I Heart Guts » People With Guts

Inside the Masters

gutsy — Tue, 01 May 2012 17:02:51 +0000

Get inside the minds — and guts — of the great artists. Dali, Van Gogh and Picasso had guts, and now you can see them via these fantastic posters by DDB Brazil for the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) Art School. {via Street Anatomy}

Smile For Me

gutsy — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:01:59 +0000

No one cares about your teeth more than your dental hygienist. Show them some love with our Flossin’ Ain’t Just For Gangstas lapel pin and maybe a bonus Salivary Gland pin if you’re feeling generous.

Book Love

gutsy — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:20:54 +0000

Fill your brain with books this National Library Week, or give your local librarian a big hug for bringing so much borrowing goodness under one roof. Thanks, librarians, for helping us get smart! We lobe you with all our brains.

Pop-Up Wrapup

gutsy — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:02:27 +0000

A note of thanks to everyone who shopped our gutsy Valentine’s Pop-up shops in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Baltimore, where 10% of sales went towards local clinics, you helped raise $193.09 to donate to the Hollywood Sunset Free Clinic, George Washington University’s HEALing Clinic and Johns Hopkins Urban Health Institute! Thanks to Munky King in LA and Trohv in D.C. and Baltimore for making all this fundraising possible and special thanks to the clinics that do such important work to give access to health care for folks who need it!

Best Kidney Day Evar

gutsy — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 20:48:01 +0000

I just had the honor and privilege of meeting some of the amazingly gutsy nurses who work at the Heart and Kidney Transplant Unit at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. The nurses there decided to celebrate World Kidney Day in style with kidney-themed cupcakes and kidney themes cookies (aren’t they amazing?) and yes, kidney-themed shirts! Being inside a children’s hospital is always a humbling experience. I can’t imagine the incredible guts required to go through what the kids go through, deal with what the parents of ill children deal with and see what the doctors and nurses see day in and day out. It makes my stomach drop to think about the strength required to endure all that. So impressed. Thanks for letting me visit, ladies!

Body Breakdown

gutsy — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:50:31 +0000

Here’s a quick cheat sheet to remember what all those guts and glands are doing all day inside your body, as told by our lapel pins. Your marvelous reproductive friends (with benefits?) are busy squirting away, and technically the sex organs and glands also require help from the brain, hypothalamus, pituitary, adrenals and yes, even sweat and saliva to some extent (but I digress!) Onward to Team Digestion, those little guys that make eating such a pleasure! Thanks everyone! What would we do without the admirable and ceaseless devotion of our circulatory system? The heart pumps blood, hormones, air anywhere it’s needed, while the respiratory champs the lungs get air in and out with no breaks whatsoever. What a champ! Onward to the good ol’ brain, in charge of the entire nervous system, the boss of the entire body. Who’s there to take out the trash? Why, the excretory system, of course, with major players the kidneys, intestine and bladder taking the junk out of your trunk. The skin keeps all the organs bundled neatly inside, and sebaceous glands keep our skin soft while sweat glands keep us cool. Flu? Colds? Not with this tough team around — your immune system is staffed by the wonderful lymphatic nodes, spleen and thymus gland, which keep you in good health (unless they don’t, some bugs are craftier than others, I suppose). Finishing up, we have the glands that make us hormonal, the Endocrine Party comprising adrenals, pancreas, parathyroid and thyroid! And there, in a nutshell, is the human body.

Merry 2012!

gutsy — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:52:41 +0000

The highlight of our trip to Florida was going to the mall — but not just any mall. We went on a pilgrimage of sorts, to visit the Friends With You Rainbow Valley playground at the Aventura Mall in Miami. It was as magical as we imagined and stomach and heart had a great time bouncing around on the sparkly cuteness (as did our two kids). It was a great start to what we hope will be a happy and healthy fresh new year for everyone!

Sight Seeing

gutsy — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:42:01 +0000

We’re taking a road trip through the human body on our way from DC to Chicago for Renegade Craft Fair in Wicker Park! We filled our itinerary with anatomical sights our guts need to see, such as the American Visonary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, which not only has a giant statue of Divine (of John Waters fame), but they also have a drawing of two anatomy charts kissing by Alex Grey. The giant walk-through heart at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia has been calling our names for years, as have our friends at the Mutter Museum, which is dedicated to medical and anatomical oddities and antiques. There’s a spinal column carved from a tree in Columbus, Ohio that I absolutely must see, and we’ll likely wind up peeping at sliced human bodies at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. If we had time, Minnesota’s Museum of Questionable Medical Devices would definitely be on our list. Need to plan your own awesome road trip on the way to see your guts? Check out Roadside America’s trip planner for the weirdest the U.S. has to offer. And if you’re in Chicago this weekend, come see us at Renagade, booth #92, we will have tons of new stuff for you to see, including giant plushie intestines, giant kidneys, giant pancreases, plush thyroids, plush appendixes, eyeball pins, skin pins, teeth pins, lymph node pins and more! Come give your guts a squeeze in person.

Child at Heart

gutsy — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:32:14 +0000

Wanna learn how to make your own organ-emblazoned tee? Look no further than Relentlessly Fun, Deceptively Educational, a blog by a clever homeschooling mom. She’s got a stencil to make this great shirt, plus more ideas about how to get your kids into their guts. Fabulous!

Metabolic Mate

gutsy — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 14:34:46 +0000

The latest in our bizarre stuffed body parts was actually inspired by a pretty heart-wrenching experience — cancer. Making a plush thyroid was something I’d been toying with for a while, after getting several requests from you, our wonderful customers, but it became personal when my husband — and I Heart Guts’ co-founder — was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last year. As far as cancers go, thyroid cancer is really not so bad, especially when compared with say, pancreatic cancer or brain cancer. But, let’s be real, hearing the word “cancer” attached to someone you love is horrible. While my husband got his thyroid removed and underwent radioactive iodine treatment, I found solace in planning a friendly and fuzzy version of this butterfly-shaped endocrine gland, which hugs the trachea and controls our metabolism. We gave thyroid and parathyroid pins to the amazing staff at UCLA Endocrine Surgery, and the fantastic surgeon, Dr. Michael Yeh, was super-excited to see such a strange and specialized product. “The parathyroid gets no love,” Dr. Yeh lamented. I also tried to make my husband laugh by doodling a silly disco-dancing thyroid and a jogging thyroid, and both of these drawings are included in the new hangtag, see details below (thanks to your input, my dear readers, we chose the Travolta Thyroid for the cover, yay!). So stay tuned, your plush thyroid will be available for cuddling very very soon! We hope you like it.