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(image via larskflem)

If you’ve been wondering where I’ve disappeared to this past month, here’s the answer: I’ve been dealing with a pretty serious issue, one that’s left me basically incapacitated. No, I’m not talking about swine flu. I’m talking about the dreaded Writer’s Block.

Have you ever felt like you’ve lost your creative mojo? It’s like I’ve run out of steam. For a while I was maintaining three blogs. Besides writing for EAD Living, I had my personal blog and my business blog. I thought I could keep my life separated into neat, little compartments, but that’s turned out to be pretty hard to do. And coming up with topics to discuss on a daily basis for three outlets has suddenly become very overwhelming. Despite living an active life, I find myself blanking out on what to write about when staring at the computer screen. Even writing this post has been challenging!

So I ask you, fellow EAD Living bloggers and readers, how do you unlock your creativity? For those of you who write for several outlets, how do you come up with a multitude of ideas every day?

For a lot of newlyweds the first few months of marriage are spent nesting - carefully unpacking and displaying wedding gifts, inviting friends over for dinner parties, contemplating home decor and getting those new pots and pans dirty in the kitchen. Well, at the end of this week we’ll officially have been married for three months and I can happily admit to largely ignoring all of that thus far. While many of our gifts are stowed away, I still have stacks of glassware and serving platters to contend with and we’ve only had visitors over once. I haven’t even unpacked all of the big bins full of wedding decorations. Those are languishing away stacked up against the back wall of our home office. Instead, I’ve been putting all of my energy into the launch of my new blog The Sweetest Occasion.

A few years ago I began coordinating weddings for friends and family members. I’ve always been obsessed with making and checking items off of to-do lists and I’ve always been obsessed with design - it seemed natural that I sort of evolved into filling this role for loved ones. With my undergraduate degree in architecture, I have an educated understanding of space planning and creating environments that are welcoming visually as well as being highly functional. With a Master of Business Administration, I have a keen awareness of organizational systems, marketing and branding. The more I dabbled in helping friends with their weddings, the more I fell in love with doing so. Somewhere along the way I started blogging and by word of mouth picked up a few clients for coordinating jobs, brides who found me through one blog or another. I got engaged, became fully immersed in the blog world, landed my dream job working for one of the premiere letterpress print shops in the country and have continued my obsession with weddings and events of all kinds as well as for writing, dreaming and inspiring.

All of this culminated in my getting married, going on a honeymoon, getting home and almost immediately pulling together some of the most talented people I know including E, who is not only the mastermind behind EAD but also my dear dear friend, to help me realize my dream of a website that is both supportive of my hopes to continue the fun I have coordinating weddings part time and to give me an outlet for the creativity in my brain, the things that inspire me daily. The Sweetest Occasion will be about all things weddings, of course, but it will also be a source of stylish inspiration for all of life’s many occasions - birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, graduations, dinner parties, July 4th barbecues, surprise 30th birthday parties and so so much more. I would love for you to come visit and tell me what you think - I can’t wait to share with you all the bottled up inspiration I have saved up!

(And, my husband can’t wait for our typically organized house to get whipped back into shape, but that’s another for another post entirely.)

PS  - Of course, I’ll still be here at EADL each week too!

ABCD Design is celebrating it’s SECOND Blog-i-versary on October 7th! I wanted to celebrate in a really big way as a thank you to all my lovely readers. When it comes to birthdays and anniversaries, what would you say is the best part? Yep, you got it. The presents! I figure when push comes to shove - what’s a blog-i-versary without prizes? I am super excited about the first ABCD Design gift because it is…

Since I design stationery for weddings, new babies and other big social events, I figured this milestone in life should be marked with a Bespoke Stationery giveaway! The winner will receive a completely bespoke personal stationery design by (yours truly) ABC Dragoo.

{Read the rest of this entry…}

Darling readers, so sorry for my prolonged absence from EAD Living recently. Things have been mighty busy Chez Rachel & Husband but I hope things are settling down now. Some of the things I have been busy with include but are not limited to:

* London Fashion Week. Miele (or, the washing machine people, as like to refer to them) invited me, along with a few other bloggers, to attend the Jasper Garvida show and these are some of the photographs I have time to download and edit from the camera that Canon were kind enough to lend me:

* As some of you may know, I was made redundant just before our wedding in June. Since then I have been for many interviews but am still not in full time employment. I am however boosting my CV with various unpaid freelance projects including learning the PR ropes in a friend’s new PR business. I also spend every Sunday helping out in a beautiful vintage shop.

* Attending weddings. Aside from our own we have been to a further 4 weddings this summer with another still to come this year and another two at least next year. I do so love weddings and at some point will be writing further about this.

* Watching Gossip Girl. Series 2 suddenly appeared on our TV choice thing and I have to admit, Husband and I have spent a fair few evenings enjoying our new Sunday evening routine: roast dinner and a film/TV evening, together. Turns out GG is a good compromise.

* Cooking. We have started having our vegetables delivered from a local organic farm delivery service and have very much enjoyed the process of cooking more local and seasonal food, together, in the evenings. Turns out that I do a good line in veggie lasagne.

* Hosting birthday parties. With cupcakes and bunting and homemade pizza and pasta. It’s a fun way to host a party: make pizza dough, tomato sauce and plain homemade pasta and ask the guests to bring the toppings.

