(FAQ 4) On Design, Cleveland, Smiles, and le Husband.

Gretchen, who perhaps has the coolest name ever and an equally awesome blog header and impeccable taste in television asks: What inspires you as a designer?

There is so much that I adore about designing and creating. I like to make things that people want to look at. Whether I’m designing a newsletter, brochure, website, or something for my Etsy shop, I am inspired by simplicity. I look at books, magazines, or websites that are well-designed. I am very inspired by good photography. Some of the blogs I visit I only go for the photography. New and different ideas for composition rock my world. Seriously.

I am just in love with the idea of communicating visually. I love being able to portray ideas through fonts, concepts and emotions through photography, and translating my intentions onto a publication.

I especially love taking old, poorly done publications and updating them. It makes me so happy!

Shannon, a total sweetheart who I adore and admire, wants to know: Where is your favorite place to go in your city and why?

I LOVE living in Cleveland. LOVE it! There are so many adorable little neighborhoods, such a sense of Cleveland pride, and it’s just totally awesome to be living in (or near) a real city again.

My favorite place is perhaps Coventry, a hip little area with a awesome restaurants, a very cool toy store, an art supply store, American Apparel, and lots of coffee shops and bookstores. It’s so unique. And I love it.

I also really like University Circle – home to the Botanical Gardens, Natural History Museum, and Cleveland Art Museum. (You might remember I took Mike here for his birthday.) It’s also right next to Little Italy, which has amazing restaurants and bakeries. Mmm.

L.C.T.. who loves chocolate and It’s a Wonderful Life just like me asks: Not including people, what makes you smile most?

Children. But I guess those are usually considered people, eh? Then either food, photography, or good television. Or perhaps a really good latte. I adore hot beverages – I’ll drink hot chocolate any time of the year! Sunshine also makes me smile, as does The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.”

Ashley, one of the few bloggers I’ve actually met in real life and a wonderful photographer wonders: Okay, maybe I’m behind the times and should know this, but how did you meet your husband? And how did he propose? (I’m a sucker for cute stories).

I was a sophomore in college (at the University of Dayton- woohoo!), he was starting a graduate program. He was a campus minister who lived in a freshman dorm and I heard about him before I met him. My friends gushed about the “cute, new campus minister!!” who played guitar.

Then I met him. And we were “just friends” because it was against the rules for him to date an undergraduate. We ate dinner together in the dining hall all the time, and he came to my aunt’s wedding – the whole family got to meet him only two months after I first met him. They adored him. Then I left for a semester in Hawaii, and we talked ALL the time on the phone. And exchanged tons of postcards, emails, and letters. We still insisted we were “JUST FRIENDS.”

(He sent me flowers and a package on Valentine’s Day with a CD of songs he wrote and recorded for me. Yep, we were just friends.)

Then I came back to Ohio and we decided we wanted to get married eventually. Buuuut, I was only a junior in college. My senior year, he was done with his program so he jetted off to Denver for a year to volunteer. This time, the distance was awful. It was so hard to be apart and I hate almost every minute of it. (Except the fact that I got to spend much more time with my friends and roommates with my boyfriend gone. Woohoo, senior year!)

I spent Christmas with his family that year, and on Christmas morning, he and I opened a stocking that was on our doorknob. A letter was in it from him, telling me that I was going on a scavenger hunt. With riddles. That were associated with our relationship. (One was on the coffeemaker, because he hated coffee before me; one was on the thermostat because I’m constantly cold, things like that.) After 16 different riddles and hunts around his parents house, we ended up by the piano. He sat on the piano bench and instructed me to sit in a chair next to the piano. He gave me a lyric sheet.

He played a song he wrote for me, a song that he had written in the beginning of our relationship without lyrics, a song that had been on my Valentine’s Day CD. And now he wrote lyrics about how he wanted to spend his life with me.

At the end of the song, he knelt down and proposed.

The first thing I said?

“How did you afford to buy this? Did you STEAL it?”

Yes, I am so romantic.