Helloooo!  Just popping in to post a wee reminder that The Moxie Girls Summer Cocktail Contest shindig is still going on until June 6th.  If you haven’t already, send us your favorite summer cocktail recipes to enter to win one of theeeese fabulous prizes:

Grand Prize Winner will receive:

• A Cosmo Caddy, which includes a cocktail shaker, 4 cosmo glasses and a retro-esque carrier valued at $55.00 courtesy of LiquidPlanet.com
• A signed copy of The IT Girls Guide to Blogging with Moxie!
• A tube of Jaqua Hand Creme (flavor may vary!)

Two Runners-Up Winners will receive:

• A signed copy of The IT Girls Guide to Blogging with Moxie!
• A tube of Jaqua Hand Creme (flavor may vary!)

Rules here… hop to it kids! Time’s a runnin’ out and these Jaqua hand creme’s a burning a hole in my pocket.  Ok, they’re not actually IN my pocket, more like in a bag on my desk… but they’re taking up space!

Hi hi hi!  Well, as you can see, we’ve been doing a little housekeeping around here. It’s been a long time coming, but we finally have our new look in place.  We loved our Air Moxie pink and blue girls, but it was just time for a change, so we’ve taken our girls to a cocktail lounge with a go-go twist.  We call it “Moxie-a-Go-Go”. We’re still making some tweaks and ironing out a few weensy details here and there, so pardon any dust you might see.  Overall, it’s finished and should be displaying just delightfully in IE7, Firefox 2.0+ and Safari for both PC and Mac. If you’re using IE6, either upgrade your IE, get a better browser and/or tell your IT department to get with the program.

Some of the new features on this site are a new and improved FAQ section, which breaks down the most popular questions we hear monthly, weekly, even daily.  We’ve also made the proposal process so much smoother by creating a detailed Request for Proposal form that provides you a guideline for pricing and add-ons. 

We have a new portfolio, too! After 5 years and over 450 projects, we realized we had to pare it down a bit, so we’ve removed anything that’s not currently online (for now, though we’ll be bring back our Design Graveyard eventually for retired designs that we really like a lot). We also wanted to showcase only our most current and best work.

As you can see, our blog does allow comments now and we’ll be doing a lot more blogging over here, so please feel free to chime in.  We love a good conversation and meeting new people. We’ll also be sharing some of our favorite blogging tips and editorials on blog design in our Blogging with Moxie category.  And while we did have a semi-hidden feed before, be sure to subscribe to our new feed here.

Kathy has some fun and exciting news for you later, too, so keep your eyes peeled. You may want to get in on it! 

Technorati Profile

Greetings, salutations and happy Spring!  We hope everyone had a wonderful Easter and there’s better weather to be enjoyed by all.  Down with Winter!

First off, we want to thank everyone who has picked up our book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie. We’ve been getting wonderful reviews, feedback and emails from readers and clients alike.  Here are just a few of the super-fab things they’re saying about us on Amazon…

...as I come to something useful and new, I open up my lap top and follow their simple 1-2-3 steps and voila! Now I’m pinging all over the place

It really is much more useful than I thought it would be, probably one of the most useful books on the topic I’ve bought so far.

As the Joyologist Helen Madden (aka Molly Shannon-SNL) would say..."I love it...I love it...I love it”

Score for the new Mom! I read the entire book that evening and instantly it all made sense. I knew what I had to do. I knew what the next step was and I immediately went to work. Ok, its slow going but the only one to blame for that is demanding son. In the near future I will be launching my new big girl blog and even a new web site thanks to the Moxie Girls.

“Blogging with Moxie” is entertaining, enlightening, and empowering to those who don’t think they have the moxie to get out there and join the ranks of other bloggers.

This book gives great examples with a list of possibilities and resources to seek out and explore on your own. The fact that the book presents it all with humor and making the topic FUN is a bonus. Getting recipes for cocktails is a plus for anyone that has lost a post or tried to reformat their blog ending with having to do a complete do over, I’ll consider the recipes a “coping skill” add on! I love the fact that it is dressed up with the “girlie girl” format and geared for women.

Well, thank you!  Thankyouverymuch!    Your word of mouth and blog entries are what helps make the blogging community such a wonderful network and resource.  We’re so happy the book is helpful and we read and appreciate every single email, comment, link and referral we receive, so thank you!

In other news, we’ve finally dug through the stack of emails and questionnaires we received during the first quarter and either have responded or are working on it as we speak. If you sent us an inquiry or a questionnaire and have NOT received a personal response yet, give us through the end of the week. If you still haven’t heard from us, it’s possible something is hinky and we didn’t receive it.  You know how fickle email is when it comes to attachments and… well, everything. Please feel free to send us your email again and we apologize for any inconvenience.

On the site design front, we have a May 1st relaunch slated with our lovely publicist for this here site, along with our fresh new site, TheMoxieGirls.com, which will be more fun that a barrel of liquored up monkeys in $35 lip gloss, so stay tuned for that. Along with our relaunch, we’ll be releasing some new ideas and methods, so we’re very excited about that.

