Independently owned and operated, CarpentyAutin.com needed a way to stand out among their competitors.

Carpenters aren’t exactly known for their marketing expertise, but CarpentryAustin.com owener, Les O’Rourke, has been a welcome contradiction to this assumption. I love having a client that shares ideas that actually are helpful and make sense. It was a perfect, open discussion on how to draw traffic to the website and turn that traffic into customers.

It started with a re-design of the CarpentryAustin.com logo, which I thought the client would immediately resist. On the contrary, he actually supplied the inspiration for the angle in the new logo. The more I worked with Les (no pun intended), the more I realized, instead of applying his creative eye used for his unique carpentry, he was now applying it to the web design discusions.

Take a look at the site and see just how creative a carpenter can be.

The original website I designed for Amplified Heat was received well, but the band didn’t have the time needed to maintain the website and edit their own HTML.

In addition to allowing the band to have a content management system through Wordpress, a hub has been created that brings the band’s fans together from different websites like Flickr and MySpace. Access was allowed not only to the band, but also to their publicists, allowing for up to the minute press releases.

The true benefit of the re-design will be determined by time and the client that now controls the content, but I feel that Wordpress will be a great tool to bring them closer to their fans.

If you have a family, business or band that you think could benefit from a stronger web-presence, contact me and I would be happy to discuss your options with you.

The kids had a big Christmas Eve at Grammy Joyce and Grandpa Mike’s house.

This morning, they woke up to their own kitchen. They love all of the doors and pots and pans and noise, “Oh the NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE!” We all had a blast this morning.

Focus Face

Porter and Mom have been working with speech therapists the last few months, trying to get him to talk more. He’s been letting Abbey do all the talking for him. He’s been improving lately, but now that he is close to three, they are considering putting him in an actual class for a few hours per week.

I had the day off, so I took him to one of the assessment appointments this morning. We walked in to a huge room full of every toy you could imagine. As soon as bubba saw the train set he was on a mission to play.

We’ll go to another assessment at the beginning of March. Depending on how that goes, Porter will attend his first day of school around mid-April.

While we were there, one of the specialists took this picture of our little buddy.

Nothing says Christmas like cold nights with no heat.

Our heater went out Friday night. If the frigid air doesn’t make you shiver, the price of a new heating unit will.

The shiney new heating unit is being installed on Wednesday.