The "FUG" femmes

If you're obsessed with blogs like me, you've probably come across the snarky, biting, oh so yummy blog Go Fug Yourself at some point. Get your mind out of the gutter; F-U-G actually stands for "frightfully ugly." Written by two very sassy young women, Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks, this blog chronicles the good, the bad and the ugly of celeb fashion and culture. Ok, so there's not so much good--it's mostly the bad and the ugly, but man, is it entertaining.

Mad props to you two clever ladies: your site gets hundreds of thousands of hits a month, MSNBC wants you on the red carpet and Star Magazine can't seem to get enough quotes from you. Loooove the power of the internet.

As if that weren't all enough, now the WSJ is a fug fan too.

Ladies Who Launch, LIVE!

I know I rave about them all the time, but I just can't help myself: I seriously heart Ladies Who Launch. It doesn't get much better: a group of smart, sassy, motivated entrepreneurs/go-getters/do-gooders all working together to help each other make great things happen. I'm super thankful I got involved in this organization, and there is an amazing upcoming opportunity that will allow you to jump in head first too: Ladies Who Launch Live.

This is going to be an all day event here in New York City on Thursday, October 20th. There is already a group of amazing speakers lined up, fab workshops and even a vendor marketplace where you can browse and buy from all of the amazingingly talented ladies. It will be a great opportunity to meet some fantastic women, get inspired, get motivated and get going with whatever it is in your life you need a little push forward with.

Sign up quickly because tickets are going like hotcakes--trust me, you don't want to miss this one.

For those who live out on the left coast, lucky you! There will be a Ladies Who Launch Live event out in Seattle on October 27th!

Making it to the big leagues...

Getting your product onto the shelves of Target or Wal-Mart seems...well, pretty freakin fabulous. I've had fantasies of early morning calls that go something like this:

mysterious caller (MC): Hello Paper Bride, this is Target...we MUST have you in every single one of our stores!
ME: uh...really? Uhm, ok, great.
MC: Get some more product printed up and get your stuff to us as soon as you can...we'll wait however long it takes.
ME: uh...ok
MC: I'm sending you a big, fat, honkin' check right now.
ME: ok...uhm...thanks
click

I hope to be a smidge more eloquent than that, but...

Here is a fantastic article about one company's experience in getting their product onto the shelves of Wal-Mart. It's not quite as easy as I had imagined...and, in fact, seems next to impossible. But a girl can dream, can't she?

Smarter To-Do Lists

Sure, we all probably make use of some sort of to do list. And upon reading the above headline, I too thought "come on...a to do list is a to do list." HA! Was I misinformed. I'm really trying to embrace this whole notion of trying to stay more organized, keeping my life in order and making sure my biz isn't in shambles. Turns out my former to do lists sucked big time. Here's how you can make yours smarter.

Mailinator Shmailinator

Ok, spam sucks. Anyone going to argue with me on that one? Thought not. I recently came across this BRILLIANT site called mailinator. Here's the deal: any and every email address @mailinator.com is fully functional and waiting for you to give out to any online shop, annoying boy at a party or anonymous job search. You don't need to join, get a tedious password or think up a clever username. Mailinator accounts are automatically created as soon as mail arrives for it. You can then go to the site, pick up your note or never use it again for all we care. Done. Wasn't that easy?

Introvert to Extrovert in 10 steps or less

Most of us have taken that Myers-Briggs personality test at some point in our lives and if you've taken it, you know the first classifcation you receive is whether you are an introvert or an extrovert.

Paris Hilton=extrovert
Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club=introvert

Tara Reid=extrovert
Ryan on the O.C=introvert

You get the picture. This test claims that we are all either one or the other.

Though I've been classified an introvert, I think I definitely tend to switch between the two depending on the social situation. But there are definitely times I wish I could draw more on the extrovert in me, and this article actually gives some great tips on how to bring out the "inner extrovert" in us all.

Managing Upwards: greatest idea since sliced bread

Can you imagine how fantastic it would be to get the chance to "rate" your boss? Or how enlightening it might be, if you are a boss, to find out what your employees think of how you run the show. This is an idea that will likely catch on right after hell freezes over, but I love the notion of doing a boss evaluation and getting a chance to to tell the people you work for why you feel justified stealing those post it notes.

Here's how to make it to the top

Arlene Blum is a world famous mountain climber. I normally don't pay attention to climbing or mountain climbers. Honestly, with my double fear of heights AND falling, if ever there were a sport that was *not* for me, this one is it. But Arlene Blum is a special exception; she has taken her amazing experiences (climbing some of the most technically difficult mountain ranges in the world) and spun it into a series of stellar tips and advice for small biz owners.

I recently came across this article about Blum on Fast Company and amazingly enough, her advice on "how to make it to the top" works for getting to the top of a mountain, OR the top of the business world. Her advice is solid, and she manages to deliver in a way that even makes typically hokey sounding things like visualization make loads of sense (I actually really believe in visualization--that was just the cynic in me rearing her ugly head for a moment).

She's well worth checking out.

PAPER BRIDE FAVE: Dragonfly Design

Our friends over at Dragonfly Design are always busy making some of the chicest bling we've seen on the internet. They make all sorts of pretty, sparkly, fun and fabulous jewelry but also have some adorable gift items like this super duper cute beaded bookmark. You really oughta check them out pronto.

Lucky for us that in addition to all the blingin', there's some bloggin going on. Dragonfly also writes a sassy blog, and man did we get an awesome review in their Tuesday Treasures column.

Gracias, Dragonfly!

