My process was the following....

• I began by creating a logo in Illustrator with retro colors, and that seemed to take on the overall "look & feel" of my site.  I probably recreated the logo 60+ times! until I liked it .....
• After our visit to the Torrington Historical Society I thought I wanted to change my logo to include some "gears or wheels" ... but decided in the end to go back to my original logo that included a skyline of hand made brick buildings...
• I found a mural in Torrington that I liked which included a movie reel... (church st) That I was able to incorporate into my own logo using photoshop and illustrator.
• I knew I was going to keep the navigation very simple and basic (horizontal at the top of the page)  since this site would be viewed by businesses that don't have time and want to know where to go to find something. 
• I created a site map (or rather took the content and pages that was given to us) And from there I began to build the site.  
• The only way for ME to really know how I like a site is to visually see it online - check how it looks and feels on a MAC and a PC (I have a MAC at home and PC where I work)  so I set up a website on one of my testing sites (lorastestsite) and when I didn't like how it looked live... I would go back and tweek it on Dreamweaver, upload it and take a new look!
• I've had some experience with building basic websites so I pushed myself to learn some new CSS  and Lightbox Code, some photoshop tutorials etc.  ( Drop Caps  and Lightbox Gallery, created post-it notes on contact pages)

I believe a website is never "complete"