new digs

I’m so delighted to announce that my blog has moved to a lovely new home at www.rachelswartley.com! I’ve been working on designing it and getting it set up for the past month, and it feels really good to be up and running! I feel like I’m still unpacking a bit, and there are still things that I want to tweak, but I’m really excited to finally go ahead and host friends and visitors in this new space.

Now for a little housekeeping…

If you’re following along via Google Reader, be sure to subscribe to the new blog feed so you can keep up with all future posts.

If you’ve been receiving email notifications about new posts, you should soon receive an email asking you to confirm your subscription to the new blog. Updates will arrive daily via Feedburner.

If you arrived via a link to my old blog (r8chel.wordpress.com), you should have been seamlessly redirected to my new blog. However, if you have my old site listed in your blogroll, I’d love it if you could take a moment to update the link.

Lastly, if you see something that looks totally out of whack, please let me know. Nobody wants to walk around with broccoli in their teeth or toilet paper stuck to their shoe.

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Thanks so much for following along as I create a life I love. I’m so glad you’re here!

perpetual calendar micro-journal

The beginning of a new year is a perfect time to start a new daily project, especially one that involves both a calendar and a journal. Over the holidays I spent some quality time with 366 index cards and a Sharpie pen to create this perpetual calendar micro-journal.

My perpetual calendar micro-journal was directly inspired by a very similar project I saw on Design*Sponge more than a year ago. At the top of each index card, I wrote the month and day, and then each day I write one line about something I did or thought that day. A year from now, it will be fun to look back and remember what I was thinking and doing a year earlier. By the time the cards are filled up, I will have recorded a decade of memories.

It’s tempting to wish I had significant things to write each day, but for now I’m really enjoying jotting down simple notes about everyday activities. It’s helping me to notice the small things, and I’m intrigued by the opportunity to record moments that would otherwise slip away and be forgotten.

While I certainly can’t capture much depth or detail, right now this micro-journal is a good format for me. It only takes a moment to jot down a memory before I crawl into bed each night.

What about you? Do you keep a daily journal or diary? Is it handwritten? Electronic? Do you leave it on your nightstand, or keep it under lock and key? I’d love to know.

five favorites of 2011

Happy New Year, friends. The beginning of a brand new year always feels so refreshing and invigorating, but before I turn my full attention to 2012, I’d like to look back at a few projects I shared with you during the past year. Out of 101 posts, these are my five favorites.

Without a doubt, my favorite creative project of 2011 was opening {rachel+paper}, my online paper goods shop. It’s so much fun to turn a dream into a lovely little reality.

Visiting the American Girl Place in New York City in October inspired me to sew more doll clothing and accessories, and the flannel nightgown I made was my favorite sewing project of the year. The soft pink flannel with tiny stars was the perfect fabric for a little nightgown.

Something about these tiny packets of paper heart confetti made me really happy back in February. It might have had something to do with the fact that I gave them all away to unsuspecting friends when I was in Virginia for the weekend.

The birthday photoshoot with the large number 8 turned out even better than I hoped, and the birthday girl loved it as much as I did. Number 9 will need sparkles, I think.

My final favorite post of 2011 was actually a whole series of posts about Zippy, our Elf on the Shelf. The kids loved looking for him each morning, and I heard the most delightful giggles when they found him.

Thanks so much for joining me here during 2011. I can’t wait to see what 2012 will bring!

handmade IZZE notepad winner

Yesterday I paid a little visit to random.org, plugged in my digits, and discovered that the winner of the handmade IZZE notepad is…

Congrats, Erica! I’ll contact you via email to get your mailing address. I hope you enjoy using the little notepad for your clinicals.

Also, I got all excited when I read Cathy’s comment that grapefruit IZZE reminds her of Ting, a delicious Jamaican grapefruit soda. The first time I tasted grapefruit IZZE, that’s exactly what I thought too!

Helvetica

I just spent the past 80 minutes listening to a bunch of men with European accents talk about fonts. Sounds exciting, right?

The documentary film “Helvetica” was released in 2007, and it really is a movie about a font.

