All Together Now

My blogging hiatus has ended in the form of a post about work… some really cool work!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you’ve more than likely seen a Sprint commercial about the lovely Veatrice Hansen turning 100 (or Double Dream Feet guy). Well, we built the website for that campaign and I’ve been PMing (project managing). Hard work pays off.

Sprint - All Together Now

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Catching up on catching up.

It’s been a while, I know. Life has been crazy lately, with long hours at work and little time to do anything but that. In all honesty, I don’t even know what to write about, but I’ll just go with it. I can’t talk about what we’re working on at Grow until it’s live, so that’s that.

One thing I can say is that we (Grow) are moving next week! It’s finally time to say good riddance to sharing 1 bathroom with 14 dudes! Here’s an “in progress” picture of the new building — It’s obviously further along now, but you get the picture.

In Progress: New Building

We’re planning a house warming party for sometime in September (tentative), so if you’re lucky perhaps you’ll get an invite from me, hehe.

And on to the next thing that pops into my head…

You should probably go ahead and buy this dress from me. I love it, it’s just too big because I’m lacking in the bust department. In fact, I loved it so much I bought it in a smaller size. So now you and I can be twins in our awesome BCBG silk ensemble. Seriously though, if you know anyone who might be interested please pass that link along to them — it’s a great deal because the dress retails at $268, but I’m only asking $75-$85. I could, you know, use the money and I don’t need 2 of the same dress. Whoops.

Well, I think I’m done here. Time to do laundry and clean the house.

Treats!

Don’t you love those days when everything just seems to come together, and the little things make you appreciate what you have x100? Yesterday was one of those days.

Every Friday at work we order Thai for lunch, so right off the bat Friday is awesome (for more than the obvious reason). Then, on top of that we received our free shipment of Buckyballs! We recently designed and developed their new website, and free Buckyballs for everyone in the office was part of the deal. The site looks great, and the Buckyballs are 100% addicting. You can make so many fun shapes, it’s hard to put them down. I highly suggest you buy a pair if you’re in need of a fun desktoy, they even come in 4 different colors. I chose black.

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The treats don’t end there! Our Flash Developer, Darius, and his wife, Anna (with their 6 month old daughter, Reya, in tow), brought everyone Jelly Ball — Her family owns the shop at Lynnhaven Mall. Now, if you aren’t from this area you probably don’t know what Jelly Ball is, but I’m sure you’re familiar with the concept. It’s bubble tea, you know those tapioca pearls that everyone either loves or hates. They have 30+ drink flavors (smoothies, milkshakes etc.). I opted for a Red Bean milkshake (without pearls), and it was delicious. Thanks Darius and Anna!

To top the day off, unlike 99% of the time, Ben didn’t have to work last night, so I actually had a Friday night with my husband! We ended up staying in and relaxing, but I’m always appreciative of the time we have together.

Thai, Buckyballs, Jelly Ball AND Ben? Yesterday was treat day!

Today, my coworker Josh (we call him Newton), and his fiancée Liz, are getting married! Grow wedding celebrations are always a ton of fun, and it’s great when all of us can get together outside of work. Plus, I love an excuse to get dressed up and feel pretty.

Happy weekend!

New work from Grow!

Things have been crazy busy over at Grow lately, which means we have new work to share!

I wasn’t very excited about the Super Bowl for the football, though the game was great, but more so for the commercials and a site launch that coincided. The particular commercial I’m talking about is for Vizio. If you watched the Super Bowl you may have seen it, as it started off with good ol’ Beyonce. The site we created to go along with the spot which is for their new Vizio Via Internet Apps TV.

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The next website I want to share is for Lucy’s gluten-free cookies! This one isn’t a fancy Flash website, but instead a sweet html website! Lucy’s came to us directly to redesign their existing site, since they recently signed a deal making their products available in Starbucks — very cool! They are a local company with great things on their horizon, and it was great working along side them :]

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And of course, we have much more in the works, which I’ll be able to share shortly. Project Managing multiple large scale websites, among other things, is a hard job, but someone’s got to do it! Hehe.

