words to live by

by unknown

bits & pieces: july 14, 2010

Hey friends! Ready to let your mid-week worries slip away? Here are some distractions that should do the trick. Hope you all have the best Wednesday in the history of Wednesdays!

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10 reasons why being married is better

amazing jewelry display, so easy to DIY

more personalized stamp love. please and thank you

paul the octopus predicts other things, too

loooooove this princess & the pea photoshoot!

adorable chapel turned into a loft

a list of overused fashion words that have been banished from the up and coming Velour magazine. see ya later, LBD, celeb and fashionista!

so what IS the American dream exactly?

the truth about agave nectar – oh geez. i had no idea

helplessly in love with these personalized sherbet-colored notebooks

oh yes, we need one of these unique custom illustrated portraits

25 things I’d never trade for money
- and –
7 minimalist lessons I’ve learned from my kids

The net worth of US presidents, from from Washington to Obama, via my friend budgetsaresexy

oooh yes – lavender lemonade ala Sunday Suppers

gorgeous spring furniture collection from Cisco Brothers

Blueberry oatmeal bread recipe that looks delicious and is EASY! No yeast or kneading required.

10 tips to overcome negative thoughts

customizable chocolate bars! so creative and yum! via via simple song

One last thing. Please vote for 100 layer cake for best wedding blog… because they are indeed the best! And because i said please. Thank you & goodnightday.

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how many times did you overdraft last year?

If I asked you how many times you were hit with overdraft fees in the last year, you might give me a nasty look and tell me that is a rude thing to ask. You’d be right, and fortunately for both of us, I would never ask you. Luckily we have polls to give us information about these sorts of things.

Warning: this is a bit of a rant. I just took a quick poll on USAA (my credit union/insurance company) and guessed that the average number of times the average household had to pay an overdraft fee last year would be about 4 times. I was wrong. I was also really disturbed by the actual outcome.

You’re an optimist, aren’t you? Actually, the average U.S. household with a banking account incurred nearly 13 overdraft fees in 2009, according to management advisory firm Bretton Woods Inc. Add it all up, and those fees cost Americans a whopping $38 billion they could’ve spent elsewhere.

WHAT?! 38 billion dollars!! Between that money and parking tickets, it’s a wonder we as a country are in the sticky financial situation we are. But I’m no economist. All I know is, this is such an easy problem to resolve and it blows my mind that Americans (no idea what the spending habits overseas are like) are so undisciplined that we can’t even manage to keep some reserve funds to cover fees like this. Because it’s not the fact that we overdraft – I mean, it happens sometimes, even to responsible folks who try and keep the bulk of their money in interest-earnings accounts versus non-interest-earning checking accounts. But most banks today offer overdraft protection, like USAA who pulls from my emergency fund if and when I ever get low. Why is it so tough to set a dollar amount and say, “Ok, I will not let my balance dip below this line.” Or even to set aside a few hundy in a savings account that can transfer funds in a temporary lapse of spending judgment?

By the way – I totally understand that some people simply do not have the means to have emergency funds, but I would argue that given our silly lifestyle of living beyond our means and the amount of money we spend on cars, clothes, fancy food, spas, alcohol, etc… there is no reason that $38 billion number should be so high.

I also realize that I am in the minority as a person who enjoys budgeting, spreadsheets and forecasting net worth, etc. – but it doesn’t take a total nerd to be able to run a proper household budget, with goals and safety nets. There are like a thousand free downloadable programs and websites (like mint.com) that can make it as easy as 1-2-3. It’s REALLY NOT THAT HARD. And I’m telling you, the relief you will feel from knowing that you’ve got cash in case of a REAL emergency (not of the Louis Vuitton nature) is truly life changing.

Is this little statistic grossing anyone else out or is it just me? Why do you think people prefer paying overdraft fees and being strapped for cash to curbing their frivolous spending habits and saving money?

what makes the world go round

I’ve got a video for you guys. Watch the entire thing. Not just because the illustrations are pretty mesmerizing, but because the ideas are very interesting and dare I say… world changing? The topic is motivation – what motivates people? Money, right? We love money!! We’ll do anything for money!! It pays our bills, buys us shiny things (sometimes before we even have the money), makes us sublimely happy. NOT. According to the studies explained below, we aren’t as scum-sucking as we thought we were. People just want to make an impact and do cool stuff.

Watch & learn:

bits & pieces: july 7, 2010

I’ve had a bit of a cloudy disposition these past couple days because the sun has decided to boycott Los Angeles, despite it being July and us saying “sayonara!” to June gloom days ago. What’s up with that?! I am all for a bit of cloudy weather, when the time is right, but right now I’m in need of some serious rays of sunshine. To help brighten YOUR day, here are a few fun things I’ve found this week. Happy Hump Day!

Images by Martin Venezky, found on KN.

