Kathy and I have finally been given the green light to announce the Big Secret we’ve been keeping for months.  If you haven’t figured it out yet… we’re writing a book!  *cue the confetti*

Late last year, we were approached by Wiley Publishing, the fine folks who put out the “for Dummies” instructional book series.  On recommendation from our colleague Susie Gardner (who I had the pleasure of sharing a panel with at SXSW in 2006), we were contacted by one of their acquisitions editors (Hi Melody!) about authoring the first book in a brand new series they’re launching called The IT Girls’ Guides.

The series is a technical instruction series with “girlfriends” conversational style.  It’s perfect for the savvy woman who’s interested in learning more — in our case, about blogging, podcasting, blog design and the hottest trends for women in the blogiverse!  Action-packed with all the juicy content you want and very little of the dry geek speak that bores you to tears.  Toss that waterproof mascara, ladies because The IT Girls’ Guide to Blogging with Moxie will be hitting a bookseller near you (and Amazon!) in Fall 2007.

So there it is, the cat’s outta the bag!  For more information, keep an eye on our site for more details as they develop!

With all the book stuff going on, we’ve kind of let this site simmer on the back burner for a bit.  Now that we’re approaching our final edits on Blogging with Moxie, we’re ready to start thinking about the future!  We have a lot of plans for the Moxie Girls over the summer and into the holiday season. We hope you’ll stop by from time to time to see what’s new.  Since we’ve been so quiet, you may wonder what we’ve been up to…

Kathy put together a fabulous site for virtual assistant (VA), Mia Chambers.  Her company, Acumen VA, was looking for a new logo, as well as a completely overhauled website using a green and purple color palette.

Kathy also did this very traditional design for return client, Athenian Properties.  For their business, they requested a more “gothic architecture” style with minimal color, which Kathy delivered in an elegant, sophisticated format.

Brandi Baldwin wanted a fun design with a sexy blonde woman and lots of cake for her home bakery business in Wyoming, Brandi Bakes!. Brandi definitely wanted “more Anna Nicole, less Martha Stewart” and requested the popular palette of pink and brown.

FashionJunkie was one of the biggest projects we’d worked on to date.  Utilizing lots of illustrations by Micho Illustrations, the client Dara Fleischer requested a bold design with lots of color and action.  This site utilizes lots of bells and whistles and features a variety of scripts, plug-ins and modules.

Wifeville, the online wife-wear boutique created by Jen Gorman, was a bright, cheery design project with a whimsical concept. This project was design-only and developed by a another firm.

It’s a rare opportunity that I get to meet my clients, but I did get the pleasure of meeting Carol Flake at our 2006 SXSW Panel.  She hired us to create a logo and an inviting design for their woman-centric financial website, Woman with Portfolio.  This project was completed in summer 2006, but the client is still finalizing a launch date.

Whew!  So, in addition to a book and a handful of small projects, this is what we’ve been doing with our time.  We also are working on a complete overhaul of this website (including pre-designed exclusive blog templates and small business website templates for those of you looking for instant gratification), as well as the impending launch of our Moxie Girls website which will feature so much cool stuff, I don’t even know where to begin.

And, of course, don’t forget to grab your copy of The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie available for pre-order now from Amazon.  It’s been selling like hotcakes (or so we’re told) so make sure to get in on the action!

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!

Well, it’s been about 6 weeks now, but our book is finally out and available both online and in stores.  The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie debuted to a great response and it only gets better.  It’s been in the top 10 of blogging books on Amazon several weeks in a row and we think it would make a perfect, reasonably-priced addition to anyone’s holiday wish list.

If you’ve recently hired us to build a blog for you, you’ve recently started blogging or you just aren’t sure where to start, pick up our book, The IT GIrl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie.  We share the ins and outs of setting up your blog for the first time, the pros and cons of various blogging tools as well as dish on how to get the most from your blog.  We even include great beauty tips, cocktail ideas and relaxation goodies to keep things lively.

And of course, everything is delivered in our usual trademark style, full of fun and cheeky humor. Check out Amazon for our latest reviews, along with our Flickr group of happy Blogging with Moxie owners.

We hope you’ll consider adding The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie to your library!

Happy Holidays!

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.

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…

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

We certainly had a good time at SXSW Interactive this year. We had an opportunity to chat and network with many of our colleagues, as well a chance to promote our book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie. Our reading went very well and the signing was such a great chance to meet new people and put some faces to the many names we encounter online.

We also had a chance to meet the team at Ellis Lab, the folks behind our favorite content management system, Expression Engine.  They are such a wonderful group of people and while we loved EE before, seeing what they have in store for their new release of Expression Engine and how passionate they are about their product and their users makes us want to become EEvangelists!

Our interview with BlogTalk Radio went smashingly!  We really enjoyed chatting with John Haven and look forward to working with BlogTalk Radio again soon.  You can listen to our interview by clicking that little player or following this link.

We’re starting to review the very beautiful flutter of questionnaires we received in late January and throughout February.  Kathy and I will respond in the order in which they were received and will do our best to get back to you as quickly as we can.  Kathy’s been feeling under the weather lately, so please be gentle.  We appreciate your patience!

