She liiiiiiiiiiives!  Actually, we’ve been very busy around here in case you didn’t notice. hehe!

Right now, I’m spinning several plates working to wrap up some projects and I’ve already booked a few new clients for the coming months, but I am still accepting inquiries… well, until I’m not anymore. I’m not quite sure when my cut off will be — there are some projects in negotiation right now. But it will only be a handful of jobs this summer, so hot-step it if you’re interested.  You can fill out our request for proposal to get started.

I will be taking my summer vacation from July 19 - August 5 and will be unavailable by phone or email (it is a vacation after all!), so if you have a project that needs to launch before then, definitely contact me as soon as possible.  Any projects I’m currently working on will certainly launch before then (barring anything unforeseen), so don’t you fret.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend!  Don’t forget your sunscreen!

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

Hello?  Oh hi, there.  Yes, it’s me Kathy… the one who fell into an abyss and got lost somewhere between Thanksgiving and Groundhog Day.  If I haven’t said it enough we’re super busy… a good problem to have!  But busy bees nonetheless.  I am packing (and preparing meals for a 2 year old so that he doesn’t eat hot dogs and jello for 4 days straight) and getting ready to pair up with my other half, Joelle, for fun, festivities and technology galore at SXSW Interactive this weekend in good ‘ol Austin, Texas. 

I’ve never been to Texas in my life.  Not even for a flight layover.  So, bring on the BBQ!  Joelle and I haven’t yet been able to attend an event together either so watch out Austin, The Moxie Girls are coming to town and they are armed with cocktail shakers.  We’re doing a quick book reading for The IT Girls’ Guide to Blogging with Moxie on the Day Stage at 11:30am on Saturday the 8th so if you’re coming to the event and want to pop in and say hi, please do!

While we’re attending SXSW, Moxie Design Studios does not sleep.  We’ll be back in the swing next week as usual.  I’ll at some point be booking new projects for April/May but for right now I am up to my gills in design.  We appreciate your patience if you’ve submitted a questionnaire.  We’re climbing Mount Paperwork as soon as we return.  Now if I could only find pink mountain climbing gear…

Things are nutty right now, so I’m going to keep this brief.  As you may have read, SXSW is upon us and we’re getting ready to take flight to Austin on Friday morning.  It’ll be the first time I’ve seen Kathy since June 2006, so I can’t wait to hang out with her and network with many of our colleagues.

My schedule right now is booked solid until early April.  We are swamped with inquiries, so I’m not accepting any new projects at this time, but we’ll be reviewing new projects above and beyond the stack of questionnaires that we already have here hopefully in the next six weeks or so.

In some exciting news, I was interviewed by the fine folks at Ellis Lab about the project I did for FashionJunkie.com. If you’re interested in checking out the interview, visit the EE Showcase.  It was so great of them to do that…

OK, off to finish more work before we jet.

Well, Thanksgiving is just around the corner. I don’t know where the Fall went.  It seems like I was just sweltering away a couple weeks ago.

There’s been SO much going on over the last three months. I’ve got several projects I’ve been working on and a couple wrapping up that I’m looking forward to posting in the portfolio.  It’s been forever since we’ve had a chance to update that.

Speaking of updates, we’ve released our first book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie in October to a fabulous response. With so much going on, we’re still trying to get our redesign completed. Those are the famous last words of many freelance designers, but clients come first, so those jobs took precedence over our own internal projects.  Sorry to anyone who has been waiting patiently for our new features.

Now, on to my schedule: I am unavailable to begin new projects this year, but I am booking projects to start in January 2008. Please fill out one of our design questionnaires and return it to us with your request to move it along.  If you send a request without an accompanying form, we’ll only respond by asking you for to fill one out, so let’s cut to the chase, shall we?  Thank you!

We are so excited by the new projects we have coming up and can’t wait to share them with you.  In the meantime, have a glorious Thanksgiving.  May your pants be expandable so you enjoy every bite and enough champagne in you to tolerate your husband’s pervy Uncle Frank.

Happy Thanksgiving!