Goodwill’s new calculator tool shows you just how far your donation will go.

letter to employees from Woot CEO regarding acquisition by Amazon – I love how playful and honest it is.

Insanely beautiful fall North Carolina wedding. I love the East coast!!

My favorite movie as a teenager, IT, is getting remade. Proceed with the criticism, odd-looks and snide remarks (I’m talking about my poor movie taste, but of course the movie is fair game as well).

Catalog Living. It’s like Days of our Lives and Pottery Barn had a baby.

Rainbowssss! by Leah Rosenberg. Not the official name of the collection, btw. But this is, officially, the prettiest cake ever:

Some more words to live by.

I love this collapsible cocktail tray table. Yes, I’m having another love affair with Overstock.

Super chic office decor. My fave is the hanging globes.

More inconspicuous video game graffiti!

How dainty and delicate are these ruffled sheets? I promise, not as ugly as they sound. I love!

These rosette pillow shams are also really sweet, but it looks like something that could easily be DIYed. Any takers?

Observations of spending based on income. Sad to see how much “General Shopping” goes up whilst “Charity” stays about even, until people reach super high income levels (and probably start to feel guilty.)

Sarah Jessica Parker’s house in the Hamptons

The 5 Healthiest Summer Cocktails

Old letter from Marlon Brando to Michael Jackson

Titanic is getting the 3D treatment for the 100th anniversary of the tragedy. Definitely going!

Makeup inspiration. If only I could pull off that color lipstick.

Gorgeous blue curtains that cost only $22 and take 20 min to make (granted you own a sewing machine… which I don’t)

Check your email once a day? That would be nice. This guy has some pretty valid points. Also of interest: How to Avoid Scaling Your Life Overhead With Your Income.

Decorating with Apothecary Jars!

Especially love the soap idea!

And now for something truly terrifying.

How did I miss this:

God bless people who get this excited… even if they may be tripping on something:

And because it wouldn’t be the internet in 2010 without a techno remix:

bits & pieces: june 26, 2010

I need to seriously limit my posts that contain the date in the title. It’s kind of irritating and not very pretty, one after another. So what’s on the agenda this weekend? A little BBQ with friends, finishing LOST once and for all (so we can get back to normal life), trying my hand at baking rolls from scratch, with a lot of errand-running and relaxing in between. Sounds like a plan! We love plans!

Summer in Paris – Ah, I already miss it!! I really hope to go back sometime soon when the weather is warmer. Despite our honeymoon being in mid-May, the weather was cold, cold, cold. And rainy. And cloudy. What’s the point of bringing cute clothes if you’re covering it up with a coat the whole time? These photos make me happy.

Ever stop to look around at your wonderful life and think, “something bad is definitely going to happen soon.” You’re not alone. Jon Acuff wrote this spiritually-driven piece about that belief and why we should stop worrying and simply enjoy the goodness in our lives.

American Migration Patterns – where are people moving to and from these days? These illustrations are awesome, and very interesting. Sidenote: I am jealous of all the people getting out of LA.

Why I Quit A Six Figure Job – don’t get any crazy ideas, I’m not quitting my job. But the pros & cons measured in this quick and to-the-point blog post do a great job at illustrating the benefits and draw backs of working for yourself vs. working for someone else. I want to add an important note here: the reason this guy COULD quit that job? He has two years worth of living expenses saved up. He also seems to live a pretty low-maintenance lifestyle, something most of us could try and imitate a bit more. (Thanks for tweeting this, Chris!)

4 Tips For a Less Stressful Morning – I could definitely take some of this advice! I tried the playing music bit and it really did help! So does taking a few minutes to do something that is totally not “getting ready to head to the office.”

THE LITTER BOX. This isn’t cool and/or pretty, but it’s still worth posting for any cat owners who have ever experienced their kitties boycotting the litter box. Seeing as this is one of the BIGGEST reasons people banish their pets to the animal shelter (or worse), it’s worth taking a look and seeing what you can to to rectify the situation before resorting to extreme measures. HINT: CLEAN THE DARN LITTER BOX MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK. Would YOU want to use a port-o-potty for a week straight? Thx!

Black & White Delight is a really neat blog, if you’re into home decor, black & white, and damask.

Abandoned Hotel photos – before and after. This is so cool! I am obsessed with looking at old, abandoned (and might I add, sometimes hideously designed) buildings in LA and wondering what they looked like back in the 60s, 70s, or 80s (or even before!) when they were hip and happening. Even in a young city like this, there’s still so much history. So curious!

My girlfriend, currently living in Naples and about 17 months pregnant, sent me these PRECIOUS baby photos from a local photographer. If you don’t love babies and cute things, don’t bother looking. If you do, enjoy.

Totally unsuspecting Space Invaders graffiti in NYC.

