Dear Reader,

Thank you for visiting this blog.

We feel perfectly pink blue that we will not be posting here anymore. We hope that, if you happen upon this site, you will still find something that inspires or encourages in some way.  I blog over at It's A Beautiful Life and you are welcome to join me there.  

Here's wishing you a perfectly pink day....

Brenda

Book An Artist Date

Source

My dad used to love to go fishing. He’d load up the truck with his fishing equipment and spend a day reeling in his quota. In later years, he’d sometimes come home empty-handed. The fish were scarce, often because the lake had been overfished.

You may wonder what fishing has to do with your beautiful life. Sometimes our lives feel like overfished lakes. If we keep dipping into our inner ponds – giving and giving – we’ll eventually dry up if we don’t also take time to replenished our ‘stock’.

Author Julia Cameron says that writers draw on an inner resource of images. “This well (is) like an inner pond, one that must be kept both stocked and freely flowing.”

She says writers and artists often ask, “Why is the work drying up just when it was going so well?”

Julia responds, “Very often work dries up precisely because it was going so well. We have simply overfished our inner reservoir without having taken the time and care to consciously restock our storehouse.”

So how do we restock our inner wells? Julia uses what she calls the Artist Date. “An Artist Date is a once-weekly solitary expedition to something festive that interests us.” (e.g. a visit to a museum, quilting shop, pet store, kid’s toy store, a card shop…a place that lets you experience lots of sensory images for you.)

When things get flat and grey, visit your favourite greenhouse or floral shop. That’s one place I love to poke around—the smells, colors and displays always rejuvenate me. Makes my life feel beautiful again.

The next time you feel overfished ... before is even better ... heed Julia’s advice and take yourself on an Artist’s Date. Maybe even go fishing with your Dad or someone near to you next Father’s Day.

© by Brenda C Leyland

Living Beautifully: First Impressions

“Hair style is the final tip-off whether or not a woman really knows herself.”
~ Hubert De Givenchy, Vogue (July 1985)

SPRING'S in the air. You’ve just gotten a new makeover and your face looks fab! Maybe you’ve added a few new pieces to your wardrobe, but now your hair style needs a serious update.

Brenda Kinsel, bestselling author of several books, including 40 over 40: 40 Things Every Woman Over 40 needs to Know About Getting Dressed, shares this interesting hair tip:

“Go to a new hair designer looking your best self. Introduce yourself to the hairdresser fully clothed the first time, before they get you into a smock. Let the hairdresser see who you are. Here’s a place where first impressions will really help ensure that you get the cut that works with your lifestyle and taste.”

Although what I'm going to tell you isn’t a hair salon experience, I’ll always remember when I first came to the city as a young woman looking for her first job. I decided to put in my application at a temporary agency, hoping that this step would help get my foot in the door of a nice place to work in the downtown area.

But I didn’t think at the time that it really mattered to dress up for this initial interview with the agency – after all it wasn’t an employer who was seeing me. But I began to wonder when the jobs I kept getting were never in those nice offices downtown, but in more casual, industrial kind of places. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the agency's first impression of me was that I was a 'jeans' kind of girl, and so the jobs they sent me to were to the casual jeans kind of sites.

It’s true, first impressions matter...at job interviews, and now we learn even at hair salons. If you haven’t been getting the style you want, maybe you’re giving them the wrong impression of who you are in ‘real’ life.

I never really thought about what I was wearing or how my hair looked when I arrived at a salon; after all, they were going to wash it and re-do it all anyway.  But if they only see me...you... in a way that doesn't reflect us at our most authentic times, no wonder we can walk away disappointed. 

That first impression turns out to be the unconscious standard they refer to forever after. So it's something to keep in mind for all our first encounters... not just in hair salons.

Here’s to living your life more beautifully... more truly you!

Using Concealer

On Using Concealer

The first thing to remember is that a concealer is meant to correct, not cover discolorations.

For discoloration, apply Mary Kay Signature Concealer before the foundation.

For blemishes, apply a matched concealer over the foundation.

Yellow will correct red, purple and brown.

