Spa Day

Last May, my friend Melanie from work got married! She asked if I would help with designing a few things, like the programs, menus, etc. It ended up being a scramble the week before the big day to get everything finished and printed, but I think they turned out just fine. And Melanie loved it. So much so that she invited me and a couple other girlfriends who helped with her wedding to a spa day as a thank you.

We met at the Elaia Spa at the Hyatt Olive 8 downtown on Saturday. We hung out in the relaxation room while sipping tea and chatting, then headed in to use the steam room, sauna and jacuzzi. We then had lunch before it was time for our massages. It was such a nice treat! Something I don't typically splurge on for myself. At the end of my massage, I had to fight the urge to fall asleep. I wanted to enjoy every minute!

Becky, me, Melanie and Kate

Kim and Melanie

Thanks again, Melanie, such a fun time!

The Global Brand Marketing Sales EXPO

I am part of the Global Brand Marketing group for Boeing, and we get to work on a bunch of really cool projects. Last week, we hosted an EXPO for the sales and marketing teams to come take a look at the new and innovative stuff we've been doing, and share our capabilities. Each sub-team (web strategy, data analytics, airline promotions, advertising and my team - design services) had their own area at the Boeing Customer Experience Center (a really fancy high-tech facility where we typically host customers). 

We had a pretty good turnout for the event, and everything went off without a hitch! Here are some photos from the event.

A quick video of the space that my coworker Paul and I
were in charge of

Seahawks are playoff bound!

Last Saturday, Clint and I watched the NFC wild card game from my place while we had friends who actually braved the cold and went to it. After an exciting Seahawks win, we decided to meet up with everyone at Girin Steakhouse down by the stadium to celebrate.

gang's all here

the guys had already done quite a bit of celebrating 

also ran into Henry, I think this photo best
describes how he probably remembers the night being,
blurry and off center

After drinks, a few of us headed over to Purple Dot in Chinatown for a late night feast of honey walnut prawns, fried chicken and mongolian beef to name a few. Such a fun impromptu night catching up with friends who we hadn't seen in a while!

21 Day Fix

My friend Kylee recently became a Beachboy Coach (I realize now I spelled that wrong, thanks Mom, but it's too funny to correct). She holds challenges that last for 21 days, and each day you do a 30 min workout, have a Shakeology drink and portion control the food you're eating. You can easily stream the workouts from an app on your phone, and the shakes are pretty tasty. You then log everything you do in the app so she can keep everyone accountable :)

I gave it a try in November, seeing as how I thought it'd be a good chance to get in shape before our cruise. However, ten days in and I got sick. Like stay home from work sick with a sore throat and chills. Jumping around in my living room working up a sweat was the last thing I wanted to do. But, in those ten days I did feel like I was getting somewhere. I was actually looking forward to the workouts! So, I'm ready to try again.

It officially starts next Monday the 9th. I figure if I post it here, it's even more of an incentive to stick to it! Will keep you updated on how it goes.

The pukey color comes from adding spinach, but still tasty!

Back to school

In the fall of 2015, I made the lofty decision that I wanted to go back to school to pursue a Master's degree. After some research, I found the Human Centered Design & Engineering program at UW, and  thought it'd be a perfect fit for me. The degree entails taking courses in design, research and engineering and is all about making things (websites, mobile apps, physical objects such as chairs and desk spaces) more usable for the people using them – hence the "human-centered" part. Not only do we learn how to design and build these things, but we learn the best way to approach how we're going to do it through research – interviews, focus groups, usability studies, etc. The UX (user experience) design field is becoming bigger which means the demand for these skills is growing as well. Once I've graduated, I'll be able to advance my career here at Boeing, or be able to branch out and work for a number of large companies in the area.

So far, I've completed 4 quarters, and have 4 quarters to go with a target graduation date of winter 2018 (yikes that sounds far away!). I've really been enjoying the courses though. I take them during the evening from 6-10pm on the main Seattle campus. It's been so much fun to be back, makes me wish I could quit work and do school full time just collecting all sorts of degrees :)

official student - Husky Card

very first day of class – fall 2015

first day night of class – winter 2016

first day of class – spring 2016

first day of class – fall 2016

stuck in the snow – fall 2016

Just for fun, here's a list of all the courses I've taken so far:
User-centered Design 
An introductory course to what user-centered design means and how the process works. For our group project, we created an app that helps people understand candidates' positions on issues during an election season, and gives them info on how and where to vote. This was back when Trump running for president was just silly talk. We sent out surveys and conducted interviews to find out what people really wanted, and after multiple design iterations we came up with Ballot Buddy.

Usability Studies

For this course, we were split into groups again and were paired with a company sponsor. My team worked with UX Designers from REI to help them conduct usability studies on their online shopping website, in particular the product details page. We ran tests with users to see how their experience was and gave recommendations on what REI could include or change.

