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My Favorite Websites & Blogs (30 Days of Lists: Day 9)

This could be a really, really, really long list if I let it be – I like a lot of websites & blogs! So instead, I’m going to list the places where you can almost always find me online first, followed by some of my favorite blogs to read.

– Gmail
Twitter
– The SWPB Group on Flickr
Facebook
– Etsy (beautiful handcrafted goodness!)

I love to read:
Design Sponge
Psychotactics (Business tactics for the small business owner)
The Bloggess
Chookooloonks

And about a zillion others that I would list if I had time to pull up all their URLs and add them here, but pulling up The Bloggess already sent me off into a 20 minute spiral of reading her posts and posting to twitter about Wil Wheaton. He may have angered the Blogosphere back in 2002, but his photo of him collating papers today totally makes up for it!

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What’s In My Bag? (30 Days of Lists: Day 8)

Yesterday was a crazy, crazy day. Matter of fact, it started the night before. I went to my studio to have a meeting about the upcoming Photocamp Houston (whoo hoo!!!) and Mike went to a 5 course dinner with beer pairings at Beaver’s. As our meeting ended and I hopped in the Mini to head home, I thought that I should take a moment to check in with Mike. Good thing I did, because it turned out it was five STRONG beers that they served up with dinner, and since he doesn’t drink often it hit him hard! Oops! He had no intentions of driving home, but since I was there I was able to go get him instead of him taking a cab. Of course, that meant I had to drive him back there yesterday morning to get his car! I needed to get in to get my hair trimmed before SXSWi, so I made a quick call to the salon and got in there as well.

The whole thing threw off my working plans for yesterday though, so today is crazy catch up day! And as I went to sleep last night, I realized I never wrote this post. That made me sad, which I considered a good sign that I’m getting back into the swing of regular blogging! Yay!

Today’s List prompt is “What’s In My Bag?” I should note here that it gave me pause as I looked around and wondered to myself, “Which bag???” Seems that I have a thing for bags. Lots and lots of bags. It doesn’t help that as a knitter, I often have projects in bags too. But I’m going to go with my main bag, my cute concealed carry purse. So let me see, what do we have in here?

– Business cards to pass out for Wholly Matrimony.
– Business cards I got from others at WPPI – I’m still working on emailing everyone that I met!
– Several Sharpie Pens – they are the best!
– Receipts
– My latest sock knitting project – hoping to finish it while on the road to SXSW
– My wallet
– A fortune from a fortune cookie
– Cash
-9mm pistol
– Debit cards, drivers license, health insurance card
– Two tubes of lipstick
– Lush lip balm
– my iPad
– my Sprint MeFi for my iPad (looking forward to the upcoming iPhone update to use that instead!)
– a thumb drive

Best part about making this list? I cleaned out my purse at the same time and threw stuff away!

I should add that I love my purse. Mike bought it for me for my birthday, but took me to the Fossil store so that I could try out the purses and make sure I got one that my iPad fit into, that way I can easily carry it around with me!

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Blog Goals! (30 Days of Lists: Day 7)

Oh goodness, this couldn’t possibly be more timely! As I mentioned before, I’m bad about “living in the moment” and not setting goals. I’m driven enough that this has worked out to be ok for me. Not great, but not bad. Just ok. But I’ve been working with Jeff Jochum on defining different goals, and several of the ones I’m working on involve my blogs.

Yes, blogs. As in I own more than one. This one is personal, but the rest are business focused, so I’m going to break this down by blog.

BigPinkCookie.com (You are Here.)
– Finish up the 30 Days of Lists
– Participate in other writing prompt activities
– Get back to blogging about personal stuff 3-4 times a week
– Before I post something to twitter as a link, write a longer post about it here if it is worthy of it
– Redesign the site, or at least give it a thorough overhaul

Hot Mama Boudoir
– Do my homework from today’s call with Jeff
– Write up my declaration statement
– Write a whole new bio that is more about ME
– Contact more past clients about sharing their sessions online
– Once I have permission for using photos, write up posts – ideally, at least once a week
– Help moms rediscover their true beauty

Christine Tremoulet
– Think more about what my big goals are, my lofty mighty dreams
– Share posts featuring weddings within a few weeks of the wedding date, after the gallery goes online
– Revamp content on static pages on the site, replace the bio, update the FAQs

WhollyMatrimony
– Cheer Melissa on as she has been posting real weddings! Yay!
– Work with Melissa on ad packet
– Fix header image
– Do a weekly editorial post on trends & products
– Work with Melissa on creating a vendor directory within the next 6 months

SLGT Photo Project
– Make sure any pending posts are online
– Check in with clients who haven’t sent PR info for posts
– Schedule outstanding shoots for people who have signed up but never did session
– Find a programmer to change the calendar format for booking to an option to be one of 300 sessions

Some of these things can happen immediately, some with take time, some will require me to work with Melissa on them. Knowing what I want to do helps me focus on getting them done though! Now off to do my homework!

Want to join the project? Check out the 30 Days of Lists site!

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Least Favorite Words… (30 Days of Lists: Day 6)

Words, words, words. Hmm… I can’t really say that I have very many least favorite words. Matter of fact, I could only think of one at first. Short list today.

My Least Favorite Words:
– Daffodil – I’ve always thought this was the goofiest sounding word. No idea why. I just remember talking to my friends in high school and commenting on how this word is utterly ridiculous
– Any words used in the form of a mean slur against someone – whether it be racial, hateful, or just mean and hurtful. I think we need to be responsible with our word usage.

Most words don’t bother me. If I think of more, I’ll add to this list.

I watched “Revenge of the Bridesmaids” today while working on wedding albums. (Thank you, Netflix!) It wasn’t the best movie ever or anything like that, but it was good light-hearted fair for while I was working. I then watched “New In Town” with Renee Zellweger & Harry Connick Jr. and I was pleasantly surprised that Renee didn’t annoy me as much as she has in other movies recently. She still makes that pursed lip face thing but at least I didn’t notice it that much. Then again, I was still designing albums. Last but not least, I watched “The Answer Man” which was an amusing indie romance movie. Definitely worth watching. Then again, like the whole words thing, that isn’t much that I don’t like.

Speaking of movies – check this out! NatGeo flew a house just like in the movie “Up!” Ok, maybe not just like it, since it looks a lot smaller, but still pretty cool that they flew it for an hour like that!

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Weekend Goals… (30 Days of Lists: Day 5)

Being self-employed makes life interesting when it comes to weekends, especially when you’re a photographer. What is the weekend to other people isn’t always the weekend for me. This weekend I don’t have a wedding or any photo shoots, so I’m actually taking it easy while getting things done. Being gone for WPPI just over a week ago and leaving town again for SXSWi in a week makes me glad that this weekend is pretty quiet.

– Tweak the blog design at Hot Mama Boudoir
– Client meeting on Saturday morning
– Work on wedding album layouts
– Clean out the garage before it gets too hot outside
– Spend some time doing nothing with Mike & Jason
– Watch the Social Network
– Read a book – have any good suggestions?

I’d love to fit clearing out the closet in there, but realistically I know it just isn’t going to happen this weekend! Maybe next week?