Remabulous

How to be generous.

If you feel moved to participate in this experiment, please share what you can in the tip jar in the top right corner of the site.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey.

Much love to all.

Help me make wishes come true!

Hello all. I have undertaken a challenge and I need your help. I believe I can raise $1000 dollars by this Friday. I want to donate this money to the make a wish foundation.

Here at Remabulous, we are all about dreams. I believe that if you set your mind to something there is hope. I believe that dreams are what this world needs. And sick kids need dreams more than anyone.

I want to raise $1000 for Make a Wish. If you would like to support me, please donate using the tip jar in this post or on the top right hand corner of the site.

When we help others dream, our dreams can get bigger, too.

I'll have a new cause next week, but for this week if anything I have ever written means something to you, please show your thanks by helping me help these kids. 

I had my tonsils out last February and it shut me down for a month. That is nothing compared to what these kids go through. I am honored to help them reach a dream and live well.

Thank you in advance for your support!

32 for 32 Vegas Edition

Hello all!

I am writing this post from my almost frighteningly large suite at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Through a crazy series of events I find myself here for a David Neagle seminar. When you get one or two signs you are supposed to attend something, it's still possible to say no and get on with your usual life. However, I just had far too many signals that this was an essential experience for me.

I can't entirely say why that is, but in the 31 for 31 list, I said that I would say yes to more adventures and so I have built that habit from last year.

It is an amazing thing to look over all that has happened since last October. I was just into my new apartment then, just getting used to the east side and getting to know new friends there. And now these friends are some of my favorite people. I have met so many wonderful people in the last year: mentors, clients, friends an colleagues.

I feel so lucky!

So now I get to lie on a gold couch and watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer- I never watched it when it was on TV, but now I am hooked. Hooked enough to bring the season 3 DVDs with me on a business trip that I borrowed from my friend Amy.

Hi Amy! Your Buffy disks are on a trip. I think they are happy to be here.

As am I. I am not entirely sure what I am in for this week, but it feels exciting. I'll keep you all posted.

ps- I made an amazing version of Madeleine cookies that is wheat and sugar free. I am really excited about it! I'll post it as soon as I am home this upcoming weekend as I don't have the original recipe I modified with me on this trip.

It will be my Halloween present to you all.

Enter Jackie Page: List item 16

One of my big items was getting my house ship shape this year. No more beige couch against beige wall! This past weekend, Jackie Page or Alter came to visit. She is a friend whose work I've had my eye on for quite a while, so it was such a treat to have her come on down and take a gander at the house.

So far so good... above is my new, but not yet totally finished, living room. I love love love to sit in it now. Before it was just a bland and cramped area. Now it is a real live room!

More to come, but wanted to update all on what's been going on with 32 for 32...

Yay!

Today, I will go to dance class.

Given that all I have been focusing on the last week or so on the list has been stakeouts, I decided it was time to give some attention to other items on the list. #4 is "take a ballet class." Now, I have found a proper ballet class, but when I was at my knitting group last week, I heard about this.

I think this might be the most terrifying ass I have ever seen in my life.(click on the image of the lady in yellow when you first land to see what I am talking about.) It's hypnotic really, in its tiny green shorts and wrist bands.

Rest assured that I will not be dressed in the same outfit while attending this experience, so please don't start a stakeout of your own outside the class. I will be in sensible yoga attire and just trying things out.

The woman in my knitting class who told me about it was about my age and making a beautiful twisted stitch cardigan, so I feel I can trust her judgment. She says she goes about three or four times a week. If it's that good, I might actually get enough exercise to be able to run around the reservoir! Without actually having to run. Especially in the rain we've been having lately. I prefer to stay inside and read. Perfection.

So... I will dance, sculpt, lift weights with, and generally stretch myself all over the place this evening at this class. Will report back. I am not giving up on the proper ballet class, but the promise of this ass was too good to give up. If mine ends up looking like this one, I will absolutely be photographing it. But as for right now, no dice.

Send me strength!

image: popphysique.com gallery.

Anyone seen this guy? I want to date him.

Ok. So one of my goals this year was "find love." #6 on the 32 for 32 list, in fact. Throughout my life, I never thought of myself as the sort of person who had a type. None of the guys I dated were very similar to each other. They looked nothing alike and often had had totally diverging interests.

