So, here’s what we did around here this week:

I worked on the design for the upcoming Bobbledy album by Drew. We decided we’re just going to go with a simple 5″x5″ sleeve. Seeing that fewer and fewer people are interested in dealing with CDs, it seemed silly to invest in a big booklet sort of production that people might look at once and toss in the trash, once their CD has been copied over to their iPod. I fondly recall my days of poring over liner notes every time I listened to a cassette on my walkman, but I believe those days are gone.

Though I had worked through most of the design for the front of the sleeve last week, there was still the question of what to put on the back (song list, special thanks, info about Drew, info about us) and how to organize it (painstakingly). We finally settled on this design:

If you are confused by all of the extra gobbledy gook around the design, whenever you design for packaging, you have to design to a template, which is set up how the piece will print. Since this is a little sleeve that will fold in half with the edges wrapping around, you design the back of the sleeve to be on the left hand side of the page, and the front of the sleeve to be on the right hand side. Fold on the orange lines and you’ve got a sleeve. Voila! If you don’t believe me, print it out and try it!

We also had to figure out what to print on the disc. We wanted to keep it simple, so decided on a close-up of the monster face. But then there was the problem of what to do with the title and Drew’s name.

(Again, all that extra writing and weird marks are for the printer’s, so they know exactly how to line up and print out our disc art.) We tried the above one first, but we weren’t really happy with how it lost some of its punch by the face not taking up the entire disc. So we tried again:

Actually, this was the fourth or fifth try. But it did the trick. That face is right in your face, and isn’t undone by the small writing down below.

We like it very much. And it looks pretty good, hanging with Drew:

In other news, I painted some more auction items:

We went on some bike rides:

Doug the Baker got some new chair and table sets for outdoor seating:

Alden assisted in the unpacking:

and the transport:

and Iggy kept the perimeter safe and the cardboard boxes at bay:

We brushed August’s hair, rendering him powerless.

We call this his “Dapper Dan” look. He is not a fan.

We played “Find the Baby”:

And finally, Kato helped make Lemon Kick Pound Cake for the Tang Soo Do bake sale today (Saturday) at the Kingstown Farm Store from 10-2! Come buy some! It’s lemony!!

August helped in the clean-up:

then discovered sour cream:

then enlisted Iggy in the clean-up:

then decided baking cakes wasn’t as interesting as making soup with plastic vegetablestuffs (another favorite pastime around here):

When I say this pound cake is lemony, I really mean it:

(pay no attention to the child passed out on the floor in the background, or the unidentified screw driver on our kitchen counter).

In spite of all the missteps along the way, Kato deemed the whole affair a success:

(on the Kato scale of success, a skeptical single thumb up is about as good as it gets).

We also started to lay out our next Bobbledy Book, tentatively called, “The Imaginary Dragon.” You can read a bit about our brainstorming process over on the Idiots’Books blog, HERE.

We also learned how to Twitter, which is turning out to be the colossal waste of time that we thought it would be. Follow us at @BobbledyDad and @BobbledyMom.

So that was our week.