I started blogging in 2005 as a way to deal with my post-college depression. I had a lot of hair back then.
I share funny stories and life lessons all written in the same down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is fashion that makes me my mom’s favorite blogger.
Cold Snaps (actually called Cold Snap) are an herbal supplement composed of 20 herbs to restore righteous chi. I don’t know what the herbs are or how it works, but I do know that it does. I just had to make a video and tell you all about it — especially when Julia came over with a cold.
What helps with your cold? Continue Reading
I caught the late morning TBS movie this morning, Last Holiday starring Queen Latifah. It was quite good and would have made me inspired to quit my day job and follow my dreams if I hadn’t already done that. But it did give me a boost of inspiration to keep it going.
The TBS feature was Movie and a Makeover which meant that they interrupted the movie a few times to tell us how to do our make up and that we need to run out to TJ Maxx or Marshall’s (the sponsors of the feature) and buy many holiday dresses — or separates that we can wear all year long. Continue Reading
As a small business owner, I am honored to receive email sales pitches for advertising placement, marketing and promotion help, and, in this case, the “Talk of the Town 2010 Plaque of Honor for Excellence in Customer Satisfaction.”
As someone perpetually obsessed with both get rich quick and get rich slow schemes, one of my favorite activities is getting to the bottom of what’s in it for these services.
“Talk of the Town” would have you believe that they evaluate all businesses and that yours came out on top. They interviewed my customers and they love me. The first time I received one of their emails, I was honored.
When you click through from the emails, you find that to showcase this honor, you need to shell out at least $195. An award you pay for? What a deal!
I especially enjoy this quote from their website:
What does the recognition mean to me and my business?
To a business it means everything. It reflects your customer’s opinion of your business and drives new business referrals. You can leverage this award to thank customers, staff and returning and new business development.
In other words, this recognition means nothing, but we’re really good at stringing fluffy sounding words together so that you feel good about what you do and want to give us money.
The funniest part to me is that someone took the time to put this elaborate scheme together. I have nothing but the most profound respect for what motivates con men, but am continually bewildered by their constant dismissal of whatever moral compass they have inside.
They do look like nice plaques, though. Maybe I’ll ask for mine for Christmas.
I heard a tale of a man named Saint-Simon. Every morning his valet would wake him and say, “Arise, sir!! You have great things to do today!”
We can’t all have a valet to wake us with such inspiring words. I created this little reminder of how awesome you are out of little bits of a Soap Opera Digest. The high resolution version is below. Download it, print it out, frame it and look at it every day and smile. Or make it your desktop background!
We all deserve to be reminded of how awesome we are as often as possible. The world will conspire to bring us down– let’s work together to stay afloat!
Whenever the Guster is hungry he makes sure I know he’s serious. That’s why I made that brain map of how he thinks the other day. I’m not sure that got across how really and truly strange his behavior turns. Seriously, I think he would bite my face off if I weren’t marginally stronger than he is.
I made a video so that maybe you would help me decide if he really is that weird:
I haven’t upgraded my television. It works fine and my environmental nature winces whenever I consider trading up for a modern, wide-screen version.
Ever since the digital switch I’ve noticed that my shows are cropped badly. The Daily Show is obviously not framed correctly–I regularly miss meaningful gestures of John Stewart’s left hand. We straight up miss jokes on American Dad and the Family Guy because they occur in that region of the show that only wide-screened TVs include.
The other day, I noticed that we were even missing out on part of Jeopardy. In some shots, two out of three of the contestants were practically cut in half! Continue Reading
I was lucky enough to attend a fantastic Thanksgiving for Orphans party my friend Madeleine threw a couple weeks ago, and I met some awesome ladies who wanted to know about my eyeliner. What better way to tell you about it than in a video? When you’re ready, get your LORAC Sparkle Pencil Eye Shadow/Liner here!
Julia Lowenthal says, “My classmates are obsessed with my sandwich keeper! And so am I!”
JenMom says, “I’ve had Tupperware for longer than [Jen’s] been alive, and it’s still going strong. Thirty-five years and it’s still going strong.” Continue Reading
I started out with one twitter account: @jennifer_heller. I think I’ve had it for a little over two years and it’s only within the past year that I’ve started enjoying using it at all. I’ve heard others share a similar experience: it takes some time, but it’s addictive as hell once you get into it. I can attest to that, but as someone balancing many competing priorities, it’s hard to prioritize reading hundreds of tweets a day. Especially since I’ve steadily added other twitter accounts to my list.
When I launched Van Gogh My Pet in the second half of 2009, I added a second twitter account: @vangoghmypet. This one, I thought, would concentrate on my pet and art related thoughts and would attract a different variety of people than @jennifer_heller. It seems to work; @vangoghmypet is on 42 pet and art related lists and my followers have steadily grown.
This graph of Van Gogh My Pet tweets verses website visits suggest that the tweets have very little if not nothing to do with increasing visits.
When I decided to brand my design and communications work as Artsy Geek Designs, it was a natural progression to add another twitter: @artsygeekdesign. Here I would tweet about my geeky subjects–web design, coding, communications. And maybe some art. Hey, @artsygeekdesign and @vangoghmypet can overlap a little right?? A further reason for separating @artsygeekdesign from @jennifer_heller is that I fully intend to expand and work with others in this business. They should be able to tweet from the business too!
I made the decision a few weeks ago to consolidate all my blogging here at www.jenniferheller.com. Believe me, I do not miss maintaining a blog at Van Gogh My Pet, and I can say with 100% certainty that I am not sorry I didn’t add yet another blog on at Artsy Geek Designs.
This January, Will and I are launching Lushes in Love, our new blog devoted to our endless love and appreciation for cocktails. You can check out the design–I put it up over the weekend, but we have yet to move in. I’ve already signed us up for a twitter: @lushesinlove and tweeted something like five high quality tweets. Thankfully, Will will also have to help with the @lushesinlove tweeting, but this addition marks my fourth twitter!
Who wants to follow a long-ass stream of nothing but links? Do you??
Perhaps it would be best to take a cue from my decision to simplify my blogging and simplify my twitter? One twitter, four subjects… perhaps that would make me a more interesting person to follow in general?
Perhaps I should embrace the robotic future of twitter and create automated twitter robots for all four… That just isn’t my style though. I believe in sincere, honest communication. When I notice that someone I follow is being a twitter-bot, I immediately unfollow.
So what to do? Nothing? Consolidate? Automate?
Oh, the problems associated with living a life on the internet. I’d appreciate any sound advice please!!
(This post could also be titled “How many Facebook pages are too many Facebook pages?”)
