What's more, all of the funds raised from the many prizes, auctions and donation envelopes will go to support the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009,

You
see we're all Melbourne women, feeling powerless to change the
devastation that last weekend's fire storms had on people living in
Victoria. 

Many of those killed and left homeless are from the
very outskirts of our city.  Most people know someone who has lost
loved ones, friends, or property in these areas.

So rather than just feel powerless, we decided to take action and RAISE MONEY amongst our favourite people – other Women.

We're inviting ALL women (businesswomen and stay-at-home mums) to join us for The Phoenix Lunch.

About The Phoenix Lunch

NEXT THURSDAY 19th February 2009
from 12-2.30pm

AT Box Hill Golf Club,
202 Station St
Box Hill Victoria

Cost $35 to cover cost of 2-course meal and wine and tea/coffee (paid in advance)

RSVP TUESDAY 9am 17th February  (YES BOOK RIGHT NOW)

All enquiries can be sent to ThePhoenixLunch@gmail.com

Bookings

There are two registration options and three payment options.  You need to book AND pay.
To pay (ESSENTIAL so we have numbers for our venue)

1. Direct Debit $35 to
   BSB 013 – 247, Account No 4870 58027
   Whitespaces Management and Marketing Services P/L
   PLEASE mark payment as Phoenix and ADD YOUR NAME.
   (The $35 for meal etc. Fundraising is with donations, raffles, auction etc)
2. Credit Card
   (Complete your details on the attached Registration form and fax to 03 9877 2138 or scan and attach to email at ThePhoenixLunch@gmail.com)
3. Credit Card Phone Transaction
   Ring Janet Powell on 0411 091 419 to complete your transaction by phone.

To Register (ESSENTIAL so we can match you and your payment) 

1. Complete the Online Registration (I'm no geek, so it's not very pretty but it's functional)
2. Complete the PDF Registration Form and fax it back to 03 9877 2138  
   Download The Phoenix Lunch PDF

What's In It For You?

Well apart from lifting some of that
sense of powerlessness and warming the cockles of the heart because
you've made a difference …

There is:

• Some Networking Development led by networking expert Brenda Thomson of Networking World. 
  We'll all learn how to use our BEST WOMANLY SKILL – networking.  That's
  to our advantage as both businesswomen with products and services out
  there in the marketplace, and as consumers seeking great products and
  services.
• Finding out about the amazing array of women's services from the inserts in your take-away goodies bag.
• Lots of Fun, Laughter, and the very important ESWB (Exchanging of
  Secret Women's Business, of course!!!)  It should be good for meeting
  new people, finding new ways to make our lives easier AND a bit of HOT
  gossip as well!

How Will That Help Bushfire Victims?

A Senior CFA
Representative will give us some insights on what lies ahead for our
state and where our donations will need to be funnelled.

We'll
get you opening your purses/wallets for Donation Envelopes (receipts
will follow), Auctions, Raffles, Door Prizes, Spot Prizes.  All these
prizes are being generously donated!  (Can you Help?)

IF
you feel the need to bring goods for the victims (Red Cross tell us
money is best) then please limit the donations to new-only, female,
health/personal products and cosmetics and bring them along on the
day.  There’ll be a box for those donations.

So Are You Coming?

We
want to fill our venue with 150 talking women.  Can you help us?  Can
you MAKE TIME to join us at this important charity event?

Even if
you live interstate, you could still join us.  Why not consider
it?  The Cause is worth flying for and worth every flying dollar!

A Community in Ashes

For overseas readers of this blog, you'll know Victoria (Melbourne is where I live) has been beset by devastating bush fires in this last week. 

While
the death toll is officially 181 the real toll will definitely be much
higher!  1800 houses have been lost and 7000 have no home.

As I
looked at the blood red sun going down last night and rising again this
morning, I join other Victorians in fearing that the returning heat of
this coming week might mean we have more bushfires to deal with. 

The fire front is still massive but better contained.

