Fridays with John: All dogs go to heaven.

But sometimes we've got a little devil on our hands.


I didn't grow up in what people would call a pet-friendly home. As a child, the farthest I got as a pet owner was with Carl, the little green lizard (a 6-inch anole) who spent 4 lovely years in the aquarium in my bedroom. Three interesting facts about Carl: 1) I fed him crickets. 2) He was named after Carl Lewis because he was SO FAST. 3) He was actually a SHE. After his male naming, Carl laid eggs. Oh well.

Fast forward about 15 years, and I got the most wonderful gift in the world. After a long day at work, Liz came home with then a 10-week-old Kingsley. I've never been so happy.

Fast forward a year and a half, and this little puppy has grown to become such an integral part of our lives. I used to cringe when I heard people refer to pets as their "son" or "daughter." I won't say those words in public, but I get it. We love our dog and it's in a way I could never have imagined.

But now back to why I'm writing. We like to think we've trained her pretty well. She can sit, lie down, stay, leave it, won't eat her food until we say "ok," shake paws, etc., but the very staged picture above shows one of her worst talents. Jumping.

I walk her in Prospect Park during "off-leash" hours most mornings--and the amount of muddy paws she places on strangers' coats and pants each day is startling. The puppy apology worked for a while, but now that she's almost 2, that's losing some validity. Most people don't mind, but those that do, DO. And in a big, sometimes overbearing way.

It's the same thing with house guests. It's never aggressive. She doesn't bite. But she will knock you over if you're not paying attention. They laugh it off because they're friends and family, but I can tell they're wondering when she will grow out of it--if ever.

She's perfect in every single way. I love her like a daughter. There I said it. But the jumping has to go. I just talked to one of the area's best dog trainers. I'll keep you posted.

Have a great weekend.

L&H Paper Package

We recently introduced our Paper Package. I'm obviously a huge paper fan - and thought this might be a nice thing to offer around the holidays. You get a notepad, a pack of note cards and a calendar - all for the same price as the sum of it's parts, except that we wrap it up with some cool ribbon and attach a gift tag. Love the blue tissue with this little package, too.

Busy Busy

Don't mean to be tooting my own horn here - but as a small card company, to see all these boxes lined up ready to go is pretty exciting - and making us a little nutso around here. Thank you, DailyCandy! The shipping bonanza continues today as we spread the L&H love with red & green pigs, moose notepads and 2008 Calendars.

Love a Great Deal

DailyCandy asked us to be part of their DailyCandy Deals email. I had no idea they even had a deals email, but I of course said yes and then signed myself up! Every Tuesday they send out an email featuring a few products at a discount of at least 25%. So get all the Linda & Harriett goodies your heart desires - and when you sign up for Deals, you'll get 25% off. Happy Tuesday!

Turkey Success

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We cooked our very first turkey and I'm happy to report it didn't totally suck. It was quite good actually! We brined the thing for a good 15 hours before and then cooked it for about 5 hours. It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. But the whole giblet thing? Woaaa, didn't see that coming. I stupidly didn't take any photos of our prized bird, but did manage to capture the pretty pecan pie. Yum! My sister also made pumpkin bars - a recipe from the Magnolia Bakery cookbook. Enough said.

Happy Thanksgiving

Flour Sack. Scottish Shortbread. Olive Oil. Bread Dough. Colors from Martha.

Off to do some painting of my own. Great timing before hosting Thanksgiving, Liz! Way to go. Let's hope I'll have some good things to share come Friday.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Teresa Green Design

I love getting packages in the mail. Yesterday, I got a great one from my sister who lives in London. She went to Origin The London Craft Fair that was going on last month and had designer Teresa Cole for Teresa Green Design make this tea towel for me. Here she is thinking about me when she's about to give birth to her fourth child any day. So sweet. It made my day. Thanks, K - I love you!

The Swell Season

A-mazing.

John and I went to see The Swell Season (Glen Hansard from the Frames and Marketa Irglova) last night at Beacon Theatre. Oh my goodness. I had chills the whole time. I first heard these two talented voices in the movie Once and was immediately in love. And last night, they did not disappoint.