Make it your mission

Most successful companies have mission statements laying around somewhere. Schools have em', non profit organizations. It's a really cool idea, actually: let's sit down and clarify exactly what it is we're hoping to do in the world, how we're going to do it and what we hope to accomplish.

So, when I came across this article on The Five Step Plan for Creating Personal Mission Statements, it struck me as surprising that I've never considered doing this for myself. I can see the possibility of something like this changing more often for me than it might for xyz big, rich company, however, I still think its a great idea. In fact, I wish I had one right now to refer to...to motivate me to get my ass off the couch...encourage me to get through one more monotonous day at work...so I can come home, work on my biz and do some things I *really* want to do. I need one of these puppies badly.

Times Weddings by the Numbers

Our friends at Gothamist have a yummy weekly feature called Times Weddings by the Numbers where they break out the statistical data from the sunday Weddings section of the NY Times into little, fun digestible bits.

For instance, this week, there was 1 bald groom featured, no brides featured wearing glasses and six (!) Yale graduates. If you watch the statistics week by week, its fun to keep track of the "typical" Times wedding. They *do* deserve some props for diversifying a bit, but having said that, their average wedding announcement is still pretty vanilla.

For a more in depth (READ: snarky) breakdown of the NY Times weekly wedding section, check out the highly entertaining blog Veiled Conceit.

envelope and letter folding

Ok, sure. I do realize that it would be much easier to go to staples, the drugstore or the stationery store and just buy an envelope. But how much fun would it be to try to fold your own? I'm here to report that the answer to this quandry is: A LOT OF FUN.

This is a great website with (mostly) dummy proof instructions on how to fold all sorts of envelopes. For a paper lover like me, this is sort of akin to web crack, so beware.

Jobs kill...creativity, that is

Here's a great article that's been making the rounds on Lifehacker and the other orgo blogs (ok, I just made that up...I mean blogs that help with organizing your life=orgo) called "11 Tips to Surviving a Day Job with your Creativity in Tact."

I'm not usually into lists like this, but this one happens to be pretty rockin.' In fact I think every darn item on the list is pretty worthwhile.

So, if you feel like its next to impossible to maintain your creative spirit workin 9-5, start workin this list...see if it helps.

D*I*Y Planner

If you want to get organized with a daily planner or organizer, we all know we can turn to Filofax or Moleskine. Kate Spade has a gorgeous but insanely pricey organizer that I have coveted from afar. But for those of us DIY junkies who are *really* on a budget, you might want to check out D*I*Y Planner.com.

"We are a community of people who see the value of paper as a medium for planning, productivity, creative expression, and exploring ideas. We encourage visitors to share advice and inspiration, and we love to see submissions for templates, kit images and story articles."

There are fantastic templaes, photos, super clear instructions and all the tools you will need to create the perfect means of organizing stuff in your own life. There is also a great forum where you can discuss tips/tricks about what does and doesn't work for you.

The site is brand new, so I imagine they will be adding loads of great stuff in the days to come. Not that I need another item on my "to do" list or anything, but I love the idea of getting myself organized exactly how I want to be, rather than based upon the bages that come in my pricey leatherbound filofax.

Dewey Decimal, who needs ya?

I came across this really cool site the other day called Library Thing that allows you to create an online catalog of all of the books in your personal library. You can set up an account for free to categorize up to 200 books. If you want to keep track of more than that, you can buy a subscription for $10 smackers.

The site syncs up with the Library of Congress' catalog and allows you to enter descriptions and best of all tags for each of your books to allow for easy future searches.

Here's an example of what your catalog page could actually look like.

Though I'm not looking forward to the amount of time this will take to add in all of my info, I'm excited to have a means of finally keeping track of all of my books...that sometimes seem to disappear before I even have a chance to read them.

Most of all, as someone who is fantastic at organizing other people's lives and not so hot at organizing my own, I love all of these new tools that help make gettin' things done so much easier. Internet...I love you.

How do you compare?

Dogpile has a really interesting Search Engine Comparison tool that allows you to compare the top 10 results on your search term from Google, Yahoo and MSN in a visual overlapped pie graph.

Its so interesting to me that there is not a whole hell of a lot of overlap here. Each search engine seems to have an almost entirely unique set of results (for my company url at least). It brought to light the whole issue of the catch-22 nature of the internet: one one hand is fantastic to have so many people, all over the world (companies, people, individuals) putting up anything and everything and allowing us all to benefit from it, learn from it, buy off it, etc, but on the flipside, is there *ever* going to be any sort of regulation and would that regulation be a good thing?

I mean, we all spend hours trying to get our sites up in the page rankings and though there are some tried and true methods, I'm sure most have us have experienced the phenomenon of getting great results with one search engine and some not so hot ones on another.

The browser issue is also hella annoying for me. It never occurred to me (until we had to build our own website) that it would look (sometimes) very different across all browsers. Just when we fix something with one browser, something shows up on another.

I'm all for freedom of expression and lettin' things work themselves out, but would a little bit of regulation be so horrible?

I don't know, myself. Just wondering...

Today

Watch the Today Show on NBC tomorrow morn, 9/2. Tune in at around 9:30am and pay close attention to the segment on awesome bridal shower gifts. I'll tell you why later ;)

UPDATE: we got cut. Boo hoo.

UPDATE TO MY UPDATE: woo hoo! The segment wound up being taped *after* the show was over and they are now planning on running it next Thurs, 9/8. I think. Of course anything and everything could change, but seems like we're back on Katie's "to do" list. Hollah!

UPDATE CUBED: Now it looks like Monday, 9/12 is the day.