After the miner set back of having no power at the office today, Things are going ok on the Christmas Theme. I am not going to show any Screenshots tonight, as I am not ready to show what I have. But here are the things I got done today.

1) Established look and feel of the Windowblinds skin.
    This proved much harder then I had hoped. Making something that is decidedly "Christmasy" that is not annoyingly bright, or to Cliché, What I want is when people see the skin for the first time to say, "wow a Christmas theme" but when they see it the second and third times I want them to see a well made skin, and a useful one. This my friends is a challenge. It is very tempting to just make a skin that has snow running along the Title bar, or Christmas lights and Holly everywhere. But this has already been done, and sometime quite well. What I am trying for, believe it or not, is a Professional Christmas theme. I mean I want Santa clause to want to run this on his XP box in the north poll.

2) Designed and got working the Window frames, Toolbar frames. And most of the buttons.

3) Locked down the palliate for the theme. I am going with White for the base color of the skin, with allot for red, "Candy Cane" Like elements. Not actual candy canes, like I said that's been done. The buttons are al going to be colorful, Tree ornaments, and the like. The Wallpaper is going to be mostly blue. I have a sketch of it but it is very vague. The Icons, Which I plan on doing at least the "base 24" are going to be white, with allot of Colors. Blue, Red, Green. They should be pretty nice, if what I have in my head finds it way out. The Desktop X portion of the skin will match the Icons and WB. So should be pretty simple.

This may not seam like allot of work for the first day. But for me this is the had part. Once I have these things down, it starts going really fast. I hope to have the Windowblinds skin done, or almost done buy tomorrow night.

I will include some screen shots tomorrow. And if any questions come up over the progress of this theme. I will try and do some mini "Tutorials" of some of the techniques I use.

I'm off to bed, so I can get a early start tomorrow. Hopefully the power will still be on.