These look like how instagrams are meant to look.

We had a small party with friends and family at our house–angel food cake, bubbles, sidewalk chalk. Tiny pizzas, round rice krispie bars, and little round cheeses–moon-shaped food. The kids played with moon dough–white homemade play-doh with gray swirls. Alice got lots of books, a moon that hangs on her wall and lights up with changing phases, and sewing cards.

That night I went to the opening party for Big Omaha, a two-day entrepreneurship conference here in town. More on that later, I think.

Happy birthday dear Alice.
Polaroids are fun.

xo
meg

You can see the original post about their flowers here.
Photos by Emil Rajkowski at the Chapel of the Flowers in Las Vegas.

Pretty, right? Violight sent me two of these toothbrushes and I have been using them for about a week. It’s not too “buzzy” for a battery-powered sonic toothbrush, and their vented mascara-style caps keep them from getting germ-y in my bag when I travel. It also comes with an extra brush head. I keep the pink toothbrush at work (in my toiletry kit as I’m finding myself showering/getting ready/living at work more and more) and the striped one at home. I took one on my trip to New York City with Rock N Roll Bride and it got tons of compliments. Crazy for a toothbrush, not surprising for good design.

Violight has offered a Slim Sonic Toothbrush for one of my readers in the color or pattern of your choice. Just leave a comment here to enter! Open to US residents. I’ll pick a winner with the random number generator on Friday!

In the meantime, check out Violight on Twitter and Facebook.

xx
meg

So by making them with shoe clip hardware, naturally, you can also buy two as shoe clips!

There are seven colors available in each style.

Bow Shoe Clips: $10
Baby Bow Ties: $5

making a "flower backpack"

Dear Alice:

Happy birthday, my sweet girl! Today you are two years old. I just got done taping streamers up along the top of your door to surprise you when you wake up this morning. Grey and white, because we’re having a moon-themed day. You LOVE the moon and you’ve been so excited about the moon party we’ve been talking about all week. We made moon necklaces at work today, and colored pictures of moon phases. We spelled moon, and you pointed out that even the “O”s in the word look like little moons.

This month your dad and I went out of town and left you for the longest time we ever have–five days you spent at Grandma Camp with my parents while we spent time working and seeing friends in New York City. When we got back home, you were like a totally different kid. You started speaking in sentences while we were gone. I’ve slept with you every night since we got home and as we fell asleep, we lay on the same pillow facing each other, whispering. You talk with your eyes as much as your words, rolling them around, blinking for emphasis, squinting as you try to remember a word. When you finally finish telling me everything, you wiggle closer and nestle into my chest under my chin. Being away from you made me miss you so much.

Today we’re having our birthday party. To prepare, we made gray and white swirly homemade moon dough and packaged it in old jars for your friends to play with and take home. We’re having cheese and crackers, mini pizzas, and peanut butter and apple butter sandwiches cut into circles. I made a round angel food cake. Today I’ll have you color and decorate some white cardboard circles in all the phases of the moon to cut out and hang from our tree outside. To drink, milk and homemade cream soda.

Here are my favorite ways you grew and changed this month:

• You started giving lots of hugs and kisses. I think every parent would agree that this is a huge milestone for a mom or dad–when we start to get repaid for our anxiety and sleeplessness with true, unprompted affection.
• The popular activity in our house right now is “mix” or “cook,” where you pretend to cook something.
• You love to use cardboard sewing cards.
• You love to climb. I hear you wailing from all corners of the house hollering for me to help you down from some bookcase or countertop.
• When we read now, you pull the book away and try to read it yourself, babble through a few pages, and get frustrated and have a tantrum.
• Sometimes when you’re upset, you say “Adiss need time-out” and take your own chill pill. At our house, you go sit in your chair in your room. At work, you sit in your rocking chair. I don’t bother you until you come back. It always helps a lot.
• With me, you like being at work more than at home. That’s sort of sad to me in a way, but I’m glad you like being at my office. I think you just like to play–you have fun toys there, and you like to sit at my desk and play with different supplies and materials.
• You started saying “breasts” instead of “milkies.” I really appreciate that. These are not “milkies.”
• You’ve started describing yourself as “big.”
• Still obsessed with white horsies.

My favorite thing about you right now is your hilarious sense of humor and deception. When you want to do things, sometimes you tell me it was your stuffed animal’s idea. Here’s the chain of meaning:

“Beebee, want, cook.” >> Your doll Brobee wants to pretend-cook. >> YOU want me to get out an array of dried beans and pots and spoons and cups and watch you scatter legumes all over my wood floor as you measure and pour imaginary soup ingredients into enough bowls to feel the whole neighborhood.

All of this delivered with an impish smile. You can’t hide it when you’re trying to trick me.

I tell you, “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, Alice.”
You repeat, “Mama fall down, truck. Aw man.”

