Well, it’s our birthday, and we can barely hold our excitement.
Last year on 22 November 2012 I started Coffeebooksong Studios to offer a place of deep happiness, where people can find love, peace, hope and inspiration to change the world.
My team and I worked very hard to deliver just this, with every story.
Twelve months, an average of 5 “Excellent” grades per story, hundreds of shares on Facebook and Twitter, incredibly positive reader feedback and a solid subscriber base later, Coffeebooksong Studios is ever more determined to continue its mission and help build a better world through its strong values and proven success.
On this very special day, my artists and I would like to send a special thanks to the people who belied in our vision for all this time.
Your love, care, valuable and cherished feedback, made us every time, truly happy, as for your subscriptions they gave us the strength to create the amazing things we’ve been talking about, in our case, the stories.
Please keep sending this feedback as often as you can, honest and critique-constructive.
It’s the best gift we can ever receive from anyone.
Speaking of gifts, we created something for you just as special,not to mention cool : a Big treasure hunt game !
So yes! you’re going to have a blast with your friends or family, yes! you’ll use your smarts and curiosity more than ever and yes! you’re going to win our amazing prizes !
First, click on the image below, ( if it’s not using all of your screen space, click again on the picture ) , use right-click, choose -> “Save as…” from the menu, select a folder from your local machine, and click “Save”.
Now go to this folder, open the picture and zoom in as much as you need to see the instructions well enough.
Read and follow them carefully, figure out each of the symbols, solve the riddle and mail us your result at nmerrynote@gmail.com .
The best 3 answers, even if they are not 100% correct , will receive a beautiful, personal, hand-made gift from Coffeebooksong Studios. We’ll handle the delivery charges too.
There’s one more thing.
I was wondering… do you like jazz ? …
See you soon,
Nicholas G. Merrynote
Founder and CEO of Coffeebooksong Studios
nmerrynote@gmail.com
This is not a Disclaimer, it’s a COPYRIGHT :
1. The story text is Coffeebooksong Studios property. All rights reserved.
2. The picture in this story can be downloaded free of charge, but you are not allowed to distribute it to people. Give them this posts’ link instead.
Also you are not allowed to claim designer rights for this picture.
Today marks a historic day for every one of us, but especially for Romanians.
On 29 october 1875, our late HRH Queen Maria of Romania was born in Eastwell, England, as the niece of the late HRH Queen Victoria of Great Britain and HRH Emperor Alexander II of Russia, and today we are honoring her memory.
She was the absolute best you could ask in an inspiring young princess, a visionary queen in charge, a war hero, a genius diplomat, a generous and able patron of arts, an incredibly gifted prose writer and painter, a great philanthropist, but above all she cared and protected us, day and night with the love of a mother…
75 years since her loss, she is still missed, still adored, still cherished, still an eternal source of inspiration for our present and future both in our private and professional lives.
There’s a lot more to say about this icon and loved lider of the early 20th century, but as the emphasis of this post is on inspiration we leave you to discover her journal, “The story of my life” in which you will find all the strength and comfort to pass your worst and a perfect role model to look up to. The link to the book is at the end of this post.
To your satisfaction we hope, we found a video made as an audio book of Queen Marie’s journal, together with inspiring beautiful pictures of the Queen and her beloved country, Romania.
Also … we were wondering … do you have a favorite Royal Head of state from past or present ?
Please use the blog’s comment feature or email us at nmerrynote@gmail.com with your answer to our question, speak your mind about everything Coffeebooksong Studios does, order custom artwork, post cards, gift cards, etc or propose a collaboration on a project what will affect positive change.
Most importantly don’t forget to subscribe to our blog, so that you will always be the first to have a link to our latest story, by entering your email address in the text box at the top right corner of the page and clicking the black “Follow” button.
So glad to finally get in touch, we missed you so much. How are you doing ?
Partially the delay for this post was due to the big changes we had to deal with our team, personal and professional lives, but also because of the higher purpose we wanted to serve with this new story and greater complexity of it’s art elements.
We worked hard and after a while, a good friend of ours, Anca Irimia, introduced us to an artist whose story was able to exceed all of our expectations…
We are Coffeebooksong Studios and you are reading “Play…until the very last note”.
Take a good look at this face and remember it. You’ll see it on posters at every street corner announcing that a music genius is honoring your town with a concert tonight. Sooner than you think.
Her name is Sabina Anna Maria Manolache, she is 20 years old, and her life is music.
When we were asked to help Sabina, learning that she is a musician, the first thing we asked for was a piece of her music.
