I don’t know about you but I take in a lot of information throughout the course of the week. And with my curious mind wanting to know random facts or how things work I end up on some interesting, weird and sometimes far out sites. Link-O-Rama is a series I am going to try to keep up every Friday to document my freaky findings of a week on the web. Maybe you will find something that interests you or something will spark your creativity. Either way I think it will be a great time.

♥ Love Canadian photographer Lissy Laricchia’s set of Weather Channel photos on flickr. (photo above) They make me want to travel.

♥ Beautiful new to me Etsy shop called The Black Feather.  Which is filled with beautiful semiprecious stone delights. She also has a Sweet as a Peach Blog!

♥ Mail Art lovers test your skills with Isavirtue’s Valentine’s Mail Art Content.

♥ Allison of Show & Tell is doing a fun #PhonePhoto Contest through February.

♥ Amy of A is for Ampersand is starting a SELF-LOVE REVOLUTION.  I know I am on the bandwagon.

Find anything interesting on the net this week?

Share the love in the comments with a link!

Have a brilliant, relaxing and someone productive weekend!

If you signed up for the swap and didn’t receive your recipe please let me know!  The postal strike in Canada last year caused a delay on mail and some went missing sadly.  I would be HAPPY to send you another.

Filled Strawberries Recipe from Graci of Life with Chandlerguera.

Two complementary dishes from Pamela of Cappuccino & Art Journal. This is going to be my next cooking adventure because couscous and chick peas are favourites in this house!

Yummy Spanish Omelette recipe from Carla & Olga of PolkaDot Lighthouse. They blog in Spanish too!

I got spoiled and Carla & Olga sent me some sweet treat magnetic bookmarks! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Apple Pie Plate from Joia over at Bliss Your Day in Curacao. Island Fever!

Now if you didn’t read the Fill my Recipe Box post let me fill you in on what is going on here.  I need some help filling in my vintage recipe box and I thought what a better way to fill it then from bloggers, mail lovers and cooking enthusiast.  I don’t know about you but I like to feel that personal connection to the people I chat with online and I know how much joy a pretty piece of mail can bring me so why not share that joy!  And that is how my love for snail mail & food hatched Recipe Swap.  Which is an on going project till my recipe box is all filled up!

How does it work?

• You fill out the form with the:

SUBJECT: Recipe Swap
MESSAGE: Your mailing address. (I will not share your mailing address with anyone) and any allergies or if you are vegetarian or vegan.

• I will handwrite or type with my typewriter one of my favourite recipes and mail it to you along with a blank recipe card for you to send back to me with your favourite recipe.  It’s a win win!

What will be done with the recipes you may ask?

Well I will be taking photos of what I receive in the mail and sharing them on my blog as I am right now.

If I trying one of your recipes I will take photos of my attempt and always link back to you.

I am tossing around the idea of creating a zine with the recipes I recieve again all credit will be given to the recipes used but that is done the road a bit so don’t fret!

I hope to hear from you soon!  

Much Love,

Online:

+ Finish up 30 Days of Blogging from last February. Yeah that’s right it will take me a year but at least I will finish. ha ha
+ Share a recipe I have made every Sunday.
+ Make the final tweaks on my blog. Do you have any suggests to add to that tweak list?
+ Host a Giveaway on my blog since my Blogiversary was January 19. Hurray for 3 years of great blogging! This might have to wait till March though :(

Offline:

+ Have a proper date with Paul
+ Have 2 solid pamper me nights. I’m taking bubble baths, wine and nail painting!
+ Stay on top of all my school work even though it will challenge my little brain.
+ Have a Skype date with my dad. He lives in the Philippines in the winter.

What do you wish to do this February?

Hope you are having a wonderful first day of the month!
Until we meet again.

I was lucky enough to be participate in the Traveling Journal: Around the World that Jessica Mack of Brown Paper Bunny was hosting.   Now you may not know this but the ladies that are part of this project I am sure well aware that I had the book for 6 months which I am really embarrassed about.

When the book got into my hands I was completely stunned with all the creativity and talent I was holding and it brought my own creativity to a screaming hult.   This may sound strange but let me explain.