Another joke you really like to tell is “butt toot.” You announce this with a totally straight face, then your lips quiver and press together to hide your smile, and in an instant you burst out laughing. Butt toot. You said it today at lunch with my friend Rahul. You react with incredulity when I suggest YOU’RE the one with the butt toot. “Noooooooooooooo. Mama’s.”

A final fond memory I have from this month is of you standing up in the tub, feet shoulder-width apart, holding a full bucket of water. You yelled “NAME, ADISS.” Then you squinted your eyes with determination and shouted “HEAD DUMP!” and poured the bucket over your head. You laughed hysterically and fell backward while coughing and sputtering and laughing. It was very Johnny Knoxville. My face was literally this emoticon: :O I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing.

You’re funny, it’s true, but the most beautiful thing that comes with that is that you’re positive and happy. I never forget that your love is the dancing, glowing ball of light that guides me in life as a mother. One night when I sat on our porch stairs with you this week, still, in the darkness, we whispered about the names of bunnies together, watching them hop through the yard in the moonlight. You focused on one rabbit on the sidewalk, who noticed us. He stood so still, and hopped carefully toward us over a few minutes, inch by inch. Your eyes were dazzling as they fixed on the rabbit, and you didn’t get up or startle it or speak. You were enchanted by it, and it was a moment of such pure, unbounded joy for me to watch.

There’s nothing more rewarding than loving you with the pure, innocent abandon that you inspire. Your love is the greatest gift and I promise to always remember the tenderness and compassion you awakened in me. Two years ago today I gave birth to you in the morning, after sixty hours of working with you to bring you into the world. We both cried as you entered it on the same day I did 24 years earlier, and we’ll always have that reminder of our spiritual and transcendental bond. Thank you for coming into my life. I needed you.

love,
mama

with chris in NYC earlier this week

Today is the launch of my friend and mentor Chris Guillebeau’s (you can follow him on Twitter too!) newest book, The $100 Startup. I’m so excited that it launched to such a great reception–it’s #9 on Amazon now, and #1 in entrepreneurship, self-help, and education. Yowza.

Personally I’m a bit over the moon because I’m featured in The $100 Startup. Chris talks about my unconventional career and how I made my work fit seamlessly into my life as I grew into a coworking studio space, had a baby, etc. There are tons of profiles of crazy unconventional businesses that are different from mine so you are sure to find inspiration and motivation from this book.

I sat down for a bit in Central Park with Chris on Sunday when I was in New York City, where he kicked off the book tour today. I encourage you to check out the list of his stops on the $100 Startup Book Tour and see if you can make it to one of the events. I wish we were hosting one at CAMP again this year but it was just not to be–glad I got a chance to say hi when we crossed paths in NYC though!

Let me know if you pick up the book, and tell me what you think!

xx
meg

We are getting married with an antique barn as the backdrop (weather permitting). Our guests will be seated upon hay bales covered with picnic blankets and will be provided a program that doubles as a fan. Bridesmaids will be dressed in gray dresses with yellow shoes and jewelry, carrying vintage picnic baskets. My fiance will be wearing a black tux. I’m wearing a simple and pretty ivory dress with my cowgirl boots. Reception to follow inside a barn, vintage chandeliers, mason jars full of flowers, candles and pretty white lights.

Needless to say, I can’t wait to see the pictures! In the meantime, here are some shots of her bouquet.

If you want to, you can see more photos of the flowers I made for Sammi and James’s wedding here in their Flickr set!
xo
meg

My friend Kat Williams of Rock N Roll Bride is the one who initially urged me to go as she’ll be in town for some work as well, so this’ll be our time to reconnect, share stories, and hit the town! I’m going to take her to gothic dance clubs.

So I tend to travel light on a plane–compared to how I normally travel, anyway. I hate carry-ons on planes and I hate it when everyone’s clogging up the line trying to fit their three enormous bags into the overheads and bonking everyone in the process. My mentor and German professor Sybille Bartels always said being polite was taking up little room with your person and little room with your voice, especially in crowded areas. Anyway, I feel like I went on about that quirk for way too long.

So here’s what I’m bringing on the plane. A bag that slides easily under the seat, a stylish but fold-able cape/jacket, an iPad with a keyboard to do some work, and a few personal essentials. My favorite is the striped Slim Sonic toothbrush from Violight–they’ve got tons of cute patterns and I’m sort of obsessed with their whole range right now (I keep one at work too).

Clockwise from top: Cape jacket; Lolita Lempicka travel-sized perfume, Maybelline lip balm, Lancome Hypnose mascara; Reusable bags (these are great for when you just need a sack to carry some stuff in temporarily); Violight Slim Sonic toothbrush; Bumble and Bumble Straight travel pack; iPad and keyboard; Solar iPhone charger; Touchscreen-friendly gloves; Leather and Canvas bag.

