Good afternoon! I hope everyone had a great weekend! Here is an update on mine :o)

Friday after work I met up with a friend from Tech and sorority sister, Kendall, and went out to each at La Carbonara with her and two of her friends. It was a really cute italian/mexican (weird I know, but they had those 2 foods) and was pretty reasonable for dinner.

Saturday I slept in to catch up on my sleep and rested from waking up early for work. Then I took the subway down to where Kendall is staying this summer. I am all the way northwest of Central Park, and Kendall is downtown, in Greenwich Village. So I took a long subway ride to her place, and then we set out and walked since it was finally not raining!! We walked west to the Hudson River, and then south to get to Canal St. Along the way, here are some pictures I got:

This is of a condo building, where famous people like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, and the Harry Potter actor live

This is the same building - It is really pretty

Walking south along the Hudson River to Canal Street

Along the way, I saw this which is one of the things Scott wishes we could have had time to do while he was visiting

The Hudson River kayakers

Once we got onto Canal Street, I didn't take any pictures because of how crowed the streets were and for the fact that we were on the hunt to buy a fake bag...after about an hour of walking pretty much the whole street of Canal from the west side to almost the east side, we finally found a lady would had good bags. The one I decided on is this red Prada bag!

After Canal St. we worked out way back up to the SoHo area. This is some weird wall graffitti/art that I really liked on a side of a building

Then it started raining...and a guy wasn't prepared with a sturdy enough umbrella

While it rained, we went in and out of little paper/stationary stores around the area - Kate's Paperie and Papyrus were my 2 favorite

This is a New York parking garage...

Another random piece of graffitti/art that I really like

After walking around SoHo for most of the day, we decided to treat outselves to a good italian dinner in Little Italy! This is a picture of the restaurant while we were sitting at our table

This is a glass of their house sangria that I ordered - I highly recommend it!

Me and Kendall at dinner

My entree - Chicken with procuitto, eggplant, and mozzeralla cheese in a wine sauce - DELICIOUS!

Then we stopped by a rooftop bar on the way back home - this view is of the Hudson River!

The place was called the Brass Monkey - and they didn't even play the song

Walking to the subway I saw this on another building

Sunday was not quite the day I expected...but it ended up being fun. Again, I was able to sleep in and was back out around 12. Me, my roommate Claire, and 2 of our suitemates went back down to the area where Kendall lives, to shop and have lunch. The place we chose for lunch was this little pizzeria place that was the best pizza I've had here so far! After lunch, we went walking around the streets just to window shop.

Here is a door that I really liked on the side of a building

And this is an edited version of the door

Once we walked several blocks, we started getting to blocks that were packed with people and loud music...then realized we had run into the Gay Pride Parade and festival.

Honestly, I was uncomfortable for me, but we walked through the festival/fair, and I got these few pictures:

Click on this picture to make it bigger so you can read what the coffee cup says :o)

This is the point where we had gotten to the parade...and there was no turning back so we had to make our way to the closest subway to cross to the streets we wanted to be on

We finally made it to the other streets, and this last picture is of a really cute jewelry store that I liked the interior decorations

After a few hours of walking and window shopping, my roomate and suitemates decided they wanted to go home, but I called Kendall, and she ended up being on the same street so we walked around a little bit longer until all the stores closed for the evening.

Today* really hasn't been very eventful, except for celebrating one of the interns birthday. During my lunch, me and another intern went to Magnolia Bakery (amazing! and one of the bakerys on my list to visit!) and got a dozen cupcakes for all the interns and Hanna's birthday. I just recently got out of a meeting with sales...more of a focus group though since they just wanted our input on bettering the explanation and process for new representatives. Now I'm taking a little break to update you :o)

Also, if any of you are on Facebook or know of the family with the twins Eli and Joey, I just recently found out that Eli is no longer alive as of a few days ago. I don't personally know the family, but I read Andi's (the mom) blog on Facebook every chance I get, so please just keep them in your prayers since he was only several months old.

I hope everyone has had a great Monday and that you have a great short week!!

Love, Taylor

Hi all! Well this has been another crazy week that still isn't even over!

Monday* was pretty relaxed and we all pretty much worked on our own projects for the day. Me and Alison, the other marketing intern, finally got our desks switched. She was placed in the office space by my mentor, and I was where she was supposed to be. So we finally got that figured out, and now I'm getting to work more with my mentor and another hair/fragrance marketer.

Tuesday* was so fun because we got to meet mark.'s new style expert, Brit Bardo!! Don't worry, I had never heard of her either until I got more involved with mark. But she is a young, hip woman that loves clothes and she provides great tips and pointers in all of our magalogs. Since she has been a hit with mark., they decided a while back to join with her and she created a clothing line, Rose, just for mark.! So Tuesday was when the PR department had the launch party for the line, and we got to go to the event afterwards (because there was an exlcusive invite list) but it was still fun and the venue/restaurant was adorable! It was at a place called Sweetiepie (ADORABLE!)....http://www.sweetiepierestaurant.com/photos.html.

They asked us not to a take any pictures of the actual event because there was 2 photographers they had there, but here is one of the Rose clothing line :o) The line has three pieces in it, the first mannequin has the black cardigan on, the middle has the green dress on, and the right has the black basic tee on:

The picture is hard to see the colors and details, but each piece is a great basic and I will be buying them when they come out :o) To read more about Brit's thoughts behind the line, go to her interview with Teen Vogue at: http://www.teenvogue.com/beauty/blogs/beauty/2009/01/20-questions-with-stylist-britt-bardo.html

For dinner this night, I FINALLY ate at my first street vendor!!...and it was delicious! I don't like hotdogs normally, but like everyone says, a New York hotdog is the way to go, and it's definitely true!

