shop1031: January 2011

note: I started writing this post right after New Years. It only took, what, six or seven weeks to finish and publish. I think we're making progress here.

Hola senoritas! Apologies for the hiatus, but the holidays are pure and utter craziness for me- mostly because of my affinity for over committing and procrastination. What can I say, it is what it is. I seriously doubt my 3 followers are going to be up in arms about the situation.

However, I do still want to share a bit about my amazing retreat experience before I move on to more current events. Although I love to write, at this time I believe the quickest and easiest way to share will be through photos, though I didn't take nearly enough. So, at the top is a photo of the beginnings of my creative mandala. This is an exercise Lisa Sonora Beam leads you through in her book (The Creative Entrepreneur), but of course we got face to face hand holding which is always nice. This process allows you to figure out what you do that really has meaning for you, what you're really good at and whether or not those things have value in the market place among other crucial things. Lisa is much better at explaining all this in her book, so I highly recommend it.

Above is a variation of a page we made each day to record at least 10 things we learned that day, from various journaling techniques to great quotes to true "aha" moments.

One night, we had dinner at a taco stand a few blocks away. It was so ridiculously good. And an amazing value- like 8 dollars or something! I wish I had a taco stand I could walk to here at home. I would literally eat there everyday.

This is the first part of a collage I put together using images to answer the question, "What do I really, really want?" As I was tearing out the pages/images I was hearing words like light, openness, beauty, flowers, freedom, risk, adventure, books, design- you know, things like that.

I love alphabet stamps. And handwriting. Below is the back of the second page, also still in the works. Above is the close up shot. Oh, and I love the macro setting on my camera.

I suppose that was near the end of the day, or perhaps a lunch break. Below are a couple more shots of the Hacienda grounds- the first is on the way back to my room.