Signature gallery collection...

I wish we had our Rye Designs blog already so I could post our album/book there, but the time will come. I did post yesterday in case you missed it (twice in one weekend, WOW!).

For some time now, we've had gallery layouts sketched out and floating around here just wishing for a home other than notebook paper – waiting to give our photography clients ideas for displaying their photos. When our print lab announced a book sale a couple weeks ago, the idea clicked and we went with it. We decided on an 8x12 album with hinged pages that lay flat, UV coating on each page, and a custom designed cover.

OH MY GOODNESS! When we received the album this past week, I could not believe my eyes. The hinged pages are normally nice and sturdy, but the UV coating made them shine like nothing I can describe. And I absolutely love how the design turned out. I'm not sure if I want anyone to touch this book now, not even me. ;)

Only ideas that we would use, or have used, in our own home went into the book, so it's truly a Rye Designs signature collection.

Spine of the book.






You might recognize this first collection if you've been to our house. It's pretty much the first thing you see coming in the front door, and makes a huge statement. We love it.


Another collection, and a glimpse of hinged pages laying flat.


I couldn't be more happy about the book and, besides being a sample of quality and possibility, I hope it brings a ton of inspiration. Pure awesome.

Hello May...

May is a month that rocks for many reasons. Mainly, it means that summer is right around the corner, and Dan and I will be celebrating another year together. I always get sappy thinking of the way our story came together and the days in May that mark a milestone for us. Actually, yesterday (May 8th) was the day we re-met...

I found Dan on Facebook the evening of April 25th, 2005 – back in the day before FB had homepages or tabs or people over the age of 30 (or something like that). I sent him a message to say hey stranger I haven't seen you in like three years, and had a response by the next morning. We caught up, remembered the "old" days, laughed about them, and acted as if it was three years prior and nothing had changed. But really, everything had changed...everything except our feelings for each other and the fact that I reeeeeeallllly wished I had kissed him back when I had the chance.

He joked that his apartment was on my way home from UC and that I could just swing by whenever I wanted, but our schedules didn't work out that way. He was going to be in a friend's wedding out of town and had things to do beforehand. I knew his birthday was May 6th, so I wrote on his FB wall and sent a text message telling him Happy Birthday, and that I hoped someone had sang to him. I heard that was the highlight of his trip. ;)

On May 8th – Mother's Day of that year – we finally had time in our schedules to hang out for the first time in three years. I had brunch with family that morning, and Dan had a graduation party to attend, but later in the afternoon I headed down to his apartment. While we took a walk around town, had dinner, and watched a movie (or something like that), we realized how much hadn't changed... how much had changed... how the universe just hits you over the head with perfect timing, and how I wasn't going to pass up my chance to kiss him that time.

The rest is history, but may be continued at a later date.

On a totally different note, we had dinner with friends Scott and Mary Ellen last night and met their new little one. We'll be having a newborn session with him soon, but we took our camera along and grabbed a few shots – hope it's okay that I'm posting them, mom and dad! I couldn't decide between color and black/white, so you get both. Enjoy!





Love the LITTLE TOES!




Tomorrow I'll have a post with peeks of the album we ordered recently. Oh man, it's fan-freaking-tastically delicious. The pictures won't do it justice, but I'll show them anyway.

Until then... Happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers and moms-to-be out there.

Woopsy daisy...

If you've visited this blog since around April 1st, which I obviously haven't done, I apologize for the missing graphics and photos. No, I wasn't boycotting images or going minimalist around here. I just wasn't thinking when we switched over to our new domain. WOOPSY!

Speaking of the new domain, you may know that ryedesigns.com became available and we purchased it. You may also know that our new website went live on April 1st! I can't give Dan enough props and respect for all of his hard work implementing my design. He had to put up with a lot of back-and-forth and indecision on my part, and then some of the normal web-coding woes. At one point we had all three of our laptops out on the couch, checking to make sure the site was compatible with every browser. If we had our way, Internet Explorer would be banned from all computers and burned. Seriously. Do yourself a favor and download Firefox.

I really enjoy looking through our site and knowing that we have something to show our work and explain how we roll. Even more than that, I dig that Dan setup an entire backend (Content Management System) that makes it super easy to update and manage our site. We have more site plans in the works, too, such as an integrated blog!

Without too many details, we were actually mentioned on twitter and gained 70 visits to our site from 16 countries IN ONE DAY soon after it launched – from that ONE tweet. Boo-yah!

http://ryedesigns.com


What you may not know is that I was called back to do contract work for my previous job at the beginning of March. After I expected to have the month of March to continue working on our website and business, I was thrown back into 40-hour work weeks and doing Rye Designs stuff nights and weekends. The biggest shift, besides having two full-time jobs again and trying to deal with creative block, is the dinner arrangements around here. I got used to making/having a homemade dinner every night, and now the verbiage of choice seems to be, "So...where shall we stop for dinner tonight?"

Other happenings recently...

• I finished a website redesign for an ongoing client, which Dan has been implementing pretty quickly. I'll have screenshots when that launches.
• We've ordered quite a few photography samples for our showroom, including gallery wraps and prints. After seeing gallery wraps, regular prints just aren't the same. Ooooo boy, that texture and quality is heavenly.
  
• I've been designing our header/footer for letterheads and such, to go with our new website, and having such a hard time with it. Not because I have no ideas, but because I have too many! A blog or facebook poll might be in order if I can't narrow them down soon.
• Our friends, Scott and Mary Ellen, had their baby boy tonight! We're so stoked to meet little Joshua and have a newborn session with him.
• I'm ready for the warm weather to come back! How about you?
  

Now to get some sleep. Goodnight.