What we heard, captivated us in the first minute and the song was played over and over making us discover one of the most beautiful souls we have ever came across, full of warmth, tenderness and innocence, expressed in every music note of that fresh, clean and mature sound.
This experience came to represent one of the most beautiful moments of our lives, and we are honored to share it with you in the next four minutes.
Ladies and gentlemen we give you Sabina Manolache interpreting “A romance” written by the great Romanian composer Petre Elinescu.
…just stunned, we immediately recognized her potential as an international music superstar and asked for further details from Sabina’s best friend Maria Zdralea, who offered us her kind help as many times as we requested it.
We found out that Sabina takes her school work as seriously as her music education, thus finishing her four years of high school with 98.85% success rate.
To prove this, we have Sabina’s permission to display the official high school grade document covering all four years, and to fully understand the information displayed it’s important to know the Romanian formal education grading system : number 1 is the worst grade and 10 is the best grade.
You can also click on the image below to be taken to a new tab in the same web browser, to see the picture in full size, and by holding down the CTRL key while hitting the “+” key, you can get closer to a particular area of the image.
Impressed, we then looked over her CV and learned that since 2006, Sabina was brave enough, exceptionally good and incredibly organized to play in all major cities of our country, three cities in Luxembourg, the city of romance, Vienna, and also at the famous George Enescu International Festival.
Along with capturing the hearts and imagination of everybody who witnessed her amazing talent she won countless prizes including 1st prize at every edition from 2006 to 2009 at the Romanian Competition of Classical Music Interpretation, 1st prize both in 2009 and 2010 for her interpretation of classical music pieces at George Georgescu International Contest, 1st prize in 2011 at Romanian Young Talents Competition, etc.
All of this success didn’t go unnoticed by the Romanian Ministry of Education who offered her a special award for great achievements in formal education and for being an excellent ambassador of Romania through her music success abroad.
This in only a few… from a long list that was written with great sacrifice, restraint, patience, insanely hard work, wisdom, careful planning, and excellent time management.
But she asked for even more. Only from herself.
While she was searching for the right teacher to work with for college, in the summer of 2012 she went to Flute Forum and Piano Diekirch Masterclass in north-eastern Luxembourg ( West Europe ), where she met the great music professor Philippe Benoit.
They worked very well together for several days and it was then, Sabina decided he was the right music guide for her, and asked for permission to study with him for the next school year (2013-2014).
Like every visionary, the teacher noticed her potential and immediately accepted Sabina in his class held at the prestigious Maastricht Conservatory in Netherlands ( West Europe ).
The difficult part was yet to come, as the young talented girl had to audition in front of the Bachelor program board of teachers, to earn her place as a student of the latter institution.
And she did audition in June this year. Big time.
Because one month later, she received a letter from Maastricht Conservatory stating that she was accepted and is to pass straight into her third year of study.
How about that ? …
We were also allowed to display this document so please click on it, to see the picture in full-scale, and hit “CTRL” and “+” keys to zoom in on a particular area you want to see better.
However, there was no time to celebrate as our beautiful music wonder was supposed to transfer 2000 euros to the conservatory’s bank account to pay the tuition of the first year and with just one month to do this everything turned rapidly into a race against time.
She didn’t have the money, she didn’t have much time, but she did have a great ambition to be all she can be and change our lives for ever through her music.
She started to ask for a sponsorship from international companies, but as the doors were shut one by one she realized it’s time to call in support and soon all her friends were raising money in different ways for this cause.
Even Sabina’s teachers jumped in to help, and soon facebook pages were created, blog posts, interviews were taken and put online or printed in local news papers and within days a full media campaign was launched to achieve this higher purpose.
Through a collective and massive effort, Sabina did manage to raise the money to pay the first year’s tuition but as she barely recognized when we asked over and over, money must be raised still to pay for a lot of things an international music career implies.
Here’s where we saw an opportunity to make our story epic.
More than presenting a role model we wanted to raise the money she needs for her music education by creating something that would sell and after careful planning we decided on artwork.
Everybody sketched for weeks, looking for a vision of form, color and feelings that would simply inspire the best in people.
The result of this effort is the ” Change… ” art gallery , which is giving you the chance to be part of an international superstar’s journey to glory, write a few lines of music history yourself and inspire others around the globe with your kindness and visionary spirit.
Before presenting the artworks, we thought about listing some of their immediate practical uses that you will get after buying them.
