Kirtsy brings together the best of user-contributed and editorial formats...two great tastes that go great together. Take a moment to get to know some super smart women who will always be on the lookout for the coolest, fabtastically excellent news, ideas and items around.
Aimee grew up in Maryland but after 15 years, absolutely calls Denver home. She co-owns a web development company that builds health education sites and tries to find time for some sideline photography. She and her husband are raising a precocious and scary smart 6 year old who trips over his own feet just like his mom. Aimee writes for the Denver Post's
Mile High Mamas,
Being Savvy Denver, and of course, her personal blog,
Greeblemonkey.
Allysha Unguren (allysha)
These days Allysha spends most of her time being mom to four precocious kids. She has been, is, or will be someday the following: a writer, amateur artist, ice cream scooper, missionary, modern dancer, humanities buff, and world traveler. She once worked in Instructional Design fixing other people's mistakes. She likes cats, key lime pie, English accents, and her husband, Ben. Allysha blogs about such things at
Bells On Their Toes.
Amie Adams (Amie)
With forty-eight hours notice and only nine months of marriage under their belts, Amie and her husband became parents to an incredible three and a half year old boy seven years ago. She'd like to believe that her parenting skills have improved since then having added two more crazy boys to their brood, but many days she's not convinced. Nowadays, Amie is raising her baseball-loving boys with her husband in the same Northern Virginia suburb where he grew up. When not at the ball field, she's working as a political involvement consultant, trying not to kill the plants in her garden, blogging at her personal site
Mamma Loves or at
DC Metro Moms and trying to find time to get out to the family beach house on the Delaware shore.
Amy Turn Sharp is a wild mama from Ohio. She has recently left her career in education to write her first novel and assist her dreamy British carpenter hubby in his passion for restoring old homes. She tracks her life on
doobleh-vay blog and runs a small cottage industry called
Little Alouette where she and hubby make wooden toys and maple teethers. She loves to re-purpose vintage children's furniture and at all times has at least 7 projects brewing. Her goal in life at this point is to have an essay on NPR. She really likes radishes, spoonerisms, and chicken korma.
Angela is a self-proclaimed internet and gadget addict, just ask her husband. By day, she is a software engineer and manager in the biotech field, and by night, she is wife, mom of two children and blogger at
mommy bytes. She prefers to let her daughter wear the skirts in the house, but when it comes to cameras, computers, iPhones and cars, watch out! On the internet, she loves all things social media and is especially hooked on
Flickr and
Twitter (and kirtsy of course!). In her spare time she loves to listen to podcasts, play video games with her son and knit.
Betsy Archbold (barchbo)
After stops in New York, Akron, Dallas, Boca Raton, and Waco, Betsy has settled in Austin, Texas, where she is a site recruiter for an educational publishing company. While her love of fashion is unabating, she had to abandon fashion PR to live in what she calls, "the best, coolest, weirdest, and most tattooed city in the world." She is on the brink of marriage to her favorite person and finds herself currently (and surprisingly) obsessed with home decorating, china patterns, and space organizing. Aside from shopping, yoga, reading, champagne, and baking cakes she hates to eat, Betsy loves Twittering (SO instant gratification) and commenting on other people's blogs.
Emily Cheramie Walz (EmCher24)
Emily Cheramie Walz is a Southern girl - at heart - living in a Northern world. Since the age of 8 she has been oddly obsessed with Martha Stewart, baking and playing Julie Cruise Director. By day she is a Public Relations guru working for a large foundation/non-profit; by night she is a new wife, seasoned cook, Food Network junkie, magazine-craft-and-entertaining addict, and lover of "alternative" media. Favorite things include: dirty martinis, sushi, vacations in Cape Cod, traveling, posting great finds on her blog, chick rock, all things British, listening to her husband's insane work stories, making people laugh and playing with her little puppy.