You should use concealer only on discolored skin areas. Applying to surrounding areas will create a ‘halo’ effect (normal skin color does not need correcting).

Also remember that concealer is dryer than foundation so it adheres better and will emphasize lines.

Information gleaned from Mary Kay literature

30-Second Inspiration: Give Your Dreams Air

“If only I could...” So often we sigh over our dreams and then thrust them away because we think it’s a waste of time to hope for something that can’t happen. Although the obstacles may be legitimate–finances, health, family–we shut down our desires before we even give them air to breathe.

There’s a lovely old movie, Enchanted April, where on a soggy, miserable afternoon two women happen upon the same newspaper ad:  ‘To those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine. Small medieval Italian castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let furnished for the month of April…’

You feel their longing, even as they push the ad aside. It’s impossible. Too many hurtles. No finances. And what will their husbands say. Yet they yearn. Dream. Ponder. When they bravely step over their inhibitions, that dream becomes reality and changes their lives forever.

Things won't change for the better…until we allow ourselves freedom to dream.  If you’ve been closing the door on something, I invite you to open the door and give it room to breathe again.

Photo source:  glittergraphics.com 

Living Beautifully: Do It With Joy!

"Do it with joy."

It was the phrase I heard in the stillness one early morning

as I got myself ready for the day.

Do it with joy?

Whether it's a perfectly ordinary day
or a day that's up-side-down?

Whether it's a day filled with bad news
or the need to make a hard decision?

Whether it's facing the same old, same old?

The dentist's chair?

A new situation that makes me feel so, so uncomfortable?

Yes! Yes!

For, as I have been discovering...

Making the choice to go about our days in the spirit of joy will shift things

in our hearts which somehow shifts the atmosphere around us!

When I choose joy over anxiety,
joy over feeling despondent,
joy when I'd rather disappear and not face the situation,
joy even when I'm tired and w-e-a-r-y of heart

...whenever Joy arrives she brings her strong companion, Strength.

 And with that strength comes a growing confidence that
I can pull my shoulders back and face whatever 'it' is
because this affliction - thankfully - too shall pass.

So today, I invite you to join me, and in whatever you must do,
choose to do it with joy....

And, I'd love to hear how that works for you!






Photo source:  The Graphics Fairy

Living Beautifully: You're The Queen

YEARS AGO I had an opportunity to hear Miss America 1980 Cheryl Prewitt-Salem speak at a women's conference.  She was an inspiring speaker and I'll never forget the one thought she shared on being happy...how we as women have the ability to choose to be happy... any time, any place, any situation.

As a young woman, I was surprised to learn that the choice for being happy was always within my reach. I guess I'd assumed up until that point, when the grumpies made their appearance, I just had to live with it (as did everyone else around me) until the mood passed, and happy came back.

It was such a startling idea for me.  You mean I didn't have to let the bad mood run its course, that I had the ability to choose?  Every. Single.Time?  Even on those PMS days?

Yes, yes... when I took hold of that idea, I found it to be true. And it changed my life!

I learned that we do not have to pick the ball even if it's been thrown into our court.  I don't know if Queens hold out scepters to their subjects, but if they do, as the Queen of my world, I do not have to 'hold court' with grumpy bad moods.

I get to choose who lives in my sphere.  I get to choose whether my mood rules me... or... I rule it!

Most times it's such a split second choice -- between going ahead and 'letting it all out' -- or being more graceful and deciding to be happy even if I'm not 'in the mood'.  

Let's be honest here.... some days it is not easy.  At all.  Sometimes I don't choose happy in that first moment, but, what I have found is that the decision I made that day long ago has governed most of my days ever since.  (I think that's a good batting average.)

Being in charge... being able to choose to be happy, no matter what, literally changed my life for the better, for the more beautiful.

It can do the same for you!

Be the Queen..... choose to be happy.... live beautifully!


 ***

"Most folks are about as happy
as they make up their minds to be."
~ Abraham Lincoln


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Photo source:  miss america.org

Graphic source:  glitter graphics.com