I compared myself to all the entries before me which brought on HUGE self-doubt that I could even come close to the bar that was set.   This brought me to push the book further down my creative ‘to do’ list to the point where I just wanted to send it to the next person. But giving up is not the answer and where is the growth in that?

Where do I get off comparing myself to others who have worked hard & gone to school to cultivate their creative lives?

I am just exploring my creative side and I can not expect myself to be as good as someone who has been working their craft as a professional for sometime.  That is just foolish, but comparing yourself to others can be can’t it?  We are all unique, have made different chooses to get ourselves to the place we are today.

Comparing yourself will only bombard you with feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt and keep you derailed from your goals.

With all of that being said, I want to say SORRY & THANK YOU to Jessica Mack and all the ladies who are part of this project for being patient with me as I slowly worked through my own lack of self-approval.  Now that I have that off my chest here are the entries that have come before me, below the photo you will find links to the creators!   ENJOY.

BLOG // TWITTER // SHOP

BLOG //

BLOG // TWITTER // SHOP

BLOG // TWITTER

Is there something that you are letting yourself be held back on?

Know that you are not alone!  We all have struggles and being honest with yourself along with some self-love you can jump over any hurdle that is before you.

If I can help you in anyway you just let me know!

Until we meet again. Much Love,

P.S. Need a little more love this morning? Check out Much Love Anna.

Not enough Barbados for you?  Check out my other post:

Sneak peek (iPhone), Barbados with my Holga, and Birthday Road Tripping in Barbados.

Hope you have a warm weekend! Much ♥,

After the mental turmoil I put myself through last year, I took a lot of time to reflect on all things in my life.  After which I have a much clearer vision of the path I am walking down and can really visualise my dreams and the dreams Paul & I have together.  This is such an amazing feeling I want to SCREAM!!!  The sense that everything will be alright is internally calming. (Even though I know full well on a global stand point everything will not be alright, but I can’t fix that machine!)

So this year my resolution is to BE KIND TO MYSELF.  Sounds a little basic doesn’t it? But the way I see it is if I am kind to myself I will have a positive attitude which in turn will help me see the opportunity in everything.

Self-approval & self-acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our lives.

What are your New Years Resolutions?

Well I am off to my first class of web mastering.

Much Love,

Paul’s year on the other hand went much better which balanced out my ‘not so great’ year.  He was the designer for the Battle for Beauty game for the launch of the IE9 browser.  {Nerd Alert: This game was all coded in HTML5. Wicked Video.} He also did a fun animated commercial for a Swiss Company , the commercial  {Take a peek at it you might see me a few times!} for Jay Peak among other small projects that came his way over the year.   All his hard work allowed us to go on two very different life changing adventures to Barbados and Costa Rica.  He really does spoil me!

To celebrate the good, the bad and the beautiful of 2011 here is a quick photo wrap up!

+ Was lucky enough to be snowed in in Manitoba which is no big surprise. So Paul and I got to ring in the new year with one of my best friends along with taking a nice long drive back to Montreal.

+ February I started 30 Days of Blogging Challenge & made it to day 17! {You should peek through them you’ll see some cute baby photos}  I think this February I should finish them up.  And sadly for me my dear friend Clare moved back to Melbourne & I cried a lot.

+ I spent most of my time trying to be Optimistic about the direction things are going in the world.  The best part of March though  was Paul taking me to Barbados, a place he holds dear to his heart as he spent a lot of time there as a child.

+ I sure did turn 28 and created some fun stamps!

+ Took a Magical Bike Ride around Notre Dame Island.  I also spent an afternoon talking with a homeless man. It broke my heart.

+ Busy, busy month June was.  Paul had travel fever after finishing a big gig & lets be honest I always have travel fever.  We made it to NYC for a weekend to visit with my cousin who was up from Mexico City on business.  Plus we went to Costa Rica. AHHH…How the mountains, rainforest and people are calling me back.  This was by far the most life changing trip of my life.  I am going to sit down and write about our day on a farm in Costa Rica which like nothing I had ever experienced.

