Interrupting the flow of neighborhood news and information for a few notes about the site. Here's the latest:

• Got a new shipment of CHS crow buttons in. They're roosting at CHS sponsor PizzaFusion on 12th Ave. Stop by and get your free button. If you find yourself on the east side of the Hill, you can also stop by Central Cinema for a free button.
• We just released an upgrade to our site search technology. Try it out -- here's a search for 'porn' on CHS.
• We're having a CHS meetup Tuesday night, 8p at Vermillion on 11th Ave. Some of us will be trading mix CDs, the rest of us will be hanging out and meeting neighbors. Here's a list of the CD swappers:
  jseattle
  final answer
  jeanineanderson
  bridget
  Uncle Vinny
  Yancy
  Avitania
  Rachel
• Thanks to dschonbe for helping us test out the new CHS Classifieds by submitting this elegantly succinct Valentine complete with slightly embarrassing nickname. Hi prickler! We drew dschonbe's name out of the hat to receive our CHS Bug Basher award -- we'll be in contact to arrange hand...

We've played this park image on our old CHS banner for all it's worth. Wesa's pretty pic of Volunteer Park served us well.

In early October, we planned a contest to replace the park image CHS banner. And we quickly canceled it after being, um, educated that contests are not the best way to achieve good design. Better, the comment masses said, was to hire an honest-to-goodness designer and set her to work designing her little heart out.

We were skeptical. The typical design budget for the typical neighborhood blog is approximately $0.35. We're not your typical neighborhood blog so we were able to up that a bit. But, really, it was out of the goodness of her heart helped by her knowledge that pumping out a super-hot CHS banner design would make her famous that we were able to hire our first ever CHS Design Intern -- EmilyP!

One morning meeting at Fuel Coffee and a few e-mails later, EmilyP submitted five proposals. Here is the CHS feedback she received at the time so that you can a) enjoy our version of the creative...