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What a fun job this was!  Tips & Toes had a nice looking business card, but it had become a little dated and was expensive to print.  After we priced out a variety of options, Wendy received those magical words all designers love to hear:  “Do whatever you want!”

The chartreuse card set was our first effort.  We put a high gloss on the photo side and a matte finish on the back (to make it easy to write on).  They turned out great!  Alish thought so, too.  In fact, she liked them so well, she decided to use them for nail appointments and cut us loose to design a complementary set for hair.  How fun!

Cooperative marketing is brilliant.

Take the Northwest Carriage Museum and the Willapa Seaport Museum.  Here, we have two amazing small museums, both created on grants, passion and courage, and both operated wisely–and close to the bone. They are neighbors, situated across the street from one another, and both have creative, dynamic, smart directors.

No one should have been surprised they would leverage their budgets and combine their talents to produce a brochure with more impact than either of them could have achieved alone.  See?  BRILLIANT.

It can be complicated to combine forces in this way, and shouldn’t be entered into blindly.  Styles and preferences are, more likely than not, disparate.  Branding can be diluted.  The time involved in agreeing on everything from concept to details can be maddening.

Had Keleigh and Amy not worked together before, there might have been trepidation.  After all, we beachdogs were agreeing to find a strong balance point between two museums and their independent-minded directors, a balance that would BENEFIT all concerned as well as PLEASE them.  Each of these women had Boards to report to, others to consult at many points in the process.  That’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen.

Not with this team!  Amy Dennis and Pam Darrah are both consummate professionals.  Not only were they each a joy to work with, their combined energy brought so much more to the project than could have been generated without them.  We’re all pleased with the result of the effort and the proof will come as distribution takes place and museum visitation increases.  Stop by one of our local visitor centers to pick up a copy of their brochure or, better still, spend a day at the museums.  You’ll be glad you did.

I just love living here in teeny tiny town.  It is literally and figuratively the beach of my childhood.  I’ve talked with people about this 30 years older and 30 years younger than myself and all seem to agree that the spirit of the place hasn’t changed over time.  Okay, so those pre-teens 30 years younger don’t really know what they’re talking about yet, but still!

This weekend offers up a slice of that magic for locals and visitors alike.  Holidays at the Beach is a weekend of family fun co-sponsored by the City of Long Beach and the Long Beach Merchants Association and we’re blessed to work with both organizations.  The rack card we did for this year’s event is shown to the left.

Organizers Ragan Andrew and Steven Linhart took over the reins a few years ago and have really injected new energy into a 3-day series of events. I love their “ticket” idea; we perforated the rack card to include a tear-off ticket to the Friday night event.  Kids get to keep the weekend’s schedule (to which they attach ribbons, bells and the like) and the theater gets a ticket so they can track participation.  Well done, team!

Keith and I going to meet the two newest members of our family in California over Thanksgiving, so we’ll miss my favorite part of the holiday season here in Long Beach: the tree lighting and caroling.  The good news is that we’ll be back in time for Ilwaco’s “World’s Largest Crab Pot Christmas Tree” lighting and Boat Parade and also for Ocean Park’s tree lighting and cookie decorating party.  There’s also the Peninsula Player’s Christmas Play, PAPA’s Fiddler on the Roof, the Boys & Girls Club’s Holiday Home Tour, the B&B Association’s Open House and Tuba Christmas.  Staff parties!  Friend Gatherings!  Cookie Baking!  Present Wrapping! Whee!  I LOVE this place and this time of year!

Happy Thanksgiving to each of you.  May your holiday, and your year, be blessed.  :: Keleigh

Of course we’re biased.  Keleigh’s on the Board of the Long Beach Merchants Association (LBMA) this year.  But our affection for the organization goes back to early exposure to their good works.  This small but mighty group of volunteers pays dues annually for the privilege of pushing up their sleeves to produce some of the best-known events in the state of Washington.

Ruth Ann Hocking has been producing music festivals longer than some LBMA members have been walking.  Her newest effort, the Long Beach Bluegrass Festival, went from zero to sixty in a short number of years and is already a top event in the Bluegrass world.  Way to go, Ruth Ann!

Jane Holeman and the rest of the mighty gang producing the Washington State International Kite Festival for nearly three decades, deserve platinum honors for putting on a week of colorful fun that really must be experienced to fully appreciate.

SandSations, the annual sand sculpture competition held in July, has a huge fan following, as does one of the newest events (for one of our oldest residents), Jake the Alligator Man’s Birthday Party.  We posted about Holidays at the Beach the other day and could ramble endlessly about the Beach to Chowder Run, Doggie Olympic Games, SummerFest… there are so many!

It was a pleasure to redesign their membership brochure as a pro-bono project this fall.  If you’re a merchant in the region, or just want to support their good works, click over to their site and send them some love.  ….or some dues!

