Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving with their loved ones!

Veteran's Day

We want to thank all of the veterans that have served our country. We can not thank you enough for the sacrifices you have made. Here are some facts about Veteran's Day that you may not know. You can learn more here.


Fun Fact #1:

Veterans Day was once known as Armistice Day. The term comes from an armistice between Germany and the Allied Nations on November 11, 1918 (Also known the armistice ending on the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day of the eleventh month). World War I actually ended on June 28, 1919, during the Treaty of Versailles. The first Armistice Day was acknowledged on November 11, 1919.

Fun Fact #2:

November 11 is both a State and Federal Holiday. (And yes, we’re still open.)

Fun Fact #3:

The original idea behind the celebrations for this holiday was parades and public meetings and also a brief suspension of businesses at 11:00 AM. This is true to this day as a number of parades are held across America as well as speeches are given.

Fun Fact #4:

On June 1, 1954, Armistice Day had its named changed to Veterans Day. This was due to a change in an act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, which made the 11th of November a legal holiday, known as “Armistice Day”. The primary purpose was to honor the veterans of World War I, but in World War II, there was a great immobilization of Veterans, thus changing its name of “Armistice” to “Veterans”.

Fun Fact #5:

Disney made films for during World War II, for each branch of the United States government.

Fun Fact #6:

Approximately 90% of Disney employees worked in the making of propaganda and training videos during World War II.

Fun Fact #7:

Today, there exists about 1.6 million female veterans.

Fun Fact #8:

Between 1971 and 1977, Veterans Day was celebrated on the fourth Monday in October. It was changed back to its original date, on November 11, 1978 due to a General R. Ford’s signing of Public Law 94-97 (89 Stat. 479).

Fun Fact #9:

Arlington National Cemetery has ceremony on Veterans Day every year to honor those who died during times of war. The ceremonies are held around the Tomb of the Unknowns and at 11:00 AM, on November 11, a combined color guard representing all military services executes “Present Arms” at the tomb.

Fun Fact #10:

Veterans Day falls on the same day as Remembrance Day and Armistice Day in other countries.

Fun Fact #11:

There is not supposed to be an apostrophe in Veterans Day. Still some spell it Veteran’s Day or Veterans’ Day.

Fun Fact #12:

Raymond Weeks, a World War II veteran came up with the idea to honor all veterans on November 11, not just the ones who died in World War I.

Fun Fact #13:

On November 11, 1921, an American soldier was buried at the national cemetery in Arlington. His identity was unknown (and his grave site is what we know as today as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier). Every year on November 11, the president or a high-ranking member of the government lays a wreath on his grave.

Fun Fact #14:

In a 2009 report, there were estimated to be 21.9 million veterans.

Fun Fact #15:

The median income for veterans in 2009 was approximately $35,000 a year.

Fun Fact #16:

Many people confuse Memorial Day with Veterans Day. Memorial Day is primarily remembered for those died during their service to our country, particularly ones who died as a result of battle. Veterans Day is to acknowledge primarily all those served in the military, either during wartime or peacetime.

Fun Fact #17:

Some schools close on Veterans Day and some stay open. There is no legal requirement for a school to close or to stay open, as individual schools districts or states are free to establish their own policies.

Fun Fact #18:

The word veteran comes from the nomenclature of the old English language, meaning old, experienced soldier.

Fun Fact #19:

The first use of the word, veteran came to use in 1789, in the English language when referring a former member of the armed forces or an ex-serviceman. The extended meaning of the word goes back to someone who has served a longtime in any position.

Fun Fact #20:

California has more U.S. military veterans than any other state.

I hoped you enjoyed these fun facts about Veterans Day and for all those veterans out there, living or dead, we proudly support you.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Fun Facts: The ancient Celts thought that spirits and ghosts roamed the countryside on Halloween night. They began wearing masks and costumes to avoid being recognized as human. Learn more here.

New Additions to the Pittsburgh Opera Season

The Pittsburgh Opera wants everyone to be able to enjoy the shows they produce every year. This is why they are including some new prices and shows for everyone in the tri-state area. This is perhaps one of the best deals in the city for the performing arts. You can learn more at Living Pittsburgh.



The Pittsburgh Opera is proving to our city that high caliber culture doesn’t always have to come with high ticket prices.

“As part of our ongoing mission to enrich Pittsburgh and the tri-state area, Pittsburgh Opera strives to make opera intellectually and financially accessible to a diverse audience, offering both high quality opera productions and several free community events throughout the season.”

In September of 2008, they moved their home to Pittsburgh’s historic Strip District into the building that was built as George Westinghouse’s original air brake factory in 1869. We caught a Brown Bag Concert Series performance last season and were lucky enough to get a personal tour of the massive facility thanks to Allison Ruppert, Marketing and Community Relations Manager at the Pittsburgh Opera. At 45,000 square feet, the building still manages to create an inviting sense of warmth and coziness, which is likely due to the pronounced “green” atmosphere. They are currently seeking LEED certification, and that should give us all yet one more reason to think that The Pittsburgh Opera rocks!

