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These Weeks In Business: Obama In Bar Harbor Edition

So the Obama family spent the weekend visiting my normally quiet corner of the world. It’s pretty much all anyone can talk about. Seeing the folks with signs sitting on lawn chairs near the bridge connecting MDI to the mainland was really sweet. Some people actually had the nerve to complain. I say the opportunities a visit of this magnitude presents far outweigh the small incoveniences to me. And I can say that with complete honesty because I live right in the thick of where the Obama family was visiting.

In case someone connected with them is reading this, thanks for coming to Maine. We were happy to have you!

These past few weeks have been really busy, which is always the case if I don’t post ‘this week in business’ one week. I’m working on several projects, most of which I can’t really talk about until they are more done so that I actually have something worthwhile to say.

For the first time ever, I have my newsletter done ahead of time.

Because I’ll be doing a little travel with my family next week, I decided to start the newsletter *gasp* ahead of schedule. It’s all about free and easy ways to set up a blog (for your business or just for you). Click here to sign up (or look right for the ‘Keep In Touch’ section)!

Too Cute Tuesday: Chocolate Portraits

Too Cute Tuesday logoEvery Tuesday, it’s a craft, a cocktail, and friends. To join the fun, check out Facebook at www.facebook.com/toocutetuesday. To see archives of past TCT evenings, see www.toocutetuesday.com. And to start your own chapter or join ours, contact Nicole.

A little overly eager, I peeled my wax paper away a bit soon before part of my 'N' could harden. Oh well!I have no idea what posessed me to bookmark this craft post sometime in March but all I can think of is it fits some of my favorite crafting criteria: 1) it involves food 2) it’s easy and 3) it looks impressive.

It was decided that my lack of Photoshop skills meant that rather than making photographs into a three color workable situation that we’d make our chocolate creations using initials and just be creative on the font front.

Over the weekend, I stopped by discount liquor store with the sole purpose of picking up items to try at Too Cute Tuesday. Enter a nice bottle of wine that had a fun label. Yay KungFu Girl!

Marketing Monday: World Of Warcraft

Marketing Monday is a weekly installment talking about a person, business, or website doing something cool online. If you have an idea, let the BE Blog know!

I recently ran into someone at a local coffee shop who was telling me how he was motivated to reopened his Second Life account. “I’ve been getting gigs to Second Life parties to play my guitar and people actually pay me like $40/hour to do it!” he was saying. Yes, this is a video game character playing the guitar and yes, he is playing for actual US dollars.

As someone who’s never gotten past level three of Super Mario, I was intrigued, and maybe even slightlyjudgmental about people who play computer games like this. I was about to tell my man friend Dan how weird this conversation was when I found out he’s a gamer.Dan has been playing World of Warcraft on and off for three years. I decided to pick his brain about virtual worlds, and how and why they are so popular:

What about WoW makes it more interesting to you than something you’d play on a gaming system (Playstation, Wii, etc.)?

You can’t beat the game so the game has more replay value. There’s always something more you can do, which is motivating.Every two to three years, the developers add on an expansion, raising the maximum level of characters, adding new maps/quests, etc.

There is a group element to the game, encouraging user interaction. When you start playing WoW, you join a guild. The guild has their own chat, and there are options for guilds to get together and help each other out. You can talk to people individually or in a group format.

Too Cute Tuesday: Tablecloth Lunch Bags

Every Tuesday, it’s a craft, a cocktail, and friends. To join the fun, check out Facebook at www.facebook.com/toocutetuesday. To see archives of past TCT evenings, see www.toocutetuesday.com. And to start your own chapter or join ours, contact Nicole.

This craft was sent to us by Dorrie, who couldn’t make it to see it through. But overall a great idea using 1) inexpensive materials and 2) good design.

A man sewing. Nothing sexier.

Materials
Plastic-y tablecloth (what Martha would call ‘oil cloth’)
Scissors
Pins
Measuring tape
Sewing machine

Cocktail of the Night: The Wolf Pack (invented by Chef Dan)
Irish cream (3/4 oz.), irish whiskey (1 oz.), 1 oz. heavy cream, 1 oz. milk. Mix and add splash of soda water and whipped cream on the top.

1. Beg on all social media outlets for an air conditioned place to sit at during the day. Have boyfriend’s mother see Facebook post and offer to lend you her spare AC for the summer. Decide you love social media (and your boyfriend’s family) even more.

2. Have boyfriend (AKA Chef Dan) show up at Craft Central right before the fun with a surprise. Install in window and press start.

3. Since you can now cook without the fear of melting yourself, cook up some apps while Dan makes the night’s cocktail.

Too Cute Tuesday: Ribbon Belts

Every Tuesday, it’s a craft, a cocktail, and friends. See all the posts at www.toocutetuesday.com or join the fun on Facebook at www.facebook.com/toocutetuesday.

