I love this time of year. Listening to beautiful Christmas music. My favorite is… Can’t decide.

What’s yours?
Laina

One of my favorite inspirational books is This Is Not the Life I Ordered. It is simply a journaling of the main characters and their life stories and their journey’s and how they persevered and were able to receive strength from each other in order to make it through those times of success and failure. I would encourage you to pick up a copy as it is one of those books that is good to have on the book shelf for those times you need a little pick me up. Let’s take today for example. It’s Monday, and because of a lot of craziness in my life, I definitely needed some inspiration to get me going. Throughout this book are quotes that I enjoy and the one today that caught my eye was from Cicely Tyson. It says “Challenges make you discover things about yourself that you never really knew. They’re what make the instrument stretch- what make you go beyond the norm.” What it said to me today is that instead of letting those challenges get us down we need to look at them as ways to make us better. It’s not always easy but it’s a better alternative than being sad and depressed about what might seem like an insurmountable challenge.

Laina

Chiczofrenic – Barbie & Ken

We all remember back when we were young and it was all about Barbie dolls and Baby Alive. If we had brothers there might be a stretch Armstrong and some Hot Wheels thrown in. However, how many of us played house. Traditional ‘play’ acting for girls and boys alike. Mimicking our parents and grandparents or people we may have watched on television. Is this where we learned that we wanted to have that perfect life? Did the those folks really portray the perfect life? It’s what all the people against Barbie and Ken were fearful of, the ideas that people could be perfect. We played with the perfect Barbie, in her perfect clothes, her perfect corvette, and perfect Ken. Did we feel this was how life was supposed to be? Perfect?

How did you feel the first time you realized that life wasn’t going to be like Barbie and Ken living the life in the Dream House? I know I’ve felt cheated at times. I thought life was supposed to be all rainbows and marshmallows. Damn that fantasy! It set some high expectations that now I must reach or live disappointed. Trying to achieve that dream is what is driving me crazy these days (among others). How about you?

Book progress or lack thereof…

Deadlines, what can be said about deadlines?? Right now I would like to say I hate them. A procrastinator by nature, making the final revisions to my book are not something I can put off because if I do not have them to my editor in time then they can’t do their work and everything gets thrown off. Don’t you hate that? I mean really, sometimes I just look at the screen of my laptop and want to stare off into space. It’s much more fun. I don’t feel like using neither my creativity nor my imagination. Honestly, I would rather go shopping right now. I even spent some time this morning thinking about what bills I could get rid of that might allow me to stop working. But then I would still want to shop and that idea went right out the window.

I need to be motivated and it’s just not there. So I need to draw some energy from you all, my friends. What do you do when you are faced with something you need to do, you have to do, and usually you want to do. But don’t want to do any of those things right this minute?

Help me????

Laina

We launched our first Orange is the New Pink (OITNP) fundraiser for raising MS awareness last night at Ruth Chris steakhouse. A smashing success we sold out of our OITNP apparel. Check out the store.

Grey Unisex Hoodie - OITNP $30

Unisex grey - OITNP $15

Ladies Grey - OITNP $20

Ladies White - OITNP $20