If you haven't seen Once, you must. And if you haven't heard The Swell Season, listen here.

A Yummy Invitation

It may be a bit too early for this kind of posting - since this week is all about turkey, cranberry sauce and stuffing - but I had to share this oh so sweet invitation we recently did for a four year old's gingerbread house decorating party. I wish I had had fun parties like this when I was four. Or now.

Long Live the Square!

There was an interesting article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal regarding the surcharge on square envelopes and how the shape is declining in sales because that extra 17 cents postage is just so darn annoying - extra stamps, but how much more?, having cards returned for extra postage. (Been there, too? Annoying!)

I'm a huge fan of the square. Square paintings, square photographs, and absolutely cards & envelopes. I love the composition a square allows for. It's more interesting to me. A colored envelope in my mailbox is a treat. A square colored envelope is a sweet treat. The Post Office, more specifically the machines at the Post Office, don't get this. Literally. They reject any square envelopes as "unmailable" which results in a person having to hand-sort these envelopes. Hence, the 58 cents postage required to mail square envelopes.

In the article the manager of a post office in Buffalo, NY had this to say about why the machines can't do squares:

Rectangular envelopes are always knocked down by sorting machines onto one of two long, stable edges. Ink detectors find the stamps: front or back, upper right or lower left. It then takes only two steps -- flip and turn -- to line them up for a computer to read addresses and spray on bar codes.

But squares land on any one of four edges, not two. So for half of them, mathematically, finding addresses takes four steps. When the machines fail, humans get involved -- at a cost, Mr. Mazurkiewicz explained, of $52-per-thousand envelopes instead of $4.

Read more from the article in the WSJ here.

[photos courtesy of Barry Newman for the Wall Street Journal]

Gingerbread Ma-

I saw this little guy on Etsy yesterday and had to share. I think he would make a very cute and guilt-free holiday present (not to mention completely unexpected and pretty funny) to send someone in the mail.

Quick comment on Project Runway

I really wish Elisa had been OUT. What was up with the grass-staining in the beginning? I shuddered at the thought that these materials were, in total, $50,000 and she was running it through the grass. And then the train? I'm thinking she won't last long.

Yesssss!

I was going to start this off with, "I have to admit", but I don't feel badly for loving this show and in starting off with saying I "have to admit" something is just an attempt to make myself feel better - and would actually undermine the quality of this show. And again, I don't feel badly about it, so I'm just going to say it like it is: I'm a HUGE Project Runway fan. I love love love it!

The contests are fantastic. Seeing how people approach the same challenge differently is 100% entertaining for me. I've been reading about this season, and it seems like it's going to be a good one.

Tune in for the season premiere tonight at 10pm on Bravo.

Sketchbook Envy

I've always tried being a sketchbook person - carrying it around with me, hoping I'll whip up some great drawings. But it's never stuck. I do carry a notebook wherever I go, but it's mostly filled with lists - to-do lists and idea lists along with the occasional stream of consciousness which I love to do on a subway ride. It's amazing how quickly your brain works while your hand tries so hard to keep up.


I came across these sketches from Paris Breakfast. Oh how I wish my hand could move like this. Plus, I'm dying to go back to Florence where I lived for 4 months in college - so these images of Venice really tug at my heart.

Under the Weather

My apologies for the thin postings. We're feeling a bit under the weather around here. Mostly John. Which means I'm on soup duty. More to come shortly.

Fridays with John: On music and art (and Wilco)

Those who know me--and now those who don't--know that my favorite band is probably Wilco. Thankfully Liz largely feels the same way, and this has allowed me to see some of my favorite concerts with her. If I take care of tickets and plan travel (more than usual I suppose), she'll usually happily come along. Most recently this brought us only a few miles away to Greenpoint, Brooklyn, but a few years ago we built a week's vacation around 2 of their shows, one at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival and the other at Red Rocks.

