https://wediditwrong.com/putextrasegmenthere/nowwehavetofigureouthowtounduethisstupidextralongtail : top ook ook excerpts from c&o
We say Ook Ook when we do something impressive in our work. Most of the time it is something that we have been trying to figure out for days. Here’s an example. I insisted on adding a segment to our url many years ago, and now we have discovered it is wrong for the...
Rhett Ozment: Helping Local Teens
Nicole's son Rhett is involved with a great organization at his high school called Legacy Club. The tagline for this club is athletes committed to excellence. Rhett is helping his soccer coach with a gift card drive for CASA of McHenry County. While they are doing an...
How to Sew a Non-Medical Mask and Do You Really Need to Use One?
Our inspiration began with a simple video shared, and a curiosity about who in the world is making headway against the Covid-19 virus, and how are they doing it? This short, simple video from the Czech Republic, with a message from their Minister of Health, truly...
The Green Event of the Year (and Linda’s glass art)
Linda is starting to exhibit her work, after a few years hiatus from showing, and she thought this venue would be a great place to begin. It aligns with what she loves and wants to support. The Green Living Expo is at McHenry County College, November 2, 2019, from...
Pare This Pair That
With the things we use daily being so advanced, why does it seem like everything is harder to manage? When you are working from home, the speed, clutter and rush of life surrounds you. Nicole and Linda work together remotely in nearby towns & both have their stand...
Messy Bun and Getting Stuff Done with Spunky Pineapple
Linda and I took a field trip to the Spunky Pineapple Co. studio in Woodstock, Illinois. It's tucked in a great downtown location behind Starbucks and near the Woodstock Opera House. We enjoyed meeting Christina McReynolds and seeing behind the scenes of her screen...
molding solutions and the details of design
One of our favorite parts of being freelance digital designers is that we get to learn new things. Take spray can caps, for example, that you see in hardware stores. We spent the summer learning a lot about what goes into problem solving, designing and...
C&O is on the rise with stand-up work stations
Just as Linda finishes the details on a new stand up desk, the Wall Street Journal publishes an article on the very subject. Are you reading this article sitting at your desk? How long have you been in your chair?
Forest Bathing
Linda returned recently from her annual camping trip to the north woods, wet tent and muddy kayak in tow. This year it was to the Upper Peninsula, Michigan, to the Pictured Rocks lake shore. Maybe it doesn't seem to make sense that hauling a kayak, dismantling a tent...
photographing 2D art: preparing for a shoot
winter whites shimmer indoors, a drip lazily meanders to board We have a photo shoot on Saturday with Chicago artist, Guy Benson, who is bringing larger work than usual, requiring a little more prep on our end. Linda is painting a large board white, to use as a solid...
remembering and memories
This photo of Nicole was inspired by the musical Crazy For You when the stage transforms into a star filled sky. The costume was from a Joffrey auction. Linda & Nicole co-created the photo with Adobe programs and Canon cameras....
take a trip | jungle trekking & colorado elkstravaganza
The experience of jungle trekking occurred on Nikki’s honeymoon to Central America in 2005. She and her husband found themselves high in the mountains talking to a shell asking for a beer. After an hour of looking way up to the bar for assistance and lots of scratchy...
lightsabers and luminaries
Since this past fall, Nicole has been doing her hair in a French braid. Growing up, her mother would do her hair, and continued to do it even as Nicole entered high school. It seemed sitting there half asleep in the bathroom was enough to pass the craft along, and...
crystal lake christmas eve luminaries
We have gotten involved this year in an exciting event that promises to be breathtaking and beautiful. Nicole’s across-the-street neighbor, Jill Augustine, is all about tradition. Her favorite day of the year is the day after Thanksgiving because it is the official...
new shop mum 117 opens in Barrington
Linda and Nicole just completed a website for a new boutique shop in downtown Barrington, Illinois, owned by local Crystal Lakers, Lynn Loure and Rudy Magnani. Lynn brings her curating skills to play in the store with carefully considered objects-of-art. Mum 117 is a...
good thing it’s family
Here’s what happens when both Nicole and Linda need the photo equipment. Thank goodness the guy soon to be photographed on that bucket is Linda’s nephew. At the same time, Nicole is experimenting with a new Savage chroma green screen for her tumblr fashion diary. They...
raising wholesome children meme
Nicole's sister sent an email with the subject interesting blog and book. It was a link to an author/blogger on parenting. Nicole loves self help books, but is beginning to discover that one really needs to be in the mood for them. She recalls one year...
