here: FLYER The flyer also shows the final winning logo.

So, not only does my design get to be on all of the IIDA Illinois flyers, materials, website, etc, BUT I also won an Eames Molded Plastic Arm Chair with the Eiffel Tower/Wire Base!!! I am so excited because I am a lover of Eames furniture and design. If I could have all of my house filled with their furniture, I would!! This is such a great chair, comfortable and versatile. I am so excited that I will own one!
I am having trouble deciding what color to get though, so I haven't ordered it yet. Can't decide if I want to go with the classic and iconic red or if I should go more neutral and get white. Hmmm. I need to decide soon though! See the photos of the chair below:

Design ~ 5 Cents

Today I went and interviewed at a temp/placement agency that only works with architects and designers. I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and go in for this "interview" just to be added to their file in case jobs come in. The man pretty much told me that he has been doing his job (placing architects and designers in jobs) for 25 years and he has never seen a downturn as bad, as long, or as deep as this one in our industry. Great. He also told me that 2009 was bad and that they don't anticipate that 2010 will be any better for our industry. Great. Nothing I haven't heard I guess. I am just ready to get back to work, whatever kind of work that may be.
So, at least I will be in in their system now and if something does come up I could get chosen for a project specific temp job or something. I also sent my resume in for a showroom manager job the other day. I am really hoping that they call me about that one, its the only glimmer of hope I have at the moment.
Also, a friend sent me this article today. I thought it was pretty good. Maybe I need to think of something that I can do to "reinvent" myself? I feel like I already did that with my career switch to interior design though, so maybe that's why I am so hesitant to figure out the next best thing that I can do. I JUST WANT TO WORK AGAIN (preferably doing something semi related to my field)!!
Enjoy the article, I thought it was interesting...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/garden/21architects.html?em

Laid Off but Keeping Busy

I don't have much to write about today. Of course once I start a blog I cant think of anything cool or interesting to write about!! Before I actually committed to this thing I had TONS of ideas! Arg...writers block I guess. ;-)
SO, I can write about some general stuff that I've been up to.... so here comes long boring stories....watch out people, I'm reeeally good at typing looong stories. ;-)

As many of you know I was laid off from my job back in February. I can't believe its been this long already...it really is too bad. I have gotten to the point where I am OK with it and I don't feel sorry for myself because it has become all to common around here. Unfortunately, people are STILL getting laid off in my industry. Anything related to building and construction and architecture is pretty much in the crapper right now.

The Chicago architecture and design industry is HUGE, there is a great network of professionals here and SO many people are out of work, its crazy. The architecture firm that I worked for is down to a pretty small group of people now. The interiors group that I was in within the firm is pretty much non-existent. Its crazy to have so many of my friends unemployed. People keep saying that this happens a lot in my industry and it always bounces back...but it sure it taking a while!! I guess its good that it happened early in my career because I will be "more prepared" when it happens again (right?!)... ha-ha....I don't know if one is ever prepared for getting laid off. Even though I knew it was coming eventually I was still shocked. I must say now that the experience I got there was good and I am glad I got the chance to work in a firm and get my foot in the door! Even though I wasn't the happiest there and it sort of was a blessing in disguise to be laid off, I sure wish I had another firm to go to! Too bad no one is hiring. :-(

All I have to say is thank god for unemployment and thank god that Joe still has a job that doesn't seem to be in jeopardy at this point! Whew! Not that things have been easy for us though...living on one income, especially here in a pretty expensive city, is not easy to say the least.

I have been able to earn some extra cash by doing private tutoring at my Alma-mater, Harrington College of Design. I pretty much started tutoring on the side soon after I graduated in 2007. I am hired privately by students to tutor them in Auto CAD, Photoshop, and other courses that they take for interior design degree. Its a good gig because it keeps my skills up to date and its pretty good money.

So, I was doing the tutoring privately, but recently I was hired on part-time at school as a Teaching Assistant in the classrooms and a tutor/learning assistant in the computer labs where students go to work on their projects. Luckily that is giving us some extra income for now that's a little more steady. Its pretty fun, the only thing is that I am gone for long hours on Wed and Thurs nights.... until like 10pm....darn those long night classes! Sure makes me miss regular work days! Poor Joe has to fend for himself with dinner those nights. You don't even want to know what he has called "dinner" for the past few weeks! Someday he will learn to cook something other than mac 'n' cheese! ha-ha.

Along with TA-ing and tutoring, I am also keeping busy serving as the board Secretary/Treasurer for my school's Alumni Association. Seems like I always have a meeting of some sort to attend. I go to the regular board meetings, plus two different committee meetings, PLUS the executive committee meetings since I am part of that as well. It keeps me very busy and the experience and contacts I get are great! Our board is really gearing back up again after some time of having no active alumni board. We are going to get some neat things done for the alumni and the school. Looking forward to what we have coming up.
Below is a link to the last newsletter that we created. Alumni newsletters are a semi-new thing for our school, so please ignore the awkward formatting, we have students working on it! ;-) It still looks pretty nice.
I wrote the article about Kickball and organized that event, it was fun! http://www.fathompbm.com/CEC/Harrington_College_of_Design/200908-HCD-Alumni-Newsletter.pdf

I also serve on the Membership Committee for the Chicago Chapter of IIDA (International Interior Design Association). Those meetings are only once a month, but with all of my other meetings, it sure seems like they are all the time! http://www.iida.org/

So needless to say, I am definitely keeping myself busy...more busy now than I was when I was first laid off which is good because at times I was getting stir-crazy just being home all the time! Luckily, during the summer I was able to get out and walk the dogs a lot and try to enjoy it. Now that Fall has arrived I am definitely going to be more of a homebody when I am not working at school or at meetings! Brrr!

So that's my life right now, or most of it anyway...more to come....
Time to relax now and watch the news, I had a long day of tutoring and meetings (shocker!).
Good night for now!