Grateful Heart

(photo by Death to the Stock Photo)

Today in my editorial calendar, I had planned to write a post to go with the Grateful Heart linkup on Ember Grey. It's a linkup where anyone can share posts that share their gratitude at the current moment. So that was my plan. And then a monster sinus infection invaded my life. I spent my night cradled a roll of toilet paper and blowing my nose every five minutes while taking NyQuil religiously every four hours to no avail. Last night sucked.

And so I wasn't feeling like blogging much at all, especially a gratitude post. But you know what? I'm up for a challenge. 

Things I'm Grateful For

The inspiration I receive from the blogging community. I really, really love looking through my Bloglovin' feed these days and just admiring all the wonderful thought that goes into the posts. There are so many beautiful + well written blogs out there and I'm glad that I've been able to discover them!

A flexible boss. I already talked to her today about work tonight and she was totally nice about it--telling me just to do what I can and not to stress out about it.

Khan Academy. Okay, sounds silly, I know. I needed to refresh on my calculus II material since I'm going into calc II or III this fall but haven't taken a calculus class in like three years. I thought I was going to have to pay for a refresher course, but I've found that I can take a quasi-course for free online! Yay!

MY LEFT NOSTRIL JUST CLEARED. I'm not even kidding, this is the best thing to happen to me all day. You never really appreciate breathing out of your nose until you can't.

Alright, that may be all I can manage right now. But still! Even that little list cheered me up a little. 

What are you grateful for?

Playlist #27: Guitar Instrumentals

I've been so busy lately, between last weekend's craft fair and working, that what I've found is I really need good background music to my life. I need music that can provide that background noise without taking my focus away from what I'm doing. You know, I always love to sing along with music, but sometimes I just need to do my own thing. This playlist is all about that--play it while you work, read, cook, etc. Save the singalong songs for the car.

Listen to the playlist.

P.S. Muriel Anderson is phenomenal--she plays the harp guitar and composes her own music. I first heard her at a local concert in Charlotte. If you like this playlist, you should definitely listen to more of her stuff!

What have you been listening to lately?

(photo by Death to the Stock Photo)

Weekly Goals #37

Helloooo! How was your weekend? Mine was pretty fun, between the craft fair and shopping with friends, except for this crazy weather! It's been insanely windy + cool (think low 60s!) + we haven't had a good beach day in a week! Oh well. This week is pretty routine. Other than working, my only real plans are hanging out with the gal pals tonight, potentially dying my hair turquoise/purple (whaaaa?! just the tips!). 

What are your plans for the week? 

Last Week's Goals:

+ Exercise 120 minutes. Rocked this. As of Friday, I had only put in 40 minutes and got discouraged. But then I remembered that I still had three days to go! In the end, I finished the week with 135 minutes, mostly of walk/runs and conditioning. Yay!

+ Read for 30 minutes a day. I came fairly close to this one. It would have been a lot easier to get the reading in if I had had good beach days, but I just had to read inside most days. I finished Ender's Game and surprisingly, hated it. It was awful. Speaking of awful, I'm reading a Jon Sharpe western book (I think called Desert Death or something like that) and I just can't take it seriously. Also: too many sex scenes. 

This Week's Goals:

I want to do something a little different this week, maybe for the future as well. I'm going to separate my goals into categories (body, mind and blog) so that I make sure I'm working on different areas of myself. Hopefully this means my goals will be more interesting and varied!

+ Body Love: exercise 120 minutes and run the 5k race. My town hosts a Summerfest every year and I'm pretty sure I saw a sign somewhere that there's a 5k race? I probably won't be able to run it all, but that's okay. But, I'm giving myself permission to wuss out if it's expensive/conflicts with my schedule, since I'm not sure when it is.

+ Mind Love: find a new podcast to keep my mind going during the summer. My favorite podcast to listen to during walks is True Murder because it's like watching SVU while exercising, but it's not exactly the most mentally stimulating. Anyone know of a good science/easy French language podcast? 

+ Blog Love: comment on three blog posts every day. It's really low, I know. But I am so guilty of being that silent lurking blog reader. If you comment on my blog regularly, I probably read your blog. I am just awful about commenting. But, I will say. If you don't have disqus, I don't bother. Get that installed, yo.

What are your goals this week?

Craft Fairs + My Future In Paper Goods

Yesterday, I participated in my town's annual craft fair and sold stationery/greeting cards that I've made. (If you want to see them, here's my instagram video of my table.) I've been making my own cards since I was a grubby eight-year-old who wanted stationery so I could write down all the names of my imaginary friends. My mom let me use clear ink and embossing powder to let me put my name in puffy gold on old pieces of her scrapbooking paper. And I've loved paper and stationery ever since!

Of course it helps that I'm a big letter writer + go through cards like none other. For a long time, I made cards myself, just because I was picky about the designs on my cards and disliked so many of the cutesy fluffy hallmark designs. But for the first time, this weekend, I decided to see what other people thought! 

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At the fair (which is very small as far as fairs go), I set up a table, which I shared with a friend who paints canvas shoes. On my half, I set up a board with samples of my cards and stationery options, along with my prices--$3/1, $5/2 and $6 for a set of four personalized notecards.

Overall, I found it to be a very fun experience--though I don't quite have the process down enough to really make much of a profit on the cards. With all the time that I put into them, I made about $8 for every hour I spent on them.

I'll admit. I'm not a professional. I don't really know what I'm doing. I just printed the cards at my house, with my plain-old printer, on plain-old cardstock and cut it up with an x-acto knife and a ruler. There are many ways in which my paper goods need to improve and lots and lots of room to grow. 