+ July Paul turned 30 and I wrapped 30 gifts for him.

+ After having the pleasure of hosting The Noble Thiefs and Greg Arcade while they where on tour in Montreal.  I felt so home sick and my parents made it happen for me to come home for a few weeks. Oh Friendly Manitoba how I miss you from time to time.

+ I took the big jump and went back to school after finishing up with my Marketing Degree 5 years ago.  Web Design & Publication was calling my name and I answered.  I also had my first paid photo gig! Photo above is one of the many photos I took.

+ This month seemed like a whirl wind with my first set of exams along with tv crews in our home with Paul being interviewed and traveling for a few interviews.

+ Can we say this month was a blur too?  One thing that sticks out is that we got a LomoKino… just a frame from the first film shot in it!  Movie to come shortly!

+ We spent a weekend in Toronto just after Christmas.  It was delightful to explore a city so close to Montreal and of course we went to see our first NBA game together (of more to come I’m sure!)

Well that wraps up my year in a nice photo nut shell.  Did you do a 2011 wrap up or resolutions post?  I could love to check it out leave a link in the comments section!

With the turn of a new year we must look back and reflect on what we would like to become.   I’ve got some great ‘resolutions’ for myself this year which I will share with you tomorrow.

It’s night night time for me.

Bonne nuit mon amies,

{Photo taken with iPhone & Instagram}

This morning I must say I am loving the fact that I have some HTML & CSS skills. BECAUSE over the weekend while I was trying to fix a few bugs with my WordPress I deleted my whole hand coded site instead. Now you must say to yourself what kind of person does work on their site without backing it up? Well I did have a backup just older than a lot of the major tweaks I made which to say the least made the site look nothing like I had already launched. So a grabbed a theme and made it work for me, just due to lack of time and the fact that I am starting my Web Mastering class this week where I will come up with something even better… so hold onto your britches.

I want to throw some knowledge your way if you find yourself cringe at the thought of lossing your blog.

Katrina over at Pugly Pixel has done some great tutorials on backing up your blogger blog and than how to restore your backups if anything was to happen.

While you are there you should snoop around at her wonderful web graphics and other very helpful tutorials.

Learn from my mistakes I can save you a lot of heartache!

Well I need to get my butt to work. I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.
I will be back in full force bloggin’ mood by tonight. I have a nice list of posts I have been working on behind the senses.

Didn’t get your does of lovin’ this morning?  Check out Anna’s Much Love Monday Post.
Much Love,

I wanted something clean, simple & fully mine. I feel I have achieved that although there is a bit of tweaking left to do. So please snoop around and let me know if you see anything that looks a little funny or out of place.

New thing on the blog you’ll find is Sponsorship spots on my right sidebar. You can read all about what your money will go towards and what you’ll get out of sponsoring The House Of Hearts right over here. Along with simplifying my about page if you don’t find what you are looking for on either of these pages then be sure to write me and ask. I’m always happy to answer questions!

I’ll be back with my 2011 photo wrap up.

Until than much love,

]]> http://www.thehouseofhearts.com/2012/01/a-labour-of-love/feed/ 9 http://www.thehouseofhearts.com/2011/12/maintenance/ http://www.thehouseofhearts.com/2011/12/maintenance/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 17:47:08 +0000 Crystal http://www.thehouseofhearts.com/?p=4830

{ Our Christmas Card }

I have been having some problems with my site as some of you have noticed in your readers that the Polish hackers seem to love me! This is not the kind of love I am after and will be doing maintenance on my site. Which means I will be shutting it down for a few weeks till I can get everything up to top notch shape again.

This is part of the reason I have not been blogging lately as I get so bumped out as soon as I sign in because there is something to fix that a hacker has done. So I’m cleaning house! I’m sorry for those of you that have seen the hacked posts and THANK YOU for still sticking around. If you want to keep up with my shenanigans Twitter is always a good bet!

With that said, I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas surrounded by the ones that you love! And remember this time of year is about giving, so try giving to someone in need, instead of someone that has everything!

Until next year. Much ♥,