June 1st rings in bathing suit season and with that comes the return of Put Down the Donut! Hooray!  All you weight watchers, health nuts and fitness fanatics out there that are sick of the same old tips, the same dry info… be sure to stop by the Donut where we get fit with wit.

Just a little update!  Enjoy your Spring and don’t forget your sunblock.

I bet you thought we fell off the planet.  It’s only been like two… oh, wait...that’s ten weeks.  Oops. Sorry about that!  We have a good excuse, though, we swear. Kathy and I have been working like mad women on myriad new client projects rolling out in March, as well as a redesign of this site. Yeah, yeah, you say, you’ve heard that song before. More on that in a sec!

As we’ve mentioned, we’ll be attending SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX again this year. Our first time was in 2006 when I shared time on a panel with other blog designers discussing “How to Make $$ with your Blog Design Skills” (which made the SXSW Honor Roll that year).  The only bummer of that trip was that Kathy wasn’t with me. We skipped 2007 due to our workload, but this year, Kathy and I will not only be attending together, we’ll be presenting our first book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie.  Our reading is at 11:30am CST on the Day Stage if you’ll be at the conference and would like to attend.  The reading should last about 20 minutes and will be followed by a signing at the SouthBy Bookstore.  Come by and say hi!  We’ll be doing a giveaway, including a free signed copy of our book and goodies from our friends at TheBar.com.  We hope to see you there.

And now, about our redesign… we decided that in order for us to effectively finish our client projects and attend SXSW with any semblance of calm, we would postpone our redesign until the SXSW shenanigans have died down a bit. Everyone in the industry tends to release their Next Big Thing, be it a redesign, a new project or software, right before SXSW. Rather than be one of many, we’d rather wait until we can approach it in a less frenzied way.  We refuse to put anything out there that’s less than and when you rush that can happen.  There will be lots of fabulous sites to peruse during the next week or so… I’m looking forward to seeing what’s out there.

We’ve always received a nice, steady if not occasionally abundant flow of inquiries, but since Blogging with Moxie came out, we’ve received more than we could ever dare hope for. Thank you, thank you!  But, to that end, while it’s fantastique, we are but two women.  Sometimes people get testy when we’re unable to take their project, hollering (yes, hollering) that we should just “hire more people!”.  But if we hired more people, you’d be getting that person and not us.  It’s not about churning out product, it’s about doing what we love by providing you amazing, personal design and a one-on-one experience.  We care about you and your project.  And we appreciate your patience. 

Right now, we’ve had to put the kibash on new inquiries… even just “questionnaires in waiting”.  They’re knee-deep, kids!  So, until we return from SXSW and have time to scale this mountain of amazing projects, we are just not accepting any inquiries. It pains us to say that, but it’s only temporary.  If you already submitted your questionnaire to us or have otherwise been in contact with us, do not despair!  We’ve got them here and we’ll still be reviewing them in the order in which they were received when we return from SXSW.  Hopefully, we’ll be ready to consider more new inquiries by April.

Again, Kathy and I really can’t thank you all enough for your interest in working with us, for purchasing our book and for your patience.  We’re off to SXSW, so we’ll catch you on the flipside!

xo

It’s that time of year when the bell-ringers are out, the smell of pine trees fills the air and people will cut you for the last Thomas the Train, but it’s also a time for giving. And we think you should give Blogging with Moxie for the holidays this year.  We’re very subtle like that. 

We also have some great announcements!  We’ve received wonderful reviews on Amazon and the book has been doing steadily well!  The fine folks at Expression Engine offered up an adorable video review for their readers and several bloggers have shared their thoughts both on Amazon and on their personal blogs.  Our publicist CJ has also beenbusily pimping us (we love her!) and on December 19th in the evening, Kathy and I will be appearing on the Derek & Romaine Show on Sirius Channel 109.  Tune in and listen!  We’ll also try to get a transcript or a recording of the interview to post here, as well.

HOLIDAY HOURS: For the holidays and because we are working diligently to roll out many new internal projects we’ve been working on before the New Year, we will be CLOSED from December 19th - January 2nd. We really need these two weeks for administrative and year-end wrap-up, and like you, we wish to spend time with our loved ones for the holidays. We appreciate your consideration and will respond to inquires sent during that time on our return in the order in which they were received.

We are booking for the first quarter of 2008 right now and we’re wading through a stack of inquiries that came in over the last week or so. January is almost booked solid for me, though Kathy may still have some openings. We will also be out of the office March 6-10 for SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. — just a heads up. Our schedules fill up fast and we are doing our best to respond to all of the requests in our inbox as quickly as possible.    We didn’t forget you!

If you are interested in having us design your blog or small business website, please fill out a Design Questionnaire. If you submit a request for a quote without completing a questionnaire, you will just receive an email from us asking you to please fill it out, so if you’re serious about working with us, please take a few moments to fill that out… yes, even the bit about the budget and timeline. Thanks!

I hope everyone has a wonderful, safe and joyous holiday season.