Sustainable Book Shelving – creative and planet friendly, I love it!

Conventional, Organic, Local, Whatever. Just eat it! Let me summarize this brilliant article for you – the benefits of eating product FAR outweigh any risk of contamination by pesticides. It beats the alternative, which is avoiding fruits & vegetables and snacking on chemically-ridden processed foods. (P.S. Thanks to my sister-in-law Jes for finding this one!)

Jacaranda Trees in LA – one of the little pleasures about living in this region. The bright purple flowers always brighten my day for these few short weeks.

What To Do When Your iPad Screen Shatters Oh, Ree (aka The Pioneer Woman – we’re on a first name basis) – she never ceases to crack me up.

A babyfied version of Julian’s JellyFish video. Tres cute!!

Bits & Pieces: March 2, 2010

- Stripes and Tulle. Two very wonderful things, usually separate, together!

- Honda Wins Best All-Around Vehicle By Consumer Reports for the 4th year in a row! Subaru was also up there. l’m feeling thankful I decided to buy a Civic in 08.

- Los Angeles Swaps 21 Billboards For Art – great! We could use less billboards in this ugly, cluttered city.

- Unhappy Hipsters. Need a break from your day? Read it & laugh. Or cry.

- What’s Your Excuse for Not Saving? Great post by my girl FB about the lame justifications people make for spending frivilously instead of investing in their future. Just FYI: you do not NEED a mansion, a gardener, a luxury car, a weekly french manicure or a $500 pair of shoes. Especially if you are in debt.

- The cutest thing I’ve seen from/about ChatRoulette.

- If I had a son, I would totally help him make these little boy Valentine’s. Gummy spiders + chocolate rocks = tasty and masculine!

- I’ve been a fan of these KittyWigs for a couple years now, but I had no idea they had A BOOK! Superb.

- These Commander Skype Headphones make headphones look just a liiiittle bit less Burger King-ish.

- Not that I surf (in the water) or anything, but this is the cutest wetsuit I’ve ever seen.

- Pantone Makeup & Nail Polish – strictly conceptual designs, but how clean and fresh is this?!

- LA Tech vs SF Tech – My favorite line has to be: “However, while both crowds love to love the city of San Francisco, San Franciscans love to loathe Los Angeles, which is understandable in some regards. Traffic here is tragic, and this IS where buttock implants were invented.”

- Also relevant… Why You Should Start A Company In LA, the latest in Fast Company’s look into startup appeal in cities other than Silicon Valley.

- Six Word Memoirs by famous authors. My personal favorite is Frank McCourt (author of Angela’s Ashes, Tis, etc): “The miserable childhood leads to royalties.”

- Award-winning cookies – perfect for Oscar parties, which I am hoping to partake in this coming weekend! Check out the Best Actress selection below. Wonder if they taste as good as those women can act? Also adorable, Oscar statue cookies!

- Empty bellies do not beget genius. – Brilliant piece by the bold and beautiful Gala Darling on female body image and why you should say “screw you” to the pressure to be stick thin.

- I Want That Hoodie So Bad. I really do. It has nothing to do with the fact that my fiance designed it and that it’s modeled after his latest sketch, which you can see below.

Bits ‘n Pieces: January 11, 2010

Tim Walker

It’ll be a lot easier on me (and you) if I do these more frequently rather than waiting until a month has gone by and the list of starred items in Google Reader is longer than my legs. Here are some of my favorite things I’ve encountered on the interwebs the last couple of days:

What it costs to be me: Financial profiles of 5 women across the globe. General consensus is that the women who bring home the largest paychecks are spending more whereas the women making less each month are saving, saving, saving. Great read for anyone taking a fresh look at their finances in the New Year!

Things I Love Thursday

Ahhh, it feels good to be back. Holidays and vacations are great & all, but I love a good routine. To anyone else, it may be boring, but for me, I get great pleasure out of knowing exactly when things are going to happen. Of course, I rarely stick to a plan, but I like to pretend.

La Maison Rose (the pink house) in Montmartre, Paris, France… where I’ll be in 4 months!
april-mo

So here we are on Thursday, just a few hours before I get to pick up my man from the airport (!!), ready to share some of the things I’m loving right now.

