Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Lulan Artisans launches at Target.com


Please support my friend and founder of Lulan Artisans, Eve Blossom, as their product launches on Target.com Red Hot Shop!

This exclusive clutch is not only beautiful, it's 100% hand-dyed, hand-woven silk by Lulan Artisans.

Design: Subtle
Movement Ikat, Color: Mulberry

Product: Clutch Purse w/snap-in silk handle

Handmade in Cambodia-hand-dyed, hand-woven

Sewn by Cambodian landmine and polio hindered persons.

Lulan Artisans supports over 650 weavers, spinners, dyers and finishers in weaving cooperatives in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and India. Lulan supports these artisans and their communities through paying sustainable wages, creating economic stability, growing local economies and assisting with other social benefits - such as education, housing, healthcare - as well as opening up new markets for their products.

Support Lulan's mission to enhance the economic development and quality of life of their weavers, spinners, dyers and finishers by purchasing one as a holiday gift today!

Monday, October 11, 2010

Mind blowing power of love

Ran across this article via a friend a few weeks ago. It blows my mind that this hasn't been discovered sooner as it seems quite obvious to me that we are linked and interconnected. As quoted in the article, "When this happens we can read each other's brains and bodies at a deeper level - a sixth sense." I'd like to see the actual research and results. I'm going to dig and see if I can find more information on the topic and will share my findings here. In the meantime, enjoy the article.

Friday, July 16, 2010

A Song In Loving Memory of My Dear Friend Kindred Khan Nguyen



A dear friend of mine, Kindred Khan Nguyen, was doing one of his favorite and most enjoyable things, camping in Kings Canyon in the Sequoia's over the 4th of July holiday weekend when he left us unexpectedly in a tragic hiking accident on the 4th of July. I've been searching for two weeks to process this and to find the right words to give proper meaning to how special his life was to me and so many others, as well as searching for the right song to dedicate to him. His services and memorials are today and tomorrow. Today I finally found the right song. I'm still speechless in words as to how this great friend impacted my life and the life of the many people he encountered over the years. You can read the blog with some of his writings at http://kindredkhannguyen.blogspot.com/ as well as visit his memorial dedication site at http://www.khannguyen.com. I know I will have much more to share about the tremendous impact he has had on my life over the last few years as soon as I am able to process the part of me that is hurting, grieving and feeling such a great sense of loss... but for now, enjoy the song. It reminds me so much of what he stood for, love and life.

"I am a c'ode of Song. The moments are notes--strung together becoming a song of life. Consciousness is the melody. Tempo, the heart beating." ~Kindred Khan Nguyen 1970-2010

Kiwanas Club 3rd Annual Poker Tournament

FYI Poker Peeps: The Kiwanas Club of Santa Monica is hosting their 3rd Annual Poker Tournament this Saturday, July 17th beginning at 5pm at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. Buy-in is $100, includes dinner and great prizes and can still be purchased at the event. Dress code is business casual. Support your local community by playing poker. http://kiwanisclubsm.org/

Monday, June 28, 2010

LA Take Steps Be Heard For Crohn's & Colitis

My friend Ashley challenged me to join her on the LA Take Steps Be Heard For Crohn's & Colitis 5 days before the event which took place at Griffith Park on June 13, 2010. When I questioned the timing of 5 days, she kindly responded, "Don't worry about raising the money. We'll split the $250 goal. Just come and walk with me." Always up to the challenge of supporting a good cause, and especially because Ashley & I share the bliss of having chronic gastro-intestinal related conditions, I signed up on Wednesday for a Sunday walk at Griffith Park, added the link to my Facebook and twitter page and emailed my friends and family to spread the word.

My aunt who was in town visiting immediately handed me $20 to encourage me to get started and within 5 days, I'm proud to announce that Ashley & I raised $770 combined for the cause. HUGE WIN!!! Thank you so much to all the supporters & contributors to our cause. The incredible support & generosity of my friends and family encourages and inspires me daily to push forward, live well and make a difference every day with or without Colitis.

Take Steps for Crohn’s & Colitis is CCFA’s national evening walk and celebration of the nation’s largest event dedicated to finding cures for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. Over 1.4 million American adults and children are affected by digestive diseases ~ one in every 200 Americans! While many suffer in silence, Take Steps brings together this community and encourages them to make noise and be heard. The money we raised through Take Steps helps support patient programs, education efforts, and furthers crucial research. In the past two years alone, they have been able to bring together over 75,000 people and raise over $13 million to help further our mission.