Like you, Pink Apple and my colleagues Angela Esnouf of Creating Order from Chaos, and Janet Powell of Mentor Maestro have been horrified by the impact of the bushfires.

Like all of you, we felt powerless.

Like all good small business people, we decided to take action.

How?

Well what else but get women together to talk to each other?  We've called it The Phoenix Lunch.  A Women's Networking Lunch in Support of the Red Cross Victorian Bushfire Appeal 2009.  

Our target is 150 bums on seats.  (That's how many the venue will hold.)

Can YOU help?

• Can you come along to enjoy a great lunch, donate some money, meet some marvellous women, win some stunning prizes, and help reach the 150 target? 
• How many of your contacts can you share this invitation with?
• When you think about all the people you know, can you ask any of your contacts for any of the things on our wish list?(see below)
• Can you or your business offer any goods or services to the prize pool? 
• Do you or your contacts know any entertainment or sporting celebrities (especially women) who could help raise the profile of The Phoenix Lunch?  (We desperately NEED a professional media person to MC the event!)
• Are you interested in promoting your business
  with marketing materials or offers to be included in the guest’s
  goodies bag?   If you can’t attend, but you'd like to market to these
  women, then you’ll need to donate $50 to the Bushfire Appeal. 
  (Attendees and donors of prizes with a value of more than $50 can
  provide promotional material for free.)
• all enquiries or offers can be sent to ThePhoenixLunch@gmail.com

Our Wish List

• A Weekend Getaway
• Wines
• Jewellery
• Women's Clothing
• Mobile Phones
• Electrical goods
• Leathergoods
• Books and CDs
• Office goods and equipment
• Business coaching and Marketing Consulting
• Dining Vouchers
• Pamper packs (including massages, day spa passes, facials, manicures and pedicures)
• Personal Services (personal training, personal concierge services etc, household cleaning, )
• ANYTHING that might be appealing to women or women in business!

For Details

…of The Phoenix Lunch and to book check out the details here.

When I get asked that question, you know the magic wand one, I always say "If I had a magic wand, I’d like to be serene!"

Friends say that if I was serene I wouldn’t be me, and I suppose that’s true and maybe even fair enough.  But the occasional bit of serenity wouldn’t go astray!

So to help in my endless quest, I make it m business to seek out methods for achieving a calmer me, and people who have serenity about them.

That’s probably one of the qualities I like most about my friend Karen Wallace over at The Clearing Space.  She has an infectious calm and serenity about her, even when things are whirling wild around her!

So it’s only right that Karen’s latest venture -an online monthly magazine – would be called The Calm Space.

It even looks serene!

Along with an array of contributing authors focusing on organising, spirituality, the digital world, reading, relationships and even breathing, the Calm Space is like walking into one of those wonderful indulgence havens.

Karen describes The Calm Space as

… like a virtual day-spa for your senses… decadent, informative,
relaxing, a real no-mobile-phones-allowed kind of escape where you can
chill for a minute or an hour and emerge refreshed and ready to face
anything your day throws at you!

It’s a rare woman who doesn’t succumb to chaos and madness at some
stage during her busy week. Whatever your particular life situation,
and no matter how your day is going, you will find respite within the
spaces here.

The Calm Space is an online, monthly magazine – written by a team of
amazing, real-life women who are living their passion with a purpose
and a focus.

What you see in this magazine is not ‘reporting’. It is information,
hints, tips and inspiration direct from those in-the-know. We write in
our own unique voices, and tell it like it is.

Now I’m letting MY Readers in on the secret of The Calm Space very early!  It was only launched last night with the odd glass of bubbles!

Subscription is FREE though I doubt it will remain that way!  There are also monthly prize draws,  This month’s is a gorgeous coffee-table book, by the equally gorgeous-looking landscaper extraordinaire Jamie Durie.  The book is called  INSPIRED – The Ideas that Shape & Create my Design

And for a very limited time, there is also a chance to receive for FREE, Karen’s e-book How to Find The Pause Button For Your Life.  Having read Pause Button, I can DEFINITELY recommend it to you!  And you MUST go get it now, because I know that it will be selling on the site VERY soon.  It’s one of the benefits of being an Apple Tart reader that you get to know about this very LIMITED OFFER!