When written down like that it doesn’t seem too bad but combined with all the usual things one must fit into a week, it’s felt like I’ve barely had time to sleep recently.

I hope you are all enjoying the onset of Autumn/Fall. More to come on that note soon.

xoxo

{…Sentimentality alert…}

When I woke up this morning to do my daily check on EADL, I suddenly realized that the next post would be #500.  And I thought… wow - how lucky am I to be doing this?

Being a blogger, which started very innocently (as I’m sure most others will also tell you), has been such a rewarding part of my life.  I have made so many friends, many of whom blog right here on EAD Living and over on EAD Weddings.  And not only that, but I’m lucky enough to have formed relationships with many of ya’ll reading this.

EAD Living has been an awesome experience so far - it’s a completely different creative outlet from EAD Weddings and I can’t even tell you how much I enjoy reading the posts that the amazing women that are a part of this site create and the comments that you all leave.  As silly as it sounds, every little comment means the world to us bloggers!

So… I’ll just close by saying thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading EAD and being a part of our community. And here’s to more amazing times with you ahead!

xo,
E.

Don’t forget to enter the Stinkerpants contest either {here} or {here} before tomorrow at noon CT!

I puffy pink heart Sara from Stinkerpants Designs. She’s so sweet and uber-talented and her hand-drawn stationery is just to die for!

This week, EAD and Stinkerpants are teaming up to give one lucky EAD winner a sweet prize - your choice of:

* 100 Save the Dates
* 100 Thank You Cards
* 1 Framed Family Portrait
* or 100 Holiday Cards!

Just check out this cuteness!

So how do you win? You’ve got up to four chances to enter. You can:

• Leave a comment on this post
• Blog about the contest and link to EAD and Stinkerpants Designs (leave a link here to let us know you blogged about it!)
• Become a fan of Stinkerpants Designs on Facebook
• Tweet about the giveaway (make sure to include the hashtag #stinkerpantsEAD and link to this post or it doesn’t count! And while you’re at it, follow @stinkerpants and @amiatead and say “hi” to us!)

We’ll pick a random winner from all of the entries on Friday - contest closes at 12PM CT.

Good luck!
E.

… to Laura, comment #16, our winner in the Hard Cards giveaway!

Have you ever pointed something out to a friend and been unsuccessful in getting them to give your recommendation a try? And then months later they come to you and say “I just started using that thing you suggested and I love it! I can’t believe I didn’t start using it earlier!”

This is my friend Megan, and recently she said those very words to me concerning Google Reader.

But this post isn’t about Megan, it’s RSS feeds, and how to utilize them like my friend Megan did. It’s written for those of you who are the Megans of my life, thinking it’s best not to take my brilliant advice. I’m hoping I can help you understand why you might want to change your mind.

First, let’s talk about what an RSS Feed is.

Actually, let’s not talk about it because it’s all very confusing. If you try to understand how to use RSS feeds that way you will hear words like “metadata” and “XML” and that is more than we need to know.

So instead we’ll focus on who has an RSS Feed, because I think if you understand who/what type of blogs have them, you will better understand how you use them. RSS Feeds are utilized by website with revolving content. Blogs, news sites, YouTube, etc. Basically any site that is consistently updating with new information or content.You know a site has an RSS feed when it has an orange square in the righthand corner of the address bar (Firefox), or when you see the little button that looks like this turn orange (Internet Explorer).

Does that make sense?

Some of you are already utilizing RSS Feeds on your Blogspot blogs (probably without even knowing it). This is my friend Jill’s blog, and on the righthand side you can see the words “My Blog List”. Underneath that she has a list of her friends’ blogs (including me cuz Jill and I are like BFF). Under each blog titles sits the title of their last post, and the names are arranged in order of the last time a person posted. This is all done through the magic of RSS feeds.

{Read the rest of this entry…}

Hello! EAD readers! I am Carlene and I am so happy to be on EAD to share everything I can with all of you all. If you’ve gotten a chance to read my little blog, You Love Me & Its Heavenly, you’ve already gotten a chance to know me. If you haven’t then let me introduce myself. I’m a twenty-something, a Graphic Designer Extraordinaire, Southern California native and on September 20, 2008, I married a handsome Canadian named Sonny. Oh! And let’s not forget…I have 4 dogs that are all so very spoiled and absolutely useless.

Being a newly-wed has so far been an adventure. Sonny and I are almost coming up to our 1st year anniversary and we just can’t believe how the year has gone by so fast. As a new wife I have learn many things about my husband. Like, he dislikes Chipotle, Pad Thai and whole tomatoes. And I have a discovered a new nack I have for crafts and do it yourself projects. This is mostly due to my new sense of frugality that has developed since the early stages of our wedding planning.

I by no means think I am an expert on “living”. And I am sure we all have 100 different spaghetti and meatball recipes and can all say ours taste the best. All I offer is a connection from myself to you. Maybe you’ll read something I did and get inspired to do it or you’ll write a comment on a common experience we both share and I’ll be hearten by your words. Living life and sharing it is something we all strive to do!

I’ve have been a huge fan of EAD since before time and have often used EAD as a remarkable tool of inspiration. I hope to contribute just as much creativity, thoughtfulness and heart as many of the EAD Contributors have done.

That’s all I got for now. Thanks for having me!

xoxo,
Carlene