8th time around!

Yesterday was Mackenzie's 8th birthday. For her, it was a modest and mellow event, considering her past birthdays almost always ended up with an evening at Chuck E Cheese. No night out, just the family at home with a small dinner, some cake, and a few choice presents. As part of my effort to cut back on the amount of useless crap my kids tend to end up with, she got quality over quantity. No crappy toys this year...

Her presents this year consisted of 2 light-weight jackets (one track and one hoodie), a couple pairs of nice jammies, a Hannah Montana music CD, a movie called ROXY HUNTER (about a 9-year-old girl detective), a pair of silver Converse shoes, and the Grand Prize Of Them All, a pink Nintendo DS.

She was very excited about all of them, especially the DS, of course. Like the rest of the family, she loves her Gameboy, and this is the first one she has owned that was not a Hand-Me-Down. All in all, a good day for her...

Octo-Bot!

Mostly as an exercise in creativity and/or stress release, I have a tendency to start working on designs for no particular reason. With all of the various projects (whether freelance, personal, or work related) I am working on, I find it's a nice break to just play around with something that has no deadline.

One the of the ideas I have been playing with is the "Mighty and terrible Octo-Bot, with its Tentacles of Doom!" (as shown here). This design really serves no purpose, other than being a fun looking image. But, it might make a neat t-shirt design.

Recently, some friends of mine (such as artist Sean Dietrich) have been getting involved with submitting t-shirt designs to sites like Threadless and Design By Humans. I'm not sure how well they've done with those submissions, but considering that those designs that are chosen are printed and paid for, I'm thinking about submitting this design for consideration. However... I'm not sure if this design is strong enough, or if I should drop the words, or change the color. I may play around with it a bit first...