Hope everyone has a wonderful week and a Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Well, the results are in!  Out of all the totally fabulous cocktail recipes we received, we have drawn our 3 winners.

First, the grand prize winner is Katrina W. with her oh-so-delectable Strawberry Pina Colada Daquiri. My blender thanks you.

Strawberry Pina Colada Daquiri

• 4 oz pina colada mix
• 2.5 oz strawberry schnapps
• 1 oz lime juice
• 1 oz Bacardi rum
• 2 oz frozen strawberries
• 1 teaspoon of sugar
• Filled glass of cracked ice

I’m a little unclear on if this is shaken and strained up in a martini glass or if you just throw it all in a blender.  If it’s the latter, I’d stick in a straw, maybe on of those umbrellas and I’m all set.  Use a glass if you must.  Festive daquiri glasses or margarita glasses work great, but any ol’ pint glass will do in a pinch.

Katrina will receive a signed copy of our book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie as well as an 8oz. tube of our current desktop favorite, Jaqua Hand Creme with Meadowfoam Seed Oil (though I’m not positive which fragrance you’ll get.  That’s Kathy’s department!) along with a too-good-to-be-true retro cocktail caddy. Oooo ahhh… perfect for trying out some other new drinks, eh?

Next up are our two 2nd place winners:  Chari (or “CLD”, as she’s often known) and Heather H.!!!  Congratulations! Those extra credit entries paid off, ladies! 

Chari sent us an antioxidant-rich recipe (let me pretend, ok?) for something she calls a “Healthy” Cosmo, which she also re-posted on her blog:

“Healthy" Cosmo

1/2 oz. Key Lime Juice
1/2 oz. Licor 43
2 oz. Rain Vodka
3 oz. Pure, REAL Pomegranate Juice
1 Lime Wedge
1 Mint Sprig

Pour all ingredients into a shaker with ice, shake mightily. Strain into a chilled [preferably frozen] martini glass. Garnish with lime wedge and mint sprig. Sit out on the lanai, prop up your earth shoe-clad feeties on an ottoman and enjoy. Feel proud of yourself for managing to up your antioxidants and get a buzz at the same time!

Heather decided to go all Italian on us with a delicious mix of light, sweet limoncello, tart cran and our ol’ girl the Goose!  She also smartly paired it with a white pizza which if I had my way, I’d have in front of me right now. Mmm mmm… And to make it even better, the white pizza is figure-friendly at only 4 Weight Watcher’s Points® a slice.  That leaves room for another limontini!  Let me have my math.

Limon-tini

• 3oz Grey Goose
• 2oz Caravella Limoncello
• 1oz cranberry juice

Pour over ice, shake, and strain into glass.  Enjoy!

White Pizza

22 min | 10 min prep | SERVES 4

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1/2 vidalia onions or other sweet onion, coarsely chopped (about 1 cup)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup coarsely chopped spinach or arugula leaves


• 1/4 cup part-skim ricotta cheese
• 4 tablespoons freshly grated parmesan cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil or 2 teaspoons dried basil
• 1 (8-inch) prebaked pizza crusts (such as boboli)

1. Spray grill rack with nonstick spray and prepare grill for medium-hot fire.
2. Heat the oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion, sugar, and 1/4 tsp of the salt.
3. Cook, stirring until onion is a rich golden brown, about 8 minutes.
4. Stir together the spinach or arugula, ricotta, 2 tbsp of the parmesan, the basil, and the remaining 1/4 tsp salt in a small bowl.
5. Place the crust on a pizza paddle or rimless baking sheet and spread the spinach mixture over it to cover entirely.
6. Top with the onion and sprinkle with the remaining 2 tbsp paremesan.
7. Using the paddle or baking sheet, slide the pizza on the grill, away from the heat source.
8. Cover and cook, rotating the pizza a half turn every 5 minutes, until the pizza is hot and the cheese is fully melted, about 8 minutes.

4 WW Points per serving (1/4 pizza).

Reposted from Weight Watchers.com

Chari and Heather will also each receive a signed copy of our book, The IT Girl’s Guide to Blogging with Moxie as well as an 8oz. tube of our current desktop favorite, Jaqua Hand Creme with Meadowfoam Seed Oil.

We’ll be reporting back about these recipes, along with others that weren’t drawn, in the coming weeks. Plus, stay tuned for the launch of our new website, TheMoxieGirls.com where we’ll be covering cocktails, entertaining, beauty and lifestyle.

Thanks for all of your awesome entries! 

Kathy is coming to visit me in San Diego this August and we’d love to create an opportunity to meet some of you lovely peeps!  We’re working on putting together a little soirée at one of my favorite lounges for a few hours one evening.  But, in order to best gauge attendance, we’d love to get your feedback on if this is something you’d like to attend. 

To give you a little sneak peek into what we have in mind, while it will be a cash bar for adults 21 and up, there will hopefully be some fun door prizes, as well as a signature cocktail special and some delicious (and I do mean delicious) noshes. I’ll be meeting with the folks at said venue about the details as soon as we can a rough headcount.  We’ll be there for general merriment, meet n’ greet, book signing and blog talk.  Most importantly, we’re there for fun, so bring a friend!

Check out the poll on the sidebar of our blog to vote!