Here's a pic of us at the LA event... Now let's be heard and find a cure so no one else has to suffer through the daily life disruptions of living with Crohn's or Colitis!

 
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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Vanessa's Slow Cooker/Crock Pot Turkey Chili Recipe

By popular request, here is the crock pot turkey chili recipe that I threw together recently that received rave reviews from everyone who tried it... and I quote from my father, "This is the best chili I have ever had! I can't believe it's made with turkey and not beef!" Hope you enjoy and please give feedback if you have any additional ingredient suggestions or additional recipes of your own.

Ingredients:
2 pds. Ground Turkey
1 (15 oz.) can black beans
2 (15 oz.) can kidney beans
1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce
1 (8 oz.) can tomatoes (quartered)
1 Carrol Shelby's Original Texas Brand chili kit
1 red onion chopped
3 cloves garlic chopped
3 (15 oz. cans) water (I filled one of the bean cans 3x and poured into pot)
Optional additions for serving: (shredded cheese, tortilla chips, sour cream, diced tomatoes)

Prep Time (15 min):
brown turkey in large skillet
chop red onion and garlic
add all listed ingredients to crock pot
cook on high for 2 hours
reduce heat to low for 2-3 hours or until ready to serve

Voila! It's easy and delicious and healthy! Enjoy. :D

Friday, February 26, 2010

Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own ~ U2

The last few months were tough for me physically and emotionally. Yesterday, on the day I finally found peace and resolve, I ran across this song and the lyrics completely connected with my experience. One of my many truths that brought me back to light, is that I don't have to make it alone. Also, the second I let go of past hurt, stopped fighting, stopped trying to being right, and allowed others to help lift me up in the moments that I needed it most, I was brought back to calm, peace and serenity.

Those who have the ability to be calm, peaceful and serene through a hard or difficult time, who see things clearly as they are, are the luckiest people in the world. I have rarely met such a person in my life... it's precious and a gift. So is the realization that the connectivity and help amongst and between people is a joy. I strive and inspire to one day be identified as a person who is calm, peaceful and serene regardless of my circumstances.

Enjoy the lyrics and acoustic version of an amazing song.

Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
U2

Tough, you think you've got the stuff
You're telling me and anyone
You're hard enough

You don't have to put up a fight
You don't have to always be right
Let me take some of the punches
For you tonight

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

We fight all the time
You and I...that's alright
We're the same soul
I don't need...I don't need to hear you say
That if we weren't so alike
You'd like me a whole lot more

Listen to me now
I need to let you know
You don't have to go it alone

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you when I don't pick up the phone
Sometimes you can't make it on your own

I know that we don't talk
I'm sick of it all
Can - you - hear - me - when - I -
Sing, you're the reason I sing
You're the reason why the opera is in me...

Where are we now?
I've still got to let you know
A house still doesn't make a home
Don't leave me here alone...

And it's you when I look in the mirror
And it's you that makes it hard to let go
Sometimes you can't make it on your own
Sometimes you can't make it
The best you can do is to fake it
Sometimes you can't make it on your own


Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you.

Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me.

Probably in no particular order, except in that they are the order I think of them, and hence that probably says something about me.

IT IS BY NO MEANS AN EXHAUSTIVE LIST of books that I love.

1. Eat Pray Love
2. The Sex and The City series
3. Little House on the Prairie series
4. The Bible
5. Wild Mind
6. Writing Down the Bones
7. The Giving Tree
8. The Monster at the End of this Book
9. The Little Engine That Could
10. French Women Don't Get Fat
11. The Nancy Drew Series
12. Siddhartha
13. Little Women
14. The Success Principles
15. The Five People You Meet In Heaven

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Dumbing Down My Twitter Experience

About two weeks ago, a few friends of mine finally gave me the clue to my frustrating question: "How to make Twitter a more enjoyable and user-friendly experience".

Answer: Add a Twitter app to my phone so that I don't get a million texts draining my phone and easily follow my friends who have all but abandoned Facebook and MySpace. So I downloaded ÜberTwitter to my Blackberry Tour and started playing to see what all the fuss was about.

Prior to having ÜberTwitter, Twitter wasn't user-friendly to me because I wouldn't/couldn't sit on a computer all day following and writing tweets. I have too much to do and accomplish to be glued to the PC and only sporadically remembered to text a tweet. Once I downloaded the app, I had to ask a few very silly questions. Things like: "Why are people using a bot to ask me to verify if I am 'real' using a bot?", "What do all the #'s mean?", "Why do 'people' say it matters how many followers I have?" and "What are people actually using Twitter for?"

