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I grew up close to Saratoga NY, famous for horse races and beautiful victorean style houses. One of the several traditions we have upstate is breaking the peppermint pig! Usually it’s a christmas time activity but it’s a radically beautiful day in March so WHY NOT? It symbolizes prosperity and good health and for us, good times.

To give you an idea of how popular it is, this store Saratoga Sweets is in a town next to me, Halfmoon:

FUN FACT: the black and white cookies that NYC loves so much was born in Halfmoon, where they are called by their original name, half moon cookies.

I read this article in the NY Times yesterday about the hunger crisis in Somalia and found myself wanting to do something to help. My thinking is that if we all donate $10 (one day’s lunch) to my little fundraiser via Mercy Corp we can raise $1k in no time.

As a bit of encouragement , I’m offering some schwagg.
if you donate $10 – I’ll send you a little kitty drawing
if you donate $20 or more – I’ll send you a little kitty painting (like those shown below)

If you make a donation be sure to include your name / email at Mercy Corp (or if you prefer to remain anonymous email me- tammy@orangeyouglad.com) so I can follow up with you to get your address.

Orange you glad is loving up all the creative mornings! This time around it was with Yancey Strickler, who was a charmer and clearly an experienced public speaker. He was one of the cofounders of Kickstarter! Some of the great things he said were about the philosophy of his company and also about what leads people to give strangers money.

Kickstarter is a website where people maintain a site that attempts to raise money for a personal creative project. It’s purpose is fund raising but what convinces a stranger to give, is a story. Those who can best express their passions and reasons for their fundraising allow for others to connect and share interest. This also banks on people’s desire to help save or be a part of something that has a low chance of being real. In this way, the stranger becomes a part of the story itself. With a compensation aspect to each fundraiser, often times the stranger can literally be included into the project. Yancey mentioned how often times, the main reason why a kickstarter fails is due to a lack of story. When someone is far more business oriented than passion driven, the stranger is less likely to be engaged and willing to support. Kickstarter creates a way for creativity to flourish without the ever persistent issue that inhibits and stifles almost any passionate endeavor, money.

Moral of the story for me, be honest and passionate and you will find help! It’s truly amazing that Yancey and his cofounders have found a way to tap into a small but great part of humanity and give it a method to make the world a little better. YAY!!

Congrats to our client Hello Cupcake on the opening of their second location.  Barrack’s Row residents (and DC peeps in general), you lucky devils! We’ve been doing a bit of work behind the scenes on some signage (check out this super sweet awning), new boxes, new this and new that. Once all the materials roll in we’ll let you know, but the packaging is just the icing on the icing on the cake. Their cupcakes are the bestest!

First: the new Barracks Row awning!

2nd: One of Hello Cupcake’s littlest fans gives an impromtu lesson on dinosaurs. (Dupont Circle location).

Well, I went ahead and joined weight watchers… again. Perhaps this falls under the TMI category (remind me to add that category) but the time has come to shed some pounds. I’m two days in and doing ok. I can still have my coffee and my giant and delicious fakey ice cream cones. Things will be ok.

I just discovered (where have I been?) that Marimekko has a line of dresses and they are the bees knees. I am going to treat myself to this lovely dress when I get down to my target size. Then I am going to wear it all week long on my beach vacation in August whilst looking both adorable and hopefully also tan but not burnt. Don’t try to stop me!

Uuna Dress
the loveliest dress on the planet.

If I really do a good job I am going to buy two dresses.
Maybe you can help me decide which one.

1.  Kiuru

2. Pirke

Ok, if i got this dress I’d officially be dressing exactly like my 3 year old daughter.
Plus, this looks super short.

+++(◕ ◡ ◕ ) Matt’s Song Pick ( ✖_✖)+++

Shannon and the Clams! They are amazing!!! Shannon, originally from and currently in Hunx & his Punx, is perfect for getting ready for summer. I’m in love with them right now and a little while ago, they came out with an album Sleep Talk. Here is a weird but probably my favorite song from that album: The Cult Song.

In case that embedded fun up there doesn’t work for you, you can go click your way there: Shannon and the Clams – the Cult Song

thanks to ssahn for the photo above. This is from a series of people covering one eye. Why??? Please tell me.

We went to see Christoph Niemann today at Creative Morning‘s in DUMBO today! He was wonderful! Very endearing and clever. He had several humorous charts for us to follow along with as he explained his creative process. I didn’t transcribe most of them but the gist is that this man has a lot of anxiety. His way of handling it is by going straight towards the problem and attacking it! The more you confront problems, the better equipped you’ll be when faced with future problems. (more…)

Exciting news today brought to you by our lovely client Reading is Fundamental. Turns out the site we designed for them (and they lovingly built) www.rif.org is up for a webby in the education category! A WEBBY! That’s pretty neat.

What’s also cool is that you could help us win a people’s choice award with a lil ‘ol vote…
Click the webby logo/image above, login through facebook and vote for us, or whoever you think should win (a.k.a. – us).

A little look at the work we did for RIF, including interface design and custom illustrations of the book-bird, book-bus, book-buildings etc. Also – shout out to Jason, Leon, and U2i for helping us out with the project.

+++(◕ ◡ ◕ ) Matt’s Song Pick ( ✖_✖)+++
I want to try out a summery song in hopes that we get some warmer weather. Here’s Kurt Vile’s Freeway!
Kurt Vile – Freeway Sorry this is all I can muster. For some reason WordPress does not want to allow me to post video or audio. Only links