Sometimes at Sandstorm your day at the office is nothing like your job description. Here’s a few people that have contributed in big ways this week. I really appreciate that all of these things got done without a hitch. (deep sigh of pure appreciation for your random talents and strengths)

- Thank you Alma for stuffing, sorting, organizing our mailing list, buying stamps and mailing all of our holiday cards. And an extra thanks for going to IKEA with a fever and cold so we could get our furniture delivered this week!
- Thank you Zachary for building all of our IKEA furniture.
- Thank you Jon for moving all of the heavy bookshelves across the office floor.

I am positive that I miss opportunities to thank people every day, but I will work on that as a new year’s resolution :)

Our big reveal – Sandstorm Design has officially expanded. We took down the plastic barrier to reveal our new addition. IKEA delivered all of our furniture, so I can imagine we’ll have small teams building out the desks, tables, and chairs all day. Our current space is still cluttered, but we’ll work all week on organizing our chaos. It’s a proud day here at Sandstorm as our interactive/user experience/marketing/web design agency expands our footprint! (Clearly we’re still working out what adjective best describes us. We struggle just like our clients.)

The blue huddle room that you can see lit up is what we call our ‘fish bowl’ because of the large amount of windows and the deep blue interior. By tomorrow we should have our table and chairs in there ready for some official Sandstorming (i.e. our marketing term for brainstorming)! If Zachary is around, I am sure he’ll take more photos. He has been our photo journalist on this rehab adventure.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a half day! The Chicago Tribune was here to shoot some photos of the office for an upcoming story in January, and the painters are finishing up some of the trim. They got some great shots of our sweeping plastic drape and cluttered space. We’ve got the holiday shopping spirit and are doing some group online shopping at IKEA to get new desks, conference room tables, and chairs. Our plan is to take down the curtain on Monday to do our formal unveil of the new addition, and of course we’ll have photos!

We’re taking a half day today to start the holiday weekend early, so Merry Christmas everyone!

Starting bright and early at 7am this morning, the metal studs were cut to unite our two spaces. When I first called the office, Zak answered the phone “It’s a loud day here at Sandstorm” which made me laugh “out loud”. If you call Sandstorm enough and are fortunate to get him to answer, he’s always got a witty and generally funny phrase for the day. I could tell in the background that the noise was annoying pretty much everyone, so to thank them all for their patience and tolerance through the noise today, I took the Sandstorm team out to Jury’s for lunch. Yum!

Now it’s nearly 4pm and our construction crew is gone. We finally have some peace and quiet to do our interactive and marketing magic, and the huge draping plastic wrap is a unique creative inspiration. It’s actually so eerily quiet in here that it feels a lot like a serious corporate environment… I can actually hear the hum of my laptop and the slight clatter of a few keyboards.

Our new neighboring space was painted today (whoo hoo!), and has such a creative, fun, lofty yet still marketing and interactive agency look to it. The old walls were gray and electric blue, which was interesting, but didn’t have our more signature sandstorm look. Plus the gray made me sad, so I just love the new shade of blond that replaced it.

In addition, we are introducing “the fishbowl”. It’s one of two new huddle rooms with tons of glass windows, with interior walls painted blue, so it kind of feels like you are in a fishbowl when you are working in it. It’s going to be great to reduce the sound of the trains on conference calls, and is a great brainstorming room. Jon is donating some old floor lamps for ambiance. Thanks Jon!

And I can’t forget our newest lunchroom. Ah… no more having to clean up the conference room or usability lab last minute because a group decided to grab lunch together, and leave random things behind. Now we have a large, bright space that will probably always have hot sauce packets on the table or tables – we haven’t decided if we want a few smaller tables or one big one.

So right before Christmas we’re going to get just the greatest gift… A new and improved, much larger space for 2010! Thank you to my fabulous and dedicated staff and to our clients for making this possible as we continue to grow as one of Chicago’s emerging boutique interactive agencies. :)

We’re still working out the details, but it looks like we’re finalizing on our very first “sandstorm jammie bake-off”. Maybe it’s the competitive streak in us, or the crazy creatives at the office, or the random baked goods that some of us bring in, but it appears just one guac-off a year is not enough for us. We’re thinking February, when the snow has fallen, the ice is cold, and we’re all ready for spring to get here. Why not celebrate with a baking competition? Now the jammies, yes I mean pajamas, are a requirement to enter. And the dessert of your choice? Well, we’re still working on the rules there (and we’re not sure if we need them yet).

The new huddle rooms sure went up fast! It took only 2 days and we were able to walk in and experience the basic layout of our new space. Very cool! We are all anxiously awaiting our two new brainstorming rooms so we can hold internal meetings, conference calls, and additional research work (for when we are doubled up on our usability lab). They will also be a great place to get some quiet time when the crew gets a bit rowdy – usually near the end of the day. And it’s been said that Sandstorm is one place is the morning, and a totally different place after 4pm :)

We’re also getting tons of new space for new workstations, and will have the room we need for growth in 2010.