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Friday, July 30th, 2010
There are two main truths you should know – or possibly already do – going in to this blog entry.
1. If you’ve ever seen me, you could probably tell that I’m someone who takes cheesecake seriously. This isn’t “Fat”, it’s CREDENTIALS!
2. Much like wedding cake.. there is an awful lot of crappy cheesecake out there. Also – again, much like wedding cake – it surprises me what some people consider “good” cheesecake. You need to try truly amazing cheesecake, to be able to have an accurate reference point. Again, see truth #1.
I bring this up because today is July 30th! You know what that means? It means NATIONAL CHEESECAKE DAY.
Growing up, my exposure to good cheesecake was hit and miss. It was rare to come across a great slice of cheesecake, and – even if I did – there’s no guarantee that a.) I’d ever be at the establishment again (travelled a lot!), or b.) the consistency was there, that my next stop at that establishment would yield an equally awesome slice. Sigh.
My lifetime quest for the most epic cheesecake came to an end when I met Amy and Tami from Muddy Paws Cheesecake.
So… where to start? Amy and Tami are complete sweethearts. Really, that’s probably an understatement. Love em! They’re two of my absolute favorite people in the local industry, no question. Any bride that hires them for wedding desserts is in VERY good hands.
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Photos courtesy Studio Laguna Photography
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While my fangirling up about those two goddesses is completely exclusive of the fact that they rock the cheesecake like nobody’s business… this blog is about the cheesecake. So, let’s go there.
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Posted in Announcements, Commentary, Fellow Cake Divas (and Divos!), Interesting, News & Events, Vendors | 1 Comment »
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
So if you follow us on twitter, you know the news already – we did not win the ISES Minnesota Star Awards. Ah well, kinda figured as much – such an odd category, “best use of food”… a single cake up against entire themed spreads of food was a long shot at best. I digress…
Anyway, photos and video will be coming in the next few days, along with a more proper blog about it all (you know, one I’m not banging out at 12:30 am as my feet feel like they’re gonna fall off!)… but I do want to share something. Well, two things actually. Two little events tonight that MADE MY DAY, and totally eclipsed the whole “losing” thing.
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Posted in News & Events, Random | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 11th, 2010
When hubby and I were setting a date for our wedding, he floated the suggestion of pi day. He was completely serious, by the way.
While his suggestion got vetoed, it did sort of pave the way for how we’d be spending March 14th *every year* thereafter. We host a Pi Day Party… honestly putting way more effort into that, than we do our own wedding anniversary! In hindsight, maybe I shoulda just caved on the date 
While I appreciate nerdiness/geeking out in almost any form, I’ve always been confused by his obsession uh.. extremely enthusiastic appreciation.. for pi. But then, irrationality in any form tends to get on my nerves (That was a lame pi joke, for the record.. not *totally* a dig at my husband!)
(A bit of explanation for the less nerdy of my readers. Pi Day is the day that celebrates Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to it’s diameter. You know, 3.14159265358979323.. etc etc. 3.14… 3/14.. March 14.. get it? It’s also Einstein’s birthday. )
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Pi day in the Porterhouse starts about a week and a half before the actual date, with the construction of our own custom “pi-nata”. Yes, a pinata shaped like the pi symbol! Last year, we posted a tutorial – Click here to check it out.
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While you may not have the time or inclination to take on such a project for yourself at this time, there are many small, fun things you can do to celebrate Pi Day. I find Pi day is an excellent excuse to clean the house and have some friends over, at the very least. You know… and bake pie.
- Have a pie potluck party! I’ll be making a lingonberry-orange zest pie this year, looking forward to see what everyone else brings – even though I’m going low carb at the moment, and actually behaving myself with regards to being allergic to wheat (sob!). Ah well. I’m sure it’ll all smell good anyway
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- At 1:59pm, (again.. 3.14159…), we’ll be toasting pi (and Einstein)… with PInapple punch. Even better yet… this year, we invested in the Pi symbol ice cube tray from ThinkGeek. We’ll have icy little pi symbols floating in the punch, and more used to garnish the glasses. Very Cute.
