If you look through the online catalog of Heaven Styles Boutique (www.heavenstyles.com) or their Facebook page, , you’ll see the spectacular creations of fashion designer Nathan Carl Garvin. His designs are unique and elegant, and yet approachable and affordable.
The ensemble you see to the right, believe it or not, is from their Spring and Summer collection, and costs $35 for the color block top and $30 for the elongated skirt. From their Facebook page, a Fall collection is currently available in the Heaven Styles Boutique location in the Boston area, and will be coming soon.
Heaven Styles Boutique uses the “fast fashion” technique, meaning that designs go quickly from the catwalk to retail sales, ensuring that you’re always wearing this season’s latest fashions.
What’s even more amazing about Nathan Garvin is that he has decided to “give back” with every purchase made from Heaven Styles Boutique. It started when he was asked to support a fashion show for Beat Liver Tumors. Garvin designed for a cancer survivor who ended up becoming a dear friend. From there, he decided to devote proceeds from all sales of his fashion designs to different cancer organizations.
In their boutiques, Heaven Styles also sells its own “Heaven Styles” branded T-Shirts, where $4 of each sale will go to a variety of great organizations. These aren’t your typical promotional logo T-shirts–they themselves come in a variety of colors and sizes.
Look through their site and their Facebook page, and spread the word. With great designs, truly personalized service, and a heart of gold, this is a small business that really deserves your attention.
Operation Homefront is a non-profit organization that helps the families of active-duty military and veterans in need with emergency financial assistance. Since it began in 1982, Operation Homefront has provided more than $170 million dollars in funding to programs that benefit military families. Last year alone, Operation Homefront met 151,150 needs for military families, including assistance with everyday needs like food, auto repair, medical assistance, housing, essential items, and raising morale. As a charity, it has been given the highest rating of four stars by Charity Navigator, which means that it’s one of the best run charities there are. Nationally, 95% of total revenue donated to the charity goes directly to programs that provide support to military families.
You can view more of the specific types of needs that Operation Homefront assists with here. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been tough on our country, and toughest on our soldiers. Many families have lost loved ones who died in service to our country, and survivors often suffer from financial hardship or physical or mental challenges upon returning home. The least we can do for these men and women who have given up so much of their lives to defend our country and our lives, is to help them. You can read more about Operation Homefront here.
Murphy-Goode is a wine seller in California. They’ve introduced a wonderful new red wine called “Homefront Red”. It’s a California red wine that’s a blend of Syrah, Merlot, Petite Sirah, and Zinfandel grapes. According to the wine tasting notes it is “food friendly and fruit forward”, full of flavors like juicy black cherry and raspberry, with toasty vanilla notes and a long, nice finish. I got a chance to sample the wine, and it is definitely a high quality wine that’s complex and lives up to other fine wines. At $15 a bottle, available direct from the winery, it’s also a fantastic value for gift giving or just for enjoying at tailgating or holiday parties.
Aside from being an excellent wine, Murphy-Goode will donate 50 cents from each bottle to Operation Homefront, with a goal of raising at least $300,000 for Operation Homefront. As the holidays approach, the need is greater than ever for food assistance, vision care, community events, moving assistance, and the Wounded Warrior Wives program.
This stunning watch is one of two special edition watches released by NOMOS Glashütte to support Doctors Without Borders. The watch comes in two sizes with a diameter of either 33mm or 38mmm, and both watches are limited to a production of only 1,000 watches.
NOMOS Glashütte first released a limited edition watch in March 2012 in Germany. Now, they’re repeating the charitable initiative by producing the NOMOS Tangente 38 and Tangente 33 in the United States.
What makes these hand-wound watches extra-special is the name “Doctors Without Borders” on the white silver-plated dial, as well as a red “12” and an engraving on the back referring to the international medical humanitarian organization. In addition, these special models have black oxidized hands instead of the Tangente’s usual tempered blue ones.
The back is special as well. You can watch the intricate movement of the gears through the sapphire crystal glass back.
These watches do come at a premium price ($1,840 for the 33mm and $2,140 for the 38mm), but if you know someone who is an aficionado of the finest timepieces in the world, this is an amazing opportunity to get an amazing watch.
