Category: Blogging

Go Green Sangha Radio Show Tomorrow

Tomorrow from 4:00-5:30pm PT, I’ll join host radio Ananda Leeke and fellow guest panelists Jennifer Moore of Pink Heels and Alicia Valair of Lifestyle Design Interiors for a discussion on “Transforming Your Life, Career, and Home into Sacred Space for the New Year.”

You can listen to the show online and participate in a Q&A with the panel.

Go Green Sangha Radio features programs that discuss how people choose and incorporate mindfulness, green living, creativity, diversity, the healing arts, and service in their daily lives, businesses, organizations, and communities.

Hope you’ll tune in!

What’s Your Five-A-Day?

Britt Bravo tagged me in a meme called “five-a-day” which was started to encourage mental wellbeing.

Here are my top five things to do every day (or every week) to stay mentally healthy:

  1. Yoga. Yoga is an amazing stress reliever and helps to clear my mind, too.  Can’t beat yoga bliss from Sean’s class at Namaste Yoga and Laura’s class at Monkey Yoga.  Or simply do what Larry Schultz from my It’s Yoga teacher training calls the “minimum daily requirement” – five Sun Salutation A’s and five Sun Salutation B’s (which fits nicely with the “five-a-day” theme!).
  2. Getting up without an alarm clock. This has been one of the biggest benefit of working for myself!  I feel so much better mentally and physically now that I wake up according to my own rhythms.  On those rare occasions when I do have to get up early, I use my BioBrite SunRise Clock.
  3. Surrounding myself with beauty. One of my core value strings is Beauty / Creativity / Creating Beauty / Style / Inspiration / Self Expression / Uniqueness / Emotions.  I feel so much better when I take in the beauty that’s all around me – whether that be admiring nature while I’m walking my dog, reading a touching story, appreciating inspiring artwork or creating art of my own.
  4. Reflecting on what I am grateful for. This always helps me put things in perspective.  I usually include something I’m grateful for when I journal in the morning.
  5. Reading.  Learning and personal growth are also core values of mine.  So, I’m always reading a self-help and/or business book and something inspirational and creative.

I’m tagging:

  1. Jamie Ridler
  2. Leah Piken Kolidas
  3. Jennifer Moore
  4. Ananda Leeke
  5. YOU!

Now off to yoga class!  Namaste.

Kreativ Blogger

Many, many thanks to the magnificent Leah Piken Kolidas for the Kreativ Blogger award!  What an honor coming from Ms. Creative Every Day herself!

Here are the rules:

  • Link to the person or persons who tagged you.
  • Post the rules on your blog.
  • Write six random things about yourself.
  • Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
  • Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
  • Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Six random things about me:

  1. I can be a little dyslexic when it comes to left and right.  Whenever I drove in high school my friends used to have to say “turn my-side” or “turn your-side” instead of turn right or turn left.
  2. I get a kick out of the show Monk.  I don’t know who else actually watches it, but his OCDness just cracks me up!  (Hmm, I guess cuz a part of me relates).
  3. I love getting massages.  Thai massage is my absolute favorite with hot stone close on its heels.
  4. I did a short stint at Sony Pictures Entertainment where I managed the promotional websites for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy.
  5. I’m a homebody.
  6. I competed in Mock Trail in the 8th grade.  I was originally slated to be a witness but I really wanted to be an attorney (must have been that L.A. Law influence!).  So, I asked the Vice Principal if I could switch to being a prosecuting lawyer.  I got the role!  AND scored a perfect 10 in my closing argument during our final championship.

My nominations for the Kreativ Blogger Award:

  1. Kate Prentiss of Kiss the Paper and paper. pixels. cloth.
  2. Molly Prentiss of Kiss the Paper and Blogging Molly
  3. Mindy of Under a Pink Sky and the Wishstudio Blogzine
  4. Ananda Leeke of That Which Awakens Me
  5. Cynthia Morris of Journey Juju
  6. Jamie Lees of Today I Create

And YAY to creative bloggers everywhere!!!  It’s been such a treat to be so inspired by everyone’s work in the Art Every Day Month Challenge.  Thanks again, Leah for creating such an awesome community!

AEDM Day 11: What I Love About Me

Tonight’s art is inspired by my week four question to Kate and Molly on the sisters’ blog Kiss The Paper.  This week’s prompt is “What do you love most about you?” as a follow up to last week’s prompt “What do you love most about your sister?”  It’s been so cool to witness the amazing creations from this dynamic duo!  Makes me wish I had a sister!

I had fun answering the same question as my Art Every Day challenge for Day 11.  You can click on the image above to see a larger version.

I’d love to hear… What do you love most about YOU?

Kiss the Paper

This past week I ventured into a new creative project with Kate and her sister Molly.  They are both awesome artists and illustrators (as you can tell from the super cute co-created image above).  And they come from a highly creative family!  This collaboration, called “Kiss the Paper,” is the paper blog correspondence of two sisters who live in San Francisco and Oakland. I have the honor of prompting these talented sisters with an inquiry each Tuesday.  They’ll take that week to craft their artistic responses and post on the blog.  Kiss the Paper will be published every Tuesday for 52 weeks.