ThinkGeek actually has a bunch of cute pi themed goodies, check them out
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- Pi Day Trivia! I’d post the link from where I got our questions, but… I know a few of our guests read this blog
- Read off Pi-ku (Haiku with a pi theme!), and then have a pi-ku writing contest. Click here for some examples!).
– Pi Day joke telling. This gets interesting. By “interesting”, I mean the kinds of terrible “punny” jokes that my father in law thrives on. (I’m talking on the order of “What do you get when you cut a jack o’lantern by its diameter? A: Pumpkin Pi!” Groan!).
- Pi Day Sudoku! Click here for the Pi sudoku that managed to fry everyone’s brain at last year’s party!
- Serve pizza. Not only is it ripe for another play on words (PI-zza), it’s round. Perfect. This year, I’ll be repeating my “St Patrick’s Day” pizza recipe that I made last year. This year, I’ll probably get around to actually posting the recipe. Trust me, it’s worth the wait – insanely yummy, and *completely* unlike any pizza you’ve ever tried. Guaranteed.
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– Cookies! I bought this cookie cutter last year. Expensive, but GREAT quality. Love it. May end up using it to cut pie/pizza dough to decorate the other food items, in addition to making pi cookies.
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- Get stuff. I had no idea that other people were as obsessed ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H enthused about pi as my husband is, but there must be quite the pi-cult out there – just found this site, and many others. This one in particular has a ton of cute stuff. Maybe next year!
- Of course, recite pi to whatever insane number of digits you happen to have memorized. I consider myself pretty sane at just 10-12ish digits off the top of my own head.. my husband is quite proud of the fact that he used to know 205 digits. Holy crap. If there was any doubt as to the fact that I married the biggest nerd out there, they’re pretty much quashed at this point. One of the things I love most about him though (the nerd factor, not pi recitation in specific!).*
- I got a bit silly with preparations, and used one of the ice cube trays to make a bunch of melt-and-pour glycerin soaps. Not only will there be a set of 4 pi shaped soaps in each of our bathrooms, each guest will be taking home a little 2 piece set, wrapped in a little pouf of cellophane, and tied of with a green (St Patty’s Day!) ribbon. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out!
So… that’s our pi day suggestion list in a nutshell. Do you have any fun ways to celebrate Pi Day yourself? Be sure to tweet, facebook comment, or email them to us.. or just comment here! We’d love to hear about it!
* Plus, I can’t say much. I used to have the entire periodic table of elements memorized. Not just name/symbol, but location, and most of the atomic weights. Ya. I’d pretty much be a hypocrite if I held his 205 digits of pi thing against him
Posted in Crafts, Inspiration, Interesting, News & Events, Random | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
If you follow us on Twitter, you’ve come to know a few things in the past 24 hours:
1. We’re nominated for an ISES Star award! (Events industry, a BIG deal!)
2. Not only that, the nomination is based on our 4′ long Klingon Bird of Prey cake, which we made back in November for Commedia Beauregard Theatre’s production of A Klingon Christmas Carol.
3. Given that having the opportunity to make such a cake was so ridiculously epic.. actually getting nominated for a big fancy MAINSTREAM industry award for it is completely once-in-a-lifetime!
4. This is a fancypants red carpet kind of event, which means it needs.. Klingons.
Yes, we’ve always been the types of people to live life to it’s absolute fullest, and the idea of having a Klingon entourage at such an event went from “wouldn’t it be awesome if..” to “We HAVE to make this happen!” in a very short amount of time. We don’t have any spare budget for the $300 in tickets that this would require, so we put out a plea to our friends, fans, and followers. To anyone who finds this idea to be full of win, who would be willing to chip in a few bucks to make it so.
The nerd/geek/gaming community has been awesome, and – to date – we’ve raised enough money to buy 2 of the 4 tickets! Thank you SO much to Commedia Beauregard, Kris A Spiesz, Damon Johnson, Margaret Cooper, Shannon Bergeron, & Nik Wachter for their donations! We truly appreciate your generosity, and it tickles us to no end that there are other people out there that agree – this is a great idea!