I don’t see ANY disadvantages to popping over to The Calm Space, taking a deep intake of Calm and registering for competitions, e-books and to receive the monthly mag in YOUR Inbox.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

I’d especially love to draw cartoons.  That instant visual is a so much more succinct capture of an idea than words will ever be!

Today, if I COULD draw, you’d be seeing a squished person desperately trying to lift a big piece of concrete off her back and get out! 

That’s me at the moment!

So while I’ve got a million things I want to write about, I don’t have lots of time so I’m going to let you know about some urgent time-sensitive ones that you need to hear about. 

In fact none of these are anything to do with me or the Pink Apple business.  Except of course I know all these people and can vouch for their integrity and commitment to service!  So this is really networking with you, and letting you know about things of interest, via Apple Tart.

1. I’ve talked before about the brilliance of Professional Organiser Angela Esnouf of Creating Order From Chaos.  Well just in case you need her assistance, she’s got another Effective Time Management Workshop [Download TM_Workshop_200907.pdf
   ] scheduled for September 20th here in Melbourne! 

   Do you wonder what happens to all the precious minutes that dribble out of YOUR day and lead to frustration and angst?  Then you need to talk with Angela. 

   The topics to be covered include: setting priorities, conquering procrastination, dealing with interruptions, and time mapping!  If I can make the time I might even be there myself!!

2. If you use humour in your presentations or work or aspire to introduce humour into your world then BJ Seminars International’s Humour Adventure at the Zoo may be just what you need.  Early Bird reservations close in 2 weeks so go and check this intriguing seminar!
3. Richard of Beaumont and Partners now has a regular newsletter on marketing.  His most recent one was a good, quick read. [Download enewsinsight_sept_07.pdf]  Contact Richard and ask
   to receive your own copy.
4. My mate Pete Aldin of Great Circle and Freaked Out Fathers (always good for a laugh) has a bit of a theme going on over at his blog, on How The War Was Won.  Seeing we all battle with minor and major wars every day, I like his style and that of all his guest writers!  I’d love to have been writing for him, but when have I had time lately?
5. Finally, and most excitingly, my pal Karen Wallace (helping women who do too much) is nearly due to launch her new online magazine The Calm Space.  Email her to be advised as soon as it’s up. 

   "It’s a virtual day spa for the senses!  Real but Enticing, Informative but Inspiring.  You can escape to chill for a minute or an hour!" 

   Now doesn’t that sound like bliss!

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson

Maybe old Tom’s not too far off the mark, it IS a case of making your own luck!

However before I go all philosophical and nauseous on you all, let me tell you about my latest bit of luck.

The lovely Anne Maybus of Tall Poppy and Diva Days has honoured me with a Blogging Award. Anne has awarded me a Creative Bloggers Award  that has been commenced by Christy Z at Writers Review where the rules for sharing these awards can be found.

Pink Apple from Apple Tart
deserves many awards. Today I have chosen the Creative blogger award.
Here it is Chris, all yours in recognition of the wonderful humourous
spin you put on things. I love to read your wicked words!

Anne, you’ve given me a gift that I can use to help quell those nasty destructive self-doubt demons.  I need every weapon available, in my battle with those dastardly demons! So Thank You for being there supporting and nurturing me and even finding me wicked!

The bigger task for me lies in my new-found nomination rights!  So here goes!

My nominees are:  (have you got your Oscar frocks on?)

Courageous Blogger:  Pete Aldin of Great Circle and Freaked Out Fathers 

A man with a strong but quiet integrity and a man not afraid to fight injustice where he sees it! (but might not want to frock up!)

Inspirational Blogger:  Tina Forsyth of Online Business Manager
and co-author of Money, Meaning and Beyond.

Another quiet achiever who quietly but expertly gets people on the right path.

