love Wordpress. Love it. Did I mention I LOVE Wordpress? The brilliance of Wordpress is how incredibly easy it is to get it up and running, how customizable it is with a modicum of programming knowledge, and now with a surplus of well-designed themes you can easily create a blog that looks great too. One of my favorite things to do is to start with a base template and modify according to my taste. I only do this for personal blogs of which I have many. I could probably feed a small country on what I spend per year on domain registration.

Anywho.

Today I added yet another domain to my collection and as I was looking for a great base template to start with it occurred to me to share some of the good ones I have found for those of you looking for inspiration or just a good base theme to start with.

Design Disease has some lovely colorful templates which can be used out of the box or customized. They also have premium paid templates, but the free ones are pretty solid. I particularly like this one.

Gigantic is a nice clean theme with decent type. This is the one I ended up going with. Download here

Irresistible – a lovely theme in my favorite color. Download here
WooThemes has other nice free themes here.

Color Paper — A well designed theme. Download theme

Design Pile for Smashing Magazine
Download

Magazeen Download Theme

Titan: a lovely, simple theme

If none of these themes is your style or you are looking for a specific style a great place to start is Smashing Magazine. The folks at Smashing have been kind enough to curate several galleries of themes. Here are a few to get you started:

• 100 Excellent Free Wordpress Themes
• 100 Free Wordpress Themes for 2009
• 83 WordPress Themes you probably haven’t seen
  

Here are a few guidelines for ensuring a successful Wordpress install:

• Always look at the demo of the theme, not just a screen capture.

  I often find that themes look very different in the live demos than they do in screen captures. A live demo will give you an idea of what the theme will look like when it is installed on your website and also help you to catch any cross browser display issues. Many themes are created by independent designers who originally designed them for their websites or who may have stopped supporting them, so it is good to check stability first.

• Read the designer’s notes

  Many designers post installation and other notes on their themes. Installation is usually standard, but these notes may help you customize, learn how to install supplemental plugins and fix small issues.

• Change the write permissions of your headers files on older versions of Wordpress

  I found this one out the hard way when my installation was hacked and my server shut off my website. Lock it down, baby.

• Make sure your new installation plays nice with your old installation

  If you have an old template in play with lots of content, it is a good idea to make sure things translate over smoothly. The newest versions of Wordpress have a theme viewer that will let you see what the first page of your content looks like before you activate a theme — this can give you a good idea of what might break. Another option is to install the new theme on a dupe of your website and move it over when you are satisfied. This, however, takes a little more work and since I like to live dangerously, I usually just do my switching late at night.

• Try and keep it similar

  If you aren’t big into coding, the best thing to do is pick a template that is similar in layout to what you would like your final theme to look like. Font sizes, Font colors and image banners can be easily swapped, but when you start doing heavy construction you find yourself knee-deep in someone else’s code which can leave you feeling like it might have been easier to start from scratch.

• Rely on plugins

  Plugins are incredible and you can usually find a plugin for everything that you want to do – why reinvent the wheel? If your theme doesn’t have a feature you would like, say tag clouds, rest assured you can find a plugin for it.

Now go forth and create.

They Draw and Cook:
My favorite this week is “They Draw and Cook” a website dedicated to a love of food and illustration. I especially love this recipe for ‘Wicked Pissah Corn Chowder’. I originally hail from Boston and having had to cull phrases like “cool beans” and “wicked pissah” from my vocabulary it makes me feel oddly at ease.

via: SallyTV

GIGI Press:
As a designer, I have a love of everything letterpress, which is only bested by my love of the mid-century modern, so imagine the squealing that ensued when I received an email from Jillian Bos at Gigi Press announcing her new Eames rocker thank you notes. I also love that all of her stationary is printed on tree-free cotton paper with soy inks. Check out the Gigi Press shop here for more beautiful design and typography.

Long and Leafy Scarf:
I want this.

ModCloth:
Stylistically similar to Anthropologie at more reasonable prices. I love this dress.

Frida Kahlo Homage:
These painting of Frida Kahlo by Tascha are beautiful — so vibrant.

Mommy Wants Vodka:
A hilarious and irreverent read.

Pom pom sack hat:
Ridiculous? Yes. Potential future humiliation? You betcha! But also undeniably adorable. Who doesn’t need a Pom pom sack hat, I ask you?

Flora Grubb:
This summer I am going all earth mother and stuff — I have planted a very large (and out of control) almost entirely eaten by pests, garden in my back yard. Every day I go out there and lament the fact that it doesn’t conform to the picture in my mind’s eye of what any perfect garden should look like (i.e. pretty much anything in a Martha Stewart catalog). For a perfect slice of heaven on earth, I only have to wander to the Flora Grubb gardens in San Francisco, which is a charming place for rare plants, aesthetically pleasing garden tools and eco plant art.