Joslyn Taylor (Joslyn)
Joslyn Taylor is an online marketing director that has been mildly obsessed with skirts since the birth of her first daughter Audrey. (And that love has only intensified upon the arrival of daughter #2 Millie.) When she isn't wildly chasing her girls across various pieces of playground equipment with her stellar hubby, she's thinking and dreaming (obsessing really) about all things interior design, specifically the various elements that go into making a house a home. (Moving 17 times as a child might have something to do with this fixation.) She can also be found writing for her blog
Simple Lovely.
Karen Walrond is from the tiny Caribbean island of Trinidad -- so it was inevitable that at some point, she'd find herself on a plane. Now living in Houston, Texas with her English husband and American daughter, by day she's a practicing attorney -- but really, that's only to feed her travel and photography habit. You can read more about Karen and her life at her website,
Chookooloonks.
Karey Mackin (kareym)
Karey Mackin is a Midwestern girl living in the Middle East, with her busy husband and three lovely girlies, Lillie, Grae-Rose, and Esmé. She vaguely remembers a career in publishing and a few books she may have written, but is absolutely certain a previous lifetime was spent as a crow. Yes, she likes shiny things that much. A few other things you should know about Karey: she laughs at all the wrong moments, prefers recipes that only require two ingredients or less, and wears black pretty much all of the time. Except for that turquoise dress. See gobs of shiny objects mixed in with girlie fables from a not-so-far away land at her blog,
mackin ink.
Katie McNeil (mckatie)
Katie McNeil works as an editor at
Answers.com in New York and can't remember what she did before the Internet. A former journalist, she writes about her life at
Long Story Short. When she's not online, this California native loves to camp, play volleyball and spoil her nephews. Katie is happily married to her brother's best friend and looks forward to motherhood but in the meantime, enjoys sleeping in.
Katie, aka
motherbumper, was a developer/quality assurance person with one of those big IT companies before rebelling and joining the gang called parenthood. During the early days of marathon breast-feeding sessions, she discovered the bottomless world of blogs and via the internet, met her insatiable need for socializing and celebrity gossip. A long time film and tv junkie, matched with a need to gossip about strangers she will never meet, Katie loves to surf and share the stories she reads with anyone who will listen. That fact alone makes her incredibly happy to be an editor with kirtsy. When not kirtsying cool arts and entertainment stories, Katie can be found at her personal blog
motherbumper, or doing her technical wizardy stuff over at
Better Than A Playdate.
Kyran Pittman (kyranp)
Kyran Pittman is an essayist and poet who accidentally started a blog and can't put it out. Posts from
Notes to Self have been adapted for print in Good Housekeeping magazine and the Toronto Globe and Mail. Her poetry has been published in journals all over the place. She is a contributor to
Flawed but Authentic and AOL's money blog,
WalletPop.
Born and raised a New Yorker, I met a Utahan in Manhattan and fell in love. We spent three wonderful years in Hoboken, NJ and then ended up moving to Salt Lake City, Utah. We have a beautiful boy named Henry (aka Baby Hank) whom we love to pieces. I blog about beautiful things and creations at
Say Yes to Hoboken, and sell vintage baby clothes on etsy at
Baby Hank Vintage. In our free time, my outdoors enthusiast husband and I love traveling and backpacking through the West's mountains and deserts.
Mariah Bruehl, MS is an educator, mother of two, and author of the website and blog
Playful Learning. Last year, after years of working in the field of education, Mariah decided to take some time off to be with her two young daughters. Among the many benefits of their time together was the birth of
Playful Learning, a website created to help parents support their children's learning and development. Mariah is now utilizing her knowledge and experience to adapt what she knows about educational research and practice into simple, playful learning experiences that promote positive family interactions. Mariah is also currently writing a book based on Playful Learning for Shambhala Publications, which is due to come out in the spring of 2011.
Mary Swenson loves dresses and shoes, decorating with flea market finds, and photographing just about anything. Though a slave to the corporate grind Monday through Friday, she squeezes in as much freelancing as humanly possible, makes whatever she can out of pretty paper, and one day hopes to be creating and writing for a living. Mary is married to a handsome chap who also happens to be her very best friend, and together they make the best homemade pizza on the planet. She chronicles this, along with other simple pleasures, in her blog,
Pretty Good .
