Friday Links

Happy Friday! Nathan and I are headed to Atlanta for the weekend after lunch today to visit his sister, brother-in-law, and our baby nephew Mac. I'm excited to get away. In the meantime...I have a big, diverse Friday Links list for you today. Enjoy!

Organization Solutions for Renters at Simply Stated
As you all know, Nathan and I are renters - in an old house, where there the closets are minuscule. We keep bringing more and more things in, but we're not moving this year and we're running out of storage options. I think more than anything, we need to figure something out for Nathan's closet. He has a lot more clothes now that he's got this new job, and nowhere to put them. Maybe one of those freestanding closets? I don't know. They can kind of be an eyesore - but nothing could be worse than how things are now.

Susan Gower of Nifty Thifty Dry Goods at decor8
The "Trim Lady" and her amazing show booth - all organized by color, and I'm pretty sure that I would have to touch everything. The pictures are total eye candy.

USA political election logos 2008 - 1960 at LogoBlink
Awesome gallery. (The whole LogoBlink website is pretty cool too.)

Art by Thomas Doyle
Really beautiful, curious, story-telling little environments. "Intricate worlds sculpted in 1:43 scale and smaller." I would love to see these in person.


Help ME help YOU at Escape from Cubicle Nation
This is an interesting article the expounds on how people in business always say things like, "just let me know if there is ever anything I can do for you!" (So true, I say that all the time.) "Bottom line: The more often you ask for what you want, the more likely you are to get it. To ask for help, you have to define what you want. To get the best results, ask about the process, not the people."

Save Money Making Homemade Art Supplies
An excellent list on how to make everything from clay and playdough to glitter and sidewalk chalk.


Art of Andrew Daniel
I'm going crazy over this guy's work and Etsy. I'm thinking about ordering some of his prints - they have excellent prices. And with over 700 sales and 100% positive feedback, you can't go wrong.

Family Trees at Cookie's Nesting Blog
A roundup of ideas for displaying family trees and photos. I personally like the first one the best.

Interior Marketplace Blog
I love Interior Marketplace, and now they have a store blog. I hope they keep it up! I don't get a chance to get over there to the shop very often, so it's fun to see the photos.

Email Me Form and ReCaptcha
I'm helping a client of mine set up a website where they will have feedback forms to sign up for things like email updates or more information. Since spam is such a problem, I wanted to figure out how I could use those little bot validator things - you know, where they ask you to type out some random text to make sure you're a real person, and not a spam robot. Apparently there are all kinds of services you can use to use those on your own website..these are just two I bookmarked for future reference.

Sarah Cihat
Completely inspiring artist - "an exercise in sustainability that reincarnates existing products." Click on "Rehabilitated Dishware." Essentially, she takes old, unused, or outdated dishware and reglazes them with a spin - a graphic silhouette, bright colors, etcetera. I want to own these - the results are stunning.

Prairie Girl, Calendar Girl at i heart linen
Adorable, reusable fabric calendar with buttons for the dates.

Waiter Rant
If you have ever waited tables, you will appreciate this site that much more. Blog of true stories about waiting tables. All I can say is....I can empathize.

Stop Work-For-Hire
"Our purpose is to explain how companies abuse the work-for-hire clause, to describe why work-for-hire is harming our industry and our livelihoods, and to address what we can do about it." I have encountered this personally in the past, in which I signed away the rights to work I had created to the hiring party without realizing what I was doing. When I finally discovered what I had done, my heart sank.

ProPay
An alternative to PayPal for accepting credit cards. It's gotten a lot of good reviews on a women's business forum I read. If I end up actually making money at my side business, I might start accepting credit cards - who knows. That's a long way off.

Church IT Help
This is a great blog I just discovered about IT and its use in the church. Funny and chock full of great stories and information. I'll be reading the archives now...


jim lahey’s pizza bianca at smitten kitchen
This looks scrumdiddly. I think I need to try it...as soon as possible.

Placemat Hack: Flaptop Laptop Cover at Curbly
I always see adorable, inexpensive placemats and think, there have got to be so many cool things I could make with that that I'm not thinking of. Exhibit A: A laptop case that I think I need to make now. Maybe for Nathan's laptop, in something pink and glittery.