Many bands sell posters at their concerts, but I am particularly drawn to the ones Wilco sells at their shows. They are all produced in limited quantities (~300) and designed by a variety of independent designers and design studios. They usually sell from $20-30 and when I've bought them, I feel that I am purchasing art and not an overproduced commodity that would have sold for the same price. Wilco's tempered level of success may lend to this. Their shows almost always sell out, but their audiences (and venue capacities) number in the low thousands and sometimes high hundreds. Numbers that make selling a limited edition product sensible--from a business and logistics perspective. I get why U2, the Rolling Stones, and Bruce Springsteen don't do this (at least today), but it's also why people aren't clamoring for them with the same passion.

Common theme's for Wilco's posters have included animals (birds, fish), Industry (appliances, factories, architecture, old bathtubs), and nature (plants, trees, flowers). Sometimes their combination makes for a forced or even tired juxtaposition, but when it's gotten right, I think they're powerful images that document much more than 1 concert on 1 night.

You can see much more of what I'm talking about here at Wilco's own shop and here at Expresso Beans, a music posters community. Hope you like what you see. Have a great weekend.

I mean....

How is it that J.Crew has so many darn cute photos? I get an email from them every other day with some perfectly composed photo that makes me think that a canary yellow winter coat is a great idea.

AND - I just went to their site to copy the link, they have a short intro clip of behind the scenes footage of a photo shoot. Maybe I'm really behind on this feature, but I think it's very smart. Check it out here.

Updated Note Cards Page

The look of a website is very important to me - it keeps me there or kicks me out. I recently decided that I wanted to change the images on our note cards section - but wasn't sure about the backdrop. My inclination was to go with white - but then things kind of disappear, especially when our cards have so much white already. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out - especially the patch-like effect and texture of the wooden planks.

But what do you think? Is seeing the whole card better than the thumbnails?

A Shared Passage

After reaching out to you all for a book suggestion, I picked up Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. And like the rest of America (and Oprah), I'm loving it. I had to share this passage. A little preface: After a terrible divorce and feeling the lowest of all emotional lows, she's on a personal voyage. She's in India at this point and has decided she "will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore." I get this completely and had to share it.

Read on here: (click image to enlarge it)

Trio of Lindas

I was putting some personalized note cards together and had to take a picture of this one. I love the Linda design - and paired with a sweet name like Grace makes this a pretty darn cute trio.

Who Were You Expecting, Emily Post?!

I was recently asked by The Daily Obsession to comment on thank you notes. I am by no means an authority on etiquette (read on...) and was feeling pretty guilty about even responding because I, myself, have not written a lot of our long-overdue wedding thank you notes! I'm ashamed - but, yes, it's true! I'm a terrible terrible person. And even more so because I'm going to follow it up with, what else, an excuse!

My computer died earlier this year, and I lost everything. All of my work until that point - all illustrations, all InDesign, Photoshop, Word and Excel files - gone. And along with my precious three years of work was our crazy super duper Excel spreadsheet titled, Master Guest List. This was our list of those invited to our wedding, those attending, what day they were arriving, what they were eating, where they were sleeping, and what gift they so generously gave us and on what day. And when this list disappeared into Cyber La-La Land, so did my motivation to thank anyone. Terrible. But sadly, very true.

So what follows is my attempt to have an opinion on thank you notes - which I think are the just about the nicest, most gracious way to show appreciation and gratitude. And in my defense, barring the whole wedding list/thank you note mishap, I'm pretty good:)

You should send thank you notes that are appropriate. To me, this means 1) you actually like the card you're sending, 2) the card matches the the reason for the thank you note in formality/design, and 3) the tone you use reflects the level of relationship you have with the person you're thanking. If you barely know this person, it's completely okay to keep it short and sweet. A gesture, if you will. (This goes very far. Who poo-poos someone for sending a thank you note? No one.) If you're thanking a good friend or close family member, feel free to throw in some humor (I must add here: ONLY IF you are a person who jokes anyway - your thank you note is not the time to play stand-up). But most importantly - don't be fake. I attribute this to all letter-writing - but be gracious and heart-felt without gushing to Aunt Betty that the cookie sheets she gave you at your bridal shower are the best gift you've ever received. No they're not. And Aunt Betty knows they're not too. But perhaps in addition to the nice cookie sheets, you're grateful she was able to be there or very sorry she missed it. That might be something Aunt Betty would like to hear and appreciate.

