2017

Like last year, I’m doing a year-end wrapup post just becase I enjoy the exercise of looking back so much. I’m a forward-facing person, and it’s easy to forget the cokl things that happened during the year. Also my memory is terrible. I also made a business-related year-end wrapup, which is here.

Side Projects

Erika and I had a fun joint project this year - we built and launched a brand for her oak mite essential oil, Mighty Oak.. I really enjoyed working with E, and I really like the branding we developed, featuring a watercolor she made on the fly.

I joined our church’s Trustee team, which oversees operations & finance.

We joined a new community group with church - but petered out by summer. :( ?

Erika continued her work with the Social Service League, and joined the Board there. She’s a big deal, and helps out a ton organizing the store and its processes. She also spearheaded their annual Dress Givewaway. We worked together on the branding for that as well.

I continued learning a little bit of Chinese, very slowly, helped by my friend Qing.

The biggest one: I started teaching a design class at KU. Officially it was called ‘Design for Social Interaction’, but really it was ‘Everything Matt Wants You to Know Before You Apply at Brand New Box’. It was surprisingly fun, and I was pleasantly surprised by how invested I was in the students. I’m doing it again this semester, although this time they’ve made it a senior-level class and called it ‘Interaction Design.’

House Stuff

I tried not to do anything with the house last year, which did not work at all. We got new gutters and trim, I replaced the plastic panels on the carport, I rebuilt the back balcony, we dug up and destroyed the walkways around the house and rebuilt them with pavers and lava stone. We did a little landscaping. We haven’t had grass for six months and we’re still missing a step to our front porch. :)

Los Niños

My children are still astonishingly wonderful.

Travel

We went to St. Louis a ton:

And had a few short trips in the midwest:

The Sea Hates a Coward