This is perhaps one of the best culture deals in the city, so do yourself a favor and check out some of these performances. You just can’t ask for a better ticket price!


Brown Bag Concert Series – FREE

In the George R. White Opera Studio at Pittsburgh Opera’s headquarters in the Strip District, friends, families and Pittsburghers of all ages are invited to enjoy intimate concerts of some of opera’s most popular arias as well as a mix of Broadway, musical theater and other surprises. These concerts are a wonderful opportunity for an informal introduction to opera. Guests can even meet the performers after the show!


Opera Up Close – $5

An in-depth look at the upcoming production, with the artists that make them happen at Pittsburgh Opera’s headquarters in the Strip District, at 2:00 PM on Sundays before the opening of each production.


Art Song Recital Series – $5

In the George R. White Opera Studio at Pittsburgh Opera, Art Song Recitals are high-level, one-hour performances of art song literature by the Resident Artists of Pittsburgh Opera. These recitals are free and open to the public. The Pittsburgh Opera Guilds from Sewickley, Fox Chapel, South Hills and the City serve as reception hosts at these events.

Here is their full listing of FREE performances for the 2014-15 season.

Take A Trip To Soergels

Make sure to head to Soergels before October 26th. You can participate in their fall festival. This annual event includes games, food, and pumpkins! You can learn more at Living Pittsburgh.




Event: Soergel Orchards Fall Festival

Location: Soergel Orchards, 2573 Brandt School Road, Wexford, PA 15090

Date: Saturdays & Sundays September 20 through October 26, 2014

Time: 11am – 5pm

Cost: FREE (items and additional activities available for purchase)

Description: Starting this weekend and throughout October, Soergel Orchards is holding Fall Festivals each weekend. Pick out a pumpkin (additional cost), enjoy kid’s activities, games, hayrides, great food (additional cost) and more! Each ticket is $1, with activities ranging from 1 ticket to 5 tickets. The pirate ship and tiny town play areas, the straw sack, and visiting the farm animals are free. Many activities are only 1 ticket!


More info online at : http://soergels.com/events/fall-festival/


Soergel Orchards2573 Brandt School Road

Wexford, PA 15090

724-935-1743

Start a Business in College

Are you almost done with your studies? It is time to start thinking about the future. For many people, this incldues sending our resumes and networking. However, have you ever thought about starting a business in college. Here are some great tips on how to make this happen.  You can learn more here.




1. Follow your passions (and ignore the haters).

If you do what you love and immerse yourself in industries you're passionate about, you'll be the best person to see where holes exist that you can fill. The three of us met as undergrads at Harvard while working on a student lifestyle-and-fashion magazine that we transitioned online. While some of our fellow students thought our site was "fluffy," we realized we had hit on something that had huge potential, and we got the idea to launchHer Campus. We knew we could bring it to that full potential, because we were passionate about serving college women — and nobody else was engaging that demographic in that way at the time.

2. Create a killer team.


It's very difficult to start a successful company all by yourself, from a skills perspective (no one person possesses all the skills needed to run a company), a time perspective (there are only so many hours in the day!), and a morale perspective. Starting a company is tough and comes with lows only a co-founder can dig you out of. It's important to find co-founders whose skills complement your own and whom you absolutely love to be around!

3. Pump out a business plan.

When Harvard's business-plan competition came around, we decided to use the competition to turn our ideas into a reality. Entering a business-plan competition is a fantastic way to force yourself to flesh out your idea and to give yourself a hard deadline. It doesn't matter if you win the competition (although it's certainly nice!), because the exercise of writing a business plan is so valuable in itself. We won the Harvard business-plan competition and got free office space as part of the prize, which became the very first Her Campus office.

4. Find good mentors.

We knew pretty much nothing about any aspect of business, so we set out to find mentors who did. Whether it was going to hear relevant speakers at Harvard or connecting with anyone and everyone we had met through past internships, we made a point of networking like crazy. While being young can absolutely be an advantage, being young also means you're way behind the competition as far as knowledge and skills go, simply because you don't have the experience that more seasoned people do. Seek out people you admire, and be ballsy about meeting them, introducing yourself, and following up, because it will pay off. Find mentors in a variety of areas you know you'll need help with (for example, web, marketing, and fund-raising), and make a point of asking for advice from them when you run into something you haven't seen before.

5. Put the pressure on yourself.

We spent the summer after winning the business-plan competition living together in a tiny, horrible apartment in New York City, each holding internships while working on Her Campus on the side in order to launch that fall. We had a completely crazy few weeks and nights leading up to the launch, including a last-minute all-nighter, but we did it and HerCampus.com went live on Sept. 16, 2009. Give yourself a deadline, and find a way to hold yourself to it, like we did with preprinted flyers! Otherwise, you can spend forever planning and researching and literally never launch — or a competitor will beat you to it.

6. Associate yourself with big names.

Our first client, Juicy Couture, signed on to advertise with us before the site had launched, thanks to Windsor's repeated cold calls to their marketing department! The money we gained from that sale was more than enough to cover our initial start-up expenses, so we were profitable before the site had even launched. Even more valuable than the advertising dollars we got (which were still pretty minimal) from Juicy Couture? The name recognition that came along with it. Once you have one big name onboard, that brand's competitors will take notice and want to work with you too. Our first advertisers, although not high-paying, allowed us to create powerful case studies that showcased our unique marketing capabilities and made Her Campus look legitimate by association with these big names.