Nina Bargiel is a part-time TV writer and full-time blogger who has been writing as the Slackmistress since before the word blogging was invented. When she wasn't blazing the trail for future writers to tell embarrassing stories on the Internet she penned 17 episodes of a little show called "Lizzie McGuire" at the Disney Channel and perfected the art of the fart joke writing Cartoon Network's "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy." When she's not throwing herself at the mercy of Hollywood's feet, she can be found at her personal blog,
The Slack Daily. She and her husband Will, along with their pit bull, Daisy J. Dog, operate a fictional detective agency in Los Angeles. You may have seen her zipping around in her pink Mini Cooper solving mysteries. Or grocery shopping. You can catch them every Saturday night on their Ustream show,
BetheMarriage LIVE! (On Ice).
Robyn Leanne knows her way around an atlas, a little too well. She enjoys literature, especially the classics, outdoor sports, and is passionate about our planet. You can find her online through the eyes of a little hedgehog at
Harvey's Muse.
Sarah Cookson is a native Bay Stater who spends her days as an Executive Assistant at a consulting firm. She loves people watching, ingenious ideas, and making lists. Sarah blogs at
Lemon Pie and runs a sweet little Etsy shop for children's clothing and accessories called
lux risa. Her guilty pleasures include Grey's Anatomy, English tea and very good books. She is also pretty fond of Johnny Cash and Mocha frosting and has been known to spoil her friends and family with baked goods.
Sara Czyzewicz is a creative technologist and social media maven. As co-founder of
DandyID, she spends much of her time programming, connecting with the community and keeping up with tech news and advances. Her passions also lie with interior design & fashion, R&D, and interactive art. She appreciates novelty, oddities and laughing to the point of abdominal pain.
Sarah Braesch lives in the Washington DC Metro Area with her husband, boy/girl twins (aka The Goon Squad) and two really loud cats. Sarah spends most of her "free" time on the internet, obsessing about sports, watching Bravo reality television or doing all three of these things at once. You can find Sarah talking about herself all over the internet at (including, but not limited to)
Sarah and the Goon Squad,
Draft Day Suit,
MamaPop,
BlogHer,
Loser Moms and
DC Metro Moms Blog.
Sarah James (whoorl)
Sarah James is a veritable prodigy in the fields of list-making and lip gloss product recognition. She also has a mild obsession with reading instruction manuals. (Seriously. Please ask her how something works so she can read the manual cover to cover for you.) Currently living in Southern California, she enjoys beaching with her picky interior designer husband and freakishly large toddler. Sarah can be found at her blogs,
whoorl and
Hair Thursday.
Suann is a former Seattleite who now lives in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area with her husband + son. She currently works part-time as a director at a major PR firm and keeps a little design and craft blog,
simplesong, to catalog her favorite things and inspirations, and also designs and crafts whenever she can. She's loves clean and simple designs, all things paper, almost all things sweet, any and all office products and a good bargain - especially on shoes!
Tamar Weinberg (tamar)
Tamar Weinberg is a social media enthusiast with a passion for all things tech and productivity. She provides consulting in internet marketing and blogs for numerous online publications, most notably
Real Simple Magazine,
Lateral Action, and
Mashable. She is also a former Lifehacker and Search Engine Roundtable contributor. Tamar is also the author of
The New Community Rules and maintains a personal blog at
Techipedia
Tracey Gaughran-Perez (sweetney)
Tracey Gaughran-Perez is a PhD dropout and ex-college professor turned blogger and stay-at-home mom living in Baltimore, MD. Armed with a blackbelt in sarcasm, she writes about her life at
Sweetney and about famous people's lives at
MamaPop. Tracey adores Jon Stewart, Indie Rock, science geekery, and underdogs in all their various incarnations.