Jen, the crafting convert. She says she may actually wear this.Let me start off by saying that my real-life friend Jen is supportive about most things in my life. Two things she doesn’t usually do are 1) read this blog and 2) attend Too Cute Tuesday. “I just don’t like it,” she says. Of Too Cute Tuesday, not the blog.

When I told her we were making ribbon belts and it would be easy, she decided to come. She made not one but two crafts. “Hey, this is kind of fun.” Yeah, Jen, that’s why we do it! “You should put this on the blog.” she said, as she added a ribbon to my dog Gidget’s neck. Yup, that’s the idea…

So if you want a craft that 1) takes 15 minutes. and 2) will convert a skeptic, this is your week. Remember it doesn’t have to be a belt. I can be a bracelet or one of those luggage straps.

Materials
Ribbon (Enough to go around your waist plus a few inches for sewing error and/or future fluctuations
Needle and thread (we used white)
Scissors
Loop things (if the hardware store doesn’t have D-rings… it’s near the bungee cords, ropes, and other items in the ‘holding stuff down on a car’ section)

Marketing Monday: Affordable Acadia

Every Monday, the BE Blog profiles an individual, business, or non-profit doing something cool online to promote themselves. If you have an idea, please let me know!

Affordable Acadia: Striking the blog balance between useful information and 'hey, buy our stuff'.

The owners of Affordable Acadia are great about updating their blog with information about area activities, festivals, local issues, events, and history. They even have their posts by category like “Day trips” and “Good eats” so readers can find the information they are looking for.

From a design standpoint, the blog is also easy to skim.They post great, large format paragraphs for easy skimming. The font is large with good contrast and overall, the appearance (clean and professional) matches what’s written on the page.

This Week In Business: The I Have The Power Edition

It’s been an interesting two weeks in the life of my company. The highlight (ok low point but viewed in an optimistic way) was when I took down my own website for about 12 hours last week.

Apparently, I am tech savvy (but I guess in this case, more tech un-afraid) enough to do semi-powerful things, like take my site down. Please note clients reading this: I would never do this kind ofexperimental behavioron your sites.

With a few frantic phone calls and text messages to people smarter than me, all eventually became right in the world. But these two weeks, I feel like not only have I had enough power to do some damage but to actually make some real headway in a few directions. Here’s what else has been going on:

I planned and executed my first solo workshop for Downeast Learning.

My friend Matt and I are on month three of our monthly technology workshops, which we’re branding as Downeast Learning. Matt is on vacation so I thought for the first solo workshop, I’d tackle Facebook for Business. This is a topic I’m pretty comfortable with, or so I thought as I started planning the slides.

It’s funny when you have to teach something how much more about it you have to learn. Those times where you have to do something ‘just good enough’ and think ‘I’ll look it up later’. And it was finally time to try all the ideas I’ve wanted to do on my own Facebook business page, or at the very least think about step by step how I would do them.

Eleven people came and I think most everyone was pretty happy about how things went. I know I had a really fun time doing it. Based on feedback we’ve gotten, the next workshop will either be about Business Blogging or Google Analytics. If you want to sign up for email alerts when we have these sort of events, go to www.downeastlearning.com.

I wrote my second largest proposal.

It’s always interesting to get an RFP from a potential client, especially a larger business or organization. So much potential yet so many ways you can mess it up if you don’t know their bottom line, who is looking at your proposal, or some other detail that could give you a bit of an edge.

Too Cute Tuesday: Paper Beads

Every Tuesday, it’s friends, a craft, and a cocktail. Want to get involved? Start your own TCT chapter, read old Too Cute Tuesday posts, or join the fun on Facebook.

Christie: Official DJ, bartender, and beadmaker... all at once.Dorrie found this paper bead craft awhile back but we were waiting for our wallpaper connection to come through. Tonight, Dorrie had to work late and other people were gone, so it was just Christie and I.

No doubt we have all made these paper beads a million years ago when we were in elementary school but with more grown up materials, they are still fun now.

Linked here is the original post. (You have to click through and see how these beads could come out. Inspiring!) That said, we did ok.

Materials
Wallpaper book
Scissors
Glue (Elmer’s is fine- squirt glue preferable)
Takeout chopsticks (or some other disposable round wooden object)
Twine/string

Cocktail of the Night: Christie’s Mix: Some mixture of grenadine, lemonade, rum, orange juice and/or triple sec

1. Have the longest week ever. Get to the point where you are almost dellerious with stress. But wait, it’s time for Too Cute Tuesday!

2. Have friend (Christie) show up at Craft Central and make you a cocktail and remind you that it’s time to craft! Stick nachos in the oven and take out the wallpaper book Dorrie got from an interior decorating friend. Note: Primitive patterns would be something my sister would enjoy.

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