This coming work week is going to be a short one for me. My sister and I are headed to Jamaica on Wednesday morning, and I can’t wait to get away for a few days to clear my head and just relax. I’ll be sure to take tons of pictures :]

Nature Made Heart Health site launched!

It’s been a while since I’ve written a post highlighting any work we’ve completed over at Grow, which is odd to me considering I’m there more than anywhere else, hehe!

In December we completed a website for Nature Made highlighting their Heart Health products — Fish Oil, CholestOff, and CoQ10. They launched it right after we got back from holiday break, and overall I’m really pleased with the way it turned out. There was a lot of asset management that went into it, but all the time spent was worth it. The whole team did a super job :]

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We have some really interesting projects coming up that I can’t wait to share!

Oh, and did I mention that our Holiday Party was absolutely amazing? No? Well take a look at the pictures here and you’ll see for yourself. A great time was had by all! Thanks to Careyann and Drew for planning the party of the year!

Q+A (Work and Location Edition)

You grew up in NJ, right? Why do you live in VA now?

Yes, I grew up in Clifton, NJ — which is about 15 minutes outside of NYC. You may think I’m crazy for moving away from NYC, but it was one of the best decisions I ever made.

October 2006 was when I decided to relocate to Virginia, and it was because I was in love (go figure). I wasn’t thrilled with the job I had at the time, so Ben and I decided that it would be best for our relationship (we had been in a long distance relationship for about 2 years at that point), if we lived close to one another so we could take it to the next level.

Why didn’t Ben move up to NJ you ask? Well, he was touring with the band Mae at the time, and they are located out of VA, plus he had another side job (which is now his full time job) that he also enjoyed. I was the unhappy one so I wanted to make the move. Then, about 2 weeks after moving down here Ben proposed ;]

I think you said you used to work in NYC… what did you do?

It’s true, right after I graduated college I landed a job at Cornerstone Promotion. I worked in the digital music department as a Grassroots Online Marketing Manager. Basically what I did was market bands to blogs and online websites. I’d set up contests and just basically be the means to getting album release and tour information out into the digital realm. I was good at my job, and I met a ton of great industry people (and friends) while working there, but it just wasn’t for me. Without that job though, I would have never landed the job I have now, so I certainly don’t regret it one bit.

You’re the Project Manager at Grow Interactive? Cool! You guys do great work!

Thank you! I’d like to think so as well ;] And yes, that’s what I do now, and I love my job. Sure it gets stressful, but I feel really blessed to be part of such an awesome company and work with such talented people on a daily basis.

Thanks for these questions! Keep ’em coming if you want to know more!

All Hail Josh!

All Hail Josh! from Grow Interactive on Vimeo.

[via the Grow blog] — On our Thank You Begins With A T site, developer Josh drew a marker and an envelope. Astute visitors pieced together that they could draw on Josh and e-mail him copies of their creations. Thousands of drawings flooded Josh’s inbox, and the rest of our team followed along with an RSS feed. Many of the drawings were too good to keep to ourselves, so we’re happy to share this compilation of our favorites.

Want to win a shirt from the site? Leave a comment on the original post, and we’ll pick three random winners next week. Good luck!

[Disclaimer: Not for the weak at heart. There is a lot of genitalia in this video.]

K-Y Intense site launched!

We (Grow) finished up a website for K-Y’s new product “Intense” months and months ago, but it was just launched. I’m not sure what the hold up was, but I’m glad it’s finally up for the world to see! It was worth the wait ;]


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I’m not going to lie, when we first got this project there were endless sex jokes going around the office, and we even got free samples of the product (wink, wink). Overall, I’m super happy with the way the site turned out. The design is fantastic (go Matt!), and the site is scattered with plenty of fun surprises. Be sure to head over to the “Reaction Room” and “Arousal Lab” to see what you can uncover!