Well, I’ve got friends in AWESOME places… and I am SO excited to announce that our friends over at the most RIDICULOUSLY awesome company ever (IMHO!*), Thinkgeek.com have offered to lend their support to our quest!
EVERYONE WHO DONATES TO OUR “SPONSOR A KLINGON” EFFORT WILL BE ENTERED IN A RAFFLE FOR ONE OF TWO 2 $75 GIFT CERTIFICATES TO THINKGEEK.COM
Yes, all caps are obnoxious.. but I really think that statement required it. I am BLOWN AWAY by the generosity! Thinkgeek.. man I love you guys. BIG box of goodies coming your way as soon as I have some time to concoct some funky new experiments for ya!
Those who have already donated will also be entered in the draw. Donations must be received prior to March 22, 2010 – OR before we reach our $300 goal, whichever comes first. Click here to visit our sponsor page, which has all of the details, and a link to donate.
Thank you, everyone, so very much for your support! We were thrilled to be nominated in the first place, and now that it looks like we really will be able to have an entourage of Klingons with us.. just wow. I’m blown away by the generosity and support of the community! As a nerd (me!) and a geek (my husband/Chief Engineering Officer), we are thrilled, honored, and humbled. Represent!!
* I’m not being biased. Although ThinkGeek has been a ton of fun not only to shop from and work with, with regards to our Brownie Mix… they also put THIS video out recently. So completely full of win that there really isn’t anything I can – or need to – say about it! Although I will say, it kinda makes me wanna drop everything, drive out east, and show up on their doorstep, begging for a job with them!
Posted in "You know what would be awesome..?", Interesting, News & Events, Random | No Comments »
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
So, we survived day 1 of the Food & Wine Experience at the Minneapolis Convention Center. We didn’t win the Czar of Cakes Challenge, but it was an honorable loss – as predicted, Gateaux won, hands down, no contest!
I’ll post more about the cake end of things tonight or tomorrow, but I wanted to post some “head’s up” type messages on products that *really* stood out to us from yesterday’s show. If you’re going, make *sure* to stop by these booths. If you’re not, by all means, check out their websites, because they’re truly fabulous!
Driving Force Energy Co. is based in Woodbury, and makes really amazing energy bars. Almost like a granola bar, but soft and SO ridiculously good. Particularly loved the PB & J flavor. Nom! Also, they had some interesting caramel popcorn – including peanut butter caramel, and sweet jalapeno caramel popcorn. Wow! Both truly amazing. Hubby asked if they sell it by the garbage bag, and I honestly don’t think they realized that he was serious.
Kayak Kitchens in Stillwater was showcasing their “Haute Habanero Paste”. I’m looking at the sheet of recipes they provided for their paste, and already thinking of the ways I’d love to use and abuse it. It’s a gorgeous orange paste with a flavor and fruityness that is *not* overpowered by heat. Really good!
Annona Gourmet was a booth that Robin from Gateaux kinda strongarmed us into visiting. Not that we hadn’t planned to check everything out, but in her opinion, we were NOT to leave without checking them out. They were hawking olive oils and balsamic vinegars. While Robin was completely sold on the traditional 18 year aged balsamic (which really was terrific!), my husband and I both immediately fell in love with their “sweet peach” balsamic. Completely over the top fabulous.
Passport Beverage was on hand to sample their Dry Soda & Q Tonic waters. I am NOT a huge fan of carbonated waters, and really, truly hate tonic water – it always tastes like baking soda to me. It blew me away that not only did I tolerate their Q Tonic, but fell in love with it. None of that horrible baking soda taste, it was light and refreshing and had a really nice flavor to it. I could see drinking it straight. Additionally, their Dry Soda was really nice. We did not get a chance to try the lavender flavor (which sounded really interesting!), but the Rhubarb, Kumquat, and Cucumber flavors were all winners with us.