For instance you could set them as your computer’s desktop background to find beauty and relaxation every time you get a glimpse of the home screen, print them and make a poster for your wall so that your room will have more personality and distinction, print them and make post cards to inspire the persons you love most, print them on T-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, book bags to be inspired as you go and change the world, use them for your music album’s cover, book cover, or other covers that you may need or use very often, and sure you can come up with many more uses, that we would like to hear about in your comments.
Next, here are the rules to buy the artwork :
Each time you want to download one of the three illustrations displayed below, we kindly ask you to give a minimum of 5 euros or a minimum of 25 Romanian RON to the bank accounts below :
RO30INGB0000999903747675 for Euro
RO47INGB0000999903747660 for Romanian RON
both from ING Bank, on behalf of Manolache Sabina, SWIFT code INGBROBU .
To download the small version of each artwork, follow these simple steps :
1. Donate a minimum of 5 euros or a minimum of 25 Romanian RON to the bank accounts above.
2. Return to the blog and take the mouse pointer over one of the three pictures below.
3. Right click on it, choose “Save as…” from the small rectangle menu that appears.
4. Choose a location on your hard drive or USB stick where you want to save the picture.
5. Click “OK”.
6. Be sure to go back to the browser tab where you left our story to download a new artwork, find out more info about Sabina, rate, comment, share our work with family and friends and follow us (there’s a big black button for this at the top of the page).
7. Please mail as at nmerrynote@gmail.com if you run into any trouble while following these instructions.
To download the FULL SCALE VERSION of each artwork follow these simple steps :
1. Donate a minimum of 5 euros or a minimum of 25 Romanian RON to the bank accounts above.
2. Return to the blog and take the mouse pointer over one of the three pictures below.
3. Click on the artwork you like and be ready to be taken to a separate tab in you browser where you will see the full-scale image.
4. Right click on it, choose “Save as…” from the small rectangle menu that appears.
5. Choose a location on your hard drive or USB stick where you want to save the picture.
6. Click “OK”.
7. Be sure to go back to the browser tab where you left our story to download a new artwork, find out more info about Sabina, rate, comment, share our work with family and friends and follow us (there’s a big black button for this at the top of the page).
8. Please mail as at nmerrynote@gmail.com if you run into any trouble while following these instructions.
And finally it’s a great pleasure to present you the “Change…” art gallery of Coffeebooksong Studios :
Picture label #1 – “Change” by Coffeebooksong Studios
Picture label #2 – “Sending you all my love” by Coffeebooksong Studios
Picture label #3 – “Everything” (the first logo of Coffeebooksong Studios) by Nicholas G. Merrynote
Last but not least, based on the above mentioned knowledge base Sabina receives the Coffeebooksong Studios Eternal Inspiration Award, the highest award our studio has to offer, for her extraordinary results in formal and music education, and for inspiring us to ever be hard-working, ambitious, and fight for our dreams until the very last second.
As we leave you to admire and buy our inspiring artwork, we kindly ask you to comment, rate and share our article with your family and friends.
Please do let us know what you think about the images above and if they were good enough by your standards to buy which particular piece, through a comment or email at nmerrynote@gmail.com , speak your mind about everything Coffeebooksong Studios does, order custom artwork, post cards, gift cards, etc or propose a collaboration on a project what will affect positive change.
Most importantly don’t forget to subscribe to our blog, so that you will always be the first to have a link to our latest story, by entering your email address in the text box at the top right corner of the page and clicking the black “Follow” button.
We would like to thank you very much for your patience over this past two and a half months as we wrote this story and for joining Coffeebooksong Studios in the effort to help Sabina become the ultimate music performer.
We couldn’t forget to send our warmest thank yous to our collaborators, Anca Irimia and Maria Zdralea, who provided us with vital information for this story and inspired us with their unconditional help towards their friend’s problem.
And finally the special thanks go to Sabina Manolache who made time to answer all our questions with modesty, calm, joy and great attention to detail.
Because of this, and much more, it’s a great pleasure to offer you her contact details :
Until next time, we are sending you all our love, from,
Coffeebooksong Studios
Disclaimer :
Pictures displayed on this post are property of Coffeebooksong Studios until bought by a person who can make proof of a 5 euros or 25 Romanian RON transaction at least in one of the two bank accounts mentioned in this article.
We have something incredible coming up, we’re asking for just a little more patience, to offer you the most inspiring materials we have Ever created and steal your hearts to join us in the most exciting, memorable and life-changing events we have ever presented.
In the mean time, we have just found this incredible artist, and after watching her performance three times in a row, we were just stunned…
Almost impossible to make such an impression on our “Mark Knopfler” studio team, for a 11-year-old child.