La Tartine Gourmande:
I am obsessed with this women. She probably knows since I have written her scores of emails drooling all over her fantastic and edible works of art. I first discovered her on Flickr and have since been an ardent follower of her blog. I often make one or two of her recipes for dinner parties.

Beet Salad with Goat Cheese and Mache

Lemon-thyme canoli

love Ramen.

Why Ramen, you ask? Probably because I have eaten it for lunch every day this week (so far) and am likely to have it for lunch tomorrow. Among its many other amiable qualities, the most wonderful is that this .99 food can be made in under 3 minutes. And it is salty. Did I mention it can be made in under 3 minutes?

Despite my current obsession with Ramen, I actually really do enjoy cooking. In fact, I have a long-standing love affair with cooking. I remember begging my Grandfather for the Easy Bake oven when I was 6 years old and when I received it, spending countless hours cooking many delectable treats (such as peanut butter and chocolate on a saltine) in the mini plastic (PBA leaching?) tray under a 100 Watt light bulb. The rest of my time was spent trying to convince people around me to sample my creations (good thing I had a younger brother). Needless to say, my taste for the epicurean has gone slightly more upscale since then.

The French Laundry is an uber fancy-pants restaurant north of San Francisco, in Napa Valley. It’s food and presentation is the stuff of myths. I have never been there, but I once knew someone, who knew someone that had cousin that went there and he said it was amazing — worth every penny (that I don’t know about, but I am reasonably sure a lot of pennies were involved).

The closest I have ever gotten to the French Laundry is owning the French Laundry cookbook — which is a thing to behold in and of itself. It has beautiful pictures, perfect typography and deceptively simple seeming recipes. It was the latter that caused my husband and I to think it would be a great idea to host a French Laundry dinner party for the holidays. This is one of those ideas that seemed brilliant at the time, to be sure.

As it closed in on Wednesday of the week of the dinner party (which was on Saturday) I began to get just the tiniest bit stressed (who me?). The list of items I needed to buy for my kitchen in order to prep the food was almost as long as the food list: a mandoline (OK, I actually wanted one of those bad boys anyway), an egg cutter (not so much, but OK), a tami (?), 2 silpats (?? WHA?), a chinois (???)…anyway, you get the point.

I decided that I needed to make my life absolutely as miserable as possible, by also arranging all the flowers for the event. This was a critical error on my part. Three days before I made a trip to the SF Flower Mart to pick up flowers and to Whole Foods and Trader Joes and Bell and Trunk and then back to Whole Foods and then one more time to Trader Joes. At one point my kitchen looked like a flower battle ground with stems and leaves everywhere and piles and piles of flowers on the counter. I was standing amongst the piles, my hair in disarray, hyperventilating because things were wilting faster than I could arrange them and because it is hard work to protect a pile of flowers from an onslaught of hungry cats who firmly believe it is their right to eat everything green (and then barf it on my white carpet).

Cooking started two days before the actual day of the meal. Each recipe had so many constituents and all of them needed to be simmered, chilled, set and beaten into submission in advance. The smartest thing I did was make an hour by hour task list of everything that needed to be completed from 7:30 AM right up until we served the last course of the meal…at 11PM.

Other than the general craziness most everything went pretty smoothly. My huz had the brilliant idea to take our menu to a local wine shop and have the sommelier on staff pair the wines by course and since there were 6 courses + amuse bouche, everyone got plenty drunk (another brilliant idea). The most technically difficult course was the starter which consisted of a truffle custard cooked in a bain marie, which was served in a an egg shell with a thinly-sliced potato chive chip. The key was to remove the top of the egg shell without cracking the egg and loosen the membrane so that the custard could be cooked inside. The removal of the top of the egg took crazy mad skillz and to prove it we ate omelets every night for a week after the dinner party.

All in all, it was a fun experience and no one died from a heart attack (due to the amount of butter in the food) or of food poisoning, which I think entitles me to count the event as a raging success. It certainly gave me a new appreciation for how much goes into a meal at a restaurant like French Laundry and a renewed love for a meal that can be cooked in under three minutes.

his past weekend was action packed. Not only did I see The Zac Brown Band (!!!) at the first ever West Coast Country Concert in San Francisco, but I also did the tour of the Barney’s Warehouse sale (which was crap) and the Renegade Craft Fair (if you have never gone, you should. It is replete with awesomeness and urban hipsters galore).