Uncle Pete’s Mustard was a big surprise to us. I’m a mustard nerd, and 90% of what’s out there is really bland, boring, and/or unbalanced tasting to me. They only offer 1 flavor, a sweet & hot mustard… god was it ever good. BIG thumbs up from me!
Thousand Hills Cattle Company featured some of the most delicious grass fed ground beef I’ve ever had (and I’m a big carnivore!). Also of note was their summer sausage, which was amazing.
I should probably get ready to head out, but definitely wanted to post these not only for all you guys, but for my own scatterbrainedness. Good to have the favs all in one place! More to come!
Posted in Interesting, News & Events, Vendors | No Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
So here it is! Tonight, we delivered our entry for the Minnesota Monthly Food & Wine Experience – the Czar of Cakes Challenge.
Bit of a spoiler – it’s not getting judged till Saturday, but I’m confident in declaring that we’re all getting our asses handed to us by Gateaux. Seriously. I’d recently heard a rumor that Robin from Gateaux had sold her soul to the devil. DEFINITELY starting to believe that one. (Though, when I asked her about it, she did tell me that the devil actually sold HIS soul to HER… that may explain MORE!).
Anyway, I HAVE to post photos! It’s been killing me to keep my theme and pics all hush-hush before the competition.
So, here’s the deal. In the course of our brainstorming: “What are our favorite foods?” “What would make a kick ass cake?” “What would be funny/different?”, etc.. we got slightly off track and thought maybe to look to other media for inspiration, rather than just restaurants and grocery stores. Any songs that feature a food theme? How about movies?
Well, at the suggestion of food related movies, one of us popped off a quote about Liver, fava beans, and a nice Chianti (there may have been alcohol involved in this brainstorming session).. and AWAY WE WERE. An idea that we were virtually GUARANTEED that no one else would think of, much less actually use: A Silence of the Lambs Cake
Like I mentioned in my latest blog entry, I honestly did float a few other ideas by a WHOLE BUNCH of people, a little part of me thinking I should probably be talked down from this idea. Nope. Bunch of enablers! Love em!
So, I set about working on all the fussy little details.. a bottle of Chianti (in the traditional style bottle!).. sugar “death’s head” moths, painted in cocoa… liver & fava beans out of fondant.. a fondant “radish rose” and sugarpaste sprig of basil for garnish… a fondant plate, gumpaste cutlery (all airbrushed with edible metallic silver luster!).. Hannibal Lecter’s mask.. and a brain. Muahaha!
(Editted to add – Been asked about the size a few times. The “man” is actually life sized, everything else is also “real” sized. The moths are about 5″ across, the cutlery all proper sized.. it was a monster of a cake!)
I will shut up and post photos now!
Obviously not a traditional interpretation of a “Food and Wine” themed cake, but hey.. Looking forward to seeing what the audience and judges’ reactions will be!
Posted in Cakes, Commentary, News & Events, Random | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Back in my figure skating days, I learned an important lesson: “When you’re going into a competition where you know you have no chance of winning/placing, just be yourself, have a bunch of fun, maybe do something crazy.. and no matter where you place, you lose nothing”.
It was that kind of thinking that was behind my Tremors themed wedding cake, for the Chocolate Show competition. The theme was animals, I’d been looking for an excuse to make a Tremors cake… grabboids are animals, right?
Anyway, if you follow me on twitter or are friends/fans on Facebook, you know that I’ve been preparing for the “Czar of Cakes” Challenge at the Minnesota Monthly Food & Wine Experience. The competition involves 6 local cake companies: Celebration Generation, Muddy Paws, Gateaux, Jessica’s Cakes, Queen of Cakes, and .. that other one. Only real rule is that the cakes have to be food / wine themed.
It took me well over 3 weeks to settle on a theme! We started with an initial brainstorming session, which produced 3 reasonably great ideas, and one “spectacular.. but has NO chance of winning, may get us escorted out, and probably will prevent us from ever getting invited back!” idea.
I tried to get into my competitors heads, when it came to weeding through the ideas. One theme was one that I could see Jessica doing, for instance. Another was one that I could see Gateaux doing. The 3rd was a really sweet idea that I definitely couldn’t see anyone else doing.. but I got really attached to the “spectacular but crazy” idea. Didn’t help much that the vast majority of my friends – in several different circles – are also kinda crazy and weird, and are enablers. LOL. Crazy idea it is!
