Anyway, I started a new project this year called Tree Association. It’s my own special version of those free association word games people and psychiatrists play, where you begin with one word (in my case, tree, because it rhymes with free—see how easy?) and make connections to new words. I plan to update every week with a new drawing, and if you have your own Tumblr you can follow my blog with the click of a button! (Otherwise, I don’t know, I guess you can try the RSS feed. Personally I still use bookmarks and visit one website at a time.)

I’ve come up with a pretty long list already so the associations aren’t necessarily fresh when I draw them, but while I was compiling the list I made sure to take no pauses. (After all, I think it’s better to relate a bunch of words all at once than it would be to actually do one per week.) So far tree has led to coral, coral has led to salt water, and salt water has led to tears which rhymes with gears. Isn’t my brain just fascinating?

Today is my birthday! I am now 24, nearly a quarter of a century old!

I was thinking about how a lot of my interests haven’t really changed since I was little. I still love letters and I still love the color purple. I love writing and drawing and making messes. If little me could meet older me, she’d probably be pretty upset that I quit wearing my retainer, but for the most part, I think she’d think I’m totally cool. Not that either of us ever cared about being cool, though. We’ve just been ourselves for years.

Thanks to a few great designers at Cosmopolitan, I have three spot illustrations in the “Man Report” section of the December 2008 issue. Ms. Theresa Izzillo, Deputy Art Director, e-mailed me about my postcard and introduced me to a few of the graphic designers there, who were really quick to give me information and to respond to my sketches and questions. For this issue I illustrated three ways you might tell somebody is lying to you:

Last month I also got to work with Mr. Tom Davis, the art director from Her Nashville magazine. When he asked me if I would illustrate and do hand-lettering for the cover of their November issue, I jumped at the invitation. A magazine cover! I spent a lot of time composing my sketches, making sure I was filling the space of the cover in ways that didn’t feel too squashed, or empty. I think I succeeded, and am really pleased with the image that was chosen. Tom gave me some helpful suggestions that transformed my initial—slightly spooky—idea into something a lot warmer and more relevant to the topic of the issue.

Overall, these experiences were both really positive and I’m thankful for the opportunities. So do like I did, and go buy December’s Cosmo. And if you live in or around Nashville, Tennessee, pick up a free copy of Her!

(Also, I’ve been uploading some more of my old college projects to my design portfolio. I wasn’t sure if I wanted such a mix-up of media and styles in there… but what the heck, I want to show more stuff.)

When I met my boyfriend Chris, he wasn’t what I thought of as my “type.” He skateboarded and went to punk shows, didn’t like the Magnetic Fields or Yo La Tengo (I listened to them heavily back then), and would never wear a sweater. I thought that if I could expect anything of a boyfriend, it’d be what I considered obvious: he’d wear wool, and jam to Stephin Merritt. Still, I adored Chris the first time I met him—and every time after—because he was just the “type” of person I wanted to know. He was funny and kind, soft-spoken and clever; plus, he had the most adorable dimples.

It turns out that Chris and I have nearly identical personalities, yet there’s a big enough wedge between our interests to make it so we’re not like the episode of Seinfeld where Jerry meets Janeane Garofalo and everything about them is so much the same that they end up hating each other. We’re both shy introverts and we both like The Office, but Chris hates my olives and I hate his bologna.

Our first real date was to the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro because we both love animals, and we went there again the next year for our anniversary. We moved into an apartment seven months later, and are still here after three years and five months. That brings us to five exact years of growing older and more ridiculous together. When it’s chilly in the morning, Chris reminds me to take a sweater. When he fell skateboarding and sprained his wrist, I fed him shreds of ginger root “to help with inflammation” and he didn’t even protest. When I get sick, he brings me medicine. When he gets sick, I won’t even know what to do because I have never seen him sick. (He had a runny nose, once.) We make dinner together and share trash duty. He likes to vacuum. I like… not having to vacuum.

Soooo, I bring you exciting news item #1!

On October 13th, my skater-dude boyfriend became my brand-new husband. We had a very small ceremony to please all six guests who attended, and spent our honeymoon in a little cabin near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was a wonderful wedding and vacation. I don’t really talk much about relationship stuff, but I think it’d be appropriate to use the word “perfect” to describe how things have been going.

In order to avoid descending into name-tattoo territory, let me just show you pictures.

There’s a little cabin at the top of an autumn-speckled mountain that is calling my name! I plan to eat a lot of steak and s’mores while I’m out there in the middle of nowhere, where hallucinations of purple squirrels are not only possible but encouraged.

I have some exciting news to share but I’m just waiting for things to come together. My calendar’s been fun, though! Here’s February:

I do have more months done than just January and February. The end of next month is when I plan to be done with all of them, which is just another deadline to meet that I’ll probably be staying up for.

I’ve been working on a calendar for 2009 that will serve as a Christmas gift to a few family members this year. Yes, it features animals. Yes, I’m aware that 2008 is almost over so I’d better hurry it up.

Here’s a whale for January:

You’ll notice that I’m really into scribbles and letters now. Here’s another illustration I did, a faux-spot about avoiding injury while exercising:

This style is a small departure from my usual style of softer, painterly blobs, but I think I can make the two mesh. I’ve never really been into coloring inside the lines, anyway.

I feel pretty spammy, I admit, but I hope nobody throws them away, you know? I am sure it will happen, many times, but perhaps the right person will see my stuff, maybe somebody like Oprah, who will offer me an amazing deal on my brand new book idea: illustrations of animals, wearing funny clothes. An animal in a top hat is never not hilarious.

See more of my Flickr favorites here.