Christmas Day Is Almost Here!

As Christmas day gets closer I hope that your schedules are starting to slow down and you are able to start preparing and anticipating Christmas Day. It is just probably me or at least I am very aware of how much marketing we are all exposed to everyday especially during this season. I read the other day that as consumers we are exposed to an avg. of 256 advertisements a day. My favorite ad when I was growing up was the Norelco Santa does anyone else remember it? Well we sure have a lot more choices today don't we? But, hopefully, for you and your family, Christmas isn't just about the latest gadgets, hopefully it is about creating memories!

Christmas each year has the high possibility of becoming one of your families "Life's defining moments", better known as fond memories! Do you know people that just seem to cause memories to occur whenever you are around them? To some people this comes naturally others need to plan for it. One of my favorite authors is John Maxwell he talks about this in one of his books. In recent history creating a "LDM" is associated with a really expensive gift. But I don't believe that it always has to be that way. It can be as simple as starting some new family traditions. In years past it was about stringing pop corn for tree decorations, going to chop down the tree or singing carols together. How about getting everyone a Santa hat to wear on Christmas or at least one for the dog! There are tons of fun inexpensive ideas out there to make Christmas less commercial and more family focused. Please feel free to post them here!

Merry Christmas may your heart and soul be filled with warm memories of the season!

Tom

Website Update Done!

Updating the webpage is kind of like cleaning off your desk. You put off doing it but once it is done you can stand back and marvel at how proud you are to have gotten it done. Now, I know some people clean off their desks everyday but for us right brainers it is something that gets put off. Hmmm would I rather sit at the computer for hours or would I rather photograph people outside? I vote for the photography part! Anyway as the snow starts to fly I get the opportunity to get caught up on the indoor things.

The big change and the thing that took the most time was changing the image galleries. I looked at a lot of different ways to display our images, everything from flash plugins to java slide shows. But I wanted the viewers (you) to be able to see the images at their own speed and not to have to "click" on every single image to view it. That is why I came up with all of the remote rollovers. I can do remote rollovers now!! The other thing I wanted to be able to do was to take a group of images, size them and then be able to upload them to our site without having to mess with the html code each time. That way I can keep the images current!!

The other things that were done probably won't be noticed like the form handler script was updated to (hopefully) deter spammers from hijacking it. The webhosting company that we use certainly will appreciate it!! Other than that just general moving stuff around and changing some of the wording.

Please, Please, Please take a look at the site and let me know if you find any broken links etc.!

As for Diane she is working very very hard on your holiday orders. We have a new employee, Tasha (more on that later). Michelle is going to be leaving soon to work on writing her book. But right now everyone, except me, is working at the studio to get everything out before Christmas Eve.

Ok I'm off to clean another desk, prepare marketing stuff for January, hit the gym, start a newsletter and make sure the staff have time to get lunch! Thanks for all of your love and support!

Tom

Snowy Afternoon!