All Posts

Monday morning 9:05 am – a new week at the office has just kicked off. As I walk into the office, all I can see are tired and long-faced colleagues. Some of them even manage to reply with a half-subdued “mor’n” to me. It is true – we at Spreadshirt also have to live with Monday mornings. But I think it’s never too late for a change, so here’s how I got the idea. Just as I produce a Tupperware container with a cake that I’d baked the previous evening, I can see people turning their heads and saying, “oh, Vici, did you bake that?” and “mmmh, cake for everyone?” Out of a sudden there seems to be new blood running through my work mates’ veins – the cake is gone faster than I can count to 20.

Well, I hadn’t planned to be eating it all by myself, to be fair. It’s fun to share! My interest in baking was kindled when I came across a great online blog that would introduce a brand new cupcake recipe on a weekly basis.A These were Martha Stewart’s recipes, and soon I ordered her whole recipe book. Cupcakes and muffins are my favourite things to bake, and it is really a great feeling when you get those little pastries right and your friends and colleagues lavish praise on you for being the primary source of their Monday morning joy.

And that’s why I like showing my love for baking – and especially for cupcakes – on my t-shirts as well:

When baking, I can relax and forget about the things that bother me during the day. I listen to some of my favourite tunes or my baking playlist (including Cookie Monster’s “C is for Cookie”) *sings it*… C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me / Oh, cookie, cookie, cookie starts with C. But seriously, you should give it a go and then enjoy your mates or colleagues chocolate-smeared faces – those always make for good photos! And there is no fault in indulging in one’s own creations either…
This is why my mantra for the ‘My T-Shirt, My Voice’ will have to be: Baking makes this world a better place!

Vici

Nelson was 13 years old when he was disposed of. He was in no physical condition to still oblige to his watchdog duties, so people were quick to pass judgement on him. So he was tied to the banisters outside a pound before he was abandoned. This happened in the middle of the night.
Nelson is no singular case, hundreds of dogs and cats experience the same fate every day. A lifetime friendship between people and pets often gets disrupted when family environments change. People get married, break up, move to different place, have children or just have less time – all of which often leads to their four-legged friends losing their home.

Animal shelters are brimming with creatures that have never done anything other than giving their owners all of their love and devotion. These animals all have their own back stories. These may be certain characteristics and personality, physical deficiencies or simply a history of bad luck – and now the life of most of them has ended in a place of no return. Trust is something that needs time, and if you show heart and decide for a pet – like I did with my 12-year old dog Leila when I picked her up in a pound in 2006 – you can experience a friendship that is very rare between people.

It was the same with Nelson when he was adopted by my family, aged 13. He may have only had another 5 months with us, but these 5 months really meant a lot to everyone in our family. He experienced a loving, caring and devoted family at our home. In the end this is what counts a lot.
(For you Nelson. I kept my promise to give you a voice.)

Petra

I’ve been a Giants fan since childhood. I never had a chance to be otherwise. It was a rite of passage. Every Sunday afternoon you could find me watching the New York Giants, yelling at the television in hopes that someone on the team would listen to me. Of course, no one ever would. But that never stopped me. I had my lucky jersey, like every football fan, that I wore during every game.

There were a couple of rules for wearing the shirt:

1. The same shirt must be worn at all times during the game.
2. The shirt cannot be washed during the season. If it is washed, all the luck is washed away with it.
3. One can only change shirts after the end of the season. Once a new season begins, a new shirt can be worn.

My New York Giants shirt was my voice for the entire season. It was my way of connecting with other fans and feeling a sense of unity and purpose. That is the power of the t-shirt. It made me feel like I belong to something bigger than myself, mustard stains and all.

In fact, the messier the shirt the luckier it became. My mother would yell at me to throw my dirty shirt in the laundry and even threatened to wash it while I slept. She never did. Deep down she understood its inexplicable power to alter the course of sporting events, even if it never actually did.

Adam

One of my favorite things to do, “hobbies” so to say happens to be gardening. I certainly will not say that I am a “green thumb” by any means but if I happen to only kill one or two plants throughout the spring/summer growing season I look at it as a big success! I suppose I started to get/grow a “green” thumb around the young age of 5. I grew up in more of a rural area and was always helping my parents with the typical yard work of cutting grass, raking leaves typical “non-fun” stuff as most would consider. However, I actually really enjoyed these mundane tasks and would prefer to be outside doing them as opposed to helping my mother inside with laundry or washing the dishes. From as long as I can remember my parents have always had a very large vegetable garden and flowering pots throughout our yard. When I got a place of my own, I wanted the same type of green environment.

So now I spend the majority of my free time, outside tending to my small garden. I don’t have the space for a large vegetable garden so I instead planted many different types of flowers and shrubs including irises, lilies, hollyhocks and maybe my most prized planting possession my rose bush. Thanks to the good use of Pinterest, I have found some really cool ideas on how to transform a small yard space into a garden with the use of different items for pots and raised cement blocks to create the perfect small herb garden. It’s quite a good feeling when you get the chance to see something so little grow into such a beautiful thing even if it’s just from your own garden.

Kristina