$100 of the sale of each watch will go to Doctors Without Borders, helping this amazing organization support people in countries around the world that are affected by armed conflicts, epidemics, malnutrition, or natural disasters. $100 is enough to supply one of the following:
1,000+ refugees ensured clean water supplies for a week, thanks to chlorination equipment
17 wool blankets to protect displaced people from the cold,
5 emergency shelters for families uprooted during a crisis,
450 emergency food rations,
20 life-saving treatments for malaria,
250 Meningitis A vaccine doses,
90 rapid diagnostic tests for HIV,
25 full sets of emergency wound dressing supplies for treatment in the field.
From now until November 3, when you visit a Safeway, Vons, Pavillions, Tom Thumb, Randalls, Dominick’s, or Carrs store, you’ll be able to purchase a reusable shopping bag for $2.99. A full $2.00 of that will go to benefit breast cancer research.
You can also purchase $30 of participating products with pink price tags, and $5 will be donated, up to $1,000,000. Here’s a video that talks about it, with a message from Stand Up to Cancer ambassador Marg Helgenberger of CSI fame.
The bag is reusable and engraved with the words “Creating a brighter tomorrow”. With 2.5 million women in the US (that’s one out of every 8) still affected by breast cancer, it’s a cause that still desperately needs all the attention we give it every October.
Each year, I take a little extra time as October approaches to talk about pink breast cancer related products. That’s mainly because Breast Cancer Awareness and the pink ribbon campaign is what really spawned the concept of retailers and consumer product manufacturers tying in their products with charities. This accomplishes two things–of course, the portion of proceeds that gets donated to charities helps the cause right off the bat, but perhaps more importantly, the product becomes a walking, living advertisement that draws attention and spawns conversation about the cause, bringing it more awareness and more donations down the road. Today, pink products are still the most visible and most recognizable of these charitable products.
Over the years, the products have gone from simply slapping a pink ribbon on an existing product to having products designed from the ground up specially for the month. One of my favorite retailers each year to watch, both during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October as well as their “Kohl’s Cares” product line during Christmas, is Kohl’s.
This year, they’ve introduced an entire pink product line called the Tek Gear collection. It includes T-Shirts, caps, leggings, tank tops, fleece, and accessories that are designed exclusively by Kohl’s. And amazingy, all items only cost $5, $10, or $15. That’s not a typo–that’s $5, $10, and $15.
In addition, 100% of the net profit (that’s right, 100%) goes directly to breast cancer causes, including the American Cancer Society and the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s Southeast Wisconsin Affiliate, where Kohl’s is headquartered.
You can find the entire collection online at their site here. In addition, merchandise will be available at all 40 Kohl’s stores in Wisconsin.
The collection is available until November 3. Jump on it quick, because as we’ve seen with past Kohl’s collections like this, once they’re gone, theyre gone.
We had the opportunity to try out the microfleece top.
It comes in pink, magenta (actually, more like a darker pink), and quiet shade (actually, a medium grey). As you can see, the magenta version is even more vibrant in person than what you see on the Web site. The material may as well be called “I can’t believe it’s not wool”, as the microfleece is incredibly warm and soft on both sides.
Here’s a photo of my lovely wife modeling it (don’t worry, she has a head and hands in real life–it’s just that she’s a bit bashful, and she normally wears an “XS”, so the “S” was a bit big on her).
For more information on the Kohl’s Cares Breast Cancer Cause Merchandise program, visit Kohls.com/Cares. And be sure to keep that page bookmarked, as I’m sure there will be something cool happening as the holidays approach.
If you’re an Apple fan, you probably know by now that the new iPhone 5s launches today! I’ve been stuck with my 4s for years, so I’m one of those who jumped at the chance to upgrade.
The iPhone 5s comes in three gorgeous colors: “Space Grey” (their fancy word for “black”), Silver, and Gold.
In order to protect the beautiful metallic finish from the inevitable dings and scratches, they’ve also introduced form-fitting cases with leather exteriors and microfiber interiors. The irony, of course, is that the case itself completely covers the very thing that it’s trying to protect.
