I’ve been upping the anty on my branding, making matching folios and business cards to give to clients. I realized I needed this as I felt silly giving my clients loose paper stacks Nothing fancy just some goodies, paperwork and a beautiful simple sleeve that matches my business cards and now my site!

Anyway – enjoy, and I’d love to hear any thoughts on the new site – although I’ll ward this one off right now — I know it loads slower. We’re working on it, but with the loading slower comes a lot of convenience and continuity with using wordpress and flickr. So – anything else, though, is welcome

-Rachel

Also check out her post today for a cool give-away!!

At the last minute, a group of exciting wedding vendors got together to talk about our first Erie Wedding Professionals meeting. I am honored to be a part of the group, especially being new to this particular industry. Luckily, what I’m not new to is creating graphics for websites With the help of Heather Mencer and Heather Neckers-Kinal we had a crash session and came up with this concept which I worked on Sunday night for MyErieWedding.com, run by John Gallagher. I hope to help translate it’s modern feel to the rest of the site in the future.

What else is new? I’m winding down to 13 days left at my 5 year art director job. There are such a mix of emotions at this stage in life. I’m sad, but so excited to stop juggling so many things and be able to focus on one thing (well many things, but with one focus) It’s weird how *aware* you are of the time running down.

Can’t wait to post about the important people’s birthdays coming up at the end of the week.

My awesome friend Danielle, Communications Director,  has done a three part series on what twitter is. Check them out if you’re one of those people going “well…what is twitter anyway – and is it valuable to me?”

Check it:

What IS Twitter, Anyway?, Part 1

Twitter: An Insider’s Guide, Part 2

Twitter: An Outsider’s Guide, Part 3

In other news – YAAAAY FRIDAY!!! It’s been an intense week I think for many. Let’s pray for God’s grace for the weekend and the week following!

Oh – and you can follow me on twitter at my username – puremotif.

Another fun part of this was that I got to do staff environmental portraits for them. It was really cool, and even included a portrait of the greeter, Piper the dog

Thanks for such a cool project guys, and I’m excited to keep working with you further!

I knew I wanted it to be flickr based since I rely so heavily on flickr and it is by far the easiest, affordable way to keep your photography and any other visual digital files organized and current. I tried downloading a few different flash type of players that would filter my flickr sets, but none of them worked as good as the tried and true rock — I am using the pictobrowser, and its simple and easy. 

I hope you all like it!

Visit my new site

Work is crazy. Work outside of work is crazy. Last night was a big website night with Danielle. Today, I am going to see Sarah Palin with friends. I’m pretty excited. Regardless of what side you’re on, a big political name coming to your hometown is an awesome opportunity.

I can’t wait until election day is over. I’m so sick of all the political advertisements, speeches, rhetoric, debates, lies, twisting of facts, etc. Let’s just get there already and move on!!!

One of the advantages to being off on Mondays (which isn’t always possible, but I try my hardest) is getting able to actually use and cook and chop and eat all the healthy food I buy at the beginning of the month. Today I wanted to make myself a healthy stir fry. It’s super simple, but unbelievably tasty. You can use whatever amount of the ingredients you want, or add or take away anything.

The basic ingredients to rachel’s summer stir-fry are:

Assorted bell peppers

Fresh pineapple chunks (this is important)

Zucchini/squash

A few slices of onion

A few piece of asparagus

Chopped fresh chicken, cooked before the veggies are added

Extra Virgin Olive Oil (about a tablespoon or so)

Rosemary/Thyme to taste

Start the chicken first obviously, and then after it’s about halfway cooked, you can add the rest. The best part? It’s a starch free meal – the only carbs come from the veggies/pineapple. It filled me up. Sort of. I have to admit, I still had a twix bar afterwards. I’m terrible about my sweets.

In other news, this weekend was good. Fast as usual. Sunday service was good – and Brian and I got some really nice quality time together. MetaCafe was fun, you need to come! Also, I got a ton of cleaning, purging and organizing and figuring out things that have just been put off due to busyness. Tax stuff, business account stuff, stacks and stacks of junk mail, coupon cutting, client file disorganization….I don’t know how I let things get out so of hand. I mean, I feel that I am an organized person, but things build up so fast. I still have a small pile on my desk I need to deal with. But I can’t get to it quite yet.

Today was one of those days where you do things you have to do – go to the dentist, run to walmart to pick up supplies you’re low on and end up spending way more than you want, heading to petsmart to get food for the cats – unable to resist walking to the adoption section and having to leave in tears because you want to take all these beautiful, loving pets home and give them a home…. etc. Don’t you all have days like that?

I’m going to Bella Designs (that website will be redone within the month, I promise) now to take pictures of dresses for a celebrity/ebay auction that will be happening soon, then home for a bit, then to Chris’s with Danielle to make a major dent in the new Grace website reprogram/redesign. I’m actually excited about it!

This post got rambly. Sorry. Where is life going? It flies and flies and flies and flies.

One project we’ve been working hard on at Engel O’Neill is the Bayfront Convention Center‘s brand new, beautiful (if I do say so myself) website! For a long time it was really just not up-to-par with the CC’s image, and I think we’ve, with the help of the awesome technical skills of WerkBot, really brought it up to the standard of just how awesome Erie can be. We also used photography from all over the place, including Mark Fainstein for the beautiful ending shot on the flash slideshow of the purply convention center at dusk, Steve Perkins, Art Director at Mercyhurst, who took some awesome arial shots of the penninsula and Erie City, some sunset pictures we all compiled together from friends and family, as well as some lesser known local photographers that I literally found on Flickr while searching Erie, PA. Meeting and connecting with all these people has been so awesome!

The site came together quickly, there were NO revisions to my original design. Yes, I said it, NONE! It was a once-in-a-lifetime hit. So I’m really happy with it. Check it out, let us know your thoughts!

Also on a random note… please please.

PLEASE.

Neuter/spay your cat, and if possible, don’t let it roam around outside. I am subscribed to a free list that gives things away, and the top thing that people are always giving away? kittens. Not to mention when I was at Petsmart the other day the adoption area was filled with young, gorgeous kittens with no home right now. There is such an overpopulation of these little pets and it causes problems and people trap them and kill them and hurt them, and its just so hard for people who love cats… we can’t take care of them all, or we become crazy cat people. I would take them all if I could, but too many isn’t positive either.

So – spay your pet.

So I thought, might as well pass it along since it’s really affecting me. If you get an emails that look like this, don’t click on the links. They look sort of official. Delete them immediately or send to your junk folder. Don’t download the new flash player they tell you to. A few people from my office have already accidentally clicked. Being on a mac, I don’t know that the virus would affect my particular system anyway, however I’m still not planning on clicking them.

Some headlines to watch out for include:

From: MSNBC Breaking News <geagtede1953@2ndshop.com>

Subject: msnbc.com – BREAKING NEWS: Plane crashes into prep school, hundreds of kids killed

From: CNN Alerts <Colleen-bychild@orkin.com>

Subject: CNN Alerts: Breaking news

Other forms:

CNN Daily Top 10

CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert

And of course, that’s not including my daily dose of: “Let’s chat,” “Sexual enhancement,” “User favorites software,” Don’t get left behind,” “Your profile,” “Can we talk?” “Control your weight and appetite,” “95% off for rachel,” “Famous brands,” “Prodigious preparation is to your service,” “123″ . . . etc etc etc.

Has anyone else been getting any of these particular spams?