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 website and has to be undone. FYI, if you are interested in the terminology:
• https:// is called the “protocol”
• whatever.com is called the “domain name”
• everything after the domain name slash is called the “path”

Easy Peasy…days later, we are down a rabbit hole and all of a sudden there are more things we are finding to fix. What?! We don’t have Yoast on some of the inner pages? Now Linda is checking broken links. I am searching online for articles on “installer-data.sql”, which means very little to me. Linda thinks she hand-coded it in the php (techie), and I think the problem is in WordPress setting (not techie).

Back to our goal: We find a promising article that calls the middle section of a url a “chonky thorax”. Really? The article says “the long tail has exploded”. Linda ominously warns, “We might break the site if we do this.” I ask clueless questions like, can’t you just undo? Linda asks me how far in years does Chrome history go back- maybe we can find the original article that got us into this mess? And then…. it’s fixed. I asked her how she did it, and she tries to explain, but I was already moving on, “Great work Linda! Ook Ook!”

Then, we laugh for five minutes and I write “chonky thorax” in our co-list that we are compiling of our silly tech history together.
(And, by the way, in the end, the answer was non-techie, found in the page settings of WordPress, and easily editable.

It’s called a Chonky thorax
Linda pretending she has a macro lens again
I am so freaked out and I want to kill Go Daddy
I schedule all my chron jobs at the same time
Psycho refresh
Nothing so satisfying as figuring out your password
You had me at Malware.
I am going to have to just go back and fix it pixel by pixel.
How can a dropdown menu be sexy? That is ridiculous.
I was going to do that but I got distracted by Russian Spam.
some days I miss that domain.
Your logo looks like spam
you are spiking my resources
I have GDPR
The first thing that I always install is my spam protector.
Oh. I have done this. The all in one integration plug-in. It’s a savior!
I am going to go into my c-panel and kill my php processes – it won’t hurt anything
Bots can’t activate parsers.
Oh no, oh dear. I shouldn’t have done that with the gutter.
Woo commerce Menu structure -I gotta get outta here
Mail Chimp Humor- How can I drop a large content block if I can’t even see it?
Put that in the Divi why is this messed up document
If we had a cool saying we could add a big drop shadow to it and put it up in the sky. But it would have to an awesome saying.
I just cleared out all the homeless articles from our site. They are transient.
Love when I find a tutorial that uses The Worm Tower (home composting system) to show me how to add an unlisted video to a youtube playlist!
Photoscape. That must be a fancy program.
I want to make a tutorial so badly for dynamic pages on Wix. But I hate Wix. (note: we now LOVE Wix- want to do WIX sites – For hire!) I am only doing it because I am forced to.
just say no to logos
General Data Protection Regulation, known as GDPR, has come into effect.
This setup’s designed to be used literally 12-16 hours a day; everything about it is rigged so that it’s all in arms reach and ultra-comfortable. I can (and have) slept in here before.
the day Linda changed my yahoo password
I have a super arousing content idea that will surely make a great addition to your site and provide a lot of value to your visitors. If you are interested, then please let me know your thought.

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 in-person drive on October 6, Rhett wanted to reach out to his travel sports teams in McHenry County, and provide a digital way to purchase the gift cards.

Linda and Nicole wanted to help facilitate this project with Rhett, and so together, they all created a temporary page on this website where they could use a PayPal account and help Rhett accomplish his goal. 

CASA of McHenry County is a remarkable not-for-profit organization.  CASA stands for Court Appointed Special Advocate. CASA trains volunteers to advocate in court for abused and neglected children. These trained Advocates then get appointed by the court  to be paired with a child during the child’s court case. The Advocate has a one-to-one relationship with the child throughout the case, and meets with the child twice per month.

This fundraiser is specifically targeting teens from age 13 – 21.  The teens are often the ones most forgotten in the foster care system and always appreciate a gift like this when their CASA Advocate visits them!

Visit the CASA of McHenry County website for more information, or to donate.

Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) of McHenry County is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization and your donation is tax-deductible within the guidelines of U.S. law.

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 10am – 3pm. Admission is free.

Summer Meadow with Monarch | Fused Glass | 11″ long x 4″ high, 2″ deep

Linda works in fused glass and has maintained a glass art studio in her home for over 10 years, Rowanberry Studio. The pieces that she chose for this exhibit focus around nature. Many of her pieces features bees and monarchs, as these are species of concern in our country, and ones that we can find in our own backyards.

Monarch Vase | Fused Glass | 5″ tall, approx. 9″ dia.

My process is focused and intricate. I find that piecing together hundreds or thousands of bits of glass is a meditative process, slow, thoughtful, or possibly thought-less. Typically I use a sheet of clear glass to form a flat base, and then I layer glass chips or powders (frit)  and/or long strands of glass (stringer) on top. Many of the tiny bits of glass are precisely placed using tweezers and tools. Powdered glass can also be used, and this is carefully shaped with tools and brushes to form specific shapes, such as the veining on a butterfly wing. The glass stringer is bent carefully, piece by piece, over a candle flame to shape it into curves and shapes. ~Linda Oeffling

Mullein Mandala | Fused Glass | 12″ dia. 

