Happy birthday to me happy birthday to me. I don’t like getting older, but I do like getting presents, and while I don’t expect to get these presents, I can always dream. (Like my magazine-style image? Ohlala!)

1. iPod Touch. So, of course we’d all rather have an iPhone, but how many monthly bills can you add to your repertoire? I have an old-school ipod nano, so I’ve been visiting the Apple Store online and in my dreams. Sigh.
2. Headphones. Even without the new iPod Touch, I’d love some big-old, colorful, new headphones so that I can drown-out the world. Ear buds aren’t cutting it. (There were some even more colorful ones, once, but I can’t find them anywhere! They were made for me!)
3. Cupcake! They aren’t just cupcakes, they’re beautiful, elegant cupcakes. Making me hungry right now.
4. McSweeney’s Subscription. Beautiful books. Directly in your mailbox. (At least two of these mags were featured in PRINT’S Regional Design Issue this year!)
5. Duffel. Not a crappy-gym-bag duffel! It’s practically a PURSE.
6. Dress. You can do anything with this dress, so it’s really like getting a dozen dresses.

Sigh. Another year older!

Remember back in July when I went laptop-post crazy. I was researching cases because I wanted somewhere light and safe to carry my MacBookPro. Recently, this “9-5 laptop case” has been making its way around the internet, and I think I’d get that monster case if I had a little extra cash.

Anyway, it took me over two months but I finally chose my laptop case. Is it any of the ones I researched? No, of course not! It’s actually an Isaac Mizrahi bag from Target (images from Target.com). (more…)

Alright, so Tricia, our newest member of the Stickers & Donuts contingent, is taking a few week blogging break, but she’ll be back with more fabulous posts (and they will be fabulous!) soon. (Don’t worry, I’ll keep you entertained! There is a great three part interview coming up throughout the week & I’m very excited about it!)

But, since in many states this is the first week of school (Labor Day. Nearly. Over.), I wanted to remind you of her fantastic four part series (you can scroll through the whole thing right here!) on the best back to school buys, including:

• The cutest pencil cases you may ever see in your life.
• The most fantastic (Tricia knows her stuff when it comes to this) pens & pencils for the 2008-2009 school year.
• Lovely, doodle-y notebooks and planners.
• Various other things you definitely (okay, maybe not definitely) need to make it through school/office life.

If you’ve already been-there, done-that, then I guess you can just buy some Star Wars themed thumbdrives from Mimobot. In a way, they kind of remind me of when I used to collect themed knick-knacks from McDonalds. I almost of wish they’d ditch the drives & just sell them as toys!

Some of my favorites from last week! (Links in the list below; right click to open in new window.)

• A book of a guy comparing his silhouettes to famous silhouettes (via SwissMiss).
• A hysterical inscription on The Book Inscriptions Project blog from a book entitled “Doktor Bey’s Suicide Guidebook.”
• I really just want to put my feet into these rugs from the Dolder Grand Hotel in Zurich (via Cool Hunter).
• I love, love, love Chris Benz’s colorful clothing lines, and his web-site is pretty cool, too! (via Oh Joy!)
• A pretty awesome chair, good for seat crunchers, via Smashing Magazine. (I’m not sure that you can buy this; it has made its way around the blogs, but I think it was originally part of a show.)
• An awesome flea market guide from Design*Sponge, listing all of the flea markets in a variety of my very favorite states (Connecticut, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maine, and Massachussetts)!
• Cool photographs of naked Olympians! (via Crap We Like)
• Another cool Smashing Magazine find — a retro phone that you talk into instead of your cell phone.
• I love this ASL (American Sign Language) pattern (and the tank top, which isn’t availible for sale, unfortunately!) in a book which includes designs from Julia Rothman (from Julia’s book design blog, Book By Its Cover).

Though perhaps not as “professional” as the cases below, these little guys from Barry’s Farm are cute enough to make up for it.

The above monster will eat your laptop. You can also cuddle with it.

Doesn’t this look like Dilbert? You can dress your laptop up in this functional little suit and tie.

There is also a robot case and other designs!

Antenna has all kinds of laptop sleeves/cases from canvas to mock croc to quilted to denim to all different kinds of prints. I’m not usually a fan of the quilted look, but I do love these stylish silver and gold cases, which add a fun little bling bling (I can’t really pull off saying “bling bling”, can I?) to your laptop protection.

I love that these can function not only as a sleeve or a case, but also as a fashion statement! These guys will run you down $33, which, in the world of laptop sleeves, isn’t really that bad.

I just rounded-up some of my favorite laptop sleeves, and in a kind of trick reverse order, I’ll now do close-up profiles of my favorite-favorites.

This “butterfingers laptop wallet” from Hard Graft is both professional and fun, especially for the clumsy. It combines the greatest aspects of an laptop sleeve (thin, sleek, and easy to fit into a larger bag) and a laptop case (a handle for independent carrying).

The only problem? A $130 price tag. The other laptop and ipod wallets, envelopes, and cases are expensive, too, but all are sleek and professional.

I’ve been shopping around for sleeves or cases for my lovely, but naked, MacBook Pro (many of them functional on PC laptops as well).

These are my favorite sleeve finds (this list of places to find laptop sleeves and cases was hugely helpful). Click on the the thumbnails to go directly to the sleeve’s site (right click to open in new window).

Technorati Tags: laptop, case, sleeve, mac, book, pro, colorful, design

*A quick tutorial if you don’t know how to subscribe to a feed!*

Do you know what these terms mean: atom, rss feed, feed reader? No? Who cares! You don’t need to understand any of them to subscribe to a blog. There are step by step instructions below (and you really only need to read the bold parts). (more…)

Couldn’t let the day end without blogging about today’s most talked about technological advancement (er, I really like macs): the new iphone (much cheaper ($200 for 8gb), but higher data rates from AT&T, so it all evens out in the end, sad, though it is twice as fast!).

I won’t be getting one of these fancy guys any time soon, but you can check some glamor shots over at the mac web-site (even has a white version!).

(PS If you aren’t a Mac-junkie you might not know that whenever Steve Job’s makes a keynote speech bloggers everywhere “live blog” the event, updating their sites continuously throughout the speech so dorks everywhere can catch mac history as it unfolds. Today BoingBoing did a specially fun version of live blogging, covering Job’s speech in the style of a classic play!)

Somehow making a cassette tape is so much more artful than mailing tunes over aim or burning a disk that just gets re-burned to an ipod, but that time consuming trend died somewhere in the 80s & 90s. Still, we love to reminisce about our youth, and so for you detailed, artful, nostalgic lovers out there I have collected my 10 favorite pieces & places to carry on the memory of cassettes & mix tapes.

1. Muxtape.com
   Upload songs to the web-site to create your own “mix tape”, or listen to the full mix tapes of others online. To show you how easy it is, I just spent an hour (there were hard decisions to make!) mixing a tape JUST FOR YOU. You can now find my tape at stickersanddonuts.muxtape.com.
2. Digital Meets Analog Ipod Case
   If you’re going to betray analog, you might as well do it with the cover of classy analog style. 45ipodcases.com makes crafty ipod cases out of vinyl records and, of course, cassette tapes. You can even pick the exact cassette tape you want to encase your ipod in.
3. Cassette Belt Buckles
   
   The pretty gold cassette buckle shown at the top of the pages was sold on Esty once upon a time. Now you can find cassette belt buckles lots of other places like

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Vavolo makes a bunch of “Freshly Baked USB” drives, including chocolate, strawberry, and green tea (um, what?) frosted donuts. (I think if you’re going to get a usb drive, it mightaswell be cute.)