It suddenly dawned on me that it’s October. And not just October, but well, well into October. The period leading into the holidays is my most busy period, and the revelation that it’s already fall lead to a bit of a manic Must Get All The Things Done period this past week. Here’s what I’m working on:

3D printed New Home Ornament

Back at the start of September I downloaded SketchUp since the online reviews were pretty good, and it was my favorite price tag – free. It took about a month of playing with 3D design software before I began to get the hang out of it. I’d open up the tool, much around for an hour making no progress and still completely confuddled by the 3d environment. It wasn’t until October that things started clicking. I now have a prototype of the 3D new home ornament. I’ve even uploaded the design to shapeways to verify the design file works. That’s the good news.

The bad news is the design looks to be a bit more delicate to be printed well in colored sand stone. The service will print it, but I’m dubious as to how it will turn out, though at the under $7 price point I wouldn’t be out much to try. (I expect my model to cost closer to $10 when finished). Shapeways is experimenting with colored plastic, which would cost me closer to $13 (guessing $16-18 when finished). At that price point I don’t really want to spend too much time iterating. Not that I have that much time to iterate. This project may not be completed the way I want it to be before the holidays.

At least the design can keep, and technology has a tendency to improve dramatically over even short time intervals.

Hand Print Craft Project

Remember the hand print I took of Alexis last December? It was for a Christmas craft project. I initially planned to finish the craft project last Christmas, but had forgotten how quickly those first few days go by. I’m hoping to finish it before this Christmas.

Holiday Card

I had only the vaguest ideas of the design I wanted before today. After a little google searching to get the creative juices flowing, I settled on a mostly geometric (and thus easy for me to do!) design for this years card and did a quick mock up. I’m quite pleased with the design.

I opted to go for a single photo layout. I’m hoping to get a good family photo by Thanksgiving, but that’s been a bit of a challenge in it’s own right. Which leads me to…

Family Portrait

I still haven’t replaced the canvas print above the mantel. It bugs me that the big family photo is missing one of our family members. It takes a couple of weeks to print a canvas print, and depending on where we have our photos taken, a couple weeks to get the digital negatives. I’ll probably book a session for early November, October is super busy because…

Halloween Preparations

This will be Nicole’s first year trick or treating, so we’re doing the whole shebang: pumpkin patches, pumpkin carvings, Halloween costumes, etc.

Posted in Family Life