Quick shout-out to Doug and Lizzie at Malt and Vine.  They’re holding a wine tasting on Jan. 19 that is wedding-specific:

Saturday, Jan 19: Wines for Weddings
2:00pm to 5:00pm
Gorgeous flavors for the right price. We can help you find the perfect wines for your special day.

I went to their December port tasting, and I highly recommend that you check them out!  They’re so friendly and helpful, and they have EXCELLENT taste! 

Happy tasting!

Happy Black Friday, everyone! In honor of today’s unapologetic consumerism, I’m posting my list of recommended gifts for the people on your list this year. Happy shopping!

Lara Swanson, of A Softer Image Photography in the Washington DC area, interviewed me for a blog article about my post on inclusive wedding documents.  This is exactly the kind of grassroots change I was hoping to get started by writing that post.  Other wedding pros reading this—please let me know if you’d like to implement changes like I did!  I’m more than happy to help. 

For now, though, go check out the article and interview!

Wow, my site is finally really finished!  (Well, with the exception of this blog’s design, but that’s in the works, too!)  The final section of the website that needed some TLC was the design section.  Dennis (my web developer) and I had this idea of an additional set of thumbnails (like sub-thumbnails) for the design gallery, in order to show alterenate views of certain projects.  I wanted to be able to display internal pages of annual reports, and both front and back views of invitations without sacrificing the overall size of my “main” images.  Sounds easy enough, but it was actually pretty complicated!  Dennis worked really hard to find a solution, and he finally did it!  It’s not exactly like we envisioned it—it’s waaaaaaaaay better!  Go to my main site and visit the design section to see what we finally came up with.

And once again, BIG BIG BIG “thank you” goes out to Dennis for working so hard for me on my website!  If any of you reading this ever need a Flash designer/developer, I can’t recommend Dennis highly enough!  Check out his website to see some of his other work, and hire him for your next Flash project—I certainly will be!

Since I was transitioning the blog and website during the time this happened, I didn’t get a chance to blog about the awesome recognition that one of my projects received recently…

I just finished a 4-month contract with PayScale, and one of the projects I worked on in that time was the GigZig. GigZig is an awesome tool that you can play with to think about the direction your career is taking. You simply type in your current job title, and the GigZig will show you two things: what people with that job title were doing five years ago, and what people who had your job title five years ago are doing now! It’s a really awesome tool, so check it out!

…and I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a great tool! The GigZig was recognized by three prominent business technology sites: TechCrunch, the O’Reilly Radar, and Business Week (scroll down to “Where you are headed”).

And by the way, while you’re over at the PayScale site take a moment to register and take the salary survey. Make sure you fill in the question “what were you doing five years ago?” so there’s even more data for the GigZig to use!

One more thing, before I go home for today…

A BIG BIG BIG “thank you” to Dennis at DCK Design for helping me get my new website up! We’ve been working on it since last fall, and started the “big push” in January…because I scrapped the original re-design in favor of what you see on the site now. Dennis was a total trooper, forging through my many changes and iterations. I really couldn’t have done this with anyone else. If you ever, ever need a flash developer, Dennis is your guy!

I’m sure some of you are wondering, “Molly…you ARE a web designer…why were you working with someone to get a new website?” Well, the answer is in the question: I’m a web designer, not a web developer…and I also had a very strong aversion to Flash for a very long time. So when it came time to upgrade the website and I realized that I needed to use Flash to keep up with the times…I had to admit that I needed help to get the site I wanted. I did all of the design and branding work, and Dennis built it according to my specifications. We’re still ironing out some kinks, but I’m really happy with how it turned out!