I just put the finishing touches on the cake, and I’m really excited now! We’ll be posting photos on Saturday, can’t wait!
Posted in Cakes, Commentary, News & Events, Random | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 30th, 2009
I should start this off by a bit of background, maybe a disclaimer: I’ve never considered myself a Trekkie at all. Hell, until this past summer, I think I’d only seen 2 of the movies, and a few episodes of TNG. When hubby and I attended a big nerd convention in July, we found it weird that neither of us really fit a particular flavor of nerd/geek.. we weren’t Trekkies, we weren’t gamers.. etc. Just generic Nerds.
After this past Friday, I think we both became Trekkies. Well, maybe pre-Trekkies. Trekkies with training wheels. Yes!
Back at that convention, there was a Klingon wedding. We were totally kicking ourselves over not knowing that was gonna happen – I would have cut a steep discount for the opportunity to make a Klingon wedding cake! The ideas – “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” flew, and built on each other. Anyway, ever since then, I’ve been itching for the opportunity to make an epic Klingon cake.
At that same convention, we picked up a sparkly gold flyer for “A Klingon Christmas Carol”. Trekkies or not, it just sounded ridiculously cool to us. We’re big fans of people who get into something – anything – and just run with it. We love crazy ideas… and we ADORE crazy ideas seen through to fruition! So, we stuck the flyer on our fridge, and awaited the play’s opening.
If you haven’t heard of this – and we certainly hadn’t, before picking up that flyer – let me explain.
A Klingon Christmas Carol is a theater production put on by Commedia Beauregard. Their mission is to perform plays that are translated – from one language to another, or from one form into another. In the case of the Klingon Christmas Carol, they took a story from a book – “translated” it into a play.. tweaked it to have a Klingon theme (Scrooge has no honor!), and then translated it into Klingon. It’s performed in full Klingon garb, with English subtitles projected onto a screen on the stage. Awesome!
On a lark, I decided to get ahold of the Powers that Be at CB theatre.. one thing led to another, and we were on board for one hell of an epic cake! (Yes, this would be the same cake that we haven’t shut up about for the past two weeks, if you follow us on Twitter, or have me friended on Facebook!)
And we’ve come to the point where a fit of fangirl overtakes me, and I have no idea which direction to go with the rest of this blog entry. There is just SO much to say! Let me be lame and bullet-point it!
- The People. My husband and I had the opportunity to meet the cast and crew of Klingon Christmas Carol a couple of times before the event. Once was a rehearsal (and yes, the fanboy/fangirl in both of us came out BIGTIME as we watched them practice fight scenes, complete with Bat’leths!), and once was a meet and greet – featuring a viewing of “The Making of A Klingon Christmas Carol” – a documentary filmed the year before. It was all very exciting.. especially because everyone involved was *awesome*.
It was really interesting to watch their prep work for the show, and we have mad respect for them as a result of what we saw. I have NO idea how they managed to learn/memorize all of that Klingon. At the rehearsal, we followed along on the teleprompter.. wow, what a difficult looking language! Weird capitalization, very few vowels, and VERY interesting syntax.
We later had an opportunity to learn a couple words, when their Klingon language expert – and translator – taught us how to say “take the chocolate!” in Klingon. The idea was to have something to say as we served the cake. I never did master just the 2 words involved that Laura taught us (thanks again Laura!), but in the end, it didn’t matter. Serving the cake was such a crazy event, I didn’t have time to THINK, much less say anything!
- The Show. OH MY GOD. Where to start? The costumes are amazing! The makeup is amazing – everything looked straight out of an actual Star Trek movie – very convincing, very high quality. There is an Orion Slave Girl bellydancer! (Holly, who’s a total sweetie!). They do a cool “transporter” effect when taking Scrooge back in time! There’s a Vulcan character as the narrator.. and SHE is awesome too!