You can check out more details about this set on Polyvore. Bon Voyage and I’ll be blogging from the big apple!

xo
meg

Big Omaha is an awesome tech/start-up/creative superconference to bring together forward-thinking entrepreneurs, developers, creative types created by Silicon Prarie News to inspire, support, and connect entrepreneurs who come from all around the country to attend. This year’s tickets all sold out in mere minutes (although you can still get on the waitlist!).

Omaha is an amazing place to live because we’re kind of within this huge wave of change in the way we work and live. On the economic side, our entrepreneurs are becoming more comfortable with risk, investors are noticing the start-ups coming out of the Midwest, and the tightly-knit, accessible community makes it easier to get more for your investment. On the cultural side, our music scene here is already well-known, but we’re also growing in bars and dance clubs, sports franchises, and fine arts attractions like ballet and opera. The close, supportive community has been really advantageous to our growth.

But enough of an Omaha commercial, I guess–I know that I’m mostly in the wedding industry and most of my readers are brides (and I know that most of them skip over posts like this), but I also know from my reader surveys that 30% of my readers are male and 65% of you LOVE the business posts. So knowing that, many of you reading now are probably entrepreneurs–creative, tech, or otherwise–and you’ve probably gone to a few conferences or at least thought about attending. On the #BigOmaha Twitter feed, I’ve seen a few people asking if anyone had any advice for first-time conference-goers. I tweeted a few tips and decided that I really wanted share them in a post.

1. Sit up front

If you want to pay attention and engage with the speakers, you can only sit up front. If you want to take bathroom breaks and have whispered side-conversations with a cool new person you’ve met, stand in the back. But don’t miss a chance to have an emotional connection to an awesome speaker–in the front row, they’re sure to remember you if you want to talk later.

2. Think of two questions for each speaker

You’ll most likely get a chance to ask them, either with a microphone after the talk, or at an after-party or chance hallway encounter. Pay attention to what your internal dialogue is doing as you listen and react to each talk. Was a detail left out that you’d like to understand more clearly? Do you have a question about how to apply the speaker’s lessons to your own experience? Think of a few questions you can ask because you will definitely get the opportunity.

3. Eat lunch last

So part of the reason you’re going to a conference in the first place is to meet people, right? One of the biggest opportunities to network is over the long lunch break. So if there’s a line to wait for a buffet-style lunch, wait until it dies down before you dig in. You’ll have time to eat, and you won’t waste any of it standing in a single-file line when you could be meeting some exciting people or joining a table of experts you’ve been wanting to meet.

4. Follow the Twitter feeds and hashtags in advance

Following the social media stream (for Big Omaha it’s #BigOmaha) for the conference you are attending in advance will make it easier to find and connect with the people you really want to meet. Follow some people, reply to some people, ask people some questions, answer some questions…then when you finally meet them in person you sort of have a foundation already and you’ve built some trust.

5. Put together something cool to leave with people

If you have a business card, that’s okay. I always try to do something a little more creative. I like this post and discussion on Robert Scoble’s blog about business card best practices. Flickr has more creative inspiration like the “Nice Package” and “Crafty Packages” groups.

6. Go to the parties

They’re fun, you’ll meet people, get your picture taken, and get free stuff. Parties are usually open to the public, so if you couldn’t snag a ticket, you can still drop in and absorb some of the energy and make some connections. And put your phone down while you’re having a cool conversation.

7. Be kind

You’re being recorded all the time–whether it’s literally by a photographer or videographer (which are everywhere), or just in the memories of everyone around you. Don’t be a jerk, remember to use your magic words, and share a thoughtful compliment when you can. You’re always broadcasting your brand, and people always remember the very good and very bad.

Finally, follow up with people you meet. Whether it’s informally through Twitter, or via e-mail–I’ve even snail-mailed people little packages before–just send the people you connected with a little shout to thank them for the friendship. Ask for help when you need it and be open to people who reach out to you.

I love going to Big Omaha because being an artist is not only creative, it has a lot to do with running a business. And as an entrepreneur, I’m excited to attend an event where I can meet other entrepreneurs and forward-thinkers who do work in creative industries. Big Omaha is my favorite conference because they do this so well, emphasizing business and technology and welcoming the artists, musicians, and designers, and writers–people who may normally be in the minority at conferences like this.

So that’s it.
I hope I see you at Big Omaha! I’ll be there with a posse–Sarah Lorsung-Tvrdik, my business partner, Shannon, my assistant, and my husband David who recently started a video game design company is coming too. I’m definitely dragging them all up to the front row with me. I hope you say hi when you see me, and I look forward to making lots of new friends!

xx
meg

See more of the flowers and accessories I made for Wendy and Bill’s wedding here in their Flickr set. Congratulations again, you two!

xo
meg