We’ve just launched Boutique Bride, an online wedding sanctuary for stylish brides in the United Kingdom.

We have a special place in our heart for London, home of our inaugural overseas journey in the fall of 2007. During this time, we were planning our own nuptials and drowning in a sea of kitsch. What we would have given for the freshness and simplicity of Boutique Bride – I fear we would have had our suitcases full to the brim!

Boutique Bride is centered around their hand-picked wedding and bridal luxuries (necessities, we dare say). Accompanying these sylish offerings is Kitty (illustrated by Sujean Rim), the site’s writer and wedding planner extraordinaire.

Not to be fooled by the simplicity of presentation, this is a full-featured Magento e-commerce website, complete with customer accounts, product management, inventory and sales tracking, credit card payments, coupon codes and content management (including blogging). While it can be a challenge to bring simplicity to such a plethora of features, we’re pleased with the marriage of form and function on this project.

The ladies at Boutique Bride are kicking off a launch party within the hour. We wish them a fabulous evening and will begin a small celebration of our own this afternoon (Sapphire happy hour is calling our name). Happy Friday!

From the simple to the ornate, Design/ers for Obama is a stunning gallery with a strong message of hope. Some of my favorites run on the simple, clean side.

Take a look and vote for your favorite!

Salient business advice from Seth Godin: If I wasn’t already running my own business, today is the day I’d start one.

Here’s why.

We at Needmore are always looking for ways to build projects better, faster, and to bring more value to our clients. It’s been many years since we’ve built a website that didn’t allow for our client to update it. We think that’s absolutely vital.

We’ve also spent most of that time trying to find a content management system, or CMS, that would work well for the vast majority of our projects. We’ve tried many open source systems. We’ve tried proprietary, for-pay systems. We’ve even written a few of our own.

And yet, we’ve never found one that would work for almost every project. While we did base a project on Drupal once, years ago, we didn’t feel it was ready for prime time. We had a lot of issues, and it left a bad taste in our mouth. However, we’ve started building several projects on Drupal 6, and we’ve been seriously impressed.

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We’ve been working on cozying up our studio for the Winter and this means quick shopping (online, of course). Now, I’ve never been a coupon clipper (can’t seem to ever find the coupon at the right time anyhow), but the internet makes coupons easy as pie to find right when you need them. I almost never buy from any online retailer without first doing a quick search for the retailer’s name plus the phrase “promo code.” These searches rarely take more than 3 minutes, but can often end up with big discounts. I never click on group promo sites, but rather look for links that show up rankend second through sixth – that’s usually where the good stuff lies.

For example, before purcahsing our new room divider from Chia’sso today, I quick searched chiasso promo code and found a handy code (link #2) that gives 20% off of my entire purchase (and, when buying furniture, this can mean a bundle).

I also purchased a throw pillow and blanket from Design Public today and, when searching for a promo code, the second link was a reminder that they had just sent out a code in their newsletter (wnhich I received, but rarely read far enough down to find the juicy discounts). I quick found the newsletter in my InBox and viola – 10% off and a free subscription to Ready Made magazine for a year!

I can think of nothing more appealing right now than this very image, a mug of Stumptown House Blend along with a mocha macadamia biscotti (kindly sent to us by one of our newest clients, Alicia, on a quick break from baking). Brings a tear to the eye, along with dreams of a cozy Portland Fall that is tantalizingly close.

I’m also brining in Fall this year with this gorgeous (and comfortable) ketchup coat from old-school Needmore client Makool Loves You (who is writing my new favorite fashion blog). MLY is having a trunk show at Seaplane tonight (7-10 PM @ 1919 NW 23rd here in Portland). We’ll be there early - stop in and say hello!

In our quest for an assistant who is a good match for Needmore, we’ve had a rough start. Currently, we’re taking part in a beta test over at TimeSvr. For the time being, you just can’t beat the cost - free. So, if you’ve wondered what having a virtual assistant is like, why not join in the beta trial. We’d love to hear how your experience compares with ours (more on that later).

We spend a lot of time online, and a lot of time with our email. After literally years of lackluster, problematic service, we’ve finally found an email provider we like: Google.

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We’ve just released a new site for Long Beach based photographer absolut beauty. Absolut came to Needmore with an interest in a a site with simplicity of navigation, ease of viewing photography without distraction and, of course, an ability to update images. We created a site that steps out of the way to show off stunning images of landscapes and individuals.

After our recent experience working with a virtual assistant at Sunday, we moved on to trying out GetFriday.

The experience didn’t start out well; my new assistant didn’t contact me until halfway through my first day of billing (after I wrote his supervisor asking if I would be able to get any work done since I was already paying for service). I received a call later from my assistant sounding quite annoyed about said email. Still, I tried to think positive…Similar to our test for Sunday, I started with three tasks for my new assistant.

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