As my husband likes to point out, I have an inner hippy which I try to embrace whenever possible (usually in the form of clothes which inevitably elicits the ever-charming response of “you’re wearing that?“). As a result, urban hipster events are pretty much the only time my collection of patchwork empire-waisted tent dresses are allowed to come out of hiding, which means these events are etched in stone on my calendar.

Whatever. Anyway, here are some of my favorites from this year’s crop of crafters:

Catia Chien:
I love these hand-painted images from Catia Chien. They almost have a dreamy quality about them.

Sora Designs:
Handmade vintage jewelry. Reminds me a bit of Elva Fields

Erin Zam:
I love these beautiful, graphic wall hangings by Erin Zam. I bought the one pictured below.

Meryl Munches Macaroni:
Colorful hand-drawn shoes for tykes

Sycamore Street Press:
Beautiful letter pressed number and letter posters for children

Fernworks:
Mixed media creations under resin. After spending an entire summer in my studio inhaling the fumes of resin and cursing my inability to make anything better than decoration for my trash can, I have a new found respect for resin art.

Little Bit:
Handmade dino stuffed animals <3 <3 <3

Mama’s Little Babies:
Victorian Illustration Jewelry

Old Tom Foolery:
I have a soft spot for good, letter pressed type, plus who can resist typestaches?

A Little Birdie Told Moi:
Super adorableness.

Colette Kids:
Graphic tees for infants and children.

Calliope:
Cute tops and headbands for little girls

Paz Sintes:
Unique textile jewelry. Pricey, but beautiful.

Petite Collage:
Cute stuff for Kids’ walls

Sara Paloma Pottery:
Perfectly hand-thrown porcelain.

Hello Hanna:
A one-of-a-kind book kit with buildable stickers and place mats with sticker kits.

Some of the most rewarding moments of the work we do at Duck Duck Moose comes from the feedback we get from other parents and from the connections we make with other artists, app developers and educators. As a creative person, I just love meeting other creative types and hearing more about their creative process and inspiration. One such person is Maggy of Red Ted Art. We just love her sweet, colorful Pop Art style. Its bright colors and clean contours are appealing to young children.

Maggy tells us that although she has never been formally trained, she loves modern art and is inspired by Pop Art in particular. Her first inspiration for painting was her son and from there she went wild, drawing inspiration from every day objects.

In addition to her work, Maggy hosts a forum for craft projects to do with your children.

It was a pleasure to meet you Maggy and keep up the great work!

Wheels on the Bus, Old MacDonald, and Itsy Bitsy Spider all won Parent’s Choice Gold Awards! Duck Duck Moose was the only publisher to receive three Gold Awards – the top honors given by Parents’ Choice Foundation — in the Mobile Apps category.

For toddlers who are eager to learn, try Old MacDonald, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Wheels on the Bus. The creative team at Duck Duck Moose has created – and delivered – exquisite lessons of cause and effect with a charming and whimsical touch.”
– Parents’ Choice Foundation

Wheels on the Bus

Old MacDonald

Itsy Bitsy Spider

We are so honored! For years, I’ve seen the Parents’ Choice Awards on children’s toys, books, and music in stores, and I remember trolling their website when looking for ideas for good birthday presents. Parents’ Choice Foundation has been around for decades and is the nation’s oldest non-profit program recognizing quality children’s media.

Check out the Parents’ Choice Reviews of:
Wheels on the Bus
Old MacDonald
Itsy Bitsy Spider

have been thinking a lot about nurseries this week since my BFF asked me to participate the in design of the nursery for her newest addition — a boy (a request I am sure her husband will come to regret once he sees what expensive taste I have). So this week’s Weekend Round-up is for you, Cheryl.

via: Nursery Project

via: Ella and Elliott

via: Oh Dee Doh

via: Design Sponge

via: Coochicoos

Creative Inspiration for Nurseries

Even the best designers need a little creative inspiration now and then. Here are some of our favs for jogging your creative spark:

Oh Dee Doh
Land of Nod
Coochicoo Flickr Group
Project Nursery
Ella and Elliot
Serena and Lily

have no idea what’s in the water this week, but it has been a banner week for press. We at Duck Duck Moose are over the moon about all the exciting coverage (not your typical week to be sure).

Here are some of the exciting tidbits:

Geek Dad on Wired.com

One of the first blogs to discover our first app Wheels on the Bus, wrote a post on Duck Duck Moose this week.

From an early childhood perspective, they get it right from start to finish… They have what I’d call the ‘Sesame Street Sensibility’ — a real respect and understanding of what will work for young children.