Happily, the cases themselves are pretty attractive as well, and come in six colors: yellow, tan, blue, brown, black…
…and my personal favorite, PRODUCT (RED).
As with all PRODUCT (RED) products, a portion of proceeds of sales of this cover will go to help the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa. You can read more about Apple’s different PRODUCT (RED) products here: http://www.apple.com/product-red/
Joe’s Crab Shack is having a special deal where if you donate $5 to Share Our Strength you’ll get a free appetizer and if you donate $10 you’ll get a free Crab Bucket. You can read details here:
I was actually a little surprised to see there was a Joe’s Crab Shack within 10 miles of me. Looks like they’re in about 80% of the country now.
One nice thing about this deal is that you make the donation to Share Our Strength yourself–which means that you can take the deduction yourself in addition to the coupon. Your donation goes a long way: a $5 donation can feed hungry childred up to 50 meals, while a $10 donation can feel hungry children up to 100 meals.
But hurry, this deal lasts from now until September 30 only (although you’ll be able to use the coupon through December 31, 2013).
It’s that time of year again: Macy’s is having their annual “Shop for a Cause” event on Saturday, August 24!
I’m always a little confused at this promotion, because I get all kinds of notices from all kinds of charities that they’re part of this event. But after a little digging I understood.
Here’s how it works: for the last few weeks, Macy’s has been distributing savings passes to eligible charities that request them, which they can in turn sell for $5. The charity gets to keep the $5, and the customer gets to enjoy 25% off on Saturday when they bring their savings pass into their local Macy’s. Over 8,000 charities participated in this event last year, and this year it looks like a ton of charities are participating again, including a charity near and dear to my heart: the Alliance for Lupus Research, as well as organizations as diverse as animal shelters, arts organizations, and home-schoolers.
Every year this is a wildly successful program. Since 2006, they’ve raised over $42 million for charities.
If you didn’t get a chance to purchase a ticket from a charity, don’t worry, it looks like Macy’s is still going to let you enjoy the discount anyway, at least online.
I believe you’ll be given the option of adding a saving pass to your basket for $5 that will go to support the March of Dimes, which will entitle you to the 25% discount (seems to apply to all regular, sale, and clearance merchandise, although bigger ticket items like furniture and electronics will only get 10%). So as long as you’re ordering something around $20 or more, you’ll be saving well over $5, making money and helping a great cause.
Kudos to Macy’s for doing this every year. Granted, they get a lot of valuable PR and foot traffic out of it, but on the other hand I think they’re doing a great thing by helping to bring awareness to and support all kinds of charities nationwide.
The Artist’s Way was a book published in 1992 by Julia Cameron. It became a runaway best-seller, selling over four million copies.
The Artist’s Way is basically a twelve-week program that aimed to help artists, both professional artists and hobbyists, to remove blocks that were preventing them from producing their art, whether it be writer’s block, a lack of confidence, a lack of inspiration, or other common emotions that artists face like fear, low self-worth, and lack of confidence.
One of the things that made the book so popular was how simple and practical it was. She provided practical exercises such as “Morning Pages” (basically keeping a daily journal on any subject), and “Artist’s Dates” (consciously blocking out time to do nothing but observe and experience what’s around them). While these sound simplistic, it’s amazing how the simplest things can sometimes help remove the toughest blocks. And as someone who does believe in God, I really appreciate how she doesn’t shy away from encouraging us to tap into Him as the ultimate creative force–and she does it without being preachy nor even espousing any particular religion.
Cameron mentions in her book that over the years, parents have approached her asking if she could write a book to help children discover their creativity. She’s finally done that with The Artist’s Way for Parents: Raising Creative Children. Perhaps inspired by the birth of her granddaughter (fittingly, the forward of the book is written by Domenica Cameron-Scorsese, her daughter), this book is a great book for parents and soon-to-be-parents on how to help encourage creativity in kids from birth to twelve years ago.