We still can’t believe it… and we thought we cut down right down to chase here and present you the new inspiration of the year 2013.
For her stunning confidence in her talent, for her “unreal” stage presence, for making the beautiful “Diamond” song Her Own! , for the courage to follow her heart and for all the hard work to achieve her dream, the Coffeebooksong Studios is proud to offer Miss Asanda Jazile, the “Coffeebooksong Inspiration of the year award”, the second most valuable award our studio has to offer.
Wrapping everything up in our Studio’s traditional colors, light blue, golden ribbon, small brown gift card, we are offering this incredible story to our dear readers with the deepest respect and sympathy, hoping it will inspire you to take action and change everything for the better as Asanda did.
You got everything to do this, and more.
Please do watch all the video, we didn’t shrink it for a good reason. Actually for many good reasons.
Love,
Coffeebooksong Studios
Disclaimer: Video material and picture property of BBC.
For short, we have our hands so tight with different problems, that’s harder and harder to write the stories as good as we want them to be, and that implies a lot of time, that we just don’t have available now for this amazing project, and as honesty and close contact with our dear reads will always be part of the Coffeebooksong Studios values, we regret to inform you that our future stories will be as short as this, until things will be back on track for us.
Of all the things this incredible studio can produce, we decided to stick to music, as it is the thing we couldn’t live without, and apparently literature also, right ?
So beware of the insanely great tunes that are about to come up, as soon as we have a spare moment.
As always we would really appreciate a sincere, critique comment about our thoughts on it and if you loved the song.
The tune we have for today is so good, so different and so full of passion that even we had a hard time deciding if it actually comes from a person, let alone a beautiful child.
In just two minutes, she brought us joy, peace, hope and made the moments spent listening to her again and again, a blessing.
Be ready to rock your boots off as miss Harriet Whitehead will remake, a classic.
Did you realize that the world stopped for nearly two minutes in late March this year?
Well it did, because Ash Morgan, the singer in the picture above, offered perhaps one of the greatest covers of “Never tear us apart” of all time, making live musical history!
And because it’s insanely great that someone with no musical training can make us burst into tears, noticing all his passion, energy, dedication to music and marvelous unique voice, we are honored to offer him the first Coffeebooksong Inspiration of the Year Award! Congratulations Ash! We can’t wait for the next performance and for your first album!
Wrapping everything up in our Studio’s traditional colors, light blue, golden ribbon, small brown gift card, we are offering this incredible story to our dear readers with the deepest respect and sympathy, hoping it will inspire you to take action and change everything for the better as Ash did.
You have plenty of potential to do this.
Love,
Coffeebooksong Studios
Disclaimer: Video material property of BBC, picture property of digplanet.com.
This post was by far the most challenging one. We say we did it, but we’ll very much appreciate your comments on whether or not you felt the same way. Thank you.
At the same time, it’s the most special one, because we get to honor our very first story request! made by our dear friend Mihaela Cruceru, who trusted us to make her day and yours also, with this Saint Valentine’s post, and for pushing our imagination and team spirit to the limit.
As I gathered my incredible team around our small round studio table, we began one of the greatest brain storming sessions we have ever had, generated by a sound success, we sketched this special story as a one that has to deliver an insanely great card for this special event, a few pieces of advice gathered in years of “for better of worse”, and of course an amazing song that will lift your hearts to a better place, and dance around in each other’s arms the whole night, while great happiness and thankfulness for finding one another would put a special sparkle in your eyes.
…hmmmm…could it possibly get even better than this…we searched the answer a whole day…despite these great ideas, something was missing.
And then it struck us. How about delivering a song so great, so deep, so meaningful to your relationship, that will become your song!
Inserting this last element into our story sketch, we went straight to work. The effort was considerable.
After a wild search, we found this incredible picture in an old hard disk or ours, and we would very much like to give credit to this magnificent artist who made it, except that the picture is not signed and we have no clue where we got it from years ago.
So if you can help, please do by commenting on this post. Thank you.
So our first gift to you, our dear couple, are these fantastic necklaces with surreal colors, beautiful engravings and inspiring text.
Hope you love them.
Next, we would like to congratulate you for finding your true love and just as a small reminder, never take each other’s trust, love and respect for granted. Earn it again and again and take each day spent with one another as if it was the last one.
Finally, the song choice was incredible hard, and it wasn’t a while ago since we find it, but we think it stands a good chance of becoming your song, the general idea of this post and a new Coffeebooksong Studios mile stone to be reached : offering the soundtrack to a love story.
