Life:

It's been a busy couple of days here at traciedesigns HQ. I have enough work to keep me going, but the kind of busy I'm talking about is life.

Last year at this time, I was the HBIC of the PTA at the 8 year old's school. It was not an easy job, and looking back, I see exactly how much of my time it took up (A LOT). But I enjoy volunteering at the school, I've met lots of great people and I can't even begin to tell you how rewarding it is (seriously. If you're feeling down, go have lunch with your kid at school. Watch their face light up and I guarantee that you will feel light years better). The 8 year old took great pride in my role as president (getting so frustrated with me if I couldn't answer her questions; "You're the PRESIDENT. Don't you know EVERYTHING??!" I wish).

But this year, I'm not the HBIC. Somebody else is running the show, and I'm OK with that. I enjoy having my time back, doing things with my kids, and not constantly checking my email to approve email blasts and flyers (OK, I still constantly check my email, but not for things like that). I enjoy letting the kids play on the playground after school gets out, and not having to run home to... yep, check email. I enjoy coming downstairs in the morning to a clean kitchen, instead of last night's dishes still in the sink. Most of all, I enjoy the sense of order I am restoring to my life.

So this past week, I've been doing just that. I've got work that I'm doing, but I'm really concentrating on a healthy work-life balance. And so far, it seems to be working.

Cooking with color:

I think I may have to find a new title for these types of recipe posts, because I have been cooking with the same palette of colors all year long.



Anywho. I love vegetables. And I especially love them in the summer, fresh from the garden. This "recipe" was made up one night when I was looking for an alternative pasta salad. I just tossed some veggies and pasta together, threw in some olive oil, and voila! Summer yumminess. This one is definitely a summer staple in our house.

Summertime Veggies and Pasta:
(please note that there are no amounts, as I don't really measure when I make this. The general rule of thumb is that I love veggies, so I try and do equal amounts veggies to pasta)

Cherry or grape tomatos
Any color pepper
Red onion
Capers
Fresh Basil
Pasta (brown rice pasta is yum with this--and normally I'm not a fan)
Olive oil
Salt

Chop up all your veggies into bite size pieces. Boil, and then cool, the pasta. Combine veggies, capers, basil and pasta. Add olive oil and salt, and mix. For extra spice, throw in a little hot pepper.

Sweet sixteen

My baby turned 16 today:



This photo was taken when she was mere days old. I don't even think we were out of the hospital yet. Sixteen seemed so far away then--the next week seemed so far away then! And yet here we are; embracing legal driving age (well, some of us are. Some of us parents, ahem, wouldn't exactly use the word "embracing").

Happy birthday to my super-awesome teenager.

Seven years later...

7 years ago today, Madeline decided to grace us with her presence. Happy birthday to the coolest 7 year old I know!

Lights out!

So if you live in or around the NYC/Fairfield County area, you know that this summer--this week particularly--we've had 2 types of weather: incredibly, unbearably, hot, humid and sticky; or torrential rain, thunder, lightning and tornado warnings. Seriously, there's no in between. Either or, take your pick.

As I mentioned, this week has been particularly bad. Monday night the rain/thunder/lightning combo was so crazy, we ended up losing power for a few hours. No biggie; unlike some of our neighbors, we had ordered take out that night, so dinner wasn't half made; there was enough natural light that we went on doing our normal evening activities--sans electricity of course (OK, almost all of us continued our normal evening activities--the teenager had to suffer through a few hours of no internet access). Power was restored by 9 and all was fine.

Tuesday and Wednesday was a return to hot, humid and disgusting, and then last night, the biblical rain came again--resulting in power outage #2 for the week. Dinner was already made, so again, no problems there, however... the power did not come on a few hours later. 9:00 came and went, and there was no light. No nothing. The worst part is that apparently we live at the very edge of our power grid, because the street next to us and behind us had power--a dirty little tease: "Look at all our lights!"

Fortunately there's no shortage of laptops in our house, so we popped a movie in the one with the most battery life and watched it until the battery ran out. At that point, it was late, and we settled into bed, only to be woken up a few minutes later by every light in our house turning on (along with TVs, radios, appliances... I always forget to turn stuff off in a power outage, so it's always a funny reminder of what we were doing when the lights went out, when they come back on). Ahhh, electricity.

Oh, but the story doesn't end there. We woke up this morning to a cable outage--which means no cable, internet, or landline. Since both Mattio and I work from home... well, the electricity may as well have gone out again. Sigh.

I remain hopeful--today's weather couldn't be more gorgeous: the rain left, and took the humidity with it. It's hot, but not unbearable. Hopefully this is the start of summer weather that I could really get used to. And also the end of the power outages.

Day of awesomeness, twitter and fame

Yesterday, I was famous.

Twice.

