Monday, August 22, 2011
Sally Goldfarb sells handcrafted belt buckles.
Many people look for ways to retreat from the stresses of work and home lives. Three years ago, one Needham resident seized the rare opportunity to turn her way of de-stressing into a business. “Some people drink, some people smoke, some people eat, and I make belt buckles,” said Sally Goldfarb, founder of B-Buckled, who sells belts and belt buckles at craft shows, events for charity and out of her own home. “I’d always collected broken pieces of jewelry and odd things,” she recalled. “Every now and then I’d sit down and sort through it just to relax.” Though Goldfarb has had a lifelong passion for crafting, she said, “Never did I ever think that someone would actually pay money for a craft.” She was inspired in part by her sister, who …
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Needham resident Mike Zhang's Stress Tracker app aims to help people manage their busy lives.
With technology making it even more difficult these days to escape all of life’s demands—now arriving via text, e-mail, phone call, Tweet or Facebook post—a cell phone may be the last place a person would think to turn when stressed out. Mike Zhang hopes to change that. The Needham resident and CEO of AboveStress Inc. recently introduced a new iPhone application that helps people identify, track and manage stress in their lives. Stress Tracker, now available for $5.99 from Apple’s App Store, allows its members to document sources of stress at any point in the day with just a few taps. The information is linked to a person’s account on AboveStress.com and can be viewed in chart form over the course of a day, week or months to help people …
Monday, June 27, 2011
Inlaws Richard and Dorothy DiNatale are spreading their message via T-shirt.
If you live in the Needham area, you may have seen people around town wearing T-shirts with a simple message: “Family is Everything.” What you may not know, though, is that the idea behind these shirts was born right here in Needham by in-laws Richard and Dorothy DiNatale, who continue to spread their message about the importance of family on the T-shirts they design and manufacture. “This was born when everything went bad with the economy and life wasn’t so good anymore, but family was still everything to everybody,” Dorothy said. It was Christmas 2005. Nephew Tyler Jewell, the son of Richard’s sister Jean, had just made the U.S. Olympic snowboarding team and would soon be going to Torino, Italy, to compete. Jean made what at the time …