Champro Sports Juice Street youth basketball uniform
We worked with Bob, from Play It Again Sports in Crystal Lake, on Junior Wolves 3rd grade travel basketball uniforms. With new options in printing, especially with fully customizable sublimation, we have been able to create some design options that go way beyond the...
does working from home really work? Yes! How to handle laundry issues
I admit, I was a little disillusioned about how much laundry would be a reality in my lifetime. For awhile I was feeling very uneasy, maybe a bit livid, with the huge amounts of time that were robbed from my life by laundry. Working as a freelance artist is about as...
threadless youth t-shirt review
Threadless is creative community company that makes t-shirts, bags, wall art and more. We love so many things about them; for one, they are local, in Chicago! They support creatives and when you buy from Threadless, you support the artist who did the design. For a...
fraternité – we stand with paris
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the konmari method – experiment in seeing the joy spark
We love self help books. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Maire Kondo is a book about the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing. After KonMaring her closet, Nicole wanted to go further with the idea of recognizing joy by how they appear in photos. She...
what have you done to mysql?
[addtoany]
as promised, redbubble scoop neck t-shirt and legging review continued
Nicole ordered the Space leggings from Redbubble in a small. At 5'6" 125lbs they are a perfect length with a snug enough waistband fit to make a workout feel necessary! We are not sure if every legging is printed the exact same way or if, as a designer, you have...
taylor swift modern dancer outfit from shake it off
It's always motivational to get a new dance outfit and the styling in Taylor Swift's Shake it Off video is of course really good. We found the modern dancer style on http://motionwear.com. It is the Overlay Halter Leotard in shadow gray and V-waist shorts. Model is...
diy halloween ghosts
Nicole's mother came up with these little DIY Halloween ghosts and they are decorating both of their fall trees. We like them because they are friendly looking, hang nicely and really look like they are flying in the wind! They have lasted for a years and you don't...
red bubble scoop neck t-shirt review
Linda and Nicole learned & laughed a lot designing & printing a t-shirt recently. (We wear our chandelier tanks a lot!) We have had a few people ask if they can order more but at that time, we were working with large quantities which reduced the price, shipped...
techie humor: uptime robot news
We love Uptime Robot. It's a great tool, letting us know when our sites go down for any reason, but we cringe every time we get an email. [addtoany]
vector dancer
A favorite Baryshnikov-inspired pose, done in Illustrator as a vector file, with Photoshop enhancements. [addtoany]
those are bugs around a light at a restaurant
Linda was in Appleton, Wisconsin last weekend, and took this photo of bugs flitting around a light outside of Fratellos Riverfront Restaurant. We didn't realize how "Midwestern" this photo was until Nicole mentioned that you would never see this kind of photo in L.A....
new website for arizona glass alliance
We enjoy designing websites. As digital designers, this is only one of the types of projects that we encounter. At the lesser end of fun, we design forms and format newsletters. This type of work can be tedious, although we never complain about having work to do....
we scream
Guest contributor Nicole Rhino spotted the words on a t-shirt, which led to capturing the image of an ice cream face, which resulted in our meme today, which led us down the well-traveled path of copyright questions. (sounds a little Dr. Seuss-y, doesn't it?) We are...
how to set up a reunion website. wordpress .com or .org with paypal?
Wordpress is an amazing platform for the creation of websites, although it can be confusing when you first look into it. Wordpress isn't a company, it doesn't have a location, it has no phone number to call. What exactly is it? Wordpress is a free tool, open-source,...
nicole was there
Brittany Sanders is an artist working in watercolor, and also as a book artist. Nicole was living in Los Angeles when she became acquainted with the Sanders family, and she attended the premier viewing of Sanders' book, "I Was There." She keeps in touch with the...
techie humor: malware!
living, ephemeral art in chicago
There a so many treasures held by The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in the Joan Flasch Artists' Book Collection. We were having an "art day" in the city, and decided to check out this alma mater resource, which is open to the public, and located downtown on...
raising the flag
The 70th anniversary of the raising of the flag on Iwo Jima is coming up on February 23. This was brought to our attention when Nicole's son was assigned a class project. As they researched, they came across an interesting article on the U.S. Naval Institute's...
holiday humor for website designers
Holiday humor for web designers, and anyone who has to listen to someone explaining something techie! Happy Holiday from Nicole and Linda
hackmatack: a new national wildlife refuge here in illinois
International Migratory Bird Day is celebrated each year, and this year a celebratory event at Glacial Park in Ringwood, IL caught Linda's interest. She brought her camera and captured some of the event, where service staff at the park set up mist nets to capture...
insight on branding
We were discussing Rowanberry Studio last night attempting to refocus and redefine the brand together, so that Linda can move forward with a better-defined goal with her art glass. In our research to understanding branding, there somehow didn't seem like enough of an...
thoughtful rebranding
We updated our image this new year to represent where our business is directed today, which is focusing on custom wordpress websites. It is so true that your own work often gets pushed to the back. So over the holiday break, we played with our logo and created a new...
| behind the scenes |
Welcome to the Chelini & Oeffling creative blog, Life in This Moment, a window to life and work from Chicagoland artistic collaborators Nicole Chelini Ozment and Linda Oeffling. We work together in digital design, photography, dance, art glass, and more. Associate designer Nicole Rhino participates with concepts and copy editing. Click on the blog titles to leave comments, share and shop. We will never show or share your information. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, and Pinterest.
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