This week’s question is, “What is it to be a sister?”  Their responses got me all choked up, they were so sweet!  We’d love to hear your thoughts on the question, too, so check it out!

Blogging Brilliance

Thanks to social media expert Britt Bravo for coming to our Oakland Ladies Who Launch meeting last night to speak about blogging.  Britt shared with us some cool tools and tips for starting and enhancing our blogs.   Based on her presentation, I finally added an RSS feed link and e-mail subscription link to my blog!  Thanks, Britt!  Please check out Britt’s inspiring and informative blog Have fun. Do good.

Speaking of blogging, via twitter this morning, I heard of this exciting contest on Martha Stewart’s blog.  Comment on her post and Martha may feature you on her blog!  Way cool!  And today’s Martha show was all about blogging and the studio audience was filled with bloggers blogging away on their laptops.  Just brilliant!  I loved seeing the creator of cute overload, too.

If you’re wanting to learn more about blogging and social media, I’ve included some great resources below.

The Ladies Who Launch site has several articles on social media and blogging:

The Pink Heel’s blog has a great overview of social media.

And here is some great information about twitter (a way of “micro-blogging”):

I’d love to hear what helpful resources or tips you’ve found on blogging or social networking.  Please share them in the comments!

Happy blogging!

Luxury, Gratitude and Synchronicity

On Thursday, the question of the day at Cafe Gratitude was, “What is luxurious about your life?” My answer… the fact that I have the freedom and flexibility to have a nice lunch in the middle of the day with a friend I hadn’t seen in ages. I had been so looking forward to seeing my friend and old Old Navy HR teammate Meredith and hearing the latest and greatest in her life! We had such a wonderful time reconnecting. She’s getting her masters in Expressive Arts Therapy so we also had a great conversation about using Expressive Arts in therapy and coaching.

While we were there, I looked a few tables over and thought that the woman there looked kinda familiar. I said to Meredith, “I think that woman wrote the book that’s in my purse right now!” I’m taking a workshop from Kimberly Wilson this Sunday in the city, so I’ve been reading her awesome book Hip Tranquil Chick. When we were done with lunch, I went to the bathroom and pulled out the book to check the headshot. I was pretty sure it was her and thought, oh what the hell, I’ll just go over to the table and ask! Turns out it was indeed Kimberly. She was really sweet and she recognized me from the wishstudio blogzine where we both have a guest column. I’m looking forward to her Yoga & Creativity workshop this weekend.

After lunch, I had a quarterly in-person check-in session with a long-standing coaching client. We did some cool work together using the Inside Team model with Expressive Arts. I’m excited to be incorporating these new tools into my practice and seeing the powerful impact it has.

I had a couple of hours before my SF Coaches board meeting, so I stopped off at Fillmore Street to hang out. Went to Paper Source and bought some new pens. Then moseyed on over to Bittersweet for a lovely cup of White Chocolate Dream (my absolute favorite is their Spicy! hot chocolate, but I knew if I had it that late in the day I’d be wired… yes, I’m that sensitive to caffeine!).

Finished the night off with a great BBQ and meeting on the deck of fellow board member Heidi’s Marina apartment.

Ahhh, I’m grateful for my luxuriously leisurely and synchronistic day in beautiful San Fran!

Meeting Jamie

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While I’m out here in Toronto (or just outside of Toronto to be more accurate), I just HAD to meet my friend and kindred creative spirit Jamie. What a treat to finally meet this amazing woman in person!!! Jamie is such a wise, intuitive soul who dances vibrantly with life. That’s us above finishing up our dinner. (I’m hoping she got a better picture!)

Jamie and I “met” early last year through an online coaching community for creative artists. One of my paintings was posted on the home page and Jamie reached out in her magical way to connect. From there we started to exchange e-mails back and forth, each time finding more things we have in common and are passionate about. Since then, we’ve been supporting each other in building our businesses, living creative lives and making a positive impact in the world. We’ve even started to collaborate together on ways to be pioneers in the emerging field of Expressive Arts Coaching.

I love that we both do things even if they scare us (see collaboration point above for just one example). I love knowing that I can drop her a line when I’m frustrated or stuck because I know she’ll understand AND she’ll call me forth. I love knowing I can always look to her for inspiration and insight. I love knowing that we’re there to celebrate successes with each other. I love that all of this grew out of a simple, spontaneous e-mail hello.

Who are you wanting to meet? What magic might unfold by simply saying hello to someone you don’t know? What new connection can you create today?

Musepreneur on Wishstudio

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The fabulous Mindy has created the deliciously delightful and inspiring wishstudio blogzine. I’m thrilled to be a part of the community as a regular contributor with my monthly Musepreneur column. In it I’ll be exploring the heart and soul of business and sharing right-brain ideas, tips and resources for creative entrepreneurs. Check out my introductory article and find out if you’re a musepreneur! I’d also love to hear what you’d be interested in seeing or learning about, so please let me know.

Come join your creative cohorts! In addition to our talented hostess Mindy, there are so many amazing women on the wishstudio blogzine including my friend Jamie of Starshyne Productions (who I get to meet in person later on this week in Toronto!!) and Kimberly Wilson of Hip Tranquil Chick.

Happy wishing!!