Wednesday* (yesterday) was a pretty long day. I really just sat at my desk and worked on my computer all day on my project. If I haven't explained already, in a nutshell, my project is to "revamped" and reposition our hair care line. We currently have great products in our line, but since they've all come out, none of them have been reformulated or repacked and a few products we don't provide are constantly strongly requested....so most of my time is spent on researching our current products, what our competitors have that our customers want, and I've also been looking at new innovative products and upcoming trends. So far it's pretty unorganized and I'm still not sure what I'll need to present at the end of the summer, but it's interesting to read and see more of this category that I'm normally not interested in.

Anyway, so I worked on the computer all day (and my eyes literally hurt for the rest of the day because I could tell I didn't move them enough or something) But we did have another Mark Your Mark lunch! This time the speaker was Polly Blitzer, and she used to work for InStyle magazine and Marie Claire, but is now running her own beauty website http://beautyblitz.com/. She was also really interesting, because we haven't heard from someone about the business side of things and how she started from scratch. I didn't take notes to share, but she basically talked about how her past jobs got her to her website now, and was really inspiring about starting your own business.

And I acutally just realized that I completely forgot to talk about last week's Make Your Mark speaker! Last Wednesday we had Meredith Kahn come in (who is actually Brit Bardo's best friend) and she has also created her own jewelry line. It's http://madeherthink.com/ and she is becoming very well known among celebrities through them wearing her pieces!

So now that I've caught you up on the speakers, I'll continue...so we had Polly come in and talk about her website and had the same delicious sandwiches that we get each Wednesday for these speakers :o) After the lunch, I worked for a while until the we had another "meeting", but this time it was with Night Agency. They are mark.'s agency that runs www.markgirl.com and they came in to use us as a focus group for trying to change the website and make it less confusing for customers (since there is http://www.meetmark.com/ and http://www.markgirl.com/ which are both mark., but one is the actual product site, and the other is just for PR.) So we had a focus group with them until it was time to leave.

Thursday* has been pretty slow since I got in this morning. My mentor hasn't really been coming in but the other girl I'm sitting with has really been more help to me since she's not so busy and knows more about what I need to do for my project. But she has been in meetings all morning, so that why I'm taking the time to write :o)

But now that I've caught you up on my week so far, I guess that's my cue to get back to work. All I'm working on today is a spreadsheet of competing products that I want mark. to create, and then hopefully sometime soon I will be able to go purchase our favorites to start using them and finding out if they could be our benchmark products.

I hope everyone has had a great week so far - only a day an half left :o)

Love you all,

Taylor

Hi everyone! I really need to listen to myself and stay on track with blogging :o/

Since my last post, from Tuesday 6.16, these are pictures for the rest of the week!

Starting on Wednesday, we had "New York's best cupcakes" (Crumbs) ordered for another intern's birthday...they were delicious!

There was a white/M&M one, and snickers, a birthday cake, a red velvet, a multi-candy bar, and an oreo one - obviously, they were perfect looking

After the birthday celebration and working hard all day, we had a meeting with our President, Claudia Poccia, about an event we were attending right after work. This is in our mark. Conference Room before Claudia came in.

Now we are at the event. It was the CEW (Corporate Executive Women) - which is basically this panel of women who are always meeting about products and events, and once a year they have a public event that anyone can attend. Since our president is a part of the panel, we were able to attend this year's event. The speaker was Leslie Blodgett, the creator and CEO of Bare Escentuals.

This is a close up of Leslie.

A view from our seats at the event. The only 2 women on stage were Leslie and the interviewer.

Thursday was another busy day, but we didn't leave the office so I didn't take any pictures.

Friday was a fun day! We got to work at normal time, and by 11 were off to meet Lauren Conrad! Lauren is known for her apperance in tv shows like Laguna Beach and The Hills, but for the past few years she has also been mark.'s spokesperson! So around 11, before we left, I snuck in a few pictures of the main part of the office!

This is a little display box thing we have to show new products - here are hook-up lip glosses

The infamous mark. sign as you walk through the doors

Me and Alison...the main doors are to the left, and the mark. sign is to the right

This is when we were on our way to Lauren's studio...it's just a cool outside restaurant

We passed the building with Girl Scouts

Walking into Lauren's studio...very random and unmarked!

All the interns with Lauren. She's the blonde in the back, fourth from the right

Then we came back to the office, and got a little break from our projects to open hundreds of hook-ups for an event this upcoming week

We made a mess of our intern office

The same night, Alison's boyfriend came into town. I got this picture of them on our way to dinner

Saturday I went with 2 other interns to a flea market and shopping at a few stores, but I didn't take any pictures since it was raining and had bags to carry.

But Sunday (today) me, my roommate Claire, and 2 other girls that lives in our suite, went to 2 more flea markets in Hell's Kitchen and Garment district area.

These two pictures are just some houses that I thought looked really pretty,

Our first flea market!

Another pretty building

After the flea markets, we were in the Garment/Fashion district - hence the huge button and needle

And this seamstrist statue

Expensive parking for only 1/2 an hour!!

We had to walk back to Time Square to get on our subway home, and decided to walk into the Toys R Us since me and Claire hadn't been inside yet.

This was the Jurassic Park area

Legos!

Barbie's Dream House!! It was actually a huge let down, but the outside it still pretty!

Some expensive Barbies!!

This is the ferris wheel that is inside the store!

As crazy-busy this past week was, looking back on it, it was so fun! The weekend also flew by, but I had a great time again. This upcoming week shouldn't be as busy with meetings and speakers, but hopefully I can get a lot of work done on my project. Once I find out more and how much I can talk about, I will share details about my project with mark.'s hair care line :o)

I hope everyone had a good weekend (and that Mom and Dad, you made it home safely) and that everyone also has a great upcoming week!

Love and miss everyone!

Taylor