Archive: January ’11 on The Blog

Is anyone else bored with Valentine’s Day beads lately? It seems like the same old little metal hearts, pink crystal and glass, and all the other things you see year after year.

We wanted to have a little more fun with Valentine’s Day this year, so we got some of our artists involved and what we came up with is pretty funky! We’ve got heart-themed beads, pendants, links, and even clasps.

It’ll be the 15th Valentine’s Day that Ali and I have been together. Sure, it’s a greeting card holiday, but it’s an excuse to spend a great evening with her, so I love it. We’ll most likely get an eager set of grandparents to babysit and go out for a relaxing dinner. With two kids under the age of 3, it’s always nice to have  a meal where you actually get to taste your food

What do you have planned?

UPDATE: Here’s a big, loving “THANKS” to everyone who created a Fresh Pick in the past day about hearts! Random picks are featured on the bottom of the Funky Valentine page, and you can see all the heart picks here. You rock!

Cupid’s headed for Lima Beads… and we need some Fresh Picks to show him love! We’ll be collecting all heart-centric Fresh Picks over the next few days, and it’s easy to get involved. If you create any new Fresh Picks with either “Heart” or “Valentine” in the title, we’ll gather them up and show them off on a special page later this week. Here’s an example pick that I just created.

We hope it will be fun to show off your lovely picks! If you have any questions, just leave a comment. And if you’re new here, you can find out more about designing Fresh Picks. Thanks everyone! Check back soon!

Hi all Garden members! I haven’t spoken to any of you since 2010 (haha)!

We’ve gotten some questions lately about how to make smiley faces in your comments about Fresh Picks and Designs. Here’s a chart that will hopefully make it easier to put some emotion in there!

To get these different smilies in your comments, just type the text equivalent and The Garden will automatically turn it into the appropriate smiley.

Smile away!

Happy New Year, everyone! We’ve decided to start 2011 off the same way we started 2010 — with a Crossword Sale! That means there’s going to be a new sale EVERY day in January. We’ve put together a crossword puzzle with 31 hints, one for each day in January. The answers indicate which items are on sale for that day. The puzzle is a little bit harder this year, so sharpen your pencils!

The sales last 24 hours each, so you need to add the items to your shopping bag that day in order to get the reduced prices. Once they’re in your bag, you have 7 days to complete your purchase (all the details are available on the Shopping Bag page).

The Bonus…

As a bonus, if you complete the crossword puzzle early, you have the chance to unscramble a secret series of letters to reveal a hidden message. If you guess right, you’ll get a prize! So head on over to the crossword page, and check back daily to see what’s on sale!