Storefront Feature: { cotton }

Part of why I love the retail side of this business is getting to know the store owners and seeing how they represent themselves online, since I haven't physically been to most of the shops.

So starting now, I'm going to start featuring some of these stores and store owners - giving you a little snapshot of the brick and mortar shop and the people who run it.

I'm starting with one that I think has one of the most beautifully put-together websites and photographs out there: Cotton located in Laguna Beach, California. I met Mindy at the National Stationery Show and am thrilled to be represented in her new shop - because her store looks just beautiful and because Mindy is such a lovely person herself!

I can't wait to visit someday! But until then, I'll drool over these photographs.

[photographs by Trever Hoehne for cotton]

NYC Marathon 2007

Yesterday was one of my very favorite days of the year in New York City. The NYC Marathon. I love and thrive off of the energy out there - of those pounding the pavement and of those watching, cheering, high-fiving anyone who's up for it. It's an incredible feat - for first-timers and many-timers alike - and still gets me choked up year after year.

It was especially meaningful yesterday because my dear friends Lizzy and Jenny ran their first marathon! It was thrilling be able to see them at our corner in Brooklyn - and then to jump in at mile 20, along with Lizzy's sister, and run the last 6.2 with Lizzy. I felt like a complete poser - but was happy to be playing the role of team support.

Problem is, I've got the bug now. It's been three years since I ran the 26.2 in NYC myself and now I want it again. Next year - game on!

Congratulations Lizzy & Jenny!! You did it!!!!!

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Updating the website with some new photos... this is a good Friday one.

Have a good weekend.

Fridays with John: Hi there. (And 6,454,770 people can't be wrong.)

Every blog seems to have a voice--and just like the real world--when 2 people speak at once there can be some confusion. That's why I'll only be here on Fridays and my contributions (and voice) will hopefully be distinct enough to add variety, but not clutter. Before joining L&H full-time, I worked in advertising for 5 years, so some of my posts may head in that direction. You may also see me talk about: music, bikes (ask Liz to tell you about my collection), Kingsley, small business accounting (I'm getting there), why I speak Swedish, and where to get the best burger in NYC.

My first post will take you back about 15 years to the world of--believe it or not--Barney and Friends, with a 2007 twist made possible by YouTube and a 17-year old rapper named Soulja Boy whose song was atop the Billboard Charts for 7 weeks in a row (it just fell to #2 today). It's a most unlikely, but entertaining, pairing that's been viewed over 6 million times:



Intrepid video editors (with freetime aplenty) have done the same with SpongeBob, Dora, the Lion King and Pooh.

That's all for today. See you next week.

Our Calendar on decor8

Our letterpressed calendar was posted on decor8's calendar round up. Hooray! We're thrilled to be a part of such a wonderful collection. See the rest here - and don't delay on ordering. Creative Thursday's is already sold out:(

Update! Creative Thursday is not sold out! Marisa told me she had only posted ten of her 35 initially - which all sold out. But she has the rest up on her Etsy shop now. I've already ordered mine because they are flying! Get yours here.

Fridays With John

I saw this recently and sent it to John because it made me think of him. Nice huh? Well, now I think I may have to put all his internet tinkering to some use on this blog. It's a bit of a departure for me to do this - since the content will inevitably be different - but since we're now a business team, I figured it would only be right for the Linda & Harriett blog to have his voice as well.

So starting tomorrow, we are going to feature Fridays With John. John is without a doubt the most resourceful person I know - online. And that's not really a stab - it's just true. He's the master of web content. There's not a show he can't get tickets for, an ebay auction he can't win, or a hilarious YouTube video he hasn't seen. And you'll get your first taste tomorrow. Should be fun.

Black Vodka + OJ = GREEN

Okay - last post about black vodka - swear. I had to follow up on yesterday's post though! You'll notice the glass on the left is separated - the oj on the bottom, the black vodka on top (with a black licorice straw!). The glass on the right has been mixed - and it is green!! It was like a mad scientist experiment. And made the coolest, most goulish drinks.