If there is anyone out there, who was looking forward to a peek around our home this past Christmas, I apologize. You know it’s something I most always share, but somehow I just didn’t this year. Our home had plenty of Christmas decor (as if I could stop myself), and you can be sure I had fun photographing it all!…. (as if I could stop myself), but I just never blogged it. I find the transitions between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, a bit of a quick turn-around. Don’t you? Especially Christmas to New Year’s! Just one week to recover from Christmas, get it together, clean, organize, de-clutter, and switch party-gears? I need more time!! Who came up with this calendar anyway?
Speaking of calendars, you are about to find out just how far I go, in helping the holidays and seasons that I love, be reflected in my home decor. At first, you may think I am crazy. (I mean, you know, if you don’t already.) But that’s only because you’ll probably get all kinds of crazy visions that are just ludicrous, before I have a chance to even explain myself. But really….you should have more faith in me. So……Are you ready for this? Here comes the big admission:
Now, tell me you are not envisioning like……tinsel, Christmas balls, or worse…..blinking lights, hanging all about my monitor. (Yes, I do still have a PC/tower. I’m a professional photographer people, with high editing standards.). Oh no….no decorations like that. No plastic snowmen and the like, either. (What do you think I am…..freakin’ tacky?) No, the computer decor I am referring to, is COOL. Like ME, People. What do you expect?
Let me tell you the truth. Smashing Magazine let’s graphic designers (or anyone I think), submit desktop calendar wallpaper designs, every month. Then, they put the collection of submissions online, and you can take whatever you want for your desktop! Yes, for FREE! At the first of the month (or sometimes a few days in, as I occasionally forget what day, or month (or year) it is….) I go check out the all of the entries, and choose the one I like best. It’s a great kick-off to a new month for me. Alright…..so to help you get the picture about what I am talking about, here below is the desktop wallpaper design I chose and had on the desktop of my computer last January, in 2010:
Of course…..I have a little bit of clutter on my desktop. Not much….but some icons I use as shortcuts, a few folders, etc. I just move them around as to not cover my pretty picture. : )
It’s just SO FUN to me, to check out what everyone came up with. There is always many to choose from, and such a variety, naturally reflecting various styles and personalities of the participating designers. So I look through them all, and I find the one that speaks to me….makes me smile….or really helps me ‘feel’ the season within my home. I might start designing and submitting some sometime myself! I get that much of a kick out of this. Because I love to design with a theme in mind. It brings me right back to art school, when I thrived on the creative juices pumping over that new assignment. I just find lovely seasonal decor gives me ‘little happies’ inside when I see them around my home or when I am out and about. It keeps me excited and in fun-planning mode for my kiddos (and me.). Like this next one I used last year in February:
Can’t you feel the love?? How perfect for the month of Valentine’s Day? There is LOTS to choose from every month, and it’s often a hard pick!! There is often so many good ones, I have contemplated choosing like 4, and changing it every week. But let’s be honest: Who has time for that? ; ) So, once you choose the one you want, you just click on the resolution/size for your screen/monitor (mine is 1024 x 768 for this monitor), it opens up bigger, you save the image, and then you set it in your screen display for your desktop!
I may have to be at my computer more than the average person, being that, a lot of my work is at this thing. So anything I can do to make it more enjoyable, and a pleasant place to be, I’m going to do! So, you know….I have pretty desktops, maybe a candle burning some evenings, a little chocolate or sugar-free bubble gum around, my kids drawings and notes for me on my bulletin board right beside me, and frequent visits from those kiddos, with specially delivered XOXO’s just for me. : )
Here is March. This one kept me hanging on a bit longer, and looking forward to that first day of spring right around the corner, when I had had it with the long, long winter. Isn’t it so springy?
The great thing with these screen savers is, not only can you choose the right size for your computer screen, but you can often choose the design you want with or without the numbered dates! I usually keep the dates, if they are marked with the days of the week too. If not, it’s not really helpful to me, sadly!
So I’ll let you take a browse through the rest of my picks for last year, and then I’ll give you the link, if you are interested in decorating your computer sometimes too. Honestly….it takes a few enjoyable minutes to choose the screen saver you want, and less than 60 seconds to save the image (anywhere on your local drive) and go get it in your computer display settings.
Enjoy:
OK….I may have to say a few little things here and there, before the end. Like…..“OH MY GOSH, How CUTE is THIS, huh??“
I really dug that cow. I have no idea why. I wanted to hang out in that meadow with him for awhile. Gee, he looks like he could put out some chocolate milk…..huh? Hmmmm. Yeah, we’d probably just hang out.
OK, this one had such a schoolish feel to me, and I have no clue why because….as you can see, there is no school house, any schoolin’ happening, or anything. But, I loved it, and it fed my back-to-school spirit somehow. Also, the more I looked at it, the more I always found something I didn’t see before. It really entertained me. ALL September. Go figure.
You all can bet the designing peeps had goulish-good time with October! But, as much I love Halloween and October, I’m just not into all of that creepy part. So this one floated my boat just fine. (There were others I really liked too.)
Fall to winter transition…..pretty cool.
For this recent December, I was looking for something more Nativity-themed, but I’m always a sucker for snowmen. And snowflakes. And large areas of clean white snow, with no suspicious yellow spots.
This is the design on my desktop right now. This January was another tough pick for me! Because there were a few others I was drawn to…..and I’m going to show you in a few little thumbnails:
Again, another snowman than called my name. I liked him….but a little too much blue going on. The middle one I loved, with all of the color. It looked like watercolor, and the salt effect. It made me want to paint. Thirdly, I loved the door and all it implies…..walking into 2011, and who knows what amazing and beautiful things are behind that door, and will happen this year? Such potential and hope of all kinds of blessings! (I’ve come a long way, huh? ; ) ) Anyway….in the end, I let Michael and {A} help me narrow it down to choose January, and they loved the tree most. And I learned something new about my own first-born kid: ‘Doors ajar have always given her the creeps, a little bit.’ Huh. How did I not know this?
You can just Google/search something like ‘Smashing Magazine Desktop Calendar Wallpaper January 2011″. or whatever month and year you need, and it should come up easy enough.
I hope someone makes use of it, and gets a little ‘happy’ on their desktop throughout the year because of it! Because not only have I been so excited share this with you…..but it was kind of a lot of work! But you know…fun work.
Have a happy month, all year long!!
We. are. so. much. alike.