What are Your New Year's Resolutions?

Photo: Creative Commons License

Aside from having professional "resolutions" in the upcoming new year, I have several personal ones as well that I wanted to share.

1. Start running again. I used to be a marathoner, and I got way lazy after my wedding in 2008. So my main goal in 2010 is to run the Brooklyn 1/2 Marathon and get back into the running groove again.


2. Eat Local Foods. I recently saw Food Inc. For a long time I've always been very against factory farming, to the point I was a vegan. On the other hand, I never had any idea to the extent of how even our produce is handled. Living in Brooklyn with so many farmer's markets to choose from (including the famous Union Square one in Manhattan, of which I'm only 3 train stops away from), there is no excuse for me to not eat more locally grown foods. If I had a yard I'd try my hand at gardening but I don't, so I guess I'll save that goal for another year.


3. Go "out" more often. My husband and I are total homebodies. One of our joint goals is to try to go out and do something once a week, whether it's go to a museum or a comedy show. There's so much to do in this city and we never take advantage of it.

Three is enough for me to start with. What are your New Year's Resolutions?

NYC Holiday Window Survey

On Christmas Eve my husband and I went to a midnight mass and then walked the streets of New York, checking out the many holiday window displays and the tree at Rockerfeller Center.

The NYC Holiday Window Survey is a great collection of photos of the best of the best New York City Holiday Window displays. If you didn't get a chance to visit the city this holiday this article is a great place to check out the best of the best.

What's your favorite window display? I loved the Anthropology car stuck in the snow, especially considering the city just got pounded with snow last week.

Books (Or Albums) Are Judged by Their Cover

Rhapsody in Blue Album Cover: www.alexsteinweiss.com

I came across this really incredible article, The Graphic Designer Who Revolutionized the Way We Market Music.



It talks about how in 1939 Columbia Records hired a young graphic artist named Alex Steinweiss to create marketing materials. Steinweiss later came up with the revolutionary idea to cover album covers with artwork representing the music instead of the basic brown paper covers that were used and Columbia's sales raised over 800% shortly after.

Besides including some beautiful album covers, the article really reminded me how easily both art and music compliment each other hand in hand. I especially love the Rhapsody in Blue album cover, with the single piano all alone under the streetlamp in the looming city. Gorgeous.



What's your favorite album cover? Do you feel recording artists' music are as well represented in today's album covers than they were in the past? I personally don't feel the same thought and attention go into album covers today than they did in years past, which is why this article was appealing to me.

What's to Come in 2010 with Invite Couture

I don't know about you, but I am so excited for the New Year. Not that 2009 wasn't a fantastic year (which it was for me), but I just have so many goals and things to accomplish I can't wait for 2010 to get here so I can really get started.

Here are some of the new things I have planned to come very soon in 2010:

• Website Redesign- I've been working feverishly on a redesign. Same look and feel, just more content.
• Invite Couture Greeting Cards- yes, I'll soon be venturing into the world of hand crafted greeting cards. So keep you eye out for some new Valentine's Day cards soon to come in early January!
• More blog posts- in 2010 I want to try to post more than 3 times a week. So stay tuned!

Since I'm working on my New Year's to-do list, I wanted to give you the opportunity to lay more on me. What would you like to see from Invite Couture in the next year? I'd love to hear any ideas you may have on greeting cards, invitations and more. Let me know what you think!

Holiday Wishes from the Feld's!

To all my friends, family, clients, tweeps and fans! I hope you have as enjoyable a holiday as I do.

Below is a sample of the holiday cards my husband and I sent out to our friends and family this holiday season.

Happy Holidays!

Holiday Wedding Inspiration Board

What better way to celebrate the day of your wedding with your family and friends than to have your wedding around the holidays? When I think holidays and winter weddings, I think a snowy yet warm color scheme with lots of red, white, black and crystal. Round off the evening with some warm beverages for your guests and you have a day to remember!

5 Tips to Survive Holiday Parties

Photo Credit: Mrs. W's Kitchen

It's the last week most of us are attending Holiday Parties (myself included). How does one survive the many parties of the season? All the food, cocktails and treats make it difficult to not weigh an additional 10 pounds come New Years and make diet and exercise a mandatory New Year's Resolution.

I decided to do some digging and came across some tips by the Examiner to enjoy the parties of the season and not pay for it later.

5 Tips to Survive Holiday Parties

Enjoy!

RIP Great Magazines, We'll Miss You!

Photo: www.gawker.com

While relaxing and catching up my my Google Reader feeds this week I came across a blog post on Mywedding.com about called "Are You a Magazine Addict?". Though I would hardly consider myself a magazine addict, I do relate to the author's frustration that several highly appreciated wedding magazines have recently been given the ax. The most recent fatality being InStyle Weddings (which was one of my personal favorites).



As far as non-wedding related magazines, I still have not been able to get over Domino Magazine closing it's doors last year. I absolutely, positively loved that magazine. It was the basis of many of the decisions my husband and I made decorating our home.



Have any of your favorite magazines recently bitten the dust? Please join me in commemorating them here. To all the great magazines out there that have recently been deemed "unprofitable", your fans shall miss you!

Website Love: Wishpot

First, I want to disclose this is a non-paid endorsement of a website I spent some time on this past weekend that I now LOVE!

For those of you who follow and chat with me on Twitter, you may know that I never, ever step into a store during the holiday season. I always do my shopping online. Do I have to pay shipping? Of course! But to me it's a small premium to pay to not have to endure the madness of holiday season shopping in NYC.

So over the years I've come up with several systems where I create lists of gifts ideas for my friends and family, and then go about finding them on the Internet. Usually I'd have to keep some sort of a computer based document where I could then copy and paste the links of everything I've found into. While this system was all well and good, it was a bit too manual for my tastes.

So a friend of mine over the past week or so had set up an Amazon Wishlist account to create a donation item list to send school supplies to the Nuevos Caminos Special Needs School in Ecuador, where she's volunteered before. When I looked at her site to donate myself, it reminded me of several tweets I've seen from @wishpot on Twitter about their service, www.wishpot.com, which is very similar. So I decided to check it out and am glad i did.

Basically Wishpot allows you to set up an account, and then to make "wishlists" using items you find anywhere on the Internet. This would work great for brides who don't want to register at traditional department stores. They even have a browser tool button you can install that let's you add an item to your account from an external website by the click of a button.

The feature I was most surprised by is they also have a section where you can store gift ideas you find for your friends and family and you can keep the list private. Score! I now had my easy, more instant solution for my online holiday shopping!

While on the site, I also made sure to make my own "wishlist" of items I'd like that I would never buy for myself. This way I can forward it to my husband, friends and family to give them a few ideas of stuff I'd appreciate this holiday season. Of course I wouldn't send it to anyone unless they asked me if there was anything in particular I'd like (though this is common in my family so at least I'm prepared).

Do you have a special technique you use to make your holiday shopping experience less stressful? Do share!

Top 5 Holiday Greeting Card Etiquette Tips

photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hannah8ball/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

'Tis the season to send out holiday cards to your loved ones! With so many different holiday and greeting card products on the market today, don't forget to consider the following five items when getting yours together.