Theoretical Foundations

Your typical required core course on all the theories and practices of interaction design. A lot of reading and a couple presentations. 

Empirical Traditions

In this course we learned how to evaluate the validity of research papers, and how to write our own. Again, another class filled with tons of reading and writing. It was a fun course, however, since there was only six of us students. A lot of fun discussion.

Information Visualization

All about data! We learned how to use Tableau, and our group project consisted of picking a dataset and then using it to visualize something useful. We chose to use data from Yelp, and used it to help travelers pick a city and time of year to travel based on their interests (restaurants, nightlife, hotels, etc.). This turned out to be a difficult class as everything was new to me, and we crammed a huge amount of learning into just 10 weeks. I think we came out with a pretty fun end product, though!

Navigating Design in Organizations

Here we learned about the business side of design. In our group projects, we were to come up with an idea for a company, and then create a business model – revenue streams, key partners, value props, etc. We had a fun product we liked, virtual reality tours of vacation homes for AirBnB, but then the instructor pulled a fast one and made us swap with another group in the class. We ended up with an online shopping business, not something we were totally interested in, but we made it work.

Tonight I start my one of two classes I'm taking this quarter, visual communications. This happens to be what my undergrad degree is in, so I'm looking forward to reviewing what I already know and hopefully coasting through an easy class. I'm also taking a introduction to computer programming course which will be all new to me. Looking forward to the quarter!

I'm back!

Miss me?

As a new year's resolution for 2017, I've decided to start blogging again, yay! So wish me luck, I'll try my best to not fall off this bandwagon.

I last left you in 2014, quite a bit has happened, but let's just skip over it all and start fresh, shall we?

On New Year's Day, Clint and I headed out to his family cabin on Vashon Island to winterize the place. It was a beautiful clear day, and a fun way to start the year with one of my favorite things to do, go for a ferry ride!

quick pic before jumping back in the warm car

view from the Skullerud cabin

While Clint emptied out pipes and flipped switches, I sat as close to the space heater as I could without catching fire and watched the Seahawks game. Then it was back on the ferry and to Clint's place where he cooked us dinner. A perfect way to ring in the new year!

2014 Recap: Part 5

November
Clint car shopping: Once I got a new car, Clint just couldn't help himself and had to get one, too. Or maybe it was because his Toyota pickup truck had been running poorly and has become unreliable. We started the car shopping process by heading to Toyota of Bellevue to test drive just about everything they had...a Prius, Scion sports car, Sequoia, a couple Land Cruisers, Highlander and a 4 Runner (which Clint owned previously, but had it stolen just before we met). Even though we just went to look, Clint ended up leasing a brand new 2015 4 Runner, and he loves it! After driving the pickup for as long as I've known him, it's about time he treated himself to something fancy. We even drove it up to the mountains to test it out in the snow.

Thanksgiving in San Diego: To continue our tradition of getting out of rainy Seattle for Thanksgiving, Clint and I headed down to SD to spend time in the sun with his family. His parents graciously let us stay with them, and hosted us for the three nights we were there and even treated us to carne asada burritos for dinner as soon as we got in, a must! Our first day, Clint and I took a road trip to the cute little town of Julian, known for their apple pie. We stopped at Dudley's Bakery for lunch (delicious sandwiches with homemade bread) and stopped in at winery that had a cat painted on their sign, because duh. We drove back along Lake Cuyamaca checking out the beautiful scenery and all the camping locations. Just might have to go back. That night we met up with Jenni and Mike (to celebrate their recent engagement!) at the Starlite for dinner and drinks, and then back to their condo afterwards. The day of Thanksgiving, Clint and I headed up to Mt. Helix to check out his parents property, and drive up to the top to see the huge cross before we went over to Blake and Rebecca's house for the big family dinner. It was great to see everyone, and to meet some of Rebecca's family as well. On our last day before heading home, Blake and Rebecca took Clint and I down to Mission Beach to ride their beach cruisers along the boardwalk. Clint and I rode the tandem bike (which was pretty fun) as we bar hopped at a couple bars along the way. Afterwards, Rebecca packed us a couple leftover turkey sandwiches for our flight, and Jerry and Karen drove us out to the airport. Another fun trip to San Diego, can't wait to go back! photos


December
XO Cookie Exchange: This year, Jecca graciously hosted the annual Chi O Christmas Cookie Exchange at her home in Issaquah. She had tons of great food for us to snack on while we sampled everyone's cookies, and she even gifted us all with the most adorable owl mugs from Starbucks! Such a fun surprise, lysico. There was a smaller turn out this year, but that just meant more time to catch up with everyone there. I hadn't been practicing my cookie baking this year, and ended up making a new recipe - eggnog sugar cookies with icing. I decided to double the recipe to have enough for the party, which resulted in never ending cookie dough. I had to transfer it all to my largest stock pot just to mix it since it didn't all fit in my big mixing bowl. I cranked out 70 (yikes) cookies the night before the party, and fortunately they turned out pretty well!

