Soulful Giving...

With this New Year I am extremely excited about the changes at Soul of the Rose Gifts. We have decided to become a dedicated giving boutique! What that means is that we now tithe 10% of all our sales to charitable organizations! Soulful Giving is what we call it and it is now the foundation for our business.

We pledge to positively affect the lives of millions of people one gift after another as we serve our customers by providing wonderful gifts that keep on giving to people in need everyday, making a difference and creating an impact in the world.

This has been a dream of mine and I am so glad that I have been able to put this into action. The start of a new year is a perfect time to initiate this new business plan. Setting this up, I had a great time investigating various organizations as I want to benefit local, national and international organizations. I found a great site called Charity Navigator that proved to be invaluable for researching charities. You may want to check it out to find charitable organizations that speak to the causes that you and your family really want to support.

Make giving a way of life; it completes the cycle of abundance and creates more good in the world!

Happy New Year to All!

A Marriage of Christmas Décor...

Christmas décor is an extremely personal thing. The traditions of holiday décor are often passed down from family to family. People get really opinionated about everything from what type of trees to get to the method of decorating the trees. Some decorate large full trees in a specific monochromatic color scheme with flocking and others delicately fill sparse pine branches with years of elementary school holiday art projects as a sentimental tribute to the children of the home.

I try to just flow with it but I would have to confess that I am sort of a Ballard catalog girl when it comes to holiday décor. I like it elegant but not over the top. The banister is decked with greenery, pine cones and lights. The poinsettias are nestled in their urns gracing the front entry and the mantle is set with soft pine boughs, red berries and elegant golden NOEL letters that hold rich velvet stockings waiting to be filled.

So you might imagine my surprise at finding the “Four Color Fiber Optic Christmas Village” conspicuously perched in my shopping cart one Sunday afternoon while shopping Target with Matt. Now, at the risk of sounding snobbish, this Village is not to be confused with anything remotely like a Department 56 Christmas Village item. It is a little more home spun than that. This is clearly not in my holiday décor road map. It is by all means a detour of taste. However, what makes the FCFOCV so fascinating is that my husband desperately wanted it and the look on his face as he said “I’m getting this”, as though he were some character straight out of Napoleon Dynamite, was so sweet – no one could have resisted.

My husband is extremely careful with his spending habits and he could probably open his very own diamond mine with a bag of charcoal briquettes – if you know what I mean. So the fact that he was helplessly taken by the FCFOCV is quite simply what I adore about him. Matt can preach to you about mutual funds, the advantages of maximizing your 401k, joys of equity, and the intricacies of compound interest, but it only took one captivating look at the Four Color Fiber Optic Christmas Village to soften his heart, proving that there is a Christmas spirit in every one of us.

This weekend I proudly made a space in the family room to display his coveted little find. I found some pinecone studded trees to display behind the little Village and plugged it in. Now every night it glows changing colors from red, green, gold and purple. My husband is happy and I love him to pieces!

I can't believe it is almost Thanksgiving!

As a retailer I am not supposed to say these things. As a matter of fact I should be playing Christmas jingles, shipping orders and sprinkling snowy glitter on everything I touch. Really now…

I don’t know about you but this Holiday thing has really crept up on me. But you know I am always in the mood for Thanksgiving! No, no not the food part. I actually could skip the whole eating part of Thanksgiving and never feel slighted. I like the thanking part of Thanksgiving. I love the idea that there is an entire holiday for being thankful. Just think of how sacred that is! If we don’t get all caught up in the dressing of the turkey and how we are going to please Aunt Vicky with our Martha Stewart spread on the table, but instead take the opportunity to be thankful then it truly is a remarkably spiritual holiday.

Sometimes it can be a tough year and I have struggled to find the thankfulness, I have had years where I was really pulling at straws –“I am thankful that I have not killed my DH.” Or “I am thankful that I can breathe.” Other times the thankfulness just pours over me like an ocean wave and it washes me clean and I am left just laughing and thinking that life is much easier than I make it out to be.

But what is really important for me to do is to learn to be thankful for all of the gifts in my life from the simplest to the most complex because they are all so valuable. I try to be thankful even before I receive life’s gifts, just knowing that good things and experiences abound for me. No matter what I am experiencing – there is someone else who does not have that experience, and so in this way I am blessed and grateful.

I am holding the thought - knowing that good things and good experiences abound for you as well. Happy Thanksgiving to you.

Happy Halloween!

Here are some pictures of Nina's Sweet Sixteen Haloween party. They had a good time I guess
because they staid until 12:30 am!

Nina's little graveyard in the backyard complete with ghost!

The witches den...

Mummy head on a platter!

Have a safe Halloween!

California On Fire!

First off I need to say that I am grateful and thankful for all that I have and for the fact that we are not directly in harms way and that we have not lost our home. Not everyone here can say that. With more than a half million people evacuated, over 300,000 acres burning out of control and over 700 homes burned as of this morning, we are lucky to be in one of the safer areas of San Diego. We are also fortunate to have such a wonderful fire crew that works so tirelessly. We have had the help of so many volunteer crews and crews from other cities as well.

From my home, which sits a top a hill I have the vantage point to see quite vividly the ridgelines of the Fallbrook “Rice” fire and the newest Camp Pendleton Fires burn. We did not go into work Tuesday as the Mayor asked everyone to try to stay home and to stay off their cell phones. The sky here is burnt orange and very thick with smoke. We kept the windows closed yesterday so we would not breathe in as much smoke. Visibility was very murky. It is very surreal and strange here right now. Taking the train in this morning I noticed so many RV’s parked at the beach, their horses tied to the rigs.

Monday night was Bijan’s birthday and we went to the Carlsbad High which had been set up as an evacuation center and dropped off blankets, pillows and playing cards for those who needed to stay there. I have heard this said so many times but it really is true, “San Diego is the largest small town you will ever find”. When we pulled up to the school there were people from all over just stopping by to drop off things and help out. We pulled up to ask what was needed and when we came back with our donations there were even more people coming up asking what they could do. Yesterday I called a friend of mine who was collecting donations from the hotels in town to drop off. I hope I don’t sound corny but San Diego really takes care of its own and those who can respond, respond generously.

Please say prayers, keep positive thoughts and do a rain dance or two for California.