If you haven’t gone, you totally should – we’re going to see it a few times, and wouldn’t miss it for the world! Definitely a year (and career!) highlight for us!
- The Cake. Ah, the cake. We looked forward to this from the moment that our involvement was confirmed! Now that it’s all over, it’s sorta sad that we no longer have anything that insanely epic on our horizon!
The cake started out with looking for existing information on Bird of Prey ships. Luckily for us, Trekkies are thorough in their obsession, and we were easily able to find blueprint type views of the ship from various views. Score! Scaled the blueprints to fit our needs, and we were almost good to go!
Next, we had to build a custom cake board for it. With measurements in hand, I had to make a special trip to the theater to measure all doors, stairs, etc… to make sure that this was actually a logistical possibility. It was – but only very BARELY! The cake board ended up being just short of 4′ long, and just short of 3′ wide! What a monster!
My husband is in charge of all non-edible builds related to my cakes, and has now earned the title of “Chief Engineering Officer” here at Celebration Generation Cakes. Tee Hee. I swear I’m going to make him a CEO shirt to wear to events we do! Anyway, not only did he cut and finish the cake board, he built the structure of the wings – no small feat! I married well.
The our edible Bird of Prey ship made it’s maiden voyage – to the theatre – in fine form, with no problems at all. Though we had to tilt the board at a fairly severe angle to get it in the door (Though I’d measured the frame, I had neglected to take into account the door edge itself, the hinge placement, etc!), it made it to it’s table with no problem.
- The Whirlwind! The few hours between us arriving (prior to the show), and serving the cake (immediately after the show) were a whirlwind of fan activity. The warbird was definitely our most photographed cake ever, with streams of camera phones clicking away at any time. Little did we know, one of those camera phones ended up tweeting photos of the cake to Cake Wrecks, who ended up tweeting about the cake to their Over 1 MILLION followers! Thanks again, Cake Wrecks!
The insanity continued when we brought the cake up on stage after the show. All of the flashes going off were blinding! Very “paparazzi”!
- Serving the Cake! This should win for “Best Cake Cutting EVER!”. Seriously. Picture a gaggle of Klingons surrounding the cake, as Scrooge cuts the cake with his Bat’leth! Ah, no need to picture it, we have photos!
Awesome. Seriously, just… awesome. The whole thing. The memories of Friday night are going to make my husband and I grin for a very long time. They’ve got shows playing right through till December 13th, tickets are available online at http://www.cbtheatre.org.
My husband with a Vulcan, an Orion Slave Girl, and another Klingon enjoying Red Velvet cake!
More photos are available on our facebook gallery, http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=10955&id=100000056868269&l=3928cc8bf1
Posted in Cakes, Interesting, News & Events | 2 Comments »
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Reflections on a *Crazy* career – BIG DAY!
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010Today I am at home, awaiting 2 deliveries. The first is something I’m pretty excited about – it’s an order of promotional materials for my book release. In particular, the order includes custom bookmarks. Yes! I’ll have my own bookmarks! How insanely cool is that?
I used to love bookmarks when I was a kid. I loved going into book stores and pouring over their selection of bookmarks, weighing the options. What color tassle? Glitter, or no glitter? Unicorns? (Of COURSE I wanted glitter and unicorns!) Loved it.
The second delivery is something even more important, and I’ve been waiting for this day forEVER. My initial shipment of “The Spirited Baker: Intoxicating Desserts & Potent Potables” arrives today! I CANNOT wait to see them, the culmination of an insane amount of work between my husband (the photographer!) and I! Insane.. this feels so surreal.
Today feels like the biggest day of my life… well, second only to meeting/marrying my amazing husband. I’m such a dork about this.. but it just feels.. augh! Amazing, and nerve wracking, and everything!
So as I sit here waiting.. and waiting.. I’m reflecting on my career. It’s been a wild ride, and we’ve had some really fun, amazing moments! Let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we? In no particular order, here are some of my favorite moments from the past few years: (more…)
Posted in Announcements, Commentary, Interesting, News & Events, Our Products | 1 Comment »