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Episode Summary
Amy hands out “Valentines” to 9 items that she loves. More specifically, she’s featuring things she has found enhancing her life through beauty and simplicity.
Items Mentioned
Episode 094 – Amy’s Favorite Things
Friday Finds #204 – Valentine Goodies
Supershieldz iPhone Tempered Glass Screen Protector (MATTE)
Breath as Prayer by Jennifer Tucker
Bitter and Sweet: A Journey into Easter by Tsh Oxenreider
Episode 105 – Evernote vs. Notion
An Introduction to Notion – A Customizable Digital Workspace to Organize Everything in Your Life
Support the podcast on Patreon
Transcript
In honor of Valentine’s Day, which is just around the corner, today’s episode, #106, is dedicated to items this piano teacher, podcaster, speaker, and blogger is handing a special Valentine’s to. Specifically, I’m honing in and giving kudos to things that are enhancing my life through beauty and simplicity.
If you’re a regular podcast listener, you might remember that I did an episode in November of 2023 called Amy’s Favorite Things. I almost shied away from doing this episode because of that, but when I sat down and started brainstorming this list, I couldn’t believe how many new things I had to share with you! In episode 94, I shared 11 items, and I’m only re-mentioning 2 of those today as they fit the theme of sleek, lovely, and simple.
If you could use a little more beauty and simplicity in your life, stick around for the next 10 minutes with me, Amy Chaplin, your host, who loves sharing fabulous resources with my fellow teachers.
Today, I want to start by highlighting one of my old Friday Finds posts on the blog, which is full of all kinds of Valentine Goodies you may find beneficial in your life and studio over the next couple of weeks. This post has a nice compilation of music-themed coloring books, Valentine-themed games, a candy jar contest printable, and more.
Everything you hear about today is linked in the show notes for you at PianoPantry.com/podcast/episode106
Over my studio’s Christmas shutdown, we finally finished the basement of the home we built in 2018. I’ve been running my studio down there for the past 5 years with an open, unfinished ceiling and plain, boring, gray walls.
We put in a beautiful drop ceiling that looks like white wood planks, lots of can lights, and painted two of the walls my favorite blue color – Naval from Sherwin Williams. One wall of the walls is quite large and was screaming for help, so my husband built Waynescoting, which is like board and batten.
If you follow me on social media, I shared a few in-progress photos but not a lot. Once I finally finish getting some updated furniture in the space, I’m going to share more details, so stay tuned!
Anyway, while this transformation deserves a shoutout as a beautiful, inspiring addition to my daily work life, all this is setting the stage for my first Valentine shout-out which is the Tribesigns storefront on Amazon. Tribesigns is where I got my desks, which I absolutely love – they’re really good quality with nice thick metal legs. I’ve been on the lookout for quite a few things and while I haven’t necessarily found all my solutions in Tribesigns, I am continually coming across their products and really liking what I see.
On a side note, I don’t know what it is, but every time I look at the name, I think Tribedesigns in my head. It actually took me a bit to realize that it’s actually Tribesigns. The text was just playing with my mind. LOL
So, if you’re looking for solutions for your home or studio space, check out Tribesigns on Amazon.
My second Valentine award goes to Trader Joe’s Greeting Cards.
Every time I walk into the store, I look forward to checking them out. The text is simple and the designs are beautiful without costing an arm and a leg. At $1-$2 apiece, I love keeping a variety of cards on hand.
You will probably get a little chuckle at my third one here but the third Valentine that brings joy and simplicity to my life is Gin and Tonic’s.
If you’re not familiar – this is a mixed drink, but there’s not much to the mixing because with just two ingredients – gin and tonic water – and maybe a squirt of lime – it’s not a lot of work. Plus, they are just sooo refreshing. My husband and I never even drank alcohol until our mid-20s, and even then, we only enjoyed wine and some beers.
With the explosion of craft beers, our joy has leaned toward the latter more in the last 5 years. It’s only been in the last couple of years that we’ve started delving into the world of mixed drinks. It all started with a bottle of brandy we had around for years we decided to finally drink. Drew actually quite enjoyed it. After looking up the difference in brandy and bourbon and realizing brandy was distilled from wine, it made sense why.
Drew got an award from work, and sometimes, in business, your gift is to choose something from a magazine. He decided to get a free bottle of gin because we had never tried it. I think we were both shocked to realize how much we enjoyed G’n T’s! We shy away from high-sugar mixed drinks, and these have become a lovely addition in the past year or so to our life foodie joys.
