Merry Christmas 2012

Christmas seemed to creep up on my husband and I this year, but we're both excited to be able to spend some time off, with our family and friends. We'll be bouncing around between Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island, and are very thankful that we don't have to fly anywhere!

Both the Believe Notes and Designers Care shops are currently closed, and will be re-opening in January with some much needed changes and streamlining. I'm enjoying the slight break and am using the time to catch up and realign. The end of this year has been both amazing and challenging, but full of growth and learning. There are lots and lots of things I'd love to blog about, I'm hoping to find some time to sit and write in the next few weeks.

I hope, for those of you that celebrate, you have a wonderful Christmas that filled with love and laughter!

PS - I have about 10 of my personal holiday cards left, so if any of you would like one, please just email me your address (believenotes@yahoo.com) and I'd be happy to send it your way

Holiday Cards Now Available at Minted!

One of my favorite parts of being a stationery designer is having the joy of Christmas in May. Yes, I said May. You may not realize just how much work goes into designing holiday cards every year, so trust me when I say it's a lot of work. As a designer, I'm thinking about the holidays all year round, and it's always SO much fun when Minted has their holiday challenges in the Spring. It's such a blast to play holiday music in warm weather with the windows open. My neighbors must think I'm crazy.

Anyway, I have two designs that will be for sale this year through Minted. Snowy Man is a fun, simple design featuring a little snowman and simple type.

I'm so excited that Snowy Man is now available, and if you're one of those super organized go-getter types that started buying presents last year, well now's a perfect time for you to start thinking about your holiday cards!

Post Holiday Update



Miss Juliet, waiting for company, at my parents home, on Christmas morning


Thank you, everybody, for making this holiday season such a great one! Business was booming, music was playing, and love was overflowing. I'm actually a little sad about taking down all of my holiday card listings from the shop - but they'll be back next year, and believe it or not, but I'm already thinking up new ideas for the holiday 2012 line!
For those of you that remember my previous posts (here and here), where I gushed over all the white and gold watches, I'm excited that now only does he actually read my blog, but that my husband also took the hint & I'm now sporting a new Michael Kors watch! It's the silicone/rubber banded one I lusted for in this post; and despite the bad reviews, I am absolutely in love with it. *Sigh*, I might just have to buy myself a second watch, that isn't silicone, just to make sure this one doesn't get too worn.

Anyway, we spent our holidays with friends and family, jumping from house to house to house. I love seeing everybody, but I am definitely wondering when we'll be able to stay in one place for an entire festivity. The jumping around is exhausting. Maybe someday I'll have a big enough house to host EVERYBODY in.
Hope you’re all enjoying your after-holiday-lull! I’m sure enjoying the time to catch up and relax!

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

This is my husband and my first Christmas together, and we've already spent lots of time baking cookies, decorating our home, eating said cookies, wrapping gifts, and listening to cheesy holiday music. Today and tomorrow we'll be spending time with our big ol' family, and we're darn happy to do so!

Merry Christmas to all! I hope you're surrounded by love and joy this holiday season!

A Moment With Believe Notes...

Right now it's about 7:30am on a Saturday morning. That's a sin, I should be sleeping at this time on a day off! But no, I'm not sleeping, I'm working hard to get a few last holiday orders out the door and in the mail by noon.

For me, the past two weeks have been a little head-spinningly busy. Hence the lack of blog posts. I've been teaching classes at the day job, and the end-of-semester rush at grad school has included 2 in-depth research papers, a few group projects, and two finals. I'm almost done though...just one final left! (wish me luck, please!)

Christmas is in full swing here at the casa de Mangiolino. Our tree is up (and hasn't fallen, not even a once!), Trader Joe's has their Dark Chocolate Peppermint Joe-Joe's on the shelf, Juliet has on her red velvet color (thanks Mom!), and tonight we make cookies, cookies and more cookies.

I thought I would share a few iPhone shots from the past few weeks:

Hope everybody else is enjoying their holiday, whichever one it is they celebrate!