I know, right? I'm still buzzing about it.

So here's the thing: a few weeks back, I made a new Twitter friend (yep, this is another Twitter post. Sorry, haters. Well, no. Not really). Meg Robustelli, of Fairfield County Child, started following me on Twitter, and liked what I had to say enough that she asked me to be her MomCrush of the month. What's a MomCrush, you ask?

I meet so many cool, inspirational moms here in Fairfield County. Every time I meet a woman who dreams big and puts words into action, I admit it, I develop a little girlcrush. I want to know everything about her and what lead to her success. So I decided to feature one mom a month (my Momcrush) on FCC so that I can spread the word about the cool things she's doing. She might be an entrepreneur, an athlete, an inventor or someone who donates ther valuable time to the less fortunate.

My answer was along the lines of, HELL YEAH! So yesterday my MomCrush post went live on Fairfield County Child, and now I'm sort of famous.

But wait. There's more.

Yesterday I also stumbled upon this super awesome mini film from Oliver Peoples eyewear. It was so adorable, I had to share. So I blogged about it, and then came up with some clever little tweet with a link back to my blog.

You guys, OLIVER PEOPLES RETWEETED MY BLOG LINK.

So, just to recap how totally AWESOME twitter is (and, let's face it, my day yesterday):

Woman with a thriving blog devoted to Fairfield County parents sees my tweets and features me on said blog--not only that but hello? She's got a crush on me.

AND Oliver Peoples exposed my blog to 1500 people that may or may not have ever seen it, because I liked their film enough to tweet the link to my blog, where I wrote about it.

Awe. Some. Ness.

Update: Oh, right. This wouldn't be a proper Twitter post without mentioning everyone's handles: Follow Fairfield County Child, Oliver Peoples, or yours truly.

Not so Super at Mario Brothers

Yesterday was a snow day--for the children. Unfortunately, when your office doubles as your home, you can't exactly say you're not going to risk life and limb on snowy roads to come into work--people just don't buy that.

The problem with yesterday being a snow day for the children is that our house is roughly half the size it used to be, due to our impending construction. So there wasn't a lot of places they could go. Which would be fine if there wasn't 2 adults trying to work. Once our 2 year old got up from her nap, I just gave up--she clearly had other plans and they involved her mother not working.

Her latest fixation? Watching someone play the Wii. Her latest Wii fixation? Super Mario Brothers.

So yesterday afternoon, I got to play "Mario Brothers"--as she refers to it. And she sat on one side of me, and our 6 year old sat on the other side, and they were in their glory:

2 year old: "Watch out for those guys, mommy!"

6 year old: "Mom, I can't believe you died again. Maybe you should go to an easier level. Or just skip this one.

2 year old: "Watch out for those guys, mommy!"

6 year old: "Mom, there's got to be an easier way for you to get to the castle. You should try the easier way."

And so it went, for a little while anyway. I have to admit, as frustrating as the game is--and if you couldn't tell, I'm not that good--it's a good way to release stress.

Especially since my desk--piled with all the work I wasn't doing--was 3 feet away.

Weekly wrap up

If you follow me on Twitter, you know that this week (well, Wednesday, anyway) stuff. Got. Done. Let's get to it:

Construction update: None. Sigh.

Work update: THISclose to finalizing a math website I'm working on. Yeah, that's right. I said math. Look, I'm not doing the actual math, just designing the site for those who choose to do it. Don't go all freaking out.

Also: had a great first round critique of some logos I worked on for a sandwich-type place. Got some great feedback, and I'm really excited to get going on some revisions so they are client-ready. I built a website, which should be going live next week (actually, if all goes as planned, I'm hoping to have 3--that's right, three--websites go live next week). I'm also juggling 2 brochures for Hospital for Special Surgery. I expect any moment to get my honorary degree in either hips or knees.

This weekend, I'll actually be working most of tomorrow. But don't worry, I'll be playing slope-side all day Sunday to make up for it. In the meantime, this week has taken it's toll on me; I'm very much looking forward to spinning away my stresses tonight, followed by dinner and drinks with Mattio and friends. He needs it just as much as I do.

Guess what? You're old.

Today a colleague called me old.

Allow me to explain: We were talking about the word fresh. Fresh as in, "These vegetables are really fresh." However, growing up, I remember my mother and grandmother using the word fresh to describe a smart mouth. As in, "Don't you get fresh with me." This colleague very nicely tried to explain that fresh meaning naughty was an older term, and kids today (which should have been my first clue) might not get it. When he couldn't come up with the right words, he finally looked at me and said, "we're old."

Then, this afternoon, I came across this: Timeline Twins, Music and Movies. The teaser really grabbed me:

If Back to the Future were made today, Marty would have travelled back in time to 1980.

Boy, talk about making a girl feel old.

