Beauty Dish: Underground Adventures of an (EX!) Avon Lady

Last two weeks of school

We're in the middle of End Of The School Year Heck, so please enjoy a few photographs from around town while I shuttle boys here and there. I'll be back with more surprises soon!

My companion parrot, Ramses

We attended a wildlife lecture and saw this gorgeous redtail hawk.

On the way to Hermit's Peak

Friday Odds 'n Ends

I'm a bit behind in posting the Avon Representative Tips and Avon Customer Reviews, so look for quite a few to be posted over the weekend as my time allows.

My son won an Outward Bound adventure in an essay competition!

Next weekend I'm manning the whole foods snow cone machine at the Las Vegas New Mexico Synergy Fest! My boys' school is selling snow cones for a dollar, and they will come with real fruits and juices, yum yum.

Birdie on KFUN

I was invited to be the guest on local radio station KFUN this Saturday, from 9 am to 10 am MST! You can listen online! I have no clue what the topic of conversation will be - Avon? Local tidbits? Tune in and find out!

Cute Photo Break!

Mr. 10 and Dean the Bunny labor over a 300 piece puzzle!

Double the pain, double the pleasure!

Both of my boys have been down with the flu the past few days. I missed posting the Avon Lady Quote of the Day and the Daily Avon Customer Review yesterday, so today I shall post TWO of each!

My boys are recovering, both snuggled on the couch this morning looking grouchy. My older boy, 12, has taken over Frankie the pot-bellied pig's blog, and apparently they got into some trouble yesterday and didn't tell me! Check it out and leave a comment for 12. He plans on helping Frankie answer any questions you ask him!

As for me, it's been a tough Avon winter, full of black ice (I've slid more times than I care to mention carting those brochures through town and now sport a jaunty bruise along my shin as black as that damn ice), customers as grouchy as my sick boys, snow, slush, the unrelenting wind.

respite

Hey, I'm taking a day off from the Daily This and That. I still haven't found a new groove with Beauty Dish since I decided to move my personal stuff to La Pajaro. I'll be back tomorrow. The newsletter goes out tomorrow as well!

Beauty Blogging Wit For Hire

I have kept Beauty Dish free of advertising for its entire two and a half years of existence. But the costs of running the site are starting to escalate! Some of my Avon Adventure stories and Avon Product reviews generate quite a few hits, day after day. I am so grateful for the kind PayPal donations I have received to date, but they aren't covering my blogging and hosting costs on an ongoing basis. And to be completely honest, my Avon career hasn't generated enough income to cover both my home and blogging expenses.

I'm going to pursue some kind of gentle advertising. I want your input! At the moment, I am testing a few things out over here. To be honest, these small get-paid-by-the-click ads do not thrill me, but perhaps I am too close to my creation. Please voice your input, friends.

What I would love, most of all, is to find a company, or a small number of companies - each socially responsible - who would like to sponsor both me as a writer and my continuing Beauty Dish Blog. I would love to write the occasional story about a caring sponsor that would help introduce their important works to the world. I'm not talking shilling for random products, but more of a set of wonderful essays that would be at home in any newspaper, corporate journal, or literary magazine.

If you know of any such potential sponsors, please drop me a note or let them know that Beauty Dish has an elegant and irreverent pen for hire!

Thank you for your continued support and love for Beauty Dish.

And Schwag Begat Schwag

I in the couple of days since I posted my wormy review of that crazy Kraft cheese, I received no less than seventy-five (75!!) requests from other companies, asking me to please, please, please review their products!

Nope. I'm still an Avon Girl. I pay for my own Avon, and with the one mental lapse of accepting free cheese (and really, who wouldn't?), I'm sticking to what I know best.

(Of course, if a fancy sportscar company is reading this and would like to replace my smashed Miata for something sleek and fast, I supposed I could be persuaded to eat a worm as I recline against the leather bucket seats...)

Summer is winding to an end. My boys start school next Wednesday. It can't come a moment too soon....

.... and in Avon News, I have finished reviewing the Photo Radiance (gave it 90 days I did) and the new Anew Clinical Thermafirm. Reviews to be posted once school starts.

Harry makes front page!

Harry makes front page of The Optic! He's the imp on the right holding the trophy. The boys and I are taking salsa dancing lessons Wednesday nights on the Plaza. The photographer asked Harry to present the trophy to our two instructors. They recently won 1st place in a big dance competition in Denver. You can see half of my face on the very right edge of the image.

You can click on the image to see a larger version.

WWJD?

While I'm setting up the mailling list software and working on the blog, please caption the photo! This is me, from behind.

And no! My name isn't Jenny!

I'm on set of the Coen Brothers' movie, No Country for Old Men. Not a minute - seriously, sixty seconds - after sending out the last Secret Bird Call with my story about trying to be an extra in the movie, the casting department called!

I had to wear the Jenny t-shirt (with a tacky cat on the front) with tight short shorts, all circa 1979. I'll tell the whole story in good time...

I insist on vintage Avon makeup!