A testament to both home schooling and the Boy Scouts (and some mighty fine parenting and mentoring along the way, no doubt), David Craft is a young man of which our community can be proud.

We had the pleasure of meeting David while he was working on his Eagle Scout project, a wonderful booklet for children of all ages visiting the Peninsula.  David designed and developed the booklet, as well as created the activities found within.  He worked with local artist Don Nisbett to create cover and interior illustrations AND raised funds to print 1000 copies for distribution by our local Visitors Bureau.  You can download your own copy here.

Thanks, David, for becoming the kind of young man we like to see in our community!

Congratulations to the hard-working folks who volunteer their time to produce Sunday Afternoon Live.  Your efforts earned front cover of Coast Weekend this week!

Thank you for all you do to bring quality entertainment to Pacific County!

Read the article.

This web development project, headed up by Karl, was a great example of taking an existing site and bringing it into the new era of what works.  The internet changes so quickly, both in terms of what ‘toys’ are available to a site owner to make their site attractive, functional, and ’sticky,’ and with what technologies and tactics work best to get your site found.

Pat came to us with a well-designed, html-based site that had gotten a little out-of-date from a technology perspective.  She was relying on a webmaster to make the majority of changes to the site, an effort which was, by nature, frequent.  Changes in that relationship left her unable to edit her site in the way she needed and she came to us for a solution.

Recreating her site using WordPress solved several of Pat’s challenges.  She was able to keep the look and feel that she liked, while giving the site a face lift.  She gained an easy-to-use interface that lets her edit most every aspect of the site herself, adding, changing, and deleting posts, pages, and pictures; it’s all in her hands.

Our hosting package gave Pat the email boxes she needed.

Kathy was also able to upgrade Pat’s search engine optimization, making the site “Google-friendly” so she will gain a strong, organic, search rank.  Because the site is blog-based, Pat should see a strong organic result quickly.

[Holtermann & Associates] focus is executive search of healthcare professionals: Administrators, Director of Operations, Director of Nursing, Finance Managers, Rehabilitation Services Professionals, Medical Insurance Professionals and other healthcare managers. Our clients include hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, clinics and Medical Insurance Organizations. Our specialty is finding the right person for your job and the right career move for the candidate. At H&A the recruitment staff knows how to find the right people for your openings … quickly, economically, and consistently. We recruit, screen, pre-qualify, and refer only those candidates who meet or exceed the qualifications that you require in your next employee.

http://hva-jobs.com

If you live in Pacific County, Washington, and don’t know about this group, you’re going to be so happy you read this!

Sunday Afteroon Live was originally founded to give senior residents quality musical entertainment during the fall and winter months.  Venues changed until the group grew and adopted the Raymond Theater as their permanent venue. Meanwhile, the group’s reputation soared as enthusiastic audiences of all ages packed the theater.  Performers coming through Raymond on their way to other venues made stopovers to perform on Sundays for grateful audiences.  Sunday Afternoon Live now attracts both residents and visitors from the Long Beach Peninsula, Grays Harbor area, Lewis County and Astoria, Oregon and includes educational programs in local schools.

The historic theater itself is magical, with great acoustics and comfortable seating.  Have we not tantalized you enough?  Take a look at this season’s schedule.  Keleigh is particularly excited that the Alley Cats are coming in March.  She first saw the doo-wop band at Disneyland, while in college and, about ten years later, in Las Vegas (regrettably, she missed the White House performance for President Clinton).  They’ll be doing Vegas with Jay Leno in September but you can see them in Raymond in March!

This is one of many stellar performances procured by Sunday Afternoon Live.  As a charitable non-profit, the group needed a website that offered them a lot of editing flexibility without incurring regular maintenance bills.  We set them up in WordPress, our blog software of choice, with a simple theme that echoes their existing promotional materials, and we provided some training to get them up and running to edit the site themselves. The site has easy-to-use PayPal buttons for making donations and buying tickets to shows.

Check out the Board of Directors and Sponsors pages and, when you see these fine people, give them a huge pat on the back.  This is what community volunteerism is all about!

Do you have your tickets for Bob Milne’s Peninsula appearance on the 8th?  This is a must-see event.  Bob, an internationally acclaimed musician, is as much an educator as an entertainer and he weaves stories throughout the fabric of his performance.  Seriously, he’s amazing.

With your entrance ticket, you get an hour of time to enjoy the World Kite Museum before the program begins, and some noshes and nibbles to boot.  Come, enjoy!

I’m reminded that I’m supposed to be writing about the products we produced for the event.  Oops!  This year’s materials were especially fun because the event coordinators tossed the facts at us and gave us free reign to design and print.  One of our vendors went through their “paper graveyard”, leftovers from other jobs, which let us design for a double-sided, letter-sized post card for less than a flyer would have cost.  We printed the tickets at the same time, business card size.  Combining the jobs gave us a sweeter printing price than if we had done them as standalones.  Thanks for the freedom, World Kite Museum!