I admit, I was a little skeptical when I heard this was a book on how to “encourage creativity in kids”–after all, kids should be the ones instructing us adults on how to remember what it was like when we were young and had boundless creativity and imagination. But in many ways, this book is needed more than ever. We seem to live in a world where art and creativity are increasingly marginalized. It’s not an uncommon site to see kids with their faces planted into tablets and smartphones and portable video game consoles instead of out there using their imaginations. And even old fashioned “analog” toys have become so intricate and so detailed that very little is left to kids’ imaginations anymore. And worse, society itself doesn’t seem to foster creativity as it used to. Arts program in school seem to always be the first things cut when budgets get tight, sometimes in underprivileged schools where the ability to dream and pull oneself out of hopelessness is needed more than ever. And even in more affluent places, kids grow up with the same unfortunate conditioning that adults are: that it’s more important to make money and to always be busy doing the next thing rather than take time to develop the inner creativity that’s within all of us.
Each chapter of the book is dedicated to cultivating an aspect of life that’s needed for creativity to flourish, from safety, to curiosity, to focus, to humility. Each chapter is filled with personal anecdotes from Cameron’s own life and her own experience as a parent, as well as quotes and advice from other leading authors. I think as with the original Artist’s Way, how you approach the book will greatly affect how much you get out of it. I don’t think the book is meant to be read as a “parenting guide” that you follow like a literal 12-step program that’s supposed to teach you everything that’s right and wrong to do with your kids. Rather, I see it more as written as “advice from a friend”, where you can read over what parts are useful to you and your kids.
The book is extremely practical. One part of the book addresses the age-old statement that all kids eventually blurt to their parent, “I’m bored”, and gives practice advice on how to deal with it. In the chapter about limits, it talks about another universal problem: clutter. The chapter on self-expression talks about the importance of letting our kids explore their own creative directions, and how to watch ourselves that we don’t inject too much of ourselves and our own interests. These are just three random parts of the book that I flipped to, but the rest of the book is filled with extremely useful things that, even if they don’t necessarily present a complete solution, they remind us to think about these things and how addressing them can open the way for our children, and us, to be more creative.
As with the original Artist’s Way, this book contains a lot of exercises that parents can do, and in some cases that parents can do together with their kids. The chapter on “Cultivating Conscious Inflow”, which on the surface sounds kind of new-agey, actually provides very down-to-earth advice on encouraging things like music, reading, and storytelling with our kids. The activity at the end of the chapter suggests that you tell a story to your child about any subject, and then immediately have them tell you a story back and really listen to what she’s saying. The chapter on “Cultivating Limits” introduces us to an activity called “The Seventy-Two Pickup”, where whenever a mess got out of hand, Cameron’s mother would make a game out of clean-up, counting out seventy-two seconds for her kids to put away as many toys as they could in that time.
From my early reading of the book, I predict this book is going to be another runaway best seller for Cameron. I agree with the author’s contention that every child is creative and every parent is creative. This book won’t necessarily make your child the next Rembrandt or Beethoven, but using the practical advice and tools inside, I think most parents who use it will be surprised at how much creativity is locked inside both themselves and their kids, waiting to come out.
The book is set to be released on August 15. For every copy that’s sold before August 15, the publisher Tarcher/Penguin will donate $1 to the LilySarahGraceFund, an amazing charity out of Stamford, Connecticut that helps bring art to underprivileged and underfunded schools throughout the United States, and to the International Child Art Foundation, which has a goal of reducing suffering and violence for kids internationally through the arts.
You can pre-order your copy on Amazon or at Barnes and Noble. To make your order count, e-mail your receipt or an image to your receipt to AWforParents@gmail.com
In a previous post, I’ve already shared with you how my sister’s puppy Clancy loves to destroy dog toys. Now I love Clancy, but it seems that there’s not a toy in the world he won’t eventually destroy.
Enter PrideBites. This is a good new dog toy that is eco-friendly, high quality, durable, and vet approved. They squeak, but unlike other squeaky toys they’re not flimsy but made of durable “Durabite fleece”. And they’re machine washable (don’t you wish all do toys were? Say goodbye to slimy hands!)
It’s a fantastic toy for playing fetch, tug of war, or romping in the water. PrideBites was kind enough to send me one, and so I thought I’d put the toy to the test on a recent trip to the Catskills with Clancy.