The next item is a big one in that it improves the experience of touching my device, which happens so much during our days. I learned about this from teacher-friend Abby Hodge. It’s a matte-textured glass screen protector. The brand I use is Supershieldz. It has such a lovely look and feel to it. I’ll never go back to a regular iPhone screen protector. So, thanks Abby!
Fifth up is another recommendation from another teacher-friend Janna Williamson. It’s a devotional prayer book called Breath as Prayer by Jennifer Tucker. I saw her post about it on Instagram last year and immediately added it to my Amazon cart. If you do one a day, it will last a couple of months, so I’m only about halfway through, but it is visually extraordinary. It brings me peace just opening the pages each morning.
The next one is another devotional book, this time by Tsh Oxenreider. I was a little hesitant to add this one to the list because I just ordered it from Amazon, as it’s for Lent and Easter. I have read several of Tsh’s books, including Notes from a Blue Bike, At Home in the World, and the Shadow and Light Advent Devotional, so I know I can confidently recommend it. Her advent devotional was beautiful as it included music to accompany each day. Amazing. I can’t wait to jump into Bitter and Sweet: A Journey into Easter by Tsh Oxenreider
The last three items on my list – numbers 7, 8, and 9 are all technology tools that don’t make me feel overwhelmed but instead are so beautiful and sleek, they only add to my life. This is where two items from my November list peek in: Todoist and Notion.
I’m still learning Todoist, but I’m getting closer to sharing more details, but it has changed the way I view my task list. One recent example I can share is that I’ve been trying to refine its use and spent some time watching videos on how other users use the tagging system to label tasks. I’ve been playing around with labeling tasks by how long they will take, like 10 minutes, 60 minutes, 2 hours, or half a day.
Let me share a brief story on how this app has made a huge difference in my life. Last week, I had two one-hour students sick and had a huge 4-hour block of time in my day. In the past, I would have just worked ahead on something for later that week – like writing my podcast a day earlier, but instead, I went into my task app and looked at items that were labeled as half-day tasks. One of those was to go through the tutorial videos certification for TechSmith’s SnagIt Editor and Camtasia – programs I use for screenshot capture, markup, and video editing. The reason it has been on my task list for 2 years is I have not had a good system for finding times to sneak things like this in. It felt amazing seeing this get done, thanks to my beautiful Todist system.
Notion is a productivity and note-taking app that offers organizational tools like task management, project tracking, to-do lists, and bookmarking. I’ve been talking about it here a lot lately because, in early March 2024, my friend Joy Morin and I are putting on an event to help you organize your life in Notion as we have.
Last week, I shared my own insights into how Notion compares to Evernote, another note-taking app. One big point I shared is that while Evernote has a very generalized organizational schema built around individual notes, Notion’s is entirely customizable. That may not sound so simple, but that’s the beauty – it can be as simple or complex as you like. Notion offers tools to build a beautiful, functional, personalized workspace. If you’re a visual person like I am, then you will love Notion and Joy and I are ready to show you how.
The signup should be live sometime this week. Visit one of our websites or find us on social media to get details. For now, if you would like a little deeper look at how it’s been working for us, as I already mentioned, jump back and listen to last week’s episode. Joy also wrote an in-depth blog post showing how she’s using it in her life, both personal and professional.
Alright…as we round into the end, the last tool that I’m highlighting in my 2024 Valentine’s list is my email marketing manager – Flodesk. I switched over a couple of years ago, and I just love how beautiful and simplistic it is in function and design. Other bloggers I know who use it include Jennifer Foxx of Music Educator Resources and Joy Morin of Color in My Piano.
I used Mailchimp for years, but it eventually got so clunky. I loved it one minute and seemed to hate it the next. I find it really interesting how things like this evolve, and while they may be the perfect solution and then all of a sudden, it feels like you blink and you suddenly realize it’s just no longer working for you or that the framework is suddenly feeling outdated. This is how it went with me when moving out of Mailchimp to Flodesk and out of Evernote (almost entirely) to Notion.
If you’re a content creator looking for a good option for email marketing management, use the link in the show notes from me to get 50% off your first year.
I hope you enjoyed my 2024 Valentine’s! Before you jump out of your podcast app today, I would appreciate it if you would take a moment to rate and review the podcast. Also, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so that all the new episodes will download for you automatically each week.
If you would like to support the work it takes to bring you this content each week, join me on Patreon at PianoPantry.com/patreon where you have the option to join at the $4 or $7 levels each month.
As always, you can get a list of everything mentioned today at PianoPantry.com/podcast/episode106