endless amount of cookies

cookie spread

Colleen and Heather

Foster wanting in on the cookie action

Mom's holiday dinner party: Another fun holiday tradition I look forward to every year is Mom's work holiday party. We've dined at some of the best restaurants in Seattle in the past, and this year got to try out The Georgian at the Fairmont Hotel. Dinner was delicious, I splurged and got the surf and turf, and it's always fun to see Mom's coworkers and celebrate another good year at Liberty Mutual.

fun presentation of a caesar salad

delicious surf and turf with mashed potatoes

chocolate cake with espresso gelato

Mom's dessert - the most heavenly soufflé ever

Holiday dinner at Blaine's: This year, Mom and I went over to Blaine's house to celebrate Christmas with the Okamura ladies. We had a delicious dinner (shrimp louie salad with yummy garlic bread), and watched Reese open the gifts Mom and I had brought her. She liked the Little Mermaid lego set I had given her, even though she already had it but had lost most of the pieces, and LOVED the Frozen Elsa hat Mom got her, so cute! Reese also read us her list to Santa - pretty much anything Frozen. It was nice to see Liz and Blaine, too. We don't see nearly as much of them as when Blaine and I were young, so it's great when we do get a chance to all get together.

Turkey dinner: The third annual Layne-makes-us-all-a-traditional-turkey-dinner was a success! Once my grandpa was in town for Christmas, I had the whole fam over. Cooking a turkey with all the fixings seems to be getting easier as I start to learn little tips and tricks each year like prepping some things the night before and the timing of it all. Also, I tried a new method to cooking the turkey this time - covering it completely with bacon. This means no basting since the fat from the bacon continuously bastes for you. You cover the whole thing with a cheese cloth that you remove during the last hour to crisp up the bacon, then remove the bacon in the last half hour to crisp up the turkey. Worked great, and I got to add bacon to the stuffing! Win, win. This has become one of my favorite traditions, I really love hosting and having the whole family together.

bacon covered turkey before adding the cheese cloth

Uncle Bub - expert carver

Jenni & Mike's engagement brunch: Jenni is getting married! In Cabo, yay! Over the holidays, Jenni and her fiancé were in Seattle, so we had brunch at Smith (a fun restaurant in Capitol Hill) to celebrate the lovebirds. It was a fun excuse to get together and see each other, especially Rachelle who made the long trip up. Congrats Jenni and Mike!

Visit to baby Nolan: After brunch, Colleen, Maureen and I stopped by the Win'E household to see Kylee and Troy and meet sweet baby Nolan who was only less than a week old. Maureen had brought them both brunch to go from the restaurant )so thoughtful), and we all got our snuggles in with the new little guy. Mom and baby were doing well, and it was so fun to see how happy Kylee was to finally have him here. Already the sweetest mother ever. Welcome baby Nolan, can't wait to see you again soon!

Christmas: This year, Christmas was full of all my favorite traditions. It first started off with a shopping trip with Dad. A few nights before Christmas, Dad and I headed to Costco to buy each other's gifts. I bought my dad a Keurig coffee maker to enable his addiction, and I got a brand new set of Caphalon pots and pans (I guess to enable mine, I love to cook). After shopping, we had dinner at Bis on Main in Bellevue where we shared the bar top with Gene Juarez, so fancy. On Christmas Eve, Mom and I made a stop to see Marianne who is the mother of my mom's high school friend, Taffy. We drank Coke out of the bottle (a must) and caught up during our annual visit. We even got a surprise visit from Taffy! Afterwards, we went to my uncle's house where Clint met us. We had delicious french dip sandwiches for dinner, chocolate pie for dessert, and played a pretty successful game of gift exchanging - everyone ended up with something they liked! On Christmas Day, Clint and I opened our stockings from "Santa" and exchanged gifts with each other. I got the most beautiful pair of earrings as well as a night at Teatro ZinZanni that we're using next month, and I cannot wait! For dinner, we headed to my mom's to celebrate with her and my grandpa. Santa struck again, and Clint and I scored with each getting another stocking full of goodies. Dinner was delicious - my mom cooked a huge prime rib roast (yum!), and we may or may not have had more chocolate pie (depends on if my uncle is asking). So thankful to have shared another great Christmas holiday with my family!

New Year's: 
Clint and I stayed in this year for NYE for what might be our last chance to see the Space Needle fireworks from his condo (he's been looking to buy a home!). That now makes two years in a row where we've been recluses, and I'm scared I actually enjoy it! We made pizzas for dinner (which I hope now has become a tradition), watched a couple Die Hard movies (which doesn't need to be a tradition), and stayed up to watch the awesome fireworks show. We lucked out and didn't get fogged out this year, they were pretty incredible. It was fun to be able to hear the entire city go crazy, too. It was a great way to end a great year!

NYE 2013

NYE 2014