Praise for our newest app:

Baa Baa Black Sheep

USA Today gave Baa Baa Black Sheep, a 4 out of 4 star rating in an article on apps for traveling kids.

Baa Baa Black Sheep also received an Editor’s Choice Award from Children’s Technology Review.

The iPhone Mom gave Baa Baa Black Sheep a wonderful review, calling it a “winningly interactive app.”

iLounge also reviewed Baa Baa Black Sheep, calling it a “top pick of the week” and noting that “Baa Baa Black Sheep’s ability to completely enrapture kids is… impressive.”

The San Francisco Chronicle

interviewed us and featured Duck Duck Moose in an article on how “iPhone moms turn ideas into kid-friendly apps”

Our apps were also featured in several Top Lists.

All Duck Duck Moose apps were ranked the #1 Stories and Songs Apps in Babble.com’s Top 50 iPhone Apps for Kids.

Several Duck Duck Moose apps were also selected for Macworld’s Toddler Favorites List and CNET Australia’s Top Apps for Tots

We are so grateful for all the attention! Whatever is in the water this week, we hope it sticks around for a while.

have decided to add a new feature to our blog called “Weekend Round-up” where I can post all the items/design I have been drooling over during the week. This week’s focus is design for children.

Little Animals:
I am a sucker for sustainable handmade dolls — the more character they have, the more I love them. This week I am crunching on these little handmade animals from Stitchface.

Stripes and Polk Dots Nursery Design:
I just love the feel of this nursery! The crib is my favorite part — it has such lovely curves and a small storage space underneath. I searched online to find this exact crib and ended up finding a similar one by PBKids. The lines aren’t quite as elegant, but still very pretty.

Posters and Totes:
Ollie and Lime Poster art & Thomas Paul totes, available at Designpublic.com

Modern Twist Place mats:
Yeah, yeah, I know. These have done the rounds a bit, but I still want some (grown-up) ones of my own, so I am posting for those who have not yet seen them. I can’t tell you how many cloth place mats I have thrown away because I just can’t seem to eat without food flying everywhere. I love these adorable ones for kids that encourage kids to color within the lines (and hopefully not on your table).

Happy weekend!

Nicci

Today’s Word of the Week is:

cracktastic.
Pronunciation: \ˈkrak-tas-tik\

As in: Peanut Butter Pows are so cracktastic that when I make the (exceedingly) stupid decision to purchase them I often find that I am unable to ingest any other food until the box is empty.

At least they have 11 essential minerals and vitamins, so I got that going for me. Which is nice.

K, I admit it, I am obsessed. You may ask what I am NOT obsessed with and that is actually a very fair question. It is a professional hazard to covet all things beautiful. This time, however, it isn’t a trendy piece of ridonculously expensive furniture, but…and I am almost ashamed to admit this…chickens.

My chicken obsession dates back several years ago when I went with good friends Nick and Jesse to Nick’s parent’s farm in upstate New York. One night, while sitting out on the patio looking at the night stars (likely after drinking too much wine) Jesse came up with the brilliant idea of a midnight hen house raid. Not having ever been close to an actual live chicken (I am a city girl, yo) it sounded like a dangerous mission, but, you know, danger is my middle name. After a prolonged display of sneaking and giggling, we surprised the poor hens who were sleeping innocently in their beds. Once we were actually in the hen house, the four of us stood there staring at the hens and they at us, right up until I sprang forward and stuck my hand under a hen’s butt only to get a vicious (and semi-painful) peck. OK, hen 1, city girl 0. After a bit of squawking and squealing (mostly on my part) and with the help of some padded oven mitts we managed to get some eggs. All in all, not the most professional display.

The birth of an idea: About two years ago, I read an article in Sunset Magazine about the joy of keeping your own backyard chickens. Up until that moment, I thought chickens only lived on farms; I never thought of raising them in my own backyard.

From that moment on, I pestered my poor husband endlessly with talk about raising chickens. My husband, who grew up in Kerala (a state in the south of India), has had ample experience with chickens — enough to know he doesn’t want any part in the endeavor. And although he has tried to ply me with all sorts of chicken facts — they smell, they are noisy, they are stupid, they make a mess…yadda, yadda…my obsession hasn’t waned, I just merely put it on the back burner.

Until I saw this:

and THIS!

Note: this is called a ‘Silkie Bantam’ chicken, but looks more like something out of a Dr. Seuss book if you ask me. I love the ball of fluff with the little beak sticking out, although I wonder how it sees?

and then Operation Chicken was shifted into 5th. So, I decided I want chickens and I decided that my authority over the backyard is clearly greater than my husband’s who hasn’t stepped foot in the backyard in 5 years ( and that is NOT an exaggeration), but there was still a MAJOR hurdle to overcome and that is The Great Chicken Negotiations with my landlord.

