I’m a little late on my annual blog post this year, must have been one heck of a NYE party or something! Let’s go with something, since NYE was pretty low key as usual. Brenda and I like to avoid the crowds and crazy drivers and stick close to home during holidays, especially during the New Year celebrations.

We didn’t have a lot going on last year with the production business; partially because it was a slow year and partially because we had to spend a large portion of our time focused on the family furniture business. Eventually, we had to make the tough decision to close the furniture store after thirteen years in business. 🙁 That is another reason my annual blog post is late, as we’ve been dealing with the final stages of closing up shop since early January.

I did build out a new website for the Garden Ridge Citizen Police Academy Alumni Association (GRCPAAA), so feel free to check it out. Brenda and I completed the GRCPA training that took place from February to April last year, and became eligible to join the Alumni Association as regular members. It’s a great organization that works to promote relations between our community and the Garden Ridge Police force. I volunteered to take over maintenance of their website and bring it up to date, and that continues to be an ongoing endeavor for me.

Beyond those few things and the ongoing maintenance involved with keeping things running around the ranch, there hasn’t been a lot of time left to do anything else. Well, besides continuing to support local musicians by attending live events around town, which continues to be one of our favorite things to do.

Up next is to get started on the project of turning the garage into an indoor laundry room/space for our animals (Our dogs, Bandit and Otis and our cat, Scratch aka Achmed), so we can finally get them out of the house! Hopefully I can get this finished before next year’s blog!

As always, if you are in need of any website work, IT consulting, video production, photography or graphic design, I’m ready and willing to work on your project, so please reach out to me and let’s talk about what you need!

Warmest regards,
-ken

I can’t believe it’s 2019 already! Where did last year go? It seems like only eleven months ago I was writing my first (and only) blog post of 2018, and now here we are starting a brand new year, hopefully ready to hit the ground running! Here’s a few of the highlights of our work over this past year, at least the ones that really stand out to me.

Enter Buddy Vargas

We had the opportunity to collaborate with a local musician by the name of Buddy Vargas. He’s a very talented singer/songwriter that’s based out of the New Braunfels/Gruene area, that we met last spring when he was playing at our neighborhood bar, JWs Bracken Saloon. It took us a bit of coaxing to get him to agree to work with us, but eventually, we wore him down… So glad we did, as we were able to work on some really cool projects with Buddy, and we’ve got others in the works for 2019. Let’s take a look at some of them now.

First things first

Although Buddy had a fairly good presence on the social media front, the first thing we did was get him a website so he could bring everything together in one place. And hence was born buddyvargas.com, the place to go for anything and everything Buddy Vargas!

Here’s a screenshot of the front page:

That got us off to a good start, but there was much work ahead of us. The next thing we tackled was to get some high quality videos done for his YouTube channel and Facebook.

Tunedesigner Promo

The first video we did was a promo Buddy wanted to make for his friends at Tunedesigner.com. He had hired them to produce his new single entitled “Forgive Me”, a song that takes on the sensitive subject of suicide, and focuses on those left behind. It’s a perspective that you don’t often hear about, that being forgiveness, and the message is very positive. Here’s the promo:

The Music Video

When Brenda first heard Buddy perform this song live, she immediately knew it was one that she wanted to help Buddy share with others in the form of a music video. Although it took about 6 months to create it, we are very happy with how it turned out. Take a look at it here:

We had a great time working with Buddy on this project, and are especially thankful for our friends Rick & Rose Andrade and their family for their support throughout the process. And a big thank you to the folks at Texas Actors Workshop who helped us cast the project, and for all the actors that participated in bringing the project to life! You guys ROCK!

EPK

To round out the website and give Buddy some demos he could use to help market himself, we spent a couple of days recording some covers as well as a bunch of his original tunes, and put together these two demos for his YouTube channel.

First up, a few of the covers that Buddy plays at some of his shows:

And next, here are some of his original songs that you also are likely to hear him perform:

We’ve got several other projects lined up with Buddy for 2019, so keep an eye out on our Facebook page or our Vimeo channel for all the latest information!

Other projects

We also had the opportunity to collaborate with a local venue in Seguin, Texas: The Abbott House. A beautifully restored historical landmark originally built in the late 1800’s, The Abbott House is a great venue for weddings and other special events. Here’s the promo video we made for them to highlight the venue for potential clients:

It was a pleasure working with Paul and Judi on The Abbott House promo video, and we also had a great time at their Holiday Social in early December! We are looking forward to working with them on more projects this year and beyond.

Bracken Saloon

One other project we worked on last year was a real estate promo for our neighborhood bar, JWs Bracken Saloon. This project was put together one morning in early June as a way for Heath and Paris to get the word out that they had decided to sell the bar and retire! There are two versions of the video, and I’m kinda partial to this social media version that we made:

So that about sums it up for 2018! There were quite a few other projects that we worked on as well, the majority if those being either small business profile videos or promos for various community organizations in our area. Some of them you can see on our social media pages, and others are hosted on various other platforms including YP.com, Yelp.com and quite a few dedicated small business websites.

So remember, if you are in need of some website work or IT consulting of any kind, give me a shout. And obviously if you need any video production, editing, photography, graphic design, etc., etc., I hope you’ll give us a call so we can help you bring your vision to life!

Warmest regards,
-ken