But what I did learn was that I want to continue doing this in the future. I have potential. People's comments were honestly the nicest. "You are so freaking talented." "I can't believe you made these yourself." "I don't even want to write a letter on this, can I just frame it?" and "When these are on etsy, I want them. All of them." (That one was my dear Victoria on my instagram.)

As I'm thinking about the future, I know I want design to stay a part of it, along with a career in science. I was talking to H the other day about my dream of opening a brick-and-mortar stationery store and I realized that this is the first step. I can't wait until I'm a total professional to start designing and selling and marketing this. 

I don't know how it'll work, living in a very small dorm, with a very low-quality printer in the fall. I'm looking into using a professional printer rather than printing myself. If any of you are more knowledgeable at this than I am (which doesn't take much), your advice would be appreciated. In the meantime, I plan to continue designing cards. 

So this isn't an official announcement, just know, there are more paper goods in the CMS future. 

Thanks for being so supportive, you guys. I love this blog and this community and you. 

Catching My Eye [links I like]

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+Free, bold and fun fonts from Holly Marie Designs. I'm digging Oxalis.

+ Worldometers shows real-time statistics for approximately everything. From the population to the number of cell phones bought to hectares of forest loss, it's interesting to literally see our world in numbers. Interesting: there are almost 900 million undernourished people and yet, today there has already been 90 million dollars spent on weight loss programs in the USA.

+ 70 of the most useful sites on the internet. Most are for fun, but some really are useful. Plus it's a fun list to read! I'm a total appaholic but I'm also always on the lookout for cool new websites. Lists like these help me find new tools for the most random things.

+ This set of infographics on lakes and oceans blows my mind. The best quote: "Sperm whales dive about this deep (2800m ish). They come up covered in wounds and sucker marks so presumably there are big squid down here? Man we know nothing about the ocean."

+ Take fifteen minutes to improve your blog with this mini-project from Elembee. Definitely something I need to do soon!

+I'm always interested in hearing about how other people spend their mornings (here's my morning!), so I love this series from Yes and Yes about mornings in different countries.

+So interesting--a photographic series on how kids change in their first year of college.

+I've shared this at least five times, but this video of whale sharks swimming peacefully in an aquarium in Japan makes me feel like I'm going to tear up every time. These are my favorite creatures on earth for their beauty and grace.

+Because I'm always a sucker for all things organized, I love these tips on keeping an organized editorial calendar on Elah Tree.

+The Dress Your Tech series on DesignLoveFest always offers gorgeous desktop backgrounds, but I'm especially in love with these blue watercolor dots by Jessica Stevens.

Weekly Goals #36

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Hey friends! I hope you've all had lovely weekends and are ready for a wonderful week! This week, I don't have a whole lot going on until SATURDAY. Saturday is the big day! My town holds a big fair where crafts, food, antiques and all kinds of stuff are sold. There's a pancake breakfast beforehand and it's always a really fun time to shop around, hang out with friends and of course, buy stuff. But! This year, I'm selling cards that I have been making (and haven't even shown you!). More on that in a bit. 

What do you have going on? I really love reading other people's weekly goals posts, and then seeing how your week goes! 

Last Week's Goals:

+ Finish tattoo calligraphy project. If you remember, a coworker of my sister hired me to design her tattoo for when she gets inked this fall. I was having a lot of trouble with it since the only capital letter in the design was 'C' and that's possibly my most boring and least pretty uppercase letter. But I finally finished it and sent it to her and she loved it! There's nothing like that feeling of nervously presenting your work to someone and having them appreciate it.

+ Do the 7-minute workout 14 times. So I was super flexible with this one, but I'm still checking it off my list. I only did the 7-minute workout six times, but I also went for two, 40-minute walk/jogs and a long walk yesterday. So I exercised enough. I will say that I am a fan of the 7-minute workout! I found one that I can do on a park bench with step ups, dips, push-ups and such. Yay for exercise!

+ Finish designs and print my cards for this weekend. Sort of success. 90% of my designs are finished but I'm waiting for my paper + envelopes to arrive. Unfortunately, there's not really any sort of printer/office supply store within half an hour of me, so I just have to wait. But I'm confident that they'll get here in time!

This Week's Goals:

+ Read for 30 minutes a day. I'm in the adult reading program at my library (me so nerdy) and I have to read a book each in the fiction, nonfiction, historical, western, romance, sci-fi, and mystery genres. I've got the fiction and non-fiction section covered easily and I read And Then There Were None this wee, so mystery's done too. This week, I'm working on Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card for the sci-fi category. Any historical/western/romance recommendations?

+ Put in 120 minutes of exercise over the week. This doesn't count by 15-minute walk to the beach everyday. If I'm wearing my heart-rate monitor, it counts!

That's really all I can think of for this week! Have a great week, lovebugs!

Color Files: Tangerine

When I'm working on design for my blog or others, I'm constantly amazed by the way that color can transform lines. It can add a totally new attitude to a design or even make YOU feel things. Colors can hold memories and associations. I know whenever I see a certain shade of blue, it makes me thing of Lake Michigan. I bet you're the same--ever see a color and immediately think of your college's colors?

One of my favorite colors these days is tangerine. Tangerine can feel summery, clean, fun, fresh and invigorating. It can give energy, provide inspiration and wake you up. It feels lively and warm.

Crossbody bag / Roller Date Stamp / Swimsuit / Heels / Pillow / Bracelets - source not found

Anyone else obsessed with tangerine? How will you use tangerine--in your outfits, design or art?