A giveaway to Celebrate and the OhSoANTSY story Part 1

January 21, 2016

Did you know that nearly 5 years ago Oh So ANTSY was born? On January 31st, 2011 I was living in Austin, Texas and I was over at my boyfriends (husband now!) apartment and I was determined to get an Etsy shop set up.

Just prior to that a friend asked if I’d like to share a booth with her at a local craft show. She suggested I knit some items but I knew that would take way too long. I suggested I used my new jewelry making skills from a class I had taken over the summer. I got to work creating and I was really motivated. I decided I would do it all so that I looked like a legitimate business when I was selling at the show. The first step was getting an online shop up so I’d have a place to send people (since of course they’d be raving about all my designs) and also I needed a name.

I sat down, opened up Etsy, and navigated to the “sell on etsy” page. I was so nervous and excited. I had no idea what to do and I didn’t even have a name picked out. What I did know was that before midnight I would have some version of a shop set up. It was such a big moment for me that I knew I wanted to share it with my birthday month.

At the time I wanted my name to be super clever and all encompassing so I could sell any number of things. I also wanted it to be math related since I have a degree in Mathematics. I had some clever name in mind but it was taken so I went back to brainstorming. Finally I settled on IntegrativeCreations! Awesome! It’s pretty funny now but at the time I thought it was great! With a name finally chosen I could officially set up my shop. I added what few items I had made and photographed and called it a night.

Part 2 will be heading your way later this week. If you’d like to see how my shop looked back then head to my recap of year 1 in business.

Now for the even more exciting stuff! To celebrate OhSoANTSY’s 5 years I’ll be giving away a World Map Necklace! It comes in sterling silver or gold fill and you’ll have your choice of which you’d prefer. To be entered to will all you have to do is comment below and tell me: If you could choose any place to travel to, just for fun, where would it be and why? Giveaway ends on January 30th and I will be sharing my favorite answer and winner on January 31st! For another entry find me on Instagram (ohsoantsy) Good luck!

Also just a heads up! Make sure to sign up for the newsletter (it’s free) and I’ll be sharing a super special newsletter only surprise at the end of next week! Don’t miss out!

A few days in Porto

January 14, 2016

The holidays took over and I realized I didn’t share the rest of my honeymoon with you! I really, really loved Porto, as I knew I would, and am excited to show you some of my favorite things about our time there. First up the PORT! We had port every day we were there. We did a tasting early on at one of the markets which turned out to be even more exciting than we could have planned. As we sat there we witnessed a group of film students running through the narrow aisles making a film and soon after a band of musicians lively playing their songs. It was great to see how excited even the merchants were as the band played. They even joined in on the port tasting when they were done playing.
The next day we did a tasting at one of the port makers and a tour of the caves in the evening-followed by another tasting-like I said lots of port. The following day we went to Kopke and tried a 1983 vintage tawny port (shown above). We had a very philosophical conversation about drinking something older than the both of us and then slowly sipped it until it was gone.

We stayed one night in a room with the view above which was quite nice. The morning we checked out we were blessed with the most beautiful rainbow over the river. But when we checked into the place we were staying right on the river I was blown away! We had the best view of everything! It was perfect for people watching, river watching, boat watching, bridge watching, bird watching, everything watching! We joked that we felt like a king and a queen being up on that balcony because everyone walking by was looking up at and taking pictures of the historic buildings we were staying in. With the sun shining on our faces I could have stayed there all day (which we did a lot of but not all day).

We happened to be in the city during Halloween which I figured we wouldn’t be celebrating but when we were on
the other side of the river port tasting we ran across what looked to be Halloween decorations. We wandered in and were told they were indeed hosting a party later on that night. They don’t really celebrate the holiday but they do like to have parties so why not! My thoughts exactly. We didn’t come prepared to dress up so I wore my black top and black pants, put my black eye makeup on to look old and a bit scary, wrapped my scarf around my head and grabbed an apple and poof I was the witch from sleeping beauty or something like that. Not bad. I felt a bit silly walking back over across the river since, like I mentioned, they don’t really celebrate Halloween. The only people I saw dressed up were at the party. The party was slow to get started but eventually it started to fill up and so did the dance floor. We showed off our amazing dance skills before calling it a night.

On our last day we took a walk up to a high point in the city to some beautiful gardens. I was pretty tired by the time we made it up there but I did end up having a nice walk around. Also it was a very nice and warm day-look at all that sun! Eventually we made our way back for some lunch and took a bit of a rest.

On our last night there I insisted we head back to the other side of the river to get some chestnuts. We had them one night and I thought they were the best thing ever! The perfect amount of salty and sweet. I wish I had a bag of them right now. Once we were back in the room and all packed for the next day we just sat on the balcony and tried to soak it all up. I think it worked because if I close my eyes right now I can imagine it perfectly.

I’m 32 and it’s a New Year!

January 6, 2016

I mentioned in the last post but my birthday was on January 1st and I turned 32! Ah! Where are the years going? Haha! Really though I love my birthday and I love celebrating and if you know me you know I will try and keep celebrating through the very end of January.

What I have been contemplating is my need to make the day and surrounding days super important. There is this natural feeling when the new year begins to make goals and work extra hard for the things we want or to contemplate the future and what’s next. These thoughts also come about when we turn a year older. Thinking about what we’ve done up until this point and what we would like to do next. I get a little overwhelmed because for me these 2 events happen at the same time. Therefore I think I place a huge importance on this time of year. Frankly it’s a tad exhausting and has me wanting to do nothing. Yikes.

Luckily I found a few posts to help me not take things so seriously, to add to some of the things I’ve already been enjoying and loving, and using prompts to help further growth and change. Jesse from Style and Pepper talks about adding more “ingredients” to her life so it feels more like whipping up something fun when looking at the new year and not like a chore. I love the 5 simple reminders from The Fresh Exchange-especially the one about cutting yourself some slack-I really needed to hear that. Finally my gal Moorea Seal wrote a book called The 52 List Project and it was featured on Oprah! In case you want to join in the fun but aren’t quite ready to purchase you can find a few of the lists here.

(P.S. These pictures were not taken on my birthday but during the weekend and we were still celebrating so Walker kept saying that the snow was my birthday miracle. I agree! It was simply magic and I could have stayed out and watched it all day but my husband is a Texan and he got cold. Haha!)

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