Listening to Michael Jackson's Thriller today is equivalent to listening to Elvis Presley's first album (1956) at the time of Thriller's release in 1982.

Say what??!

I'm not going to go spilling my age (there's just no need for that), but let's just say I'm old enough to remember listening to Thriller when it came out.

I'm not sure of the point of this post, except that misery loves company. Read the rest of Timeline Twins, and feel a little older with me.

Weekly wrap up

This week began and ended with illness; with some illness thrown in the middle for good measure. A nasty little stomach bug took 3 out of 5 of us down this week, in addition to one annoying head cold. But, fair readers, illness could try and stop us, but it can't keep us down. Here's the traciedesigns weekly wrap up:

Construction update: Sadly, none. Builder stopped by earlier this week (hopefully avoiding all the germs) and said perhaps next Monday, weather permitting, of course. So you can be absolutely sure that it is going to snow like a mother out there 1 week from Monday. You heard it here first. Also? Sorry 'bout that.

Work update: Logo for CFO approved! Yay! Onto business cards. Also worked on a dental logo, saw a fair amount of crappy dental sites (dentists: call me), did some research for another food logo--my favorite--and worked on some hospital materials.

Cool work update: Guys, brace yourselves: I'm a little more famous than I was before. I am a published woman! I found out that 2 of my logos were published in Basic Logos. I found this out via email, letting me know that because my logos are in the book, I got a free copy.

But I had to pay for shipping.

Which was 20 Euros.

But totally worth it. The 2 logos?


Saturnia (Which sadly, I found out recently, is no longer in business)


and Mari the Studio (Which is still very much in business. And if you are looking for a rockin' cut and color, you'd best see her)

So that is definitely reason to celebrate. But unfortunately, we won't be celebrating tonight, as this stomach bug insists on hanging around.

Next week on the to do list: Food logos--and lots of 'em (oh, and celebrating my fame. Duh). Happy weekend!

Mr. Contractor, tear down this wall!

Neither Mattio nor I have never lived in New York City. We've never had the pleasure (or discomfort, some may say) of loft living, complete with exposed brick and beams.

Well, all of the changed the other day, as THE WALL came down. The wall that I speak of is the one that used to separate the front room in our house (the dining room) from the back room (our bedroom). The removal of THE WALL was the first step in a long series, as we try to make our teeny tiny cape a bit more roomy.

So here's THE WALL before it came down:

And here, my friends, is where THE WALL used to be:

We're trying to keep some sort of "bedroom barrier" with my desk and the armoire there, but that won't last long as we've just been informed that the demolition of the upstairs could start as soon as this week. Which means that traciedesigns HQ will be temporarily relocating during construction (cause the house is cold now, I can't imagine what it's going to be like sans roof!)

Here's our exposed beam:

And our exposed brick:

Of course, the exposed beam will eventually be covered with sheetrock and crown molding; and the brick--that is, the chimney--will definitely get covered up.

But there you have it, folks; Mattio and I are living with all the amenities (and I use that term very, very loosely) of a swanky NYC loft. Of course, it might not feel real until we start storing my shoes in the oven...

Tracie designs (and finally blogs)

I think at this point we all know by now that a break in between posts means that Tracie is busy designing--a good thing for me, but maybe not so much for this poor, neglected blog. What have I been up to?

First and foremost, Art/Place launched earlier this week. Yay! This was a pretty hefty site for me--for a while there, the mail consisted of bills and discs from artists. I always enjoy working with other creatives and this site was no exception.

I've also been working hard on 2 logo projects: one was presented last week, and one will be presented in the coming week or two. I've decided to feature both of these processes in depth--once a final logo is approved. Sorry kids, you'll just have to wait.

Tomorrow, I'm headed to the city to help a client engage their business in social media. I can't wait for Glow Gluten Free to start tweeting about their delish cookies. I'll keep you posted there, as well. Better yet, follow me on Twitter if you're not already--I'll more than likely be tweeting about it.

Also, next week, I have a big presentation coming up: I'll be speaking about the importance of branding at the next FINE Networking meeting, Thursday, 10/15 at 9AM at the Westport Country Playhouse. I have to admit, I'm a little nervous, but anxious to see if this is the start of my public speaking career.

Finally, this past Monday was my birthday. I don't feel much older (thank goodness), but I do feel that this past year was a great one for me. Throughout my 20s I really struggled with finding the kind of person I wanted to be--not so much finding myself, but maybe getting comfortable in my skin. Now that I'm--gulp--halfway into my 30s, I can honestly say that I am very comfortable with the person that I am today. I think I have grown leaps and bounds in the 4 years that I have worked for myself, more than my entire 20s combined.

So next week will bring more logo design, working on that presentation, a few small projects, and of course, not neglecting the blog.