Super exciting news to share, y’all! Kirtsy relaunched yesterday!

I’m one of the co-founders and we’ve been working hard for about 5 months (or 3 years, depending on how you want to look at it) to get a completely new site up. The old site was a great experiment in crowd-sourcing. But as the web has become more crowded, Kirtsy became less of a resource and more of a, how shall we say, crackhouse. For spammers. With the new Kirtsy we wanted to preserve what we loved about the old Kirtsy (finding great stuff online) and present it in a way that wasn’t so spamgasmic. What we came up with was curated slideshows.

Every day, the new Kirtsy will feature a slideshow curated by some of the most interesting people on the internet. The topics will be all over the map — fashion, design, food, people, crafts. Our hope is that the slideshows will inspire you. They’ll be full of links to interesting articles, images to pin, projects to try, people to meet.

Yesterday’s big slideshow was a set of 10 easy one-day crafts — with step-by-step how-to’s — curated by Blogstar. I’ve already bought the supplies for the tie-dye bags because my kids are required to carry tote bags to school this year (instead of backpacks). I’m excited to help them make their own awesome looking bags this weekend. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

We partnered with Giggle.com for the launch, and to celebrate, they’re offering $10 off when you sign up.

I’d be honored if you’d take a look and let me know what you think. I’m kind of crazy excited about it all.

P.S. — Don’t know what Kirtsy is? No worries — here’s a short history.

Friends. Texans. People who love food. I’m excited to show you something we made. It’s a logo and a website. For an amazing place: Revival Market. Revival is a locally-sourced grocer, butcher shop, coffee shop, and restaurant all wrapped up in one hip store that opened in March, in Houston. We had the great honor (and luck) of getting to design for these folks, and we couldn’t be happier with how it all turned out. Co-owners Ryan Pera (from Charlotte, y’all!) and Morgan Weber were the best kind of clients: smart, interested, opinionated and creative. No wonder the store is so filled with awesome.

The website just launched and let me tell you — it seriously makes me wish I lived in Houston. Drought be damned.

(click for bigger)

I hope you have a chance to take a look at the site. And if you live in Houston and have not been to Revival yet, please. PLEASE. Do yourself a favor and head over there this week. I promise you’ll thank me for it.

Well folks. It’s official. We have been in our LEAP office for a full year now, so we decided “what the heck, let’s put some signs up!”

There are many advantages to being tucked away in our sweet, squat little 1950s building, but we think our clients (and more importantly, our potential clients) will appreciate us making it a little easier to find our office. What can I say, we’re givers.

So now you have no excuse not to visit us. And as soon as the Diamond reopens across the street, just give us a shout as you’re pulling in and we’ll meet you over there!

LEAP Design is seeking experienced VB.Net developers for freelance projects in Charlotte, NC. Please, no third parties or agencies.

Experience with the following technologies is essential:

ASP.Net
— VB or C#
— Web Forms
— AJAX Toolkit
— VS 2008 and VS 2005
SQL 2005 and 2000
jQuery

Experience with the following could increase opportunities:

ASP.Net
— MVC framework
— NHibernate
— Web Services
php
MySQL
Drupal
WordPress

Work would be project-priced or hourly. At this point there are no plans to convert position to full-time.

Are you perfect for the job? Then by all means, contact us immediately!

Do you know someone who would be perfect for the job? Please send them our way!

Thanks thanks thanks and thanks!

The brilliant and beautiful Katherine Center has done it again. This time in the form of a video addressing the statement Mom 2.0: Defining a Movement.

I can’t wait to see Katherine in Houston next month at the Mom 2.0 Summit. I feel like time spent with her, regardless of what we’re doing, is quality time. Do you know people like that? I’m lucky to.

Speaking of Mom 2.0 Summit, have you registered yet? Please do. I promise you won’t regret it.

My friend Aimee Greeblemonkey told me today was National Delurking Day. This means that you — the person reading but not commenting on my many, witty, interesting posts — need to let me know you’re out there and say hi.

And since Aimee went to all the trouble to create that creepy flasher guy graphic above, I think it’s the least you could do to honor her (and Rude Cactus) and participate, right?

The thing is, although I love writing and finding cool things to share with you even if you just look and read and move on, it sure helps, once in a while, to know you’re out there. Plus, it helps me when I write to be able to picture the person reading. So I find myself “talking” to specific people when I write certain posts.

So do it! Delurk! Let me know you’re there. And maybe I’ll write my next post specifically to YOU! Lucky dog.

I’m a little late, as usual, but I finally bought my tickets to the alt summit and I am so freakin excited!

Have you looked at the speaker list lately? Holy cow it just goes on and on and on with awesome. And I’m lucky enough to be speaking too! Moderating, actually. A panel about designing online and its inherent challenges. Where do we even begin?

The bloggers and designers and tastemakers that are coming to this conference kinda make my mouth hang open with awe, like the neighbor kid in The Incredibles watching Mr. Incredible pick up his car. I can’t believe I get to spend the weekend with these, um, incredible people. People whom I have admired from afar for years. People who haven’t yet had a forum created just for them. To talk about design. And designing. And pretty things. And cool design. And, holy moly, it’s going to be fantastic!

And bonus: conference registration includes a free ski pass to the gorgeous Solitude ski resort! I can’t wait to go boarding with you!

If you haven’t registered yet, it’s still not too late. Click here:

So I loved seeing the photos of all the cool CES gadgets flying around the internets all week. But this one made my jaw drop. Then I jumped out of my chair. New Polaroid cameras! That will work with Polaroid instant film!

Have you heard of The Impossible Project? If not, go to that link and read. And be sure to click through the pictures and read the captions. It’s an amazing story about how Polaroid Instant Film is being resurrected. The film is supposed to be available in February. I assume the cameras will be ready to go then too? Hope so!

(Thanks Electricpig for the news and the photos.)

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Edited: The direct link to The Impossible Project wasn’t working when I first posted. But it appears to be back up now, so go!

Pantone has announced its color of the year — time to redecorate!

I’ve seen their annual color forecasts before, but I can’t remember seeing a single color of the year before. It’s a great gimmick (as in, “Oh man, I totally need to update my Pantone swatchbooks”).

I do think its funny that Pantone, which began as a way to achieve color consistency across printing presses, chooses a fabric swatch as color of the year.

Also, this made me laugh: