The Curtain and Pen

Nebraska Copywriting Services for Small Business

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Be Honest, Be Genuine

I got a shot a few days ago. An injection. A big-ass, long-overdue, and totally good-for-the-soul shot of genuineness.

Genuineness is totally a word. I looked it up and didn’t get the red squiggly line.

I mentioned earlier that I’m getting some new pictures taken to help jazz up the site a little bit. Well, on Tuesday, I had a photo shoot. Being the subject of a solo-photo shoot is an…experience. Sure, I had senior pictures taken…but that was more of a “tilt your head, lean this way, think about cute, furry chinchillas” kind of thing. That was not what I wanted for this…I wanted something natural and beautiful. This, of course, means that when it was go-time, I felt anything but natural.

In fact, I felt like a complete idiot. A vain, vain, fumbling idiot…for about 5 minutes. Because that’s about how long it took for the Genuineness to take effect.

Okay, so what in the ‘H’ am I talking about?

My photographer. (Totally rocks.)

It’s impossible to be nervous when you’re around someone with such a genuine contentment and love for what they do. She laughed with me, exclaimed quietly when she saw a great angle or a rusty door-frame, and let me know when I was being too forced. That kind of honest approach is what I appreciated most. I’ve been following Rutheah’sphotography for a few years now, and have been enthralled the whole time with the natural honesty that I found in each picture. It was definitely a no-brainer when it came down to deciding on a photographer.

Ever since the shoot, my mind has been in over-drive. Rutheah inspired me. I love what I do, and I want to be as honest as possible about it. I want my passion to be so genuine that the people around me can’t help but feel the same about what they love.

So I’m adding another item to my List for Self-Improvement: Work on being more genuine. In business, in parenthood, marriage, friendships, everything. I think it’s something we can all work on. We need to start asking ourselves some tough questions about our careers, relationships, art, and projects. Why am I doing this? Do I really love it? How can I improve?

What are you guys focusing on right now? Do you feel like you’re genuinely putting yourself into it? How can you make your efforts more fruitful?

P.S. I’ll unleash all the photos when I’m ready to put up the new text. Soon, I promise 🙂

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A Guest Post to Keep You from Melting

I’m posting this week’s guest post in hopes that all of my readers haven’t melted away…Our lovely guest this week is Heidi Moyer, a dazzling domestic goddess with blogging skills to boot. Once you get a batch of her homemade popsicles made, you should probably bring a couple over for me.

Yeesh, it’s been hot. Duh, Heidi it’s summer. There is always relief in sight, as long as freezers continue to exist in our realm, and too, the desire to eat something cold, cold, COLD.

Popsicles are an excellent choice to help chill you from the inside out—great for kids and adults, alike. But I always feel let down when I get to the market and begin looking at ingredients, it usually starts out something like this: Water, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, juice from concentrate, natural flavorings, ice structuring proteins, contains 10% juice…I could be exaggerating but I’m not, this list is from none other thanPopsicle brand popsicles website. So, is my toddler supposed to suck on one of these chemically sweetened hyper-sticks? Em, no.

Homemade popsicles will delight your kids and you, and you won’t be trying to figure out how to cut sugar from the rest of their meals to balance out the bad ingredients. And can you say “smarty-pants”? Only because these babies are so easy to make you’ll wonder why you ever bought them from the store to begin with. If you don’t have a blender, just get two different flavors of yogurt smoothie, although, the fresh fruit flavor of the second layer is very tasty. All you need besides the ingredients is a popsicle mold, mine came from the friendly dollar aisle at Target. (Now you’re thrifty and smart!)

Pastel Popsicles

Needed: 1 container of Kefir (or other Probiotic yogurt smoothie) in any flavor, ½ cup vanilla yogurt, ½ cup frozen strawberries, food processor or blender, popsicle mold—most molds need approximately 2 cups of freezable liquids, you can always eyeball to make more if needed.

Preparation

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1) Shake, and then pour Kefir half-way up into the popsicle molds
2) Cover with plastic wrap (without sticks stuck in) and freeze for 2 hours
3) Remove popsicle molds, the Kefir should be softly set
4) Blitz together the vanilla yogurt and frozen strawberries, pour into molds

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5) Place the stick-handles into the molds
6) Freeze for 3 hours before serving

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Heidi Moyer is a stay at home Mommy to Vail, and wife to Eric, and writes as often as she can for her food blog at www.thekitchette.blogspot.com.

probioticpops

 

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Another Guest Post!

So, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to post this…my only excuse is that I’m on a 5 day lake-vacation with all of my husband’s immediately family…my brain has been a little more on the scattered side than usual!
Aaaaaanyway, I’ve got a guest post up as a “Friday Foodie” atMidwestern Moms. Midwestern Moms is a great blog that specializes in everything from Blog Monetization to Crocheting, so go check it out!
I hope you’re all having a great weekend!

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Lumberjacks, Bacon, and the Value of Using Your Resources

Each and every one of us has something spectacular to bring to the table. It may not be something conventional, or even widely used, but I can guarantee you this: someone out there in this ginormous world has a use for what you’ve got…and that can be a very good thing for you in the long run.

Let’s say you’ve got dreams of owning a successful all-bacon restaurant. You plan on providing nothing but glorious bacon-rich menu items to everyone, featuring pigs you’ve raised, fed, and butchered yourself. You love bacon. No one does bacon better than you.
You’ve bought the property, hired the initial staff, and purchased your pigs. You’re all set, except for one thing:

A giant, chainsaw-carved hog, advertising your Bacon Oasis.

It’s the one thing you need to complete your vision, and you are tapped out on funds. What do you do? Wait until the business makes more money? Take out a credit card?

Nope. You look around yourself, take inventory of the people you know, and see if you can find a way to get your pig without owing money or compromising your creative vision. That’s called utilizing your resources, dudes, and if you can find a way to do that honestly and intelligently, I say, “Do it.”

So, instead of selling your soul to Visa, you sit down with your address book (or phone…or however you keep track of contacts) and see if you know anyone who can help you out. After a little perusing, you decide to call your friend, Beau the lumberjack.
As it turns out, Beau’s having a big lumberjack reunion, and is trying to figure out how to appropriately feed his guests.
And it also turns out that they just love to carve animals out of tree trunks.

That friends, is a savory, sizzling, salt-cured business match made in heaven.

Now, obviously, there aren’t many of you out there with bacon-flavored dreams…but I know you’ve all got something you’d like to achieve. Whether it’s a craft business, design firm, or even home-canned goods, you’ve got a skill with which you can barter…and I think that in this day and age, bartering is something we could all do a little more of.

Now, before you run off and starting trading your pigs all willy-nilly-like:

Be Smart
Know who you’re working with. Going into business with someone who just got out of county jail for turning lawn ornaments into bongs might not be the best associate.

Be Realistic
Is this something you can handle in a timely fashion? Remember, you’re both providing a service in this situation…is adding this extra task to your workload going to be too much? No one wants to do business with someone who cries every time they answer the phone.

Be Honest
The fact that you’re not getting compensated monetarily does not give you the excuse to provide a sub-par product. If the person you’re bartering with respects you enough to make a trade, you should show them the same respect. Besides, if you give them bad bacon, they’ll probably carve out a wooden pig with a butt for a face.

Have you guys traded goods/services with anyone lately? Did it turn out well? Badly? Comment away!