Lucky for me, I have a lot of real life friends on my Twitter and they helpfully guided me through my questions as I figured it out. Twitter is definitely an app that you have to actually use to figure out how it works. I think that the reason most of my friends who are not on Twitter are not using it, is they don't have the time or patience to figure out how to make 140 characters useful to them and why it's worthwhile and valuable.

So to pay it forward, I will try to answer those questions via things I learned so far and dumb it down so to speak for those who are interested. Let me preface the rest of what I will write by saying that I am in no means a Twitter expert nor do I claim to be, so anything I say that is incorrect cannot be held against me at this point. I'm still a tweet newbie too, but I see potential, which is valuable and worth sharing in this space. ;)

Question #1: "Why are people using a bot to ask me to verify if I am 'real' using a bot?"

Answer: One of the first thing I noticed is there are a lot of bots on Twitter, and I personally am not at all interested in following a 'robot'. I am interested in keeping up with my friends, random and useful information, news articles and updates, inspirational quotes and sayings, having a laugh at some of the hilarious things people do and say, and most importantly using any communication tool that will spread a good and right message to the world. As it turns out, the method I've used is to look at a user's page before I follow them. If I think they have something interesting to say, I add them to my list of "following". If all I see is sales ads and pitches for products and services, I kindly bypass them with no disrespect because I certainly don't want to spend my day looking at business ads all day posted by someone I don't even know.

Question #2: What do all the #'s mean?

Simple answer: They are twitter tags of trending topics.

The tags are a good way of following a trend, especially if you don't necessarily know the people speaking about a topic and want to find more information on that topic of interest. For example, #NowPlaying is a tag I use when tweeting a song I'm currently listening to. #Quotes is a tag for inspirational quotes and sayings. #FF or Follow Friday is a tag for Follow Friday which is a great way to acknowledge the friends & people that you believe are worthy of having other Twitter users follow as well.

The question I'm now pondering and playing with is "How can I create my own trends?" as I integrate my twitter experience with my personal and professional goals and experiences.

A group of my friends at Dog Town Studios set out on a mission this week called "Project 72".
Their mission: Project 72. 4 boys setting out on a mission to create a successful iPhone game in 72 hours from start to finish and document the progress on this site for anyone interested to see.

I find this challenge completely intriguing/noteworthy/awesome (not just because they are my friends) but because they are out there pushing not only their own limits but creating new trends of proving what can be accomplished with technology in such a short time span. They not only launched a successful iPhone app from start to finish in 72 hours, but blogged the experience as well as had live feed streaming their progress while they built the app from scratch... IN 72 HOURS. Amazing. At the end of their challenge, they had about 10 minutes to spare before accomplishing their mission, submitting the app to IPhone for review and popping open the champagne in celebration of their success.

This is a perfect example of when it is a good idea to create a trend so that people can easily track and follow their project; so their Twitter tag became #Project72. This will also be useful as the word spreads as part of their long-term marketing/advertising strategies and as their product launches and people want to continue to follow their progress and projects. So while I'm not going to list all of the different tags and their translations here, I think you should now be able to easily follow trends and tag your own tweets for others to follow.

Question #3: "Why do 'people' say it matters how many followers I have?"

Answer: I don't think it really matters for my current use of Twitter during the learning experience, but I can now obviously see that if you are twittering business information or marketing a product or service, the more followers you have, the more people your message is reaching. I still haven't decided what I would like to "accomplish" with my Twitter so right now this isn't yet relevant to me. Funny enough, I think just by tweeting my random daily experiences and thoughts, I have had over 100 additional followers just in one week.

Important to note, Twitter is a "keyword driven tool". The people you will attract will find you based on what you type into your 140 character tweets. I figured this one out, very simply, because I have a Bachelor's Degree in Industrial/Organizational Psychology so I have a habit of paying attention to statistics and trends. By mentally noting my tweet topics and the subsequent followers I gained, I noticed clear and consistent patterns. When I typed "eBay" while writing about my eBay experiences, eBay users followed; when I typed a quote that was running through my mind, inspirational users followed; when I typed "health", health users followed... and so on and so forth. So Twitter actually does support a law of attraction theory. You will attract the people on Twitter who have similar interests, hobbies, habits as you, or at least "what you tweet about". Likewise, you can type the name/item/hobby/topic of interest into the search bar and view/follow other users who tweet about these things at your discretion.