However, as friends have pointed out, there is one sort of guy I have a weakness for. He's probably pretty tall- around 6 feet at least, pretty lanky, sandy brown hair to light brown, green or blue eyes and black framed glasses. It gets a bit more specific, but I have encountered enough of these creatures to know they do a number on me.

Beyond that, I am going for the sort of guy who shuffles around in socks on a Sunday morning reading the New York Times. I recently spotted one of these types in the current issue of ReadyMade. He has a painting BFA and is a custom bike builder. Perfect. Unfortunately, I then spotted a wedding ring in the photo. And he lives in Portland. Enter the sad trombone.

So... I decided to take matters into my own hands and found a composite sketch generator online and am broadcasting my type out to all of you. Here he is:

I couldn't really find the right hair in the program. His hair is usually a bit longer in the front and short in the back. Looks like he just messed it up. And the glasses are black or dark tortoise. You know what I mean. If you know this guy, and he's 32-40, gainfully employed, kind, well read and looking to date an unconventional lady... send him my way. If he lives in LA, that would be preferable. Extra points for the east side... and super extra points for non-american (British, Scandinavian, German, etc.) Thank you!

I'm not too proud to ask for help on this one. It's a big goal, people. But I figured that if I knew he was this type, the rest would be a bit easier.

Also... I would die to go out with Stanley Tucci. DIE. So that's a big wish list item, too. Just thought I'd throw that in.

On trying to take days off.

I am a big list maker. I make big lists, it's what I do. I make a longer list each year on my birthday and when things get overwhelming and crazy, I make a list.

I think lots of us do this. It works, and we get more done for the most part.

Recently I have been trying to challenge this idea. Is getting more done really the ultimate goal?

As I am jumping into a new project with a kick-ass collaborator, she pointed out something to me in a meeting we had: "I don't think our goal in doing this is to work 18 hours a day."

What a sigh of relief. I watched Yes Man, and read the book and took it to heart. I want to embrace opportunity and excitement and adventure in my life and my business.

Given the option of participating in something, I'll probably find a way to say yes. It was a good thing to try this.

I am kind of a homebody sometimes. (translation- I work from home, and you sometimes need a crowbar to get me away from the computer.) Getting out is good.

But when making plan after plan is the only way to get me to stop working, and I start working again as soon as I get home, hmmm. Not so good.

I looked over my 32 for 32 list this morning again, as I like to do on a fairly regular basis to see how I'm progressing, and realized a few goals have had to shift.

When I put down "learn to make cheese" as #3, I didn't realize that #22, get rid of my skin condition was going to require me to give up dairy. Hmm.

So what's the answer? For this one, it's a raw cooking class and learning to make nut cheeses. And maybe goat cheese and sheep cheese as I can add those things back into my diet.

But the specifics aren't the point.

We make lists with the knowledge that we have when we make them. We do our best, and if we update lists on a weekly basis, then we have the chance to bend and flex as needed.

But an annual list? Does everything always fit the same way it did when you made it? Probably not.

I think it's just as much of a gift to myself to allow the list to evolve as I do. And when #32: Stakeout becomes a big screaming opportunity, as it has in the last few weeks, I can then have the space in my life to reach out and grab it.

After all that's the whole point.

And in the meantime, I might be able to teach myself to take a day off now and then. Today, that day will be Sunday.

Hugs to all.

image: Flora

Video Friday: Clean up that kitchen, people!

Your kitchen matters more than you think.

Especially when I am trying diet modifications to get rid of my skin problem. Let me say that it's a whole lot easier to make these things happen when you don't have a million off limits items at home.

But either way, it's easier to get to those goals with gusto if you're eating well.

Check out my new kitchen, above. Yay!

Stakeouts and stakeouts, oh my!

My dream of going on a stakeout sure is taking off, I must say. I am so excited about all the amazing feedback that has been coming through.

I am very excited to announce that I have a url for the show: www.stakeoutgirl.com. I am in the process of building a wordpress site for it, and my graphic design muse, Jessica Krewson, is hard at work on the banner and I am crossing my fingers that my lovely photographer friends Krista or Jesse will be willing to shoot a headshot with some opera glasses.

All is progressing according to increasingly real-feeling plans. yay!

Will keep you all updated as news unfolds. Thanks for the amazing comments. I can tell this will be quite a ride.

image: ARebbs