Gold Foil Valentine Card

Recently, I acquired some really fantastic vintage emblems for my gold foil press. One of them happened to be perfect for Valentine's Day. Through the daily grind of the busy season, I needed a little break from packaging orders, so I tested out the emblem and finally came up with this card. I loved it! Despite having already released the 2014 Valentine's line, I just had to pop one more into the shop.

I love the colors and the simplicity of this card, and am happy to welcome it into the shop!

Respect is a Two Way Street

As a recently married gal who has been in the same relationship for nearly ten years, I have been more aware of blog posts and articles about the subject of marriage. They fascinate me mostly because I just simply can't relate to them. Many bloggers confess to marriage being the hardest thing they have ever endured, that marriage takes hard work, and that they are so thankful to have made it as far as they have. I have been inundated with posts like these as of late, but they leave me wondering what I'm missing. I'm just not quite getting what makes marriage so difficult.

Maybe Andrew and I have it good. Maybe we're just that compatible, or we just have a knack to working well together, or respecting others, or communicating, or what have you, without even thinking about it. I not sure really what it is, but I guess I just don't see it as hard work. If you love and respect someone and that is a mutual thing, then I think it just comes easily. That is not to say that we've never had arguments about anything, but I just can't ever remember a time when I felt at my wits end over our relationship as so many others have confessed.

This weekend, after already reading a plethora of these articles on how to keep a marriage together, I happened upon another article dealing with marriage that I simply couldn't leave on the back burner. This time, my cousin had fueled the fire with a post on facebook sharing this article about 25 Ways to Communicate Respect to Your Husband. As a married male, he was posting the article in a WTF?! kind of way and even stated something to the effect of "respect is a two way street."

I was curious, so I began reading the article. As I began reading, I realized that it was a list of ways in which the woman must act only for the husband in a relationship-- to me, this was not a list of ways to maintain a healthy relationship. I got as far as number 11, "Eyes Only For Him," before I felt like I was going to lose my lunch and had to stop reading. Was this truly a woman writing this article?! And how could she possibly feel that thinking only of meeting her husbands needs and catering to his beck and call is a healthy relationship?! What about her needs? About what makes her happy? Is there no mutual respect?

While I suppose there is some small amount of merit to a few of these points if taken on a mutual level, I just couldn't get past how archaic a large majority of her points were. I was angered that she suggested that women must reciprocate whenever their husband is in the mood for sex. Outraged at the fact she believed women should dress only to please their husbands. Horrified by the many points she makes in which the wife should not speak her mind, make decisions, or question decisions made by the husband. Disgusted by her insinuation that women should be the only one responsible for a clean house and food on the table.

This is submission. 

Submission and choosing to accept that men are more powerful and mean more than the woman in a relationship. That women are less than. That women should not be honored and respected in the same way. It is antiquated thinking that I just can't wrap my head around or deem as acceptable in our modern society. Women have worked far too hard to make it to the point at which we are in the world today, and this article felt like a slap in the face, a step backward from the freedoms and equalities that have been accomplished thus far.

Power is a frightening thing. When one has a sense of power, they will most likely do things that they may otherwise not have thought to do. And when there is no longer a balance of power in a relationship and we give power to only one side, it is no longer healthy. Both sides of a relationship should be equal, and to disrupt that equality to create a system of subservience versus power, changes the way people view each other and respect each other. While, the author of the article may find that a woman should do these things to show respect, what she hasn't considered is the way in which she is disrespecting herself in return. And above all, if we don't respect ourselves, living a fulfilling life is much harder to do.

After mentioning the article to Andrew, I finally mustered the courage to finish reading it in its full length. I read the article aloud to Andrew as we drove home from our weekend grocery trip. "What is this?! What kind of man treats his wife like that or expects those things from her?!" he exclaimed. And then it hit me. Maybe that is why marriage is so easy-- because we take our relationship as a two way street. We respect each other equally, allow the other person to be who they are, and hold no impossible expectations over the other's head. And to me, that mutual respect is truly what love and relationships are all about.

How to Survive the Cold if You Have the Metabolism of a Hummingbird

I'm sure everyone is sick about talking about how cold it is. However, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that aside from when I'm sleeping at night under my warm down comforter, I haven't felt warm for more than an hour straight over the last week or so. Apparently I have the metabolism of a hummingbird, because once I'm cold there's no going back. So how do I survive the cold with the metabolism of a hummingbird?

I go with a pair of socks, a pair of skinny jean, a pair of knee high socks over said skinny jeans and original pair of socks, and then some boots just for added insulation.

Then on the top, I go for a tank top, a tee, a long-sleeved shirt, and then a sweater. I like to add a scarf and hat to keep heat from leaking out of my head. And then.... then. If I'm still not warm enough, obviously I turn to my hot foil press as a heat source.

And that, my friends, is how I survive the cold with the metabolism of a hummingbird. Hope you're all staying warm out there wherever you may be! And if you live in a warm location... well, just don't talk to me! ;)

My Top Ten Tracks of 2013

I'm having a little fun for Friday and thought I'd look back again on a really important aspect of every year-- music, obviously. As the year came to an end, Pitchfork put out their Top 100 Tracks of 2013. To me, their lists are always ridiculously overly pretentious or predictable. I mean, how many of you know most of the bands on that lists, and three tracks for both Daft Punk and Kanye? Really? Really?

