Are the spring catalogs getting you excited about warm weather and ice tea? Oh spring, hurry up now. There are flower baskets to hang.

The spring catalog from Flor caught my eye. They seem to have selected perfect patterns for the season, and I’m a sucker for a pretty blue with brown.

I look at these pictures and I wish we had less carpet in the house.

Lame picture of the not lame Gwen Bell taken from my iPhone. Next year I’ll make sure to bring along the SLR.

Mom2.0 has wrapped up! The conference had a great energy and I felt very lucky to be part of the talented speaker list. My good friend Angela co-hosted, and our new friend Adrian Roselli moderated. Luckily nothing broke and we were able to get the audience involved in the discussion. Success!

There was a quick review of the talk on the Mom2.0 blog as well as some live tweets during the session. I’ve also uploaded the full powerpoint (careful, it’s over 11mb) that details a handy usability checklist you can apply to your own site. I think it does a good job of showing successes and fails of most items, illustrating the user experience issues.  If you would like to see the full version of Angela’s usability checklist, check out Normal Modes. You’ll particularly enjoy the “Automatic Fail” section. 

I was telling a friend that along with finding blogging inspiration, the conference really was a giant self-help session for me. I found myself telling random people in my life about Gretchen Rubin’s happiness project, and applying the three small things you can do to make your day happier. My in-laws already want a copy of her book.

Take care everyone.

Design Mom posted a short blurb about these beautiful SMEG fridges. Aren’t they gorgeous and happy?

If we ever get around to finishing the kitchen in the basement (haha, I’m so funny) I would love a robin’s egg blue SMEG with some creamy cabinets. And a magical oven that automatically refills with cupcakes and cookies.

Oh, it’s been a slow couple of weeks. I’ve been feeling a little sick and all energy seems to have gone out the window. Things are picking up though, so let me give you a quick recap:

Mom 2.0 is THIS WEEK! Our presentation is almost complete, and we’ll be handing out a “usability checklist” that attendees can apply to their own sites/shops/etc. We’ll be speaking this Friday during the 1:15 breakout session.

To boost energy, I’m thinking of enrolling in some exercise classes. Pilates? Yoga? Snowboarding? Suggestions are welcome.

Lacey sent me a subscription to House Beautiful. Sigh, it’s so beautiful.

I had this awesome plan of sewing up a skirt for an IKEA end table laying around the house. The idea came from this beautiful pedestal sink skirt by Jenny, except mine would use a coral/salmon fabric instead of the emerald green. Alas, it turns out lazy people don’t get much done over the weekend, so I’ll have to save this for later. Did I mention it fastens with velcro? So easy.

And that’s all that I have for now. What’s going on with you?

This has made the blog rounds (from kottke and dooce) but I’m still chuckling over this. Shouldn’t the airlines be fighting over Louis CK for their inflight videos?

Take a look and cheer up:

(PS, I miss Conan. I know you do too.)

A while ago, Lacey asked if facebook was stealing flickr’s thunder. Although flickr is a better photo management tool, facebook clearly has more action.

It’s too bad since flickr has a lot more to offer. Take for instance the flickr blog that showcases selected photographs like the ones below. Winter sports anyone?

These photographs are part of the The Commons, the world’s public photography archives on Flickr. They encourage visitors to comment with any information.

Neat stuff.

I grabbed one of these return address stamps from Note Trunk’s etsy shop. You can get either the hand stamp, or the more fool proof (but less artsy!) self-inking stamp. Aren’t the designs adorable?

There’s an “apothecary” collection, complete with creepy-chic birds. And if you don’t need return addresses, there are several options for gift giving/self promo like this:

Link via Say YES! to Hoboken. I’m slowly getting through my reader these days. :)

The Summit was phenomenal! It was fun seeing all these blog masters just walking around the hotel. They really are all beautiful and inspiring people.

I was even lucky to chat (briefly!) with Maggie Mason and Karen Walrond. I asked Maggie some questions for my upcoming session at Mom 2.0 (oh yeah, I’m speaking about usability and user experience with Angela) and Karen shared some of her findings from the recent Houston photoshoot for her book. I bow down to these ladies.

It begins tomorrow and I still have outfits to pick! Allison of petit elefant put together this guide of what to wear during the activities. This is a design conference after all, so I expect everyone to look fabulous.

Excuse me while I trash my sweats and go shopping.

What a busy weekend! Our family was in town, and this time we did a better job of showing them the sites. Our first priority was taking everyone for snowboarding lessons, which meant shopping at the Park City outlets for snow appropriate clothes. On Saturday they headed up to Brighton for the gear rental and lessons (I stayed home unfortunately.) They came back bruised and sore, but ready for more! We finished the trip with some tubing in Park City. Overall, a very active weekend. Not so bad for a bunch of Texans, eh?

We were reminded that Utah is an awesome place for winter sports. We should get off our tooshies and enjoy it.

I have the best friends. Kathryn gave me some serious sewing motivation by sending these cool Amy Butler patterns. Don’t they look like fun?

I think I’ll be tackling the middle pattern for a laptop cover and mp3 (or iPhone, hello) case first. It should be a good opportunity to play around with this fat quarter set from Piper’s:

If you’re looking for some additional sewing inspiration, Amy Butler has a lot of free patterns posted on her site. The sash with beaded fringe, sweet greetings portfolio and cozy kitty pillow look like quick and easy projects:

Thanks Kathryn!
 

Since family is visiting soon, I’ve been running around town looking for pieces to finish the den. I had blogged about this pillow a while back, but now it’s 50% off at Z Gallerie stores (no longer available online.)

This picture doesn’t do a good job of showing the tassles here. They’re beautiful. Also, if you’re not a fan of the “blue bell” color, the red pillow is on sale while the coral and peacock versions are still full price.

So, how was your weekend?

Oh Joy! posted about these cases earlier and I fell in love. They’re a million times prettier than my manly switcheasy case.

Still no luck finding the right doormat, but I did come across this DIY project using Flor carpet samples:

I have a drawer full of Flor samples, but I don’t think this is a sturdy enough solution for the snow filled winters here. Alas.

My favorite grouping by far came from this post by Whorange, but since it’s dated September ‘08, a lot of the options are no longer available:

Aren’t the top prints beautiful?

We finally made it back home last night. We had to fight a snow storm and plane de-icing, but we’re here safe and sound. I don’t want to see another airplane for months please.