Adjusting to Life Changes -- Changing my Name, New website and Follow-up on our Honeymoon

Save the Date - Saturday, October 19, 2019

Tom and I are participating in the second annual Ontario Festival of the Arts on Saturday, October 19, 2019 from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm. This year we will each have our own booth!

What's Been Happening in 2019?

I've gone MIA again for almost the entire year. This quote from the last post in November 2018 sums up most of my experience this entire year: "Life has been very intense lately with a lot of changes happening at the same time..."

In the last year I haven't made any new art at all. I spent the majority of my mental energy (and a lot of extra time) focusing on all the changes happening at work. My supervisor of 5+ years, who was more of a mentor and friend, departed the organization for a better opportunity (which I'm very happy for her!) and another respected member of my team also moved on to pursue other opportunities, at the same time! I miss his professionalism, high energy, refreshing, and inspiring ideas. I know change is inevitable and nothing lasts forever, but I'm glad I enjoyed the time I did have with both of them. Then there was the matter of adjusting to new teammates, which takes a while to figure out new workflows, getting to know each other, on-boarding, etc. Since I'm currently the senior marketing person on our team, I've stepped up and taken on more responsibilities - although its challenging at times, its also very beneficial for me because I'm learning so much and getting a lot of new experience that will help me in the future. Dealing with all these changes at the same time left me with very little creative energy at the end of the day. This is the first year since 2013 that I didn't participate in the Ontario Open exhibit. 😕 

Getting Married and Changing my Name

A big change that has been very rewarding is marriage. I didn't expect too much to change in our daily lives since we've been together for almost 11 years and lived together for half that time. Married life is absolutely wonderful and brought Tommy and I closer together more so than I ever imagined! Changing my name legally took a lot of time and I'm not sure if I'm even done updating every account I have. I still keep finding some that need updating every few months. With that being said my new website is now andreacypert.com. My old site is no longer functioning. I changed hosting service and was having too many issues forwarding the domain so I figured it's time to change it. I was worried that changing my name would hurt my SEO and google search results but it helps that I've published a lot of content in this blog!

Follow-up on Our Honeymoon Our honeymoon in November was awesome! We originally booked it as our 10 year anniversary trip and then it became our honeymoon when we got engaged a week later. 😂 We drove up 8+ hours to northern California to the Sonoma County and took a few days driving back making stops in our favorite places. It was a nice time to unwind and reconnect.

Pictures from our day at Safari West in Santa Rosa, CA. If you love animals I highly recommend! We each got to sit in the top part of the jeep and have a close encounter with a giraffe! They have an aviary too with lots of cool birds. Had so much fun at this place. You can even stay overnight in a yurt.

When we were leaving the Russian River area we stopped by Korbel Champagne Cellars for some coffee. Those grounds are beautiful and the views are spectacular! I couldn't resist and bought some Champagne mustard plus hot sauce and other food items. We also bought a few bottles of California Champagne to take home for the holidays. 

The last stretch of our trip we stayed in Central California, in Cambria and in Solvang. When we got to the parking lot of our hotel in Solvang, we ran into a couple from Denmark who were vacationing at the exact same hotels we stayed in both cities (about 100 miles apart!) What are the odds!? The gentleman told us it was  an odd experience seeing an American version of a Danish town. Pictured above is the Rigdon House in Cambria and Tommy looking through antiques, one of his favorite things to do on vacation.

We have a lot of actives going on this fall. Tommy submitted some work for the first annual West End Photo Open (WEPO) at the Chaffey Community Museum of Art. Exhibit runs September 19-November 9, 2019. I'm entering the original Day of the Dead girl drawing used in my t-shirts into the Ontario Museum's Dias de Los Muertos exhibit running October 3-November 9, 2019 (Finally! Why didn't I think of this before?! ) and we are doing the Ontario Festival of the Arts.