Category Archives: partner campaign

National Blog Posting Month, partner campaign, Shopping, sponsored

Beautify your home and give back with Macy’s Heart of Haiti

11/25/2015 Nichole 2 Comments

In 2010, a massive earthquake hit Haiti. It destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, leaving behind a devestated country. Shortly after the earthquake, Macy’s reached out to artisans in Haiti to create the Heart of Haiti product line, which includes handcrafted goods such as bowls, trays and vases.

Macy’s now employs 550 artisans in Haiti to make the Heart of Haiti line, including the talented soul who made the black-and-white vase they shared with me. It’s made of papier mache, and it puts the chili pepper I made in high school to shame. The Heart of Haiti papier mache items are made by crafters and artisans in the seaside town of Jacmel. They start by forming a mold out of dried mud, then use recycled cement bags to make the vase. Check out this video of the artists in action.

I’d like to share with you how artfully I incorporated the vase into my home decor, but instead I’ll tell you the truth: There is no such thing as “artful” when it comes to me and home decor. I thought the vase deserved something more than what I could offer it, so I took it to our friendly local crafting emporium, where floral designer Angie helped me.

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When I say Angie “helped me,” what I mean is I followed Angie around and said things like “sparkly but not crazy” and “maybe some red” and “I’d like to leave it up ’til February, so wintery but not too Christmasy” and finally “Holy cow that looks great, how did you do that?” Thanks to the Heart of Haiti artists and the very patient Angie, I now have a striking addition to my winter decor.

heartofhaitivase1

The Macy’s Gifts that Give Back initiative is a beautiful and simple way to give back this season. You can decorate your home and buy gifts for your own friends and family while helping these artisans care for their families. It’s a win-win! The Heart of Haiti line is available online and at select Macy’s stores (Herald Square in Downtown Brooklyn, Downtown DC’s Metro Center, Chicago’s State Street, San Francisco’s Union Park, Downtown Seattle, Dallas Gallaria, Downtown Portland OR, Atlanta’s Lenox Square, Dallas Galleria Mall and Miami Dadeland).

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post for Macy’s Heart of Haiti line in conjunction with Everywhere Agency.

Music, partner campaign, reviews

Joy Williams embraces new sounds and raw emotions on “Venus”

06/02/2015 Nichole 1 Comment

Joy Williams’ new record, “Venus,” is a breakup album — or, as Williams calls it, “a break-through album” — but it goes beyond heartache. You can almost hear Williams working through her emotions, dealing with the expectations placed on her specifically and women in general and meditating on what it means to challenge those expectations. It’s about picking up the pieces, reassembling yourself into something familiar but new and then moving along with your life on your terms.

The imagery in some of the songs — the ghostly whispers and raven’s feathers in “Before I Sleep,” for example, and the thorny crowns of the broody, atmospheric “The Dying Kind” — would be right at home on an album from Williams’ now-defunct duo The Civil Wars. Aurally, the strongly syncopated “Venus” is largely a departure from the duo’s old-timey, folksy sound.

Williams says she initially played the songs on the album with an acoustic guitar before her “love of Massive Attack, Annie Lennox, Portishead, Kate Bush and hip-hop” moved her to try out some different production styles. I’m not sure where Portishead fits into the mix, but I can hear a little Annie Lennox and even a very light bit of hip-hop in the production.

“The Dying Kind” in particular kind of sounds like Galadriel left Middle Earth and teamed up with Justin Timberlake to make a record. Which isn’t a coincidence, exactly, as Timberlake introduced Williams to her co-writer and producer Matt Morris and thus left what she calls his “invisible fingerprint” on the record.

In addition to the eerie-but-catchy “Before I Sleep,” I was particularly drawn to “Welcome Home” and “You Loved Me.” “Welcome Home” is an achingly pretty song. Williams has a beautiful, lilting voice, and the song is all strings and lyrics like “come inside from the cold and raise your weary soul” and “you’re wanted, you’re not alone.” “You Loved Me” sounds like a lullaby, but it’s a very melancholy one; “I had all the answers; it was easier than facing the dark.”

Overall, it’s a strong, empowered record. But the album does have a couple of tracks I’m not crazy about. “Not Good Enough” is the record’s most pop-country sounding track, with a little bit of Celine Dion warble thrown in. Neither pop-country nor Celine is my favorite, and it’s my least-favorite song on the record. Likewise, while I appreciate the sentiment behind “Woman (Oh Mama),” I found both the lyrics and the production a bit overdone:

I can’t find links to videos for anything else on the album, but you can preview it at iTunes and/or Amazon. “Venus” comes out on June 29.

Disclaimer: I participated in the Joy Williams “Venus” album review program as a member of One2One Network. I was provided an album to review but all opinions are my own.

Flotsam / Jetsam, partner campaign, sponsored

I fought the cat and the cat won (but so did I, eventually, so I guess it was more of a draw)

10/01/2014 Nichole 2 Comments

This time last year we were heading into battle. It was a battle for the ages against a foe I doubted we’d ever overcome. It was a fight for olfactory purity, and it was being waged in our home.

It started in the darkest corners of the basement, where neighbor cat Boo Radley (yes, really) liked to sit in the window wells and taunt JJ T. Cat. It smelled musty, sure, but “Hey,” I told myself oh-so-naively, “that’s just what basements do.”

I didn’t put two and two together until JJ brought the fight upstairs and I witnessed him at work.

JJ was spraying.

I didn’t know it yet — not until I bought a little black light and investigated just like I was Horatio Caine and JJ was a Miami uber-criminal — but JJ was spraying everywhere. The walls. The front door. The filing cabinet. And most hideously of all? He was spraying into the heat register in Pete’s bedroom. (We discovered that when we turned the heat on for the first time last fall and suddenly the kid’s room smelled like the swamps of Dagobah.)

We were at war against the cat, and the cat was winning.

A little Google research let us know that the war would have to be waged on two fronts simultaneously. I couldn’t make the house smell clean if JJ was still spraying, and JJ wasn’t going to stop spraying until the house smelled clean again. So I set to work cleaning every surface — Pledge wipes on the walls, carpet deodorizer on the floors and Nature’s Miracle Urine Destroyer on every surface — and we took JJ to the vet for a checkup.

The cleaning worked well. The vet? Not so much.

JJ was perfectly healthy, the vet said, but nothing was going to make him stop spraying. He was unhappy being inside, where the neighbor cat could taunt him at will. We had a choice to make: JJ could be an outdoor cat, or we could have a funky-smelling house of horrors. Emotionally, it was a difficult choice to make. I never wanted an outdoor cat. It’s dangerous out there. But logically, I knew what we had to do.

JJ T. Cat has been outside for almost a year now. I’ll admit to missing his presence inside every now and then. He was an excellent snuggler. But now he’s the king of the yard. Boo Radley keeps his distance, and JJ gets to lounge on the sidewalk to his heart’s content. He also has his own private entrance to his suite in the garage, because it gets cold here in the winter and I have a softish heart.

It was a tough decision to make, but you know what? I’m really looking forward to the house still smelling clean after I turn the heat on this year.

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post for Acorn: An Influence Company‘s #SmellsClean campaign. The “sponsored” part means money and some product changed hands. Acorn didn’t tell Nichole what to write, though, which was probably obvious as they almost certainly wouldn’t have suggested that she write about flying cat urine.