St. Louis Photographer » A Journal by Holly McCaig

But no time to really slow down. That’s life really. I’m about to make myself another hot toddy. Did one yesterday. This thing is pretty nasty and I’m a total baby.

Anyhoo – I wanted you all to see a few things we’ve been working on. On top of my other jobs and projects that is. Some of those BIG things I was mentioning.

Holly McCaig Designs
For this, you can check out my new homepage here. Still under construction, but started. I have implemented a guest artist each month for Holly McCaig Designs. This month – well, February is none other than Lauren Pieters. Such a doll and so sweet. She sent me the CUTEST Starbucks mug yesterday! I said I’d photograph it but I’m too lazy. It’s pink! AND CUTE! It goes great in the studio! So, help me congratulate her! I’ll be hand selecting people each month so maybe, just maybe, I’ll select you! AND, I’m looking for two team members to join me that are willing to create projects or altered arts with my products each month. One project minimum per month required. If interested, please email me at holly@hollymccaigdesigns.com and show me some samples. I want to get them on board ASAP, so please reply by the end of the weekend and tell everyone you know!!!!

My Digital Muse
Tomorrow this will go in a newsletter email, but we’ve been posting a little here and there to make it known. We’re hosting a new kind of designer call. We want to add one new person to our boutique to sell, but rather than doing a traditional call, we’re looking for people that will work hard and really try. So, we’re hosting this:

You can read the details in our forums…but that brings me to something else. We are going to upgrade our forums to V-Bulletin either tonight or tomorrow. We are hoping it will help with the spam issues and plus, it’s a much better board. Our current board was free software and well, you get what you “don’t” pay for. So, once we run a test installation and link up to the existing posts and make sure it works, we’ll be closing the forums to get it working publicly. The hard thing is that we’re going to wipe out out gallery in order to properly integrate the two. We’re COMPLETELY sorry, but have no way of avoiding this to make sure we do it right. This will go out in the email tomorrow and we’ll hope everyone will get back on board with posting and reposting layouts and photos! We love you guys!

In home news….my mom was informed a few weeks ago that her job was being eliminated. In fact, the entire department was. This isn’t new to her company as last year many jobs were eliminated just before the holidays. See, in insurance, many of the jobs are being eliminated and outsourced overseas to India. These are customer support and phone support jobs for inside agents. I am all for diversification within companies, but get very upset when I make phone calls for support to places like Dell and get someone that cannot speak clear English. I can’t understand them. I have been known to hang up and call back again until I get someone I can understand. I even once asked the support operator to please transfer me to someone who spoke better English because I kept having to have her repeat the same things over and over again since I could not understand her. So, this outsourcing situation is wrong in my opinion because the Big Guys get to keep their large salaries so they can save a buck by outsourcing US-based jobs. But, being the kind person that she is. She offered to go to Dallas for the next two weeks to train this outsource company coming in from India. She will probably come home for one weekend and then go back again for two more weeks. She is one of the people that has no small children or family to have to take care of so I think it’s very noble of her to do this. Needless to say I’m going to be so lonely without her here. But, it will be nice to have the place to myself and all. It will just be strange. If anyone is in the Dallas area that wants to show my mom around on the weekend, please let me know! I want her to enjoy her time there too!

Well, I need to get back at it and drink my hot toddy…Days is on and I could use a nap to rest up.

When I was blonde and thinner I have been told Reese Witherspoon, but I don’t think I look like any of these people! Aren’t there any fat celebs on here?

Well, I’m officially sick. It started yesterday with me not getting much sleep and waking up with a horrible sinus headache. I thought it would go away with some coffee. Nope. Then I thought, man, I must seriously need some sleep. Couldn’t get to sleep. Got even more sick feeling as the day went on and progressed into the evening. So, picked up some Tylenol Sinus Severe stuff and took it. I’m trying to sweat it out but can’t seem to get hot enough. Hot bath didn’t work. Was hoping a good sleep would help, but no such luck. Here I am feeling like some nasty germs have decided to make home in my head. I can’t exactly not work during this time, so I am doing what I have to and then just going to nap some. Anyhoo – that’s me.

Here’s the kit from me and Kristy that is up at MDM. It does come with a card template and the cute little cut-out envelope box deal. Cute huh? That garland is soooo cute too!

Purchase at My Digital Muse for $4.25 before it goes up to $5.25! Here. And, Kristy is giving away a goody on her blog that you can use with the kit too! Go see.

I’m still not “in love” with this blog theme yet – not the colors, just the style and all. I keep playing with fonts and colors. Trying to get it to what I want. But it’s going to have to be something I work on a little later. It will do for now.

Remember, just ONE more day to apply for my Photographer’s Boutique creative team!

I also have some other great announcements coming your way this week…BIG STUFF! You will LOVE IT!

Okay, still waiting on an update from our host. We can do anything that doesn’t work off a mysql database, so what can we do now but wait and see?

Anyway, Kristy and I have a new kit for sale – but if things are slow on the server issue, we may sell in my Photographer’s Boutique until that gets resolved. It’s a Valentine kit and well, that’s time sensitive! We want you to have it. So, we’ll see by tonight! It’s cute! I’ll share later on what it will look like but you can peek over at Kristy’s blog.

Photographer’s Boutique is open. It has anything that a photographer would love to have. I have a few things there that are for sale at MDM, but things here that are exclusive to the Boutique because they would compete with other designers at MDM. I have a lot more coming too! Time is just not on my side! LOL I’m going to be working on this website and updating my blog too. So, it will have a direct link posted shortly. Anyhoo – here’s the link: http://hollymccaigdesigns.com/boutique/ – have fun!

Finally – happy birthday to my little brother, Jake! 19!!!! I have him set up on a blog and am hoping he gets it going soon. I am trying to teach him a few things so I can hire out to him if need be on some projects. Anyway – wish my brother happy birthday k?

Now, I need to go to work for real….and am NOT going to stress about MDM. No sense in getting upset.

Okay, in case you haven’t noticed I’m doing a new theme on the blog – and one that is taking a lot of adjusting. It’s not done yet, but I have to do some things so taking a break. Back later to work on. The theme uses the kit from me and Kristy coming out hopefully tonight.

PS – MDM is back online!

Just an FYI. Yes, we know that MDM is down. It appears it’s a server issue. We are not on a dedicated server and those also on our server are experiencing the same issue. When we know more, we’ll let you all know. We are sorry for any inconvenience and hope to be back soon.