I was talking to my coach the other day, and was telling her about the Church of Craft post I had written a few weeks ago. We both noticed that, while I feel this free and open to creative experimenting (including being ok with the occasional failing), sometimes I don’t behave this same way around the creativity, progress and/or failures in my business.

In our past year or so of working together, I have gone to her to help me create movement in areas of my business where I feel stuck or stagnant. Granted, it’s a known entity that sometimes things don’t move as fast as we want them to (in life or business), but I have found that sometimes it moves, and other times I need to look at where I am getting in my own way. So she recommended I try to rewrite that post, in a way that relates to my business. So here it goes:

For me, developing and creating a successful, eco-conscious business is my creative outlet. Making time to build and grow WilloToons is making time to allow creativity to flow through me. Keyword there is FLOW. Feeling in the flow, witnessing & feeling the power of CREATING [something new] is powerful. This outlet is different for everyone, but for me, and my business, it’s: drawing, developing new characters, designing new products, making jewelry, painting and researching/creating products that are in alignment with my passion for conserving the health/well-being of people, animals, and our earth.

By using my creativity to develop eco-friendly products that celebrate individuality and expression, I know I am making a contribution to our world.

I also really love the amazing connection it brings me to my self, and (in my words) to Spirit. When I tap in & create space to listen, amazing things can happen. That amazing thing might be drawing a new character that will be perfect for a baby bib, onesie or tee, or having a great idea about how to market my message (like giving a % to Music in Schools Today, to “support Band Geeks everywhere”), or brainstorming an entirely new product line to place my illustrations & designs on, like throw pillows (aka Willo’s Pillows).

When I’m creating – designing, drawing, crafting my business plan, or moving into a new playing field with my business, like the wholesale market – I  don’t quite know what’s going to happen. It’s a little like jumping out of a plane, or rock climbing. I  can only plan so much, but it takes taking that first step, and then the next, and then the next, and the process can be fun, challenging and exhilarating. What makes this so exciting is that it takes a fair bit of trust. Trusting the process. Trusting myself. Listening to myself, and trusting what my intuition is saying. <– This is the part I absolutely love.

Creating, and growing a business you’re passionate about, can be scary. But when you practice listening + trusting + doing, it gets easier, and more second nature. And the good news is that there is no screwing up. And there is no “perfect.” :)

All we can do is create and keep moving. Take that first step. And then, another. And then, another. And you know what? If you get to the end of all those steps, and you really think that it sucks, or you’ve failed (or not done it right, or perfect), SO WHAT!? You’re not going to die. Nobody is going to love you less (I promise). The world is not going to end. In fact, in my opinion, the world has improved a little bit just by you sitting down & opening yourself up to LISTEN and CREATE. Not to mention that what you created doesn’t suck at all, because there are so many companies out there that are either designed horribly, or are not eco-conscious at all.

If you develop something that doesn’t come out the way you want, or end up making some business decisions that don’t pay off the way you would have hoped, all that happens is you LEARN. Some lessons are harder than others, but we don’t get anywhere if we don’t keep moving, trying, and experimenting.

Rest assured, when you’re following your heart and listening to your intuition, you will create amazing results in your business. You are listening. You are trusting. You have passion, talent and a heartfelt mission behind your products, and that integrity IS important, and will be recognized. Your products are uniquely and lovingly made by YOU.

Dive in & allow FLOW into your business. Let *creating your business* be your creative outlet.

:::

This is a bit of a gratuitous post, but as with most of my self-help posts, I hope that it is helping/speaking to someone out there who may need to make a similar shift. Please leave a comment if it has… or just to say hello. :) Thanks for reading!

This last Sunday my awesome little family – my brother, Max, his wife Samara & my niece, Sylvyanna – drove up from Santa Cruz and we took a little daycation together!

We started by going over the Golden Gate Bridge and up to the lookout. It was SUCH a gorgeous day! Then we headed into Sausalito, where we had lunch at Horizons on the water, before going over to the Bay Area Discovery Museum… a wonderful place to take kiddos!

Check out all our fun photos & videos from the day:

Family Daycation! set on Flickr

I love them so much. I’m excited, too, because my little sister is coming up here for Thanksgiving & we’re going to be joining them in Santa Cruz. Yay for family. <3

p.s. Yes, I know… I have fallen off the NaBloPoMo wagon something fierce, but I’m getting back on the horse!

I love choirs! This is so beautiful I just wanted to close my eyes and listen. Really sweet to see/hear so many talented young kids.

Choral Tribute to Lily Allen by Capital Children’s Choir

Haylie sent me a link to this today. Thanks, sis!  <3

I’m working on a post tonight that’s taking waaay longer to finish than I can keep my eyes open for. So for now, I’ll leave you with this:

No, I don’t plan on making this a Blake Lively fan blog (ha!) but seriously, she is so beautiful! For those of you who have no idea who Blake Lively is, she plays Serina, a lead character on Gossip Girl. A show that, while totally ridiculous in SO many ways, I’m way addicted to watching. :p

I have fallen in love with many of her breathtaking looks, but I think the first time I was truly knocked off my feet was when she wore this gorgeous grecian goddess dress:

For the record, it’s an Oscar de la Renta, from his Spring 2008 collection
(I know, who am I? I’m so not usually into fashion this much)

Look at her beautiful grecian up-do, too! *sigh* So gorgeous.
As a small side note, Nate (played by Chace Crawford, pictured above), is SUPER sexy to me, as well. He could come over & make out with me *any time.*

So, while I was somewhat aware of my huge crush on Blake Lively (and her fashion), it wasn’t until last week’s episode that sent me into full force internet stalking. haha. The dress she wore to Chuck Bass’ big club opening was SO HOTT!! Luckily for me there are major Blake Lively/fashion fan blogs that documented it already. Thanks, internet! :p

For the record, it’s really best that you see her in it, by watching the show.
Photos hardly do it justice. :)

Lastly, I found this one while internet stalking. She’s so smokin’ hot!

It’s crazy, but she’s totally inspired my fashion. Not to mention I totally want her legs! :)

While we’re on the subject of Gossip Girl, I’ll also just say that I’m not attracted to Chuck Bass AT ALL (so many girls are, you can have him). And Blair drives me up the wall. And while we’re on the topic of teeny-bopper shows we watch, I’ll confess: I also watch the new 90210 & Melrose Place, too. Heee!

OK, we will now return to our regularly scheduled blogging about geeky tech stuff, crafts, creativity, business & other excerpts from my rock ‘n roll lifestyle. ;)

Perusing an article on Mashable today, I ran across their poll, What’s Your Favorite Firefox Extension?, but I was surprised to see that hardly any of my favorites were on their list, or in the reader’s comments. So, while I left my favs in a comment on there, I thought I’d also post about them here, too, expounding a bit, for all my geekyfantastic readers.

Now, as far as browsers go, I actually only started re-using Firefox again this year. I had gone between using Safari & Firefox for long periods of time, but then used Flock for about a year. However they changed some things at one point & I just wasn’t as into it anymore, so I decided to switch back. Now my love affair with Firefox is back & stronger than ever, and that’s hands-down due to how awesome the add-ons are!

So without further ado, here’s my favorite Firefox Add-Ons, that make my life online easier every day:

• Firebug – an absolute must for any web developer, novice or expert.
• Feedly – Do you use Google Reader for your RSS feeds? I hadn’t either until this year (previously I had used Safari, and then Flock), so I’m here to tell you that if you don’t use it currently, you totally should. :) Because THEN you can get the Feedly add-on which is srsly awesome. It turns reading your feed subscriptions into a beautiful, magazine-like interface. I love it! Plus, it adds a little widget to your browsing experience, so you can easily twitter/post to FB or Share it in Google Reader (Shared items in Reader is another reason it’s awesome).
• Email This – Makes it easy to share a link via email with someone at the click of a button. Flock had a similar feature built in, but when I switched back to FF, I missed it so much that I went seeking for an add on that did the same thing.
• ColorZilla – Using an Eyedropper, easily grab the hexadecimal value of any color on the screen. This is helpful again for designers and web nerds, like me.
• Read Later – I sometimes find myself leaving tabs open for days, wanting to make sure I don’t lose the site. Read Later let’s you file it away (dog-ear it if you will), w/o having to bookmark it.
• Aviary – I use Skitch for most all of my screen capture needs, and I even have/used ScreenGrab! for a long time, but Aviary’s “Capture Entire Page” feature is super fast & easy to use.
• DownThemAll – do you want to nab all the MP3s that are linked to on a page? Or just the JPGs? In one click, you can! Very cool. There’s also an add-on called FlashGot that’s similar. I have no idea which is better, though.
• Power Twitter – while Brizzly is still my absolute fav (and yes, I may be partial, considering I was hired to animate & clean up the illustration of the adorable Phineas Brizzly bear), Power Twitter is handy to have around when find yourself actually on Twitter.com.

As you can see, there’s a little something for everyone, when it comes to Firefox Add-Ons. Start with the above, or you can also check out their Fashion Your Firefox site, which recommended add-ons, based on what you like to do online.
Oh & before I go, I have one more Firefox tip for you: I highly recommend setting a master password. I use 1Password for my wallet, identity & password management data, but even if you do that, you should also password protect all the usernames & passwords you’re letting Firefox remember for you. (Click the thumbnail to the right to see where you set this in the Preferences.)

Hopefully you discovered some fun new add-ons in the above. Please leave me a comment with what you think, and let me know which ones you’re in love with, too!

This Halloween started with getting mani/pedis with mah girls at a place called Hand Job in the Castro (yet another extension of celebrating Misty’s fabulous 40th birthday!). Not only is the name brilliant, but they serve you champagne the whole time… LOVE IT!

After brunching & hitting the office for a bit, I went over to my friend Cam’s house to borrow some costume fixins (the black wig, hot boots & fabulous white fuzzy jacket I wore last night were thanks to her). We drank wine and had fun talking about clothes & boys – good ol’ fashioned girl time! Plus, I got to snap a few photos of her hotty outfit.

After dropping her off, I cruised over to Glen Park where I walked around trick-or-treating with Todd, Amanda & their neighborhood friends & kiddos. So cute!! I am going to try to do that every year from now on. Seeing all the cute babies, kids, dogs & parents in costume is so fun. Plus it gives such a nice neighborhood feel to this bustling city of ours!

After falling in love with some seriously adorable kids (who at one point literally had me laughing so hard I was crying), and hangin with Todd, Amanda & their fun neighbors (parents of said adorable kids), I swooped home to throw a costume on…which resulted in me being in some type of Annie’s Got Her Gun getup (sans gun). I made people guess all night, in order to come up some better description, but I never got one (uh, I mean, I don’t remember if I did).

This year I heard a lot of people talking about how Halloween is this instant excuse for girls to dress up slutty. (Seriously, I feel like I heard several people talk about that this year, more than ever before), but dressing up last night, it made me realize why that is. First of all, most of the time in San Francisco we either wear t-shirts, jeans & hoodies, or more professional work clothes… so what’s left? All the hot little dresses in our closet that we never have a chance to wear!

Plus, I gotta say, when people are in costume they’re in rare form. It makes for a super fun night & a great opportunity to meet someone new. So hey, why not look hot? I loved this tweet by JayZombie addressing the topic:

Ha! Love her. She was at Andy’s huge house party, too – most all my peeps were, so it was awesome! Sooo many people, so many ridiculous costumes, and so much whisky. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos there (I’ve completely given up on all my cameras, I need a new one so bad!), but I have one in the set Ryan Frietas snapped of me, Kristen & Aubs. Overall it was such a ridiculously fun day. This year really made me love Halloween a lot more. Hope you all had a fun one!

p.s. This post marks my first for NaBloPoMo – posting every day for a month! Wish me luck. If you’ve wanted inspiration to post more often, please do it with us! I was inspired by Karen Hartline.