It’s our honor to offer you this tune by two of the greatest song writers of all time, and one of them a living legend of folk music performing publicly for 53 years and releasing over 30 albums: Joan Baez and Mimi Baez( Joan’s sister) – Catch the wind.
Happy Valentine’s day !
from,
Coffeebooksong Studios
Disclaimer: The videos on this post are property of Joan Baez and her sister Mimì Baez. Picture property of unknown to us artist.
As we are developing the next big thing in our wonderful little studio, we stopped for a second to say a hi and to share with you some of the greatest news of 2013, if not the greatest.
You are given the privilege, yet again, to change everything! for the better, give hope and inspire a whole planet…what could be more exciting than this!
We believe, you could be the next game-changer that cold solve a problem that no one else can. You should too.
Of course we will enter with an amazing project about a new way to read books, because we’re crazy about technology, computer languages and science in general. More than everything we think reading can save one’s life.
Below are two projects that we thought were the most inspirational, to get you a head start, and a video about how to enter one of the most important competitions ever, for you and for the world.
Keep us posted with your inspiring projects, we know your work will make a difference,
Love,
Coffeebooksong Studios
Disclaimer: The videos on this post are property of Google.
Britanny Weger offered a better way to diagnose breast cancer,
Jonah Kohn offered death people a better way to experience music,
As we lacked inspiration for text, we wanted to have our own picture again, and since the music we planed to rise your spirits more than ever was going to be produced on the 1st of January at mid day, we took our time until now.
After two days of hard work we came up with this New Year card, which we are thrilled to offer you :
As it was inspired by our great King Michael I of Romania, we would like to explain the elements that decorate this card.
The faded red curtain is decorated with our King’s seal, where M and the little I stands for Michael I, the faded blue curtain the upper right corner is decorated with the seal of our worthy Queen Anne of Romania, two A’s taking almost the form of a cross, and the faded yellow curtain in the middle is decorated with a crown, not the Romanian one, to suggest that the seals on the left and right are royal ones.
A bit lower on the right hand side is the simplified form of the Grand Cross of the Victorian Order, which our King posses since 1937, Knight grade, making him one of the sixty people ever to receive such a distinction starting from 1896.
Of course we couldn’t be more proud of him and grateful for his impeccable service of country for seventy-two years in a row.
The small balls on the left and right are Christian ropes. They are a constant reminder to us that we must respect the teachings of God, and pray more often, so willing for you to do the same, we included them in our design.
In black, blue and gold is a cordon that holds the Romanian Royal Family’s motto, “Nihil side Deo”, Latin for “Nothing without God”, and since it’s also ours, we had to decorate the last part of the card with it, as a conclusion.
The text and our first released banner is enclosed in the shape of a cross, and it represents a simplified version of our coat of arms, where the top half is wishing to inspire you, and bottom half, our name.
All of this inspired by the fact that King Michael I coat of arms will be forever displayed inside the Royal Chapel of the Savoy in London starting from November 2012, making him the first non-British monarch to receive so much respect for his lifetime work.
While the card is for our dear readers, today’s music is dedicated to King Michael I of Romania for being an everyday inspiration and example of, above all, leadership(through kindness) and strong spirit.
Leaving you to admire the best videos of the year, get more inspired than ever, and fill your hearts with great happiness and peace, we are signing off until next week.
With the deepest respect and sympathy,
The artists of Coffeebooksong Studios
The Coffeebooksong artists are taking a deep bow before our great king, King Michael I of Romania and our great queen, Queen Anne of Romania, and another deep bow before the entire Romanian Royal Family and wish them “Merry Christmas! and may you be healthy, peaceful and joyful all the days of your life. Thank you so much for your implacable service of the country, yet another year, and most of all for showing how much you love us through every single one of your public actions.”
To all our dear readers we express thoughts of good health, luck and great happiness coupled with a stronger desire to make the world a better place and give back to other people less fortunate starting with your local community.
Last but not least we hope you had the most wonderful Christmas ever and realizing that giving is so much rewarding than receiving, you gave love, patience, understanding, time, help, meaningful and beautiful your-hand-made gifts then ever before to your family and others in need of them.
Our gift to our inspiring King Michael I and royal family, beloved readers, family and friends is what else, great music.
This concert has one song that is part of our bucket list philosophy, and the rest of them are the only ones that lately are getting us through tough times in our personal lives.
We couldn’t deliver a more personal and inspiring gift, with lots of love from your,
Coffeebooksong artists
Disclaimer : Picture property of tarafagarasului.eu, song and video material property of Mark Knopfler
Coffeebooksong Studios(TM) 