Holding the toy in my hand (this is “Stripes the Tiger”), it definitely feels solidly built. The tiger design is beautifully stitched and consists of thread, polyester fleece, and cloth that’s sewn solidly to prevent tears. This is all on top of a plush pillow made of soft foam with reinforced stitching to keep the toy intact as possible. There are squeakers on both ends of the toy, which are sure to rouse your dog’s hunting instincts. They also float, which makes this the perfect toy for the pool or playing fetch.
They do make a point to emphasize that this isn’t a chew toy, and that you should “not leave the product unattended with animals that eat toys”.
When we got to our small rental house in the Catskills, the first thing I did was take out the toy. Clancy has a sixth sense about when any toy or treat is intended for him, so his tail started wagging right away.
The first thing I did was play a couple rounds of fetch with him. I really, really loved how I could chuck Stripes the Tiger a long way like a frisbee. It was light, but solid enough that I could throw it a really long way. And I’m guessing that another PrideBites creation, Larry the Mailman is even more aerodynamic, just like in real life.
He instinctively knew to chase after it, and after catching it, his prey instincts kicked in and he tried to shake the life out of poor Stripes the Tiger. As you can see, we’re still working on minor details like “bring it back” or “drop it”, but right away we knew he loved this toy–it fit into his mouth comfortably, the soft fabric covering was pleasant enough for his mouth, and it could squeak.
Clancy is a big-time “puller”, so when I play tug-of-war with him he usually wins. The PrideBite does withstand 55 pounds of pressure and you can get a really good grip on it, so it’s a perfect toy for tug of war. Here’s him in battle with my sister (who happens to be “pack leader”). Notice how Stripes the Tiger is hanging together!
Now Clancy is just a puppy, not even a year old yet. And he’s never been in the water. So we thought we’d take him to a local swimming hole to see if he could swim.
My sister and I stood knee-deep in the water, and Clancy kept looking at us with a “what, are you guys crazy?” look. But eventually he made his way to us in the water. We kept throwing Stripes the Tiger back and forth hoping he’d swim after it, but he just kept staring at us. A few times Stripes got away from us, but happily he’d just float away due to his innards being made of sturdy foam (I’d be the one doing the fetching).
Finally, after throwing Stripes in the water for the umpteeth time, Clancy seemed to let out a sigh and then started doggy paddling in a big circle around us. Both of us were so excited to see him take his first swim, but he sort of just gave us a, “There, are you happy? Can we go home now?” look.
Overall, I was really, really impressed by the PrideBites toy and the company. The company was founded by four young guys in LA who had a passion for dogs and wanted to create a truly durable dog toy. This is the kind of entrepreneur I love to highlight most on this blog.
For every toy sold, PrideBites donates $1 to animal shelters and other organizations that helps dogs in need. This includes the SPCALA, GiveBones, K-9 Angels, and RAIN.
They come in all kinds of designs, including Larry the mailman. You can also customize them with your own photo, or if you prefer, the picture of someone in your life that you wouldn’t mind siccing the dog on. Just submit three good-quality photos and the PrideBites artists will actually create a custom PrideBite for you.
I should say that as PrideBites warned, the toys is not completely indestructible (we didn’t heed their warnings and left the toy unattended with Clancy, who did eventually figure out a way to disembowel poor Stripes after a few weeks). But as long as you keep it to its intended uses (fetch, tug-of-war, swimming, etc.) it should last you for years and years and keep it like new by machine washing it. And to PrideBites’ credit, it took him a lot longer to figure it out than most toys (he’s a very smart and stubborn puppy :P)
If there’s a dog or dog lover in your life whom you don’t want to give yet another generic, mass-produced toy that every dog already has, check them out on their site or on Amazon.
If you look through the online catalog of Heaven Styles Boutique (www.heavenstyles.com) or their Facebook page, , you’ll see the spectacular creations of fashion designer Nathan Carl Garvin. His designs are unique and elegant, and yet approachable and affordable.
was a book published in 1992 by Julia Cameron. It became a runaway best-seller, selling over four million copies.
or 
is even more aerodynamic, just like in real life.
.