Thoughtful Blogger:  Amanda Cox of Diary of a Mad Cow.

Underneath a tongue dripping in acid and an hysterically satirical spin, lies a woman using humour to help other Mums realise they’re not alone and there’s always something to laugh and share about.

The "in thing" these days in the blogging world are tags or memes.

Some bright spark will come up with an infectious idea for everyone to give their personal opinion/experience of.  The starter author writes their own piece, then nominates a number of mates to pick up the thread/tag.  It’s a little like the old games of chasey/tag/tiggy/"it" that we all played in the school ground.  Once named, you are "it" until you can write your story and shift the tag onto someone
else. 

These memes spiral (viral) around blog communities like a dose of the Black Plague through medieval London!

When I receive a tag, it usually leaves me with a sense of dread and horror, and the mental conversation that snottily starts with "Oh Great!  When I am ever going to find time to do that?  Thanks PAL!"   (Ungrateful tart, aren’t I?)

Unfortunately my sticky-beaky curiosity, and eternal desire to be "in" anything, gets the better of me.  So, I go and read a few other tagged responses, and next thing I know my mental conversation has meandered off into … "Gee, that does sound interesting, I wonder what I’d say IF I was to respond!" 

See?  It just gets you suckered in and infected.  The only cure is to write and shed the burden elsewhere!

So having mentioned Pete Aldin at the beginning of this post, I’d better tell you that at last I’m about to get around to picking up the ball and running with Pete’s meme!   And yes Pete, I did curse you!  But yours  was definitely one of the most constructive memes that have been tossed my way!

You’ll hear more in my next post!

Here in Australia, a long time ago (in a land, far, far away – oops sorry went all fairytale there for a moment!) there was an ad for a non-alcoholic mixer drink called Claytons.

The drink was pretty bloody awful as I remember, but the advertising campaign saw to it that Claytons (the drink you have when you’re not having a drink) entered and REMAINED in the language.  At least for most of us BabyBoomers!

Well let’s get off non-alcoholic drinks and on to a networking event I went to last night. And no! I had NO wine!

Clever Chics Night

Clever Chics, has a BAG (Big Audacious Goal).  Clever Chics aspires to be the biggest women’s networking group in the world!  I like a group who thinks small.    That’s why I joined!

Currently they’re growing into the Melbourne Networking market and last night’s event was a Makeover Expo.

Catching up with old friends and meeting some new ones was mild in comparison with the highlight of my night – a makeup makeover!

The Big Reveal

But before we got to the lovely Jane Iredale makeup, Christine, from Cutters Club in Newport, applied an amazing Bags-Under-Your-Eyes-All-Gone kinda product. 

This stuff is called Eyesential and I was stunned.  I’d seen it being reported on one of the more tabloid-type current affairs programs and had been very dubious. 

Shut Up about the Vanity, Guys!

Now for you blokes who poo-poo the kind of shallow, female, vanity that would have people worrying about bags under their eyes, I’d like to tell you I saw a couple of blokes sit down to have this stuff applied to their bags, and smiling as they looked in the mirror.  So Raspberries to you!!!!!

The Sceptic Worm turns!

As a consumer, I’m often persuadable.  However one area where I’m pretty resistant and strongly sceptical is the cosmetics front.  As anyone who’s seen me in my track-pants (sweats) would have noted, I’m not all that bothered about what I look like.   My morning makeup routine is very limited, and usually I’m lucky to get some lipstick on.  So my cosmetics budget is pretty low! 

But , once I’d seen just how much the shelves under my eyelids disappeared, I was SOLD!  This time a little box of precious stuff came home with me!

Now for the drum roll,

Just before I left, the biggest makeover of all came my way, I won a door prize.  (Yes another prize, I have done well this year.)   

This was a voucher for BOTOX treatment.

(Ok, friends you can stop laughing NOW!!!)

The irony is amazing.  Me and Botox were not exactly a mix I’d EVER have considered!

Will I use it?  We’ll see …