Brody's birth announcement + Christmas card infographic

I had such a great response regarding last year's Christmas card infographic that I knew I had to do something similar this year. Since Brody was born at the end of November, I decided to merge my Christmas letter and his birth announcement together. Being the obsessive compulsive busybody that I am, I had the initial layout done way back in like April or May. No judging. I also included a 4x6 photo with similar graphics on it with every card.

Overall, I am pretty excited how they turned out. Merry Christmas and enjoy!

Blue Lake Community Church website redesign

I was given the great opportunity to redesign Blue Lake Community Church's website over the last few months and it's finally up and running. This was a fun project having very few limitations and Pastor Pycraft has been great to work with (sorry, no dreaded client horror stories here.) I'll be responsible for keeping the website updated weekly with new bulletins, YouTube videos of the sermons, calendar events, etc. Thank you Kevin and BLCC for the opportunity to work with you!

Donating time + talent

I'm a firm believer that if you are blessed with a certain talent or skill, there's no reason that you shouldn't use that gift to better a cause or circumstance... without seeking reward or monetary gain. I've blogged a few times about my favorite news cast showcasing how photographers are donating their time and skill to take better adoption photos for local animal shelters. Well, I'm no photographer, but I do know a thing or two about marketing and design. I just wanted to take the time to showcase a few projects I've taken on pro-bono to prove that it doesn't take much time or effort to make a difference in a cause you feel passionate about.

So get out there people. Donate your time and talents to whatever cause floats your boat. It's worth it.

Lakeshore Pet Alliance

Logo design

Because Of Mandy

Logo design

Website design & maintenance

Twitter account setup and maintenance

YouTube channel setup and maintenance

Harbor Humane Society

Fundraising group logo design

Animal Placement Bureau

Monthly e-newsletters

March 2012 issue

February 2012 issue

January 2012 issue

December 2011 issue

November 2011 issue

October 2011 issue

Christmas card/infographic

I can't take all the credit for this because I stole the idea off Pinterest, but I decided to do away with the traditional Christmas letter and turn mine into a letter/infographic. With it, I included our family photo.

Merry Christmas everyone!

The Archambaults

Because of Mandy website redesign

I love design and I love dogs. Getting the opportunity to design a website to help save dogs has been an incredible opportunity. A co-worker of mine semi-recently rescued her dog, Grace Kelly, from a rescue group called Because of Mandy. When Aimee Ryding (the owner) was looking for someone to give her website a little TLC, I was stoked that she turned to me. For the past week, I've worked on redesigning their current website as well as adding quite a few new elements. Today, ladies and gentlemen, it went live! Please go check out www.BecauseOfMandy.org and let me know what you think!

Original home page

Home page

Adoption page

Happy Endings page

Contact page

I was a little nervous about working within weebly.com because I wasn't sure how designer-friendly it was going to be. Surprisingly, it wasn't too bad. Fortunately, there was a decent pre-existing template and it had some HTML access. Overall, can't complain.

Booze 'n Tunes

Bravo drinkify.org, bravo. Pandora should start suggesting that I restock my liquor cabinet.

Portfolio tummy tuck.

Yes, I sucked the fat from my blog and website layout. Cleaner, less cluttered, simple. I know, I feel like I change them quite regularly, but I can't help it. I spent the last week (of my vacation, yes) asking my friend Google how to make certain changes to my blog. I think it's how I'd like it... for awhile at least. I was hoping integrate my blog and website by using Wordpress, but tech-savvy I am not. Anyways, check it out.  :)

On the serious side, my many thoughts and prayers are with the Sagan/Sorensen/Winsemius families and friends tonight. Another young life left this earth too soon from a family still grieving from two other losses just recently. My heart aches for them. This is another heartbreaking reminder to cherish every single moment of your life... for time favors no one. Rest in peace Derek.

APB Newsletter launch!

Attention boys and girls... the Animal Placement Bureau newsletter has finally been launched! After about a month and a half of building the template, collecting subscriber lists, finding stories, getting the right permissions and all the other little details... the newsletter was finally launched yesterday afternoon. I know Friday afternoons aren't the most ideal time to send out mass mailings, but I really wanted to get it out in the beginning of the month and was too excited to wait until Monday.

So far there's been a pretty decent response despite that 69% of the mailing list has yet to open it. I was granted access to both the APB Twitter and Facebook accounts in order to link the newsletter to both sites. I find myself checking the status reports quite often to see how many more opens, clicks, re-tweets and likes we're getting on this. 

Feel free to check out the newsletter HERE and subscribe if you'd like to receive these every month! 

e-newsletter eve.

Holy freelance projects rolling in! And holy stuff to do at work! Feeling a bit overwhelmed right now... deeeeeeep breath. I just finished up the Animal Placement Bureau e-newsletter layout and all prep work, so hopefully it can launch tomorrow! Fingers and toes crossed that all the subscribers actually receive a functioning email... no broken links, no missing pictures, no jibberish of any sorts. Check out the APB Facebook page to sign up for these monthly newsletters. Stay tuned everyone... more to come tomorrow.

New portfolio site redesign!

If you knew anything about me and my capabilities/thoughts on web design, you'd know I'm slightly retarded. Ok, a lot retarded. That "gibberish" (as I've heard it called) scares the bejesus out of me and HTML may as well be some long lost language. I hated our web classes in college and I partially blame the teacher on that one. Coincidence that the majority of my class graduated without understanding a lick about the web? I think not.

But anyways, huge huge accomplishment for me this week! I had grabbed a template to work off of a long time ago for my portfolio website. No way in hell I was going to come up with something functional AND cool all by my lonesome. I have to say, I was pretty proud of what I came up with after altering the HTML the first time. . Alas, I grew a little tired of it and wanted to spice it up. AND... drum roll please... I sort of had the itch to dabble in some code again. Weird, huh? 

I've done a lot of googling the last few weeks and have watched an obscene amount of YouTube videos on how to make my site do what I want. Dear web developers, I secretly envy you and your creepy coding tunnel vision. This web mumbo jumbo makes my brain hurt. However, without further ado, I present the slightly redesigned www.andreaarchambault.com. Take a peak, let me know what you think!

Index page

One of the portfolio pages

Contact page

Finally up and blogging!

Man, do I wish I were more tech savvy. I was so proud of myself for dabbling in some HTML to create and launch a new portfolio site a couple weeks ago, that I wanted to go ahead and start a personal blog with the same look and feel as my site. What I thought would be a simple task turned into a two week long headache. Blah!

Enough dwelling on that. I'm up and running and really excited about my return to blogging. I was one of those brides that kept a wedding blog up until the wedding, then gave it up and started married life.  ...but I kinda miss it. I love to write... er, type. Some days I just need to share/vent what's on my mind. Plus, with my parents living several hundreds of miles away, I figured it would be a good way to stay connected to them and other family members/friends I don't get to see that often.

Speaking of parents M.I.A... my mom is home for the next handful of days and I'm super excited about that. A girl's night is planned tonight with mom, Ashley (sister) and myself in Muskegon. The rest of the weekend consists of my grandpa's and twin cousin's 13th birthday party and a handful of my nieces, nephews, sister- and brother-in-laws are making there way to Holland for a much needed card night. I love card nights and luckily so does Clay and both of our families. I wish we could find some people in Holland who like to kick back on a Friday or Saturday with a cold drink and a deck of cards. Any takers?

Well, I won't go overboard on my first post. Besides, couple of things to wrap up at work and then I'm outta here! TGIF. Take care everyone and have a great weekend!