New Year... with the flu.

So unfortunately I was diagnosed with the flu on New Year's Eve. I was so bummed I could have cried, because NYE is seriously one of my favorite holidays. I still saw some friends and I LOVED that the new year came in with a thunderstorm, but I am just itching to feel better. Thankfully, I know some really great people who are going to throw me a re-new year's eve party. With the countdown and everythingggg. So I'm excited for that. But in the mean time... this is just miserable.

I'll leave you guys with something currently cheering me up. My friend Ckate got me a chocolate frog for Christmas! Ahhh my Harry Potter dorkdom is showing. I don't care. I find no shame in waving my Harry Potter freak flag. And I am stoked. It even came with a wizard card!

I hope you all had a happy and healthy New Year's! I'm really excited about this year. The last was really fantastic and some really amazing things happen despite some of the lows. 2011 is going to be full of big decisions and life changes and some scary but wonderful things. I'm ready to plan big changes and get myself organized! A cliche starting-a-new-year post is probably soon to follow. But I'm serious this time about my resolutions. No, like for real. They're happening. Even though I say that every year... this is different. (Even though I probably say that every year too? Oops.)

❤love.

Free Holiday Downloads!

So everybody loves a great download that doesn't cost you a penny! Especially if it's useful, and even better if it actually saves you money. So I decided to post a collection of some of my favorite Christmas downloads so that for you guys it's just one stop! Much easier than wading through the bad links and sketchy downloads. Well, here goes nothing!

For the first link, the blogger of How About Orange made this precious background. The image is so cute, but I love that it's small so if you have files on your desktop, they won't get lost in the picture. Click HERE to get this wallpaper!

Now, if you've read some previous posts or know me at all, you'll know I'm a type nerd. I understand that if you're not familiar with typography, that's a weird concept. That someone could be gaga over fonts? I know. Freak. Oh well. This is a Christmas font that I love for fun holiday flyers or even Christmas cards. Plus, the name just cracks me up. Click HERE to go to the download page for Christmas on Crack. That's right, folks. Christmas. On. Crack.

If you're a little more on the old fashioned side, or love the look of vintage Christmas cards, than this font, appropriately called Christmas Card, is just for you! Get to the download page HERE.

Next we have printable holiday tags up the heezy, because well, I just couldn't choose one. They're all great, but all so different!

These are from Paper Crave and are actually available in three different colors! For the red and teal shown above click HERE. There is also a deep fuchsia and green version, which you can get HERE. And lastly, dark and light blue, which is HERE.

The next holiday tags are from Domestifluff! These are so cute, I love love love the first one with the repeated 'snow' on it. Get them HERE.

Okay. These tags are to die for and my absolute favorite. They are from the brilliant illustrator behind Orange You Lucky! I mean. Does it get any better? Get the first set HERE, and the second HERE.

Now, West Elm is not only offering gift tags in four different themes, but also entertaining sets with place cards, name tags and menus. This is just the tiniest sneak peak of some of their gift tags, but if you go HERE, you can choose gifting or entertaining downloads and then between their four themes, botanical, graphic, animal, or snowflake. I mean, if you want, you could just choose them all!

This next download is a set of Merry Mixers from hi, friend design and comes with the labels and the recipes! This would be really great for a hostess gift or even just fun to give a friend who loves entertaining. For the Charming Cranberry Cocktail recipe and tag, click HERE. For the Apricot Ginger Fizz, click HERE. (I really want to try that one!) For the Pretty Please Pomegranate Cosmo, click HERE.

What's your favorite download of these freebies? I want to know!

❤love.

Father's Day!

I had a great Father's day with my family. First up, I ate breakfast at my Mimi and Papa's with my mom. It was absolutely delicious. Eggs, bacon, and biscuits with apricot marmalade. Plus tons of fresh fruit. I love the way breakfast makes a house smell when it's cooking. And besides that, seriously, these two people are my absolute favorite. They're my rock.

Afterwards I went out with my sister and bought poster board. We made a big welcome home sign for my dad like we always did when we were little. Then we went and picked him up from the airport! He's been gone to Taiwan and Vietnam on business and made sure he flew back in for his special day. The three of us just hung out and went to dinner. It was nice!

Hope all of you dads out there enjoyed your day!

❤love.

When your day goes wrong.

I just wanted to share with you a story to remember the next time your day goes wrong. Whether you're thrown off schedule or forced to go out of your way, sometimes there's reason in the small annoyances we face.

Right before Christmas, during some of the snowstorms, my Aunt's plane got delayed in North Carolina. Because the babysitter couldn't stay, my other aunt had to go pick up her nephew and feed him dinner and get him in bed before his mom finally got home. So she ended up pulling in her driveway about 9:30 at night, when normally she would have been in bed. It was freezing cold, and raining. That horrible bone chilling rain that's barely a degree away from ice. And as she drove in she noticed an unfamiliar car with it's lights on in the back of her driveway. She got out of her car, and cautiously walked to the far side of the strange vehicle. The door was left open, and on the ground was an 88 year old woman who had slipped, broken her collarbone and shoulder and could not get back up. She had gone to a Christmas party and had gotten lost on her way back home. After driving around for awhile, she decided to stop there for directions because the house looked 'friendly.' She had been laying in the freezing cold in the rain for over an hour. My uncle never heard anything outside and if my aunt's day had gone normally, she would have been inside as well, and no one would have noticed until morning when it would have undoubtedly been too late. My aunt sat there in the driveway with her while they waited for the ambulance to get there and the woman shared bits and pieces of her life story. She spent a few days in the hospital but is going to be just fine.