You can walk through a field and have an impression of waving grass and glorious meadow color, or you can slow down and see the minutiae in all of its infinite detail, the butterfly’s wing and the shading of color on a flower petal. My art pieces, as a result, have a meditative feeling. You can view the piece and see the overall beauty, or contemplate the fine details that make up the whole. – Linda Oeffling

As the light changes throughout the day, each piece is illuminated and transformed. They are one of kind, hand-created pieces that would love to live in your home.

Green Living Expo:  McHenry County College, Woodstock, IL
Saturday, Nov. 2, 2019
10am – 3PM | Free Admission

See over 100 area businesses and organizations offering green products and services plus check out educational exhibits, green gifts, and energy efficient ideas for your home and businesses.

Highlights this year:

• Free workshops on regenerative agriculture, composting, and the latest recycling information.
• Tours of the new MCC greenhouse and high tunnels.
• Meet the team developing the Center for Agrarian Learning at MCC as well as many of McHenry County’s finest farmers.
• Solar installers featuring the latest panels and financing information, sustainable toys, skincare, beekeeping and energy efficient ideas for your home and businesses for little or no cost.
• In addition the McHenry County Solid Waste Division will be conducting a paint recycling collection event. You must register to recycle paint. Please call (815) 334-4585.

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 printing business. Her studio is a super organized, sunny, happy place and we didn’t want to leave.  She is very kind and shared with us creative tips that we are very grateful to learn.  We can’t stop thinking about her metallic inks and thermal label printer for example…art geek stuff.  Beyond her bustling online business, she takes time to print custom shirts for local schools, bars, events and coming soon, us!  Her work is top notch and she uses water-based non-toxic inks.

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 manufacturing them, when we were hired to do Engineered Molding Solutions new website.  Mike Jacobs, president of Engineered Molding Solutions, in McHenry, Illinois, was a pleasure to work for and his business is a happy place to be.  We will never look at another spray cap the same way again!

Do you need a new website? CHELINI & OEFFLING, INC based in Spring Grove, Illinois, provides affordable website design and printed materials. After over 10 years of working together, we have found that we enjoy being very organized, which allows us to work quickly and efficiently. We work remotely with clients as well as being able to work in a team environment.

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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? Even if you don’t make the jump to creating a desk, it might get you thinking about moving a bit more.

Here are some quick facts:

• Higher calorie burn and better posture
• Medical studies have tied excessive sitting to increased obesity and other health problems because of factors including a drop in physical activity
• The human body is designed to stand, not sit. Standing is better for the back than sitting. It strengthens leg muscles and improves balance.

And a few resources:

• The Many Benefits of Standing At Your Desk, Harvard Business Review
• Stand Up While You Read This! The New York Times
• Those With A Desk Job Please Stand Up, The Washington Post

Linda works from home, and being closeted in a room did not appeal, so she decided to make her work station part of the living area. She wanted something that didn’t look too ultra modern. Ready-made stand-up desks were either way over budget or too big and bulky looking. And being an artist, she admits to enjoying the work of  building things with her own hands.

The step was to get a file cabinet, a needed accessory. She found a fantastic deal with a damaged floor model. Nicks are barely visible, and style looks great. Next was to decide on the counter top. The perfect economic and beautiful solution turned out to be from Ikea – butcher block counter top for only $60. When Linda went to pick it up, she found that it was damaged from being dropped on one end. It was not a problem to cut it down 6″, gaining a 30% discount. One coat of stain and 4 coats of poly, and it was ready.

I hope this was inspirational – stand up for a while!

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The scientifically proven benefits include lower blood pressure, lower stress levels, and significantly higher immune system markers. Your natural killer cells, white blood cells that fight infected or tumor cells, are significantly higher after forest bathing. (from The Washington Post)

Hiking along rushing waterfalls and exploring the lake shore of Pictured Rocks was a wonderful way to rejuvenate and come back refreshed. The views were awe inspiring, which is actually a state of mind that has been studied by psychologists. Feelings of awe and wonder were described by the astronauts who have experienced earth orbit, and is called the “overview effect.” The emotions experienced can be life changing.

Along with forest bathing, Linda was able to
have a little fun experimenting with camera settings
to create the “soft water” effect.

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 backdrop surface on which to isolate his paintings. The end product for the client – archived images, accurately capturing color and texture, that can be easily emailed to galleries worldwide. Benson is currently featured at Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago.

We have been photographing Guy Benson’s work for many years, and it has been interesting to watch his work evolving. Below is a detail from “Neighborhood”.

Benson’s figures floating in space are reminiscent of some of Paul Klee’s iconic work. Pictured here: Legend of the Nile, Paul Klee, 1937.

See more of his work on his website, designed by C&O with Benson: artguybenson.com. We are excited to see the new work this weekend.