- Budgets. Saving money. Money blogs. Financial planning. What kind of a nerd have I become? I think it’s largely due to the fact that I’m smack in the middle of listening to the audiobook of The Millionaire Next Door, but all my free time lately has been spent reading and researching better ways to budget, save, and invest. I find our culture’s obsession with spending and consumption sickening yet fascinating, especially considering the pressure we put on ourselves to appear wealthy. News flash: driving a $90,000 car doesn’t make you look rich, it makes you look $90,000 (or more, if invested) less wealthy. I’m in a good place to save right now being somewhat young, able, and with minimal responsibility (no kids!) I’m not a resolution maker, but I’m vowing to increase my net worth by mucho dinero this year, not only to relieve the future me from the burdens of financial stress, but so I can give as much as I want to. Last night, I spent four solid hours creating my very own budget excel spreadsheet because I wasn’t pleased with the ones I found online. Plus, I’m not too crazy about Mint.com and I don’t feel like waiting for Quicken for Mac 2010 or paying $50 for the darn thing. Anyway, if you’re interested in seeing my magical spreadsheet (split into two columns because many of us are paid twice monthly), you can download it here. I added the standard categories, but you can edit to your heart’s desire depending on your needs. It doesn’t include any investment, asset, net worth or debt reduction calculations, it’s mostly just for setting monthly spending goals and recording how you measure up. Just add in your planned income and expenses, tally up your actual income and expenses and enter them in, and the numbers at the bottom of the page should automatically update to give you an overall idea of how you’re meeting your monthly goals.

I’m also pretty obsessed with reading financial blogs, these are some of my favorites:

• Budgets Are Sexy

• Fabulously Broke… In The City
• The Frugal Girl
• Almost Frugal

- Catching up on sleep. That’s what breaks are for, right? Even the night I got back to LA, sleeping in my own bed was downright blissful. It’s remarkable how much of a difference getting a good night’s sleep can have on your day. I read a study recently that teens who sleep less than 5 hours a night are up to 70% more likely to be depressed and 40% more likely to have suicidal thoughts. We aren’t teenagers, but I’m pretty sure the same goes for adults. Not that we’re having suicidal thoughts, but it’s safe to say your mood is ~842x better when you get a full night’s rest. Many people I know brag about how little sleep they need to get by and feel that pulling an “allnighter” makes them look tough and seem more hardworking. Guess what? It’s just going to make you less productive the next day. There should be laws about how much sleep we are required to get. Arianna Huffington even published her Sleep Challenge 2010 and I suggest all you women take a look and take action get some rest! Yes, I’m a big, huge fan of sleeping. Especially if there is no end point in sight (nothing worse than taking a nap when you know your alarm is going to ring in 1 hour… 45 minutes… 38 minutes.. 14 minutes..) Oh, it doesn’t hurt that I’m obsessed with my bed, even though there is no rug under it which causes the bed frame’s wheels to slide all over the floor.

- (RAH)² (AH)³ + [ROMA (1+MA)] + (GA)² + (OOH)(LA)². Sigh. I’m sorry in advance for this. I tried to fight it, really I did, but I can’t stop listening to Bad Romance. Back at Thanksgiving, I asked my nine year old brother what his favorite song was, and he said “Bad Romance” (I guess he hasn’t reached the age when liking a pop song, especially by a girl, is an embarrassment.) At that point, the only thing I knew about Bad Romance was that it was Lady GaGa’s new song and that the music video was always on the top of Viral Video Chart. As I did with all her songs, I rolled my eyes and happily resisted listening to it… until I ACCIDENTALLY heard it on the radio – hello, ear worm! I found myself actually wishing it would come on the radio, shameful I know… then I bought the song. I even watched the video, which I loved, despite the white spandex Slim Jim outfits. So I watched it again. And again. And then started dancing like a mad woman all over my apartment (alone, of course). That’s another thing I love, dancing. I really need to find a good dance class in LA. Why is Lady GaGa so freaking infectious?! Are there subliminal messages in her songs? Am I being hypnotized? If I were 14, I’d gather my friends and make up a dance to this song.

- Scout and Pepper attention after a vacation. I love traveling but I hate, hate, hate leaving my girls behind. Especially Scout, because she is so attention-hungry. I tend to avoid thinking about them when I’m gone, because I know they miss me, strictly based on their behavior when I return. I seriously can’t peel Scout’s fat booty away from me the day I get back in town… and it is so, cute. She has to be thisclose to me at all times, sleeping on my head, laying on my shoulders if I’m on the couch, sitting on my lap if I’m at the dining table, etc. Whoever said cats are mean has never met my Scooba! Pepper is not quite as needy, though she is definitely a black fluffy bundle of love when I get back in town. I woke up to her on top of my head this morning.

- Anna Inghardt’s photography. Um, drool. I could seriously look at her photos all day long. I’m a sucker for soft lighting, pretty bows, comfy beds and cats, so her photostream is completely delicious to me. It kind of makes me want to paint everything I own white, get rid of all my bright colored clothing, and just lounge about all day painting my nails and looking at my jewelry. Too bad I look horrible in white. Cast your eyes upon these beauties, then check out her Flickr.

That’s all I’ve got for you today, my dear friends. I’ve got a humongous ‘Bits ‘n Pieces’ that is just itching for me to write it up. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had a headache for two days straight now and I need to go chug some water in an attempt to rehydrate myself if that is in fact the issue here. Until next time! ♥