So the next time your plane gets delayed or you have to run an unexpected errand. You get stuck in traffic or your day just gets totally screwed to hell. There might be a reason. You might have to deal with a bunch of things going wrong, that in the scheme of things don't really matter, so that somewhere, for someone else, something can go right. In a big way. In this case a snowstorm, a delayed flight, a day that went longer than planned, all added up to the little old lady that lived.

❤love.

Dear Santa. (or Jesus.)

Whoever is more appropriate to ask for snow. Now, I am perfectly aware that something forecasted for the tenth day of the ten day forecast should be viewed skeptically. Mainly because weathermen have been known to crush dreams on the weekends for sport. BUT. This would make my life. Or you know, Christmas. But life is only a semi-exaggeration.

Seriously. Bing had it all figured out. White Christmas, people. And go big or go home.

No that's a lie, I'll take what I can get.

(PS. Who thought it was a good idea to name their child an onomatopoeia? Did he have a brother named Bang? That would have been perfection. But you know, in a totally cruel way.)

❤love.

Boone!

So last night I drove up to Boone, North Carolina. I used to go to school up here at Appalachian State University. I miss this place a lot. I'm where I need to be education wise (design school), but I love the cold weather and the mountains. So I still come up every once in awhile, to see people I miss and to regenerate a little bit. There's not much here, it's pretty secluded, but it's beautiful. And sometimes it's nice to feel far away from everything for just a little while. It's an especially nice breath of fresh air after a stressful, uninspired ending to a semester. I'm ready for a new start in a sense, ready to reorganize. My life, my house, my work. I need to find definitive directions and make decisions about internships and what I want to do when I graduate. But for right now... for right now I'm going to breathe. Enjoy the mountains. Enjoy the snow. (Snow!) I'm going to rejuvenate and gain a fresh outlook to go back home with. Maybe do a little Christmas shopping at the antique stores and outlet mall nearby. I'm also going to make some delicious goodies for my friends still going through finals. I mean... I may eat some as well... but mostly for them. Pictures later!

❤ love.

Typophile.

I'm just going to go ahead and put this out there. I'm a type nerd. I'll be clear that my nerdiness encompasses much more, but we'll work up to that. Baby steps. Another of my favorite things? Christmas shopping. Or really any kind of shopping for other people. FInding that perfect present and watching for that reaction as it's opened. It's an art. And a science really. (The shopping part, not the watching part.) So I've created a little bit of a gift guide to share with you full of some typography I've been crushing on. A combination of my two loves. And maybe you know somebody who also has thing for letters that might like a little type lovin underneath their Christmas tree.

1. READ recycled wood $32 by William Dohman 2. Chicago $22 by Ork Posters 3. Winter Beverage Towel Set $21 by NestaHome 4. CMYK Necklace $20 by Plastique 5. Marquee Alphabet Lights $178 from Urban Outfitters 6. If Life Deals You Lemons laser cut $65 by Julene

❤ love.

My favorite four letter word.

Okay you guys. It's not what you think. Snow, people. Snow. And I need some. BAD. Even after tacky sweaters and ornament exchanges for some reason it just doesn't fully feel like December. It should, I mean, lord. I heard a Hanson Snowed In song in the mall the other day. Oh it takes me back.... to last year. Or I mean. Grade school. Because no one listens to them anymore... So anyway. Today would have been perfection with some snow, but alas it was nasty misting rain. We threw a Potluck, Ornament Swap, Tacky Sweater party and had an absolute BLAST. I'm so blessed with the friends in my life. We voted on a bunch of superlatives and I got... too many. Best Personality, Most Random, Most Likely to Not Use Their Degree (oops), Most Likely to Not Have a 9 to 5 Job, and Most Mischievous. I got that gleam in my eye...

So back to the snow thing. It makes everything better. It does. No matter what is happening in my life, no matter how stressful, when it suddenly starts to snow, it all falls away. It's like a giant hush. One of my very favorite things is waking up in the morning to that silence. Before you even get out of bed you can hear it. So peaceful. And like a slate wiped clean, it always makes me feel so hopeful.

There's a quote that I absolutely love from the movie The Family Stone. It's the scene where Meredith and Ben are sitting in the car and he decides to tell her about the dream he had. It's so innocent and beautiful.

"You were shoveling snow. You were just a little girl in a flannel night gown. And you were shoveling snow from the walk in front of our house. And I was the snow. I was the snow. And everywhere it landed and everywhere it covered. You scoop me up with a big red shovel. You scoop me up."

I think I feel better already. Just remembering that. Maybe I'll dream of snow tonight. In the meantime I'm sitting in a giant beanbag watching Baby Mama on the projector with some of those amazing people. We do this finals thing righttt.

❤ love.