7. Use whatever resources are available.

During our senior year at Harvard, we tapped into every possible resource we could to get our business off the ground. We had free office space through the business-plan competition and free legal help through a program at Harvard Law, and we had friends of ours writing for us for free. The business was going well enough that by halfway through that school year, we had decided to pursue Her Campus full-time after graduation. It didn't matter that we didn't have investors, capital, or many resources. We took advantage of what we did have access to in that year to allow our business to grow. Most colleges have resources that can help you; you just need to be resourceful and dedicated about seeking them out!

8. Fake it 'til you make it.

Over that first year out of college, Her Campus continued to grow, and we were lucky to be named to Inc.magazine's 30 Under 30 Coolest Young Entrepreneurs, among some other key press mentions. Regardless of the internal state of things, we promoted the heck out of every piece of press we got, every new advertiser we signed on, and every new partnership we secured in order to portray the image that our business was on fire. There can be lots of ups and downs and uncertainties when you're running a startup. However, it's critical to make everyone on the outside think you're doing amazing, even though you know that on the inside, things can feel like they're on the verge of falling apart at any moment.

9. Frugality is key.

Even after we graduated and the company started making a little more money, we stayed practical financially. Keeping your money in the business allows you to hire more people and invest in resources that will lead to much larger dividends for you long-term. This mind-set is one that we still adopt today even now that the business is doing much better financially, because once you start to just spend, spend, spend, you're no longer running a lean business and you're poised to drive your business into the ground.

10. Exercise self-discipline.

As time went on, the business started to run more and more smoothly. Our traffic and campus-chapter numbers kept climbing, our editorial system ran like clockwork, and brands were consistently reaching out to us, wanting to advertise. At that point, we needed to give ourselves a schedule and deadlines so we could be sure not to let the business stagnate and coast. As an entrepreneur, you don't have a boss, so it's on you to make yourself work (at least!) a full workday every day and to hold yourself and your cofounders accountable.

11. Show patience and perseverance.

Over the next few years, our traffic, campus chapters, and revenues all continued to grow, we brought on bigger and bigger clients, and we hired our first employees. But there will always be ups and downs, even once your business is well off the ground. There were months when we had to defer our salaries, instances when huge projects and partnerships completely fell through, and times when something we put a lot of effort into totally bombed. And when things are going well, you can't get too comfortable in your success or else things will stagnate. You have to keep challenging yourself, creating more work for yourself, always looking toward what's next, and continuously setting higher and higher goals for yourself and for your company as a whole.

12. Start today!

Five years after we launched, Her Campus now has more than 250 campus chapters, more than 3.5 million monthly readers, and our own beautiful office. Our last tip is to start today. You'll always be busy, and you're only going to get busier and have more "real" things to worry about as time goes on, so just get started on your idea now and let the momentum carry you forward! And don't think that you can't do it just because you're still in school or because you're not a business major or because you don't have enough in savings — because you can! But if you wait around forever just thinking instead of actually doing, you'll never get started. Just start now! We can't wait to see what you accomplish.

Wine Festival

This weekend make sure to head to Millvale for the Harvest Moon Wine Festival. The festival is this Saturday from 5pm-8pm. There will be live entertainment, food, wine, and more. You can learn more at Living Pittsburgh.

Event: Harvest Moon Wine Festival (Enter ticket giveaway below!)
Location: Millvale Riverfront Park, Pittsburgh, PA 15209
Date: Saturday, September 27, 2014
Time: 5pm until 8 pm
Cost: $40 and $20 for food only
Description: The Borough of Millvale and The Millvale Borough Development Corporation will host the fifth annual Harvest Moon wine festival on Saturday, September 27, 2014 at the Millvale Riverfront Park. The event will feature a single session; 5-8 PM.

Tickets include wine, live entertainment by Etta Cox Band, fresh locally grown food, honey, tea, coffee, chocolates, desserts, specialty beers, and a bottomless souvenir logo tasting glass. Ticket cost is $40; designated drivers can purchase a food ticket for $20. Bike or kayak to the festival and receive a free gift. The Harvest Moon Wine Festival will be held at the Millvale Riverfront Park on the shore of the Allegheny River.

Western Pennsylvania wines will be featured along with live jazz, fresh prepared local food grown in Millvale and great wine pairings from our friends and partners. Wine by the bottle and case, merchandise and other sundries are offered by various vendors on a pay-per-item basis.

Monies raised will help the Nonprofit Millvale Borough Development Corporation stabilize, revitalize and rejuvenate Millvale’s neighborhoods, through the development of housing, and businesses. This is a 21 and over event.

Enter to win a pair of tickets by emailing us at info@livingpittsburgh.com. Subject title the email Harvest Moon. In the body, include your first and last name, contact email, and phone number. Winners will be selected and notified on Monday, September 22. You must reply to the email to claim tickets.