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

Potato and Onion © Dan Worthing. All rights reserved.

This strip, Potato and Onion, was introduced to me by a friend and I love it now. 

Wait… that’s not how that goes…

Look, tequila gets artsy fartsy!  I was just reading on Cocktail Times how 1800 Silver is teaming up with nine artists throughout the United States and Mexico to create a fashion line of tequila bottles. How cool!

I usually prefer vodka, but I’ve been learning to appreciate tequila lately… and not in that “Oh my god, what happened last night?” kind of way.  I tend to dig higher quality tequilas and preferably clear or “silver” tequilas.  I’m also more of a sipper than a shooter. My body shot days are long since over… thank god.  I’ve never had 1800 Silver, but I might give it a go for one of these bottles!

Margaritas are such a perfect summer drink, so here’s a recipe for a super-cute and very delicious-sounding version, courtesy of Cocktail Times. That needs to be tried asap!

Pink Margarita

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz reposado tequila
• 3/4 oz Monin wildberry syrup
• 3 oz sweet & sour

Garnish: pink salted rim, lime wheel and lime twist

Mix tequila, syrup and sweet & sour in a cocktail shaker. Strain into a salt rimmed margarita glass (or short glass) over ice. Garnish with lime wheel and a twist.

Happy Friday!

With the amount of requests we’ve received this week, it’s like someone let the Web Design Party Bus off at The Moxie Girls™ Lounge.  You guys are absolutely drunk with ideas for your websites and we are overwhelmed with exciting projects. Thank you for thinking of us!  If you’ve sent an estimate in the last couple weeks, make yourself at home, pour yourself a cocktail and we’ll be with you momentarily.

While we’re working our little fingers like mad to create incredible designs for our current couture design clients, we’ve also been busily creating designs for our labor of love, Femmeplates™.  We decided earlier this year that while we love creating designs for our clients, we also wanted to cut loose and design pretty things just because. We have to design for passion, not paycheck sometimes. It helps us keep things fresh for every client and not get in a rut, which can be easy to do if you’re not mindful.

Now, that’s not to say Femmeplates will be free. Let’s not get crazy!  These will be stylish, mostly female-centric, moderately-priced premium designs for Wordpress, Blogger or straight up HTML/CSS markup.  Femmeplates are not regurgitated freebie layouts with different banners, these are not templates created by others and modified by us, these are luxury designs lovingly created by us in our spare time so you can give your blog The Moxie Girls touch without waiting in the queue until you’re collecting social security.

There will be a few tiers of pricing, depending on the level of exclusivity you choose. We also must consider the licensing for the images used in the design, so that all parties involved get their copyright needs met. We respect stock illustrators (and all artists), their desire to protect their creations and we hope you do, too.

As these are designs of passion, so to speak, it means the looks you’ll find could be anything that strikes our fancy.  It could be seasonal, it could be bridal, it could be mommy-oriented, hobby-oriented, professional or whatever blows our dress up at the time.  We won’t be taking specific requests for Femmeplates — that would require a Request for Proposal for a custom project.  But, we are open to hearing your ideas, so if there’s a type of design you’d like to see in the Femmeplates showcase, drop us a line.  It doesn’t mean we will do it immediately, if at all, so don’t get bent if you don’t see it for a while. It’s nothing personal!  It simply means we’ll tuck it into our hat for the future.

The initial offering on August 11th will be select.  It’s a soft launch for testing the waters, so first come, first served.  No hair-pulling and no biting.  We don’t have that kind of insurance.

Have a great weekend!

This made me laugh so hard… because I would totally go to a Font Conference.

Thanks for the link, Kymberlie!

Ok ladies… no pushing, no shoving, no line cutting and no hair pulling.  Femmeplates™ are finally available for purchase!  We know, we promised these on August 11th but an unfortunate run in with some stubborn code set us back some.  Not to mention, I was out of town while Joelle hammered away at the set-up so that didn’t help move things along any faster.  How helpful of me!  However now, we have it all pulled together and working smoother than Kenny G covered in cream cheese.  Now, don’t go throwing darts at us if you run into anything hinky on checkout.  We’ll get any kinks ironed out I’m sure.

Femmeplates™ came from our desire to do some less restrictive creative work without the usual rules and regulations set forth with bigger projects.  We love designing pretty much anything but sometimes it’s fun just to do whatever hits our artsy fartsy button.  So we’ve unleashed a handful of premium cute stylish templates to choose from with a variety of price and license options to fit your needs.  We’ll be adding more new designs as the year goes on so the stash will get larger but for our premier Femmeplates™, we though this grouping would strike some of your girly chords. 

So go ahead and head over to our new Femmeplates™ selection and browse around. Viva la Femmeplates™!