Question 4: "What are people actually using Twitter for?"

Answer: EVERYTHING! :)

I am only a little over a week into really testing and using Twitter but I can tell you for certain already that people are tweeting about everything and anything we can think of. With a little creative thought, by putting focused effort into your Twitter Topics and by being REAL, Twitter is an extremely useful social media tool to spread news and information on any topic you choose.

I'm still pondering what message I'd like to send to the world in a public domain. I have some ideas, but once I nail it down and feel confident that it's the "RIGHT" message, I will use it for these purposes as well. In the meantime, I'm really enjoying the Twitter experience as of now. My advice would be that the best way of learning Twitter is by actually doing it, playing with it, making mistakes and continuing forward. This is my advice for most things, but definitely applies to tweeting.

I must also note that I am not thrilled with the brevity of message content. I don't like spelling with errors and am not thrilled that Twitter is forcing me to write short-hand and/or grammatically incorrect words/sentences. Most of the time, I just need more than 140 characters to clearly and accurately portray a worthwhile thought. I'm making effort nevertheless to go with the flow on this topic.

Lastly, my favorite day of Twitter experience so far was Friday for #FF Follow Friday. It was/is so fun to acknowledge the people I know and respect as well as my new friends who are amazing and have good messages to share. That's worth tweeting about.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Moment of Surrender by U2

On October 25, 2009, I volunteered to serve food and beer at The Rose Bowl to raise money for my brother's school music program during the U2 concert. Since they are in high school, they need adults over 21 to server liquor. One of the other adult volunteers cancelled sick last minute that morning and so I was able to attend in her place.

The Rose Bowl offers a great program in the local community where various groups sponsor each of the Rose Bowl's stands as volunteers. In return, a percentage of each food stand's earnings is donated to these local community groups at events such as the Pasadena flea-market, UCLA games, concerts, etc. After we finished serving a completely sold-out concert for an on-our-feet exhausting 5 hours straight (the lines never broke the entire time), my brother and I watched the end of the concert. I don't think I could have picked a better event to volunteer at than a U2 concert, especially since I lived in Dublin, Ireland for 18 months in a beautiful condo on the coast in Blackrock that was actually owned by one of U2's accountants. I earned over $400 in tips alone, all donated to the school's music program and with total earnings, it was the largest single fundraising event for the school's music program to-date. So many thanks to U2 and The Rose Bowl for helping support and continue my brother's music education program. :)

This is U2 performing Moment of Surrender live at The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, CA.

The Purpose of A World Butterfly ~ My Inspiration

I am documenting this journey with a purpose in mind.

My personal and professional experiences can be described as similar to the metamorphosis of a butterfly: growing, learning, expanding knowledge, gaining insight and evolving in the quest for love, peace, health & prosperity.

I trust my internal compass as strong and thriving, keeping me on track to pursue challenging and rewarding life goals.

NOW is always the time to make a difference and create positive impact.

My intention is to step-by-step create change through action that can benefit many worldwide.

About Me

MY NAME IS VANESSA. WORLD IS A COMMON NAME FOR THE PLANET EARTH BUT IS ALSO OFTEN USED TO MEAN THE SUM OF HUMAN CIVILIZATION LIVING ON IT, SPECIFICALLY HUMAN EXPERIENCE, HISTORY, OR THE 'HUMAN CONDITION' IN GENERAL.[1] IN A METAPHYSICAL CONTEXT, WORLD MAY REFER TO THE UNIVERSE, EVERYTHING THAT CONSTITUTES REALITY. VANESSA HAS BEEN ADOPTED AS THE NAME OF A GENUS OF BUTTERFLY. THE ANCIENT GREEK WORD FOR "BUTTERFLY" IS ΨΥΧΉ (PSȲCHĒ), WHICH PRIMARILY MEANS "SOUL", "MIND". A BUTTERFLY IS SEEN AS THE PERSONIFICATION OF A PERSON'S SOUL; WHETHER THEY BE LIVING, DYING, OR ALREADY DEAD. IN CHINESE CULTURE TWO BUTTERFLIES FLYING TOGETHER ARE A SYMBOL OF LOVE. IN SOME OLD CULTURES, BUTTERFLIES ALSO SYMBOLIZE REBIRTH INTO A NEW LIFE AFTER BEING INSIDE A COCOON FOR A PERIOD OF TIME. THIS IS MY STORY...