What could a parenting book and a book about spontaneous public speaking have in common? Surprisingly, a lot.
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Writing Wedding “Thank You” Notes with Trello
Find more ideas for thank you notes here: 6 tips for writing top-notch thank you notes after your wedding.
While I really enjoy writing thank you notes in general, when it comes to writing them in bulk… it can be a little overwhelming. There’s no shortage of etiquette guides for thank you notes for your wedding (these were my favorites), but it can be a bit harder to find tips on how to keep track of it all.
I used Trello to stay organized while I was writing my thank you notes, and it was really helpful! If you have a stack of thank you notes to write, I’d definitely recommend giving it a try. I’ve written up this guide based on my experience, but everyone works a little differently, so feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest.
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6 tips for writing top-notch thank you notes after your wedding
I typically try to post to my blog at least once each month, but I didn’t get around to it last month. I was too busy with a different writing endeavor: finishing off the thank you notes from my wedding.
After all of the excitement of the wedding and the honeymoon, writing thank you notes definitely felt like work. I admit I procrastinated, but I still managed to get them all in the mail just over a month after the wedding. Words cannot describe how happy I was when I dropped them off at the post office!
The weird thing about going through a wedding is that you gain all of this knowledge and experience, but, ideally, you’re never going to have to use it again. Since I will hopefully never need to write scores of thank you notes at once again, I’m sharing a few of the things I’ve learned here, in the hope that it might be helpful to someone else.
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“So, do you feel married yet?”
I’m writing this from the airport on my way to my honeymoon, two days after my wedding. In the past 40 or so hours, the question that keeps coming up, from both others and myself, is this: “Do you feel married?”
How I’m using technology to get more sleep
The basic tenets of good sleep hygiene are pretty well established, but actually following through with them is a different story altogether. Sure, I know that I should stay away from screens before bedtime and go to bed and wake up around the same time each day, but actually having the discipline to follow that advice isn’t that easy.
Although some may say that technology is at least partly to blame for these problems in the first place, I’ve been able to use technology to help me get to bed on time. And while I definitely have room to improve in other areas of sleep hygiene, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned so far in case anyone is struggling with this.
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Wedding Planning Mid-Point: 9 Things I’ve Learned So Far
I got engaged in February, and with my wedding coming up at the end of July, I’m a little past the half-way point of my engagement. Since I’ve struggled to write a real blog post this month, I thought I’d reflect on the journey so far and jot down some of the things I’ve learned.
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Remembering Tahirih on International Women’s Day
When I remembered that today was International Women’s Day, I immediately thought of Tahirih.
Tahirih was a 19th century poet and religious scholar, renowned for both her beauty and her intelligence. She was one of the first followers of the Báb, the forerunner to Bahá’u’lláh (the founder of the Bahá’í Faith), and she’s one of the religion’s great heroines. She was ultimately executed for refusing to give up her faith, and I can never tell the story of her final words without tearing up: “You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women!”
It’s not uncommon for Bahá’í parents to name their daughters after Tahirih, either as a first or middle name, and when I first became a Bahá’í, I actually felt a little jealous that I hadn’t been named after this impressive woman. But, as it turns out, I was. Sort of.
Let me explain.
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How Instagram helped me develop a joyful attitude toward fasting
Today is the first day of the Bahá’í month of fasting. The Bahá’í calendar is so awesome that it really deserves its own blog post, so I shall provide only a brief explanation here. The Bahá’í calendar consists of 19 months, with the final month spent fasting. During the fast, Bahá’ís abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset, making the arrival of the new year even more joyous.
This is my 11th year fasting, which is hard even for me to believe. The first year, I worried about everything. Then, after that, I found a breakfast that worked for me and ate it every day of the fast. That was typically oatmeal, Greek yogurt with berries, a hard-boiled egg, and half an apple sliced with peanut butter. It didn’t seem like a big deal to eat the same thing every day because, at that time, I ate the same thing every day for breakfast anyway: oatmeal in the winter and Greek yogurt in the summer.
But when you really love food, having only one meal that varies for three weeks gets a bit dull. So, in 2015, I decided to do things a little bit differently.
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How I got my dream job
I write to you from a small but stylish hotel room in New York. I’m here to spend a week in a Product Management course at General Assembly to prepare for my new role as an Associate Product Manager at Trello. Before this opportunity was announced, if you had asked me to write down exactly what I wanted to do next, it basically would have been this job description.
I haven’t always been this happy in my career. Just two years ago, I was pretty miserable. I was in a professional setting that was not a good environment for me, and I was just a few weeks away from being unemployed. I felt hopeless, without a chance of ever finding a better situation.
So I how did I go from despondent to dream job? Well, to be honest, it involved a lot of luck. But maybe there’s something in the story that can be of use to someone else, and with that hope in mind, here’s how it happened.
Feelings are hard sometimes
Earlier this evening, I started crying while on the phone with my boyfriend, for reasons I couldn’t articulate either to him or to myself.
Jared handled it pretty well. He apologized for having insulted Love Actually, which wasn’t why I was crying, but I’ll take the bonus apology anyway, as it was a pretty serious offense.
Eventually, we decided to put the conversation on pause and give me some time to deal with my surprise case of feelings.
Caity Thinks 