Gingerbread Cookies: A Perfect Christmas Gift

Every year my friend Juliet makes these incredible gingerbread cookies. This time around she created them in shapes of forest creatures: a squirrel, a hedgehog, a snail and a bear. I did not get a chance to photograph them all, as they were so delicious! They were eaten very quickly. The bear is the only one I snapped a picture of right before I ate it with my coffee this morning. Yum!

Merry Christmas "From My Stoop To Yours"

Hand-drawn cards from my dear friend, artist and shoes designer Sarah Keane of DoThat:
Cafe Mogador & From my Stoop To Yours.

Happy Holidays!

It has been a while since I've posted here. The last six months of my life have been a whirlwind. I quit my job and moved to New York City to join the Product & Design track at Startup Institute NY as a way to change my career. Upon completion I received a job offer as a User Experience Designer at Brightstarr in NYC. Many other things had happened, some very tragic. I lost my only brother who, thankfully, came to visit me in the US for the first time ever in the beginning of this year. I have met many amazing new friends and gained new perspectives on life.

I wanted to thank all of my wonderful family and friends for all of the love and support. I would not be able to do it without you. Merry Christmas and here is to a Happy New Year 2014!

Pinterest Redesign 1

I have been using Pinterest for a while now and am a huge fan of it. The application is awesome and super-addictive (I find myself spending hours late at night and on a weekend pinning away my favorite visuals). But as amazing as its functions are, there is definitely room for improvement. I recently created these mockups to show what I would like to see Pinterest implement.

Currently, when a user is looking at someone else's board there is no option to pin all the pins at once. In this study Pin All Pins button was added to enable users to grab all pins they like from a given board and add them to their own board. The option of pinning pins one-by-one will remain for those who like to be selective.

SiNY: Day 12 of 38

An early afternoon session with Scott Haylon, the director of Business Development at Mortar Data Inc.:



The weekly 'therapy' session with Bradstreet Rand of SiNY. Helpful as always!

At the end of the day I went to my first networking event: The Ultimate Career Makeover, hosted by BaubleBar and The Muse (!!!) Made some great connections.
Had lots of fun.
Photos attached.

SiNY: Day 11 of 38

Great start to a new week!
Morning session with Ashley Granata, the co-founder and CMO of Fashism.com.



An intrack session with Chuck Ha, a freelance software engineer.

A founder talk with Reece Pacheco, the co-founder and CEO of Shelby.TV

SiNY: Day 10 of 38

Today is the first day of summer! Time is flying so fast; I am both happy and sad about it.

The day began with fireside chat with Susan McPherson who is the Senior Vice President & Director of Global Marketing at Fenton.



Later we had our intrack session with David Branner, a professor of Chinese and a software developer, who introduced us to a brand new world of living in a digital world.

Then a session with Kailey Raymond of SiNY on body language.



At the end of the day we went to see the performance of Christina Wallace, our program director, who sings with an a cappella group called NYC#. They were terrific and we all had so much fun!

SiNY: Day 9 of 38

All day: working on Fathom project with my team:


We have the greatest whiteboarder ever!

SiNY: Day 8 of 39

Made it through day 8 :).
Tomorrow we are starting a group project with Pavia Rosati, the CEO and Founder of Fathom. Glad we had our morning fireside chat with her where we learned about her experience, her ideals and the philosophy behind the company. She is a very interesting individual and I found myself thinking we have many things in common.
An intrack session with Nathan Goulding, the founder and CEO of Swishu. He is very knowledgeable and a great teacher.
A super-personable afternoon chat with Divya Gugnani, a co-founder of Send the Trend(!)
Another intrack session of the day, this time with Bradsreet Rand of Startup Institute NY. Thank you, Brad, for your guidance!
Met an alumni of Startup Institute Boston, Aeron Glover today. (I am only 31 days away from being there :))

End of day summary: many things are starting to come together.
Network is expanding. Head is 'exploding' with things learned.
Thankful for having great new friends.
No pictures today, sorry.

SiNY: Day 7 of 38

A very busy day.
My team and I met with Pavia Rosati, the CEO and Founder of Fathom. From now on, every Thursday we will be working on a group project at Fathom (!)