After an in depth conversation with my sister about how ridiculous Pitchfork's music preferences are, I decided to take a stab at my own version. However, to spare you the most ridiculous blog post of all time, I decided to stick with my top 10 tracks for 2013 (read-- top ten tracks I probably listened to the most in 2013). So here they are. I give you Heidi's Top 10 Tracks of 2013.

10. Wild Things - San Cisco

9. Railway - Boy

8. Heavy Bells - J. Roddy Walston & The Business

7. You Can Be All Kinds of Emotional - The Lone Bellow

6. Morning Song - The Avett Brothers

5. Farrah Fawcett Hair - Capital Cities

4. Departures (Blue Toowong Skies) - Bernard Fanning

3. Hope - Kopecky Family Band

2. Made Up Mind - Tedeschi Trucks Band

1. Just Beneath the Surface - Dawes

What are some of your favorite songs from the past year?

2014 Goals

As always, I like to set some new goals for the new year. I don't like to think of them as resolutions because I feel as though I am setting myself up for failure. I'm a goal-driven person and if I set my eye on something that I truly want to do, then I often will work to accomplish it. In addition, I feel that resolutions are not really reasonable for the most part. They don't allow you to get halfway there or slip up. Goals, on the other hand, are always a work in progress. After looking back on my 2013 goals, I felt good about how far I've progressed in the past year. And as 2014 is beginning, it's time for me to find a new focus.

1. Be showered and dressed by 9:30am. This may sound crazy, but it needs to happen. It makes me feel awful when I have realized that I spent half of the day in yoga pants. I was warned this would happen when I started working from home, and it has. Now it needs to stop. Being fabulously dressed makes me feel fabulous, and I prefer feeling fabulous than gross.

2. Follow through. There are a lot of ideas that I write down or verbalize. Sometimes they don't happen or they happen months later. I want to seize the moment and follow through on these ideas rather than just sitting on them and thinking that maybe they should happen. I will go back and forth in my mind about whether or not to do something. It's wishy-washy. I need to stop bullshitting myself and just do it. I was off to a better start with this already in the latter part of 2013, but I need to keep the ball rolling. I have big projects I want to accomplish for my business this year and it's time to just do it.

3. Cut out negativity. Time to let go of anything or anyone that is causing unnecessary negativity in my life. This is something I started after we got back from Australia. If the habit wasn't good, I stopped. If the relationship wasn't productive or was giving me negative vibes, I moved on. I decided that it was time to stop worrying about whether or not I was stepping on the toes of others and just do what is true to myself. That in itself has already generated a lot of positive vibes in my life and I hope to continue to cut back on that negativity as I continue to seek a positive, creative, and fulfilling lifestyle.

4. Live like I'm on vacation. I wrote about my new found perspective after our return from Australia. I want to enjoy every aspect of my life. I don't want life to feel like a burden. I want it to feel light and enjoyable, so I'll continue to think about how I can make every day feel like vacation. What can I do each day, even if just for a few minutes, that will help me depart from the idea of life being a daily grind? That is what I'll continue to challenge myself to do.

5. Unplug and spend more time in the moment. This is easier said than done as my business is an online based business. I was good about this when I first quit teaching. When the work day was done, it was done. No more responding to clients after hours. My brain turned off the work day. That hasn't been the case recently, and I would like to make that a priority again. I also want to be more purposeful in the time I spend using social media with my business. Rather than checking in constantly, I want to think of it more as a scheduled use of time. In other words, hello productivity and goodbye time suck.

This year I'm feeling more positive than ever about my goals! I feel as though 2014 has a lot of momentum that has built up from the previous year, and I'm excited for what is to come.

Do you set goals for the new year? What do you hope to accomplish in the year to come?

The 2014 Valentine's Day Line is Here!

Happy New Year! I hope you all rang in 2014 in a fabulous way, whether that be out on the town or on your couch. We decided to have a fairly low-key event with another couple and decided to go duck pin bowling. Nothing says "Happy New Year" like the crash of some old bowling pins.

2013 has been quite the adventure for me as I quit my day job as a teacher, got married, turned the big 3-0, and traveled halfway around the world to Australia for nearly a month. It has been a good year, and I can only hope that 2014 will be just as fabulous. I wanted to start 2014 with a bang, so I thought what better way to bring in the new year than to launch my new Valentine's Day card line? Just like last year's line, there are some sweet, some hilarious, and some naughty as well. New this year is a special card just for you Baltimore locals. Shall we take a look?

I have worked really hard on this year's line of cards and I am completely satisfied with how each and every one of these turned out. I feel as though I have found a groove and creative energy that has started to click for me not only in this new line, but in the set of cards I have most recently been producing. It's hard to choose just one favorite!

Be sure to check out the full Valentine's Day card line! And as an additional bonus to you all, use the code MYVALENTINE on a purchase of $20 or more and you will receive 15% off. That's for one day only, so hop on it people!

Alright, which of the cards is your favorite?!