I started by emailing them pictures of my hypothetical chickens (which I have named Snowball and Snicket) — who can resist such cuties??!! And then a barrage of chicken facts and finally, a link to San Francisco city laws which permit the keeping of up to 4 hens without a permit (but not more than 3 dogs which apparently requires a permit). They clearly think I am a freak, but they agreed to let me have two chickens. Negotiations actually got easier when I explained that I don’t plan to EAT the chickens — Just steal their eggs and make them into pets.

So, now that I have permission to HAVE chickens, I need to figure out what I need to do to keep them alive and happy. I recently took a great organic gardening class at The Garden for the Environment which has a Chicken Raising class in the fall. As it turns out, the internet is a wellspring of information on how to raise chickens in the backyard (who knew chickens were so en vogue?) The first order of business is to pick a chicken living situation. The chicken cribs hen house (shown above) is suited for small spaces, but I worry that the chickens will be able to see their predators (in my backyard cats and raccoons) which will give them a chicken anxiety disorder.

The other option is to build my very own chicken crib from a chicken plan, which it turns out you can also get online (ah, the interwebs). My Pet Chicken is actually a great resource for coops, plans and all things chicken, including a tool to help you choose the best chicken for you according to your criteria.

So, Operation Chicken is now in effect. Shhhh, don’t tell the Hubz.

Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge recently interviewed us about our design process. Check out the full interview on iLounge.com!

From the look of the polished exterior, expansive gardens and painstakingly perfect interior design of 3450 Washington Street, one would never guess that a mere few months ago the 8,368 foot mansion was just a shell of a house. The Beaux Arts-style Presidio Heights mansion is now on sale for a pittance of 19 million dollars (chump change, my friends). Built in 1929 and designed by noted architect Albert Farr, the house is a maze of small cubbyholes and secret nooks adorned with design ranging from the bare minimalist to the fanciful.

The mansion is divided into 33 spaces of varying size featuring 28 different designers, each intent on expressing his or her own unique vision. Some of the rooms are over-the-top strange and in one particular instance, even creepy. For example, the “Quiet Room” by Lushart Decorative has rather nice, subtle murals of organic shapes on the walls, but also features a light fixture covered with what appears to be bug eggs and the bugs that presumably hatched from them. It reminded me a little bit of my last vacation to Mexico where I lay awake all night inside of a mosquito netting covered with large and hungry-looking bugs clinging to the outside. I managed to keep myself (barely) calm by softly repeating the mantra — “this is an embrace bugs vacation”. Definitely not a room that invites “quiet contemplation” or a “transformative act of introspection” unless your idea of quiet contemplation involves communion with insects.

Another bizarre addition is the room decorated entirely in black and white gingham (even the walls) with bright green and yellow accents and a bathroom entitled “Modernism Talks Back” with dizzying black and white glass tile reminiscent of pixel art; the coup de grace being the reminder to wash behind your ears.

There are also incredibly beautiful rooms like a small dressing room entitled “Le Suite” by Sagrerabrazil Design, which despite its small space is a room that captivates with its hand-cut lampshades and gorgeous graphic wallpaper by Harlequin. You could almost imagine yourself lingering over the beautiful vanity, combing through an extended palette of colors, planning your wardrobe for a night out while the scent of Chanel wafts through the summer air — almost.

Another notable favorite is the Guest Quarters at Mongibello by Wick Design. There is no way to do this room justice by description. The room boasts a very clean minimalist design with a neutral color palette complete with a hanging seat in which to lounge or read or just stare idly out the window.

One of the main highlights of the tour was the spaces designed for children. The Triplets Nursery room by Marsh and Clark design had some lovely elements, including the Hightower Stingray chair (which I am currently obsessed with), the Hannspree Polar bear photo frame (so cute) and some lovely custom light fixtures. Outside the children’s playroom is a small balcony space entitled “Sacred Space to Grow” designed especially for small gardeners in mind.

Other notable rooms are the kitchen — an incredible space for any cook and the living room designed by David Kensington which features a collection of beautiful antiques from around the world and manages to feel both sophisticated and comfortable at the same time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the artwork in the hallways — an exhibition entitled “The Secret Lives of Teachers” created by the Visual Arts department at University High School.

All in all, this years Decorator Showcase was certainly worth seeing.

We recently updated all the graphics in Wheels on the Bus for use on the iPad. Check out Wheels on the Bus HD for iPad on the iTunes App Store.