Then a super-helpful session with Danya Cheskis-Gold on personal presentation, dress and behavior.

Later in the day we had our first career fair with the following companies:
Rent the Runway
Stray Boots
DE-DE
Hukkster
Rent Hop
Lean Startup Machine
Swishu
Knewton
Mortar Data
ShuttleCloud
Greatist
LearnVest


Got some freebies :)


Beautiful sunset on the way home, and it is still light outside(!)

End of day summary: got on a wrong train on my way to school (note to self: catch up on sleep). Met incredibly interesting and inspiring individuals at the career fair; definitely interested in working for some of those companies.

SiNY: Day 6 of 38

Fireside chat with Divya Narendra the CEO and co-founder of SumZero, who also co-founded HarvardConnection (later renamed ConnectU). Wow!!!
Learning from the Pros: Intrack HTML/CSS Intensive with Sean O'Connor, a senior engineer at Bitly.
Founder Talk with Jennifer Fleiss the co-founder and president of Rent The Runway (!!!)


End of day summary: met some incredible people (unbelievable!); mades some progress on lab assignments (Melissa Fear, thanks, for helping me out with git!). Must go through Codecademy's CSS: Coding with Style. Must prepare for tomorrow's career fair.

SiNY: Day 3 of 38

Morning session with Nicole Thomsen, a recruiting manager of 2u.
Meeting with Aaron O'Hearn, a co-founder and CEO of Startup Institute.



Very insightful intrack session with Ellen Chisa, a product manager at Kickstarter (!!!)



Afternoon session with Adam Rothenberg of BoxGroup.
Startup Growth, Fundrasing and Where You Fit Financially with Caitlin Strandberg of Flybridge Capital Partners.



(View from the office)



Late night learning the fundamentals of Github with Brian Dant of Startup Institute.
Setting git issue is resolved! Yay!!!

End of day summary: great day, exhausted, in need of more sleep. Upon my arrival home I realized that I lost my computer. Thankfully, it was still laying on top of the checkup counter at Duane Reade. Relieved.

SiNY: Day 2 of 38

Elevator Pitch & How to Introduce Yourself session with Adaura Adoji.
A session with Katie Rae, a co-founder and chairman of Startup Institute.
A session with one of the founders of Stray Boots.
Followed by an unexpected scavenger hunt.




(Golden skirt rocks!)

Suspicious ar first, tried dollar-a-slice pizza. Turned out to be amazing!
End of day summary: learned a lot, head exploding with new information, bad blisters on my feet.

SiNY: Day 1 of 38

(Two days after arrival to NYC)


Introduction:
Startup Institute New York team: Christina Wallace, Bradstreet Rand, Kailey Raymond + Shaun Johnson, a co-founder and COO of Startup Institute.
+ 42 students (total)
Everyone is AMAZING!
Four tracks: Web Dev + Product and Design + Sales and Business Dev + Marketing.
Product and Design track: only eight of us.
Intrack orientation with Brad.
Many issues with git setup; the concept of git and Github has yet to be conquered.
'What do I suck at' session.
End of day summary: super-impressed, excited, overwhelmed, survived...
Love my new T-shirt.

Accepted to Startup Institute New York

I am thrilled to share the news: I have been accepted to the Startup Institute New York in Product and Design Track!!!

From now on I will be posting about my experience throughout the school.
Eight weeks = 38 days.
Stay tuned!

Olga

29 Ways to Stay Creative

Let's face it. We have all been there. There are moments in our lives, especially those of us in the creative industry, when we feel drained and uninspired. And in those moments we all need a little boost of energy and encouragement.

The inforgaphic here is a good alternative to Keep Calm And Carry On for your work place. I printed it and pinned it to my inspiration board both at work and home (and, of course, on Pinterest). I recommend you do the same!




Infographic courtesy of visual.ly

Monday Style: Fresh Scarves from A Peace Treaty

Silk scarves by A Peace Treaty















Images via A Peace Treaty

Bird Pin Keeper

I received this pretty bird pin keeper for my birthday this year and cannot stop admiring it for its smart design and functionality. Everything, including the cozy wool tweed, the stitched wings with buttons, the wooden pedestal, and even the tag.., is simply adorable and brilliant!