We’re back from the holiday break and have plunged headfirst into the new year. We’re working on a whole bunch of exciting projects that we can’t wait to share! 2012 is already looking pretty great.

But we really enjoyed having a short break from our busy schedule. Well some of us did. Tomas, the (apparent) workaholic, spent a good chunk of his break continuing to shoot our portfolio with our buddy Joe C. However since the studio was closed, Tomas and Joe were able to set up shop in our spacious conference area as opposed to being shut up in our somewhat claustrophobic photo studio. The photography is coming along really well, if we do say so ourselves. There’s only a dozen or so projects left to be shot, so we may actually finish before dying of old age.

Ian and Bryan, on the other hand, took the opportunity to get the hell out of Dodge (or rather DC), and spent their breaks in Colorado and West Virginia, respectively. Back in his hometown of Durango, Ian spent most of his time skiing at Durango Mountain Resort and consuming a tremendous amount of tasty food and microbrewed Colorado beer. If you can find it at a specialty liquor store near you, Ian recommends Steam Engine Lager from Steamworks Brewing, or True Blonde from Ska Brewing (careful, music plays automatically on the Ska site), though outside of Colorado those may be tough to locate.

While Tomas and Ian were busy over their breaks, taking pictures and keeping track of things to blog about, Bryan was lazing about, apparently doing nothing. “Did you take pictures for us for the blog?” we asked.

“No, I didn’t do anything interesting,” Bryan replied.

“Then your punishment is drawing something for the blog. We don’t care what it is,” we responded.

So here’s Bryan’s punishment-drawing. He spent the holiday losing games to family members who spent the previous year playing what he called “Friends with Scrambles” online. In his words, he is now “much more educated in the finer, two-lettered points of Chinese spirituality.”

So in terms of things that actually happened this week… there’s not much. We’ve been busy catching up on correspondence, readjusting our schedules, and generally getting back into the groove of things. However we did have a fun creative meeting with some AMA DC folks Thursday evening. We’ve been working with them for awhile and are pals with almost all of them, so we figured we’d make this week’s meeting a little more enjoyable by adding some wine to the mix. After all, Jack Kerouac always talked about creative people drinking wine… why shouldn’t we?

Well it apparently works. Here’s a shot from the start of the meeting: serious people conducting serious business at a seriously organized meeting.

After the meeting: happy people having a jolly time around a productive, creative mess. We’re onto something here…