[image source]

The film tells the life story of the typeface Helvetica, and shows many, many instances of the font in contemporary culture. Target, Crate & Barrel, Greyhound, JCPenney, AmericanAirlines, 3M, and Jeep all feature the font prominently. Helvetica appears on New York City subway signage, IRS tax forms, and the space shuttle. It’s everywhere. The film is also full of interviews of designers (lots of men, and just two women), some of whom think Helvetica is brilliant (modernists), and others who think Helvetica is basically boring and overused (postmodernists).

I happen to love Helvetica. It’s sleek, clean, legible, confident, and classic. Do I think everything should be written in Helvetica? Of course not. But I’m a bit of a font snob, which means I think Helvetica should be used more and Comic Sans should be used never.

Speaking of which, on April Fools Day this year, if you googled the word “Helvetica,” the entire results page was in Comic Sans. I love Google’s sense of humor.

Children’s Book Week

This is my final post about Children’s Book Week 2011. Click here to read the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth posts.

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Today is the last day of Children’s Book Week 2011, and I’ve had a very hard time deciding which children’s book to write about. It’s not because I can’t think of any more favorites — I’m struggling because there are so MANY!

Should I feature Curious George? Peter Rabbit? The Little Engine That Could?

Should I write about Caps for Sale? Henry’s Awful Mistake? Millions of Cats?

Should I honor Richard Scarry? Stan & Jan Berenstain? Shel Silverstein?

I couldn’t decide. So instead of reading another one of my favorite children’s books, I’ve decided to read YOURS.

What’s your favorite children’s book? Leave a comment on this post with up to three book titles, and I’ll read the first 50 books you recommend. Go!

thankful but unoriginal

My blog host, WordPress, makes it possible for me to see what search terms people use to find my blog. Yesterday 28 people visited my blog because they apparently weren’t feeling creative enough to come up with an original Thanksgiving-related status update for Facebook. Although it makes no mention of Thanksgiving, my post from a couple years ago about fun facebook status sequences was on the second page of results when googling “thanksgiving facebook status.”

Here are the search terms on that theme that people used to find my blog yesterday:

thanksgiving facebook status – 9
facebook thanksgiving status – 4
thanksgiving facebook statuses – 2
thanksgiving status facebook – 1
thanksgiving facebook status about indians – 1
thanksgiving statues for facebook – 1
profound thanksgiving facebook statuses – 1
facebook status about thanksgiving – 1
thanksgiving facebook status type – 1
thanksgiving military facebook status – 1
unique thanksgiving status for facebook – 1
nice thanksgiving statues for facebook – 1
http://www.thanksgiving statuses on facebook.com/ – 1
unique thanksgiving words for a status update – 1
snarky thanksgiving facebook status – 1
thanksgiving statuses for facebook – 1

For those of you who clicked through to my blog via these searches, I’m sorry you didn’t find a blog post full of Thanksgiving facebook statuses. Or statues.

my thoughts on cardboard

happily overwhelmed

This evening I…

• worked late, since I can count my remaining days of work on my thumbs.
• stopped to buy milk at a locally-owned grocery store where I soon won’t shop anymore.
• returned home to a house that no longer belongs to me.
• ate leftovers that were stored in a very empty fridge.
• am spending most of the rest of the evening with cardboard boxes and packing tape, preparing to move everything to PA this weekend.
• will debate whether to post a picture of the birthday cake that I made for my soon-to-be-daughter’s 7th birthday this past weekend.
• will make a grocery shopping list for the goodbye party I’m hosting on Friday night.
• will enjoy talking to Tim on the phone while I pack. (Best part of the day!)
• will send some wedding planning emails. Ten days!
• will fall into bed happy but exhausted.

Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to make only one major life transition at a time.

the past 19 days

The Past 19 Days… By The Numbers

Number of full days I spent in Virginia: 5
Number of days I woke up in Pennsylvania: 11
Number of times I drove across the Mason-Dixon: 6
Number of vacation days I used: 5.5
Number of times I went to the dentist: 1
Number of Phillies games I attended: 2
Number of wedding bands I purchased: 1
Number of bottles of Mountain Dew consumed on the way home from Pennsylvania on Day #19, causing me to be unable to fall asleep and resulting in a blog post at 1:45 a.m.: 1