My Williams-Sonoma Letter!

Happy happy Mindset Monday!

I hope you guys are enjoying this hot girl summer☀️

It’s SO hot today and it is supposed to be in the high 90’s the entire week!! When it gets hot like this, it can only mean 1 thing!!! MY BIRTHDAY is coming soon!!! Whoot Whoot👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

But back to the topic at hand! I wanted to reveal something to you guys that I actually forgot about until a few days ago! This is SO cool and I was so excited when the Holy Spirit brought it back to my attention. During the COVID pandemic back in 2020, like everyone else, I was looking for ways to make some money. I was looking for a job and I was trying to get creative. I remember watching CNN one evening and I think it was Anderson Cooper saying that because of the Black Lives Matter movement, fortune 500 companies were looking to hire more qualified black people! I mentioned it to my Dad and he suggested that I make a list of several I could find, get their mailing addresses and mail them a letter introducing myself and tell them I’m looking for employment! I immediately got to work. I vividly remember mailing letters to the Williams Sonoma CEO, Laura Alber!!! My brother, Thomas helped me to craft a really professional letter!! I typed it out and printed it AND mailed it with a wing and a prayer!!! I was so excited but I was not sure if my letter would make it all the way to San Francisco, California🔥🔥🔥🔥

I have always loved that store and I have previously studied Interior Design so I figured I had a good shot at landing a job if their team did receive my letter!! SO, I waited! And waited AND the I got an email!!!! It was from Patty Claauss, the Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition for the Williams Sonoma, Inc!!!! It was dated Thursday, September 10, 2020❤️❤️❤️ The email read…

…Hope this finds you well. Laura Alber shared your kind letter with me and I would be more than happy to learn more about you and your experience. Do you have a resume you can share with me?!!!!!!!

I was speechless! I immediately responded by sending her my resume! We chatted back and forth over the phone and even had a few phone interviews but it just wasn’t a good fit for me at the time! But I was honored to get that email! God was definitely the one orchestrating the entire situation!!! Later, I went back into my email inbox, printed the email and put it in a frame! 🖼️ 

The moral of the story is… NEVER GIVE UP! Faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains, my love! I never thought my letter would reach the CEO of Williams Sonoma BUT God, hunny!!!!!! Anything is possible when you believe. ANYTHING! Apply for that job, send the email, make that call, ask that person out that you like!!!! You never know what could happen when you step out on faith!

I hope you enjoy this day and I’ll see you next week!

love you, mean it❤️❤️❤️

✌🏾 

Our First Focused On The Fruit Friday! One of my Favorite Health Hacks….Juice Plus.

Happy happy Friday, love!

I hope you are having a beautiful day and are enjoying the sun wherever you are! I am SO happy and proud to bring you guys a new segment that I like to call, ‘Focused on the  Fruit Friday’s’! I have so much to say and give and I want to share my hopes, dreams and desires with the world! I will be bringing you my favorite music, food, beauty products, skincare, health hacks and SO much more every single Friday! Just think of it as a fun kickoff to the start your weekend! We are focused on the FRUIT! Bearing fruit is a metaphor for a Christian’s growth in Christlike character. In other words, fruit are the blessings that flow in and through your life when you are a child of God! 

Today , I want to talk about a product that I was introduced to about a year ago by a really good friend of mine! I was experiencing lots of fatigue and a lack of energy. I had gained a lot of weight and I was sleeping until 10 every morning. I was just really lethargic and in need of some major changes with my health! My good friend Abi Nowlin is a top tier spokesperson for a company called Juice Plus! It took me a while to commit to buying it but I finally decided to commit to it in April of 2026! They are a packet size of berries and veggies that you put in your water! You take one every day with water and ice. I have mine in a mason jar because I am from the country! I started taking a pack a day at the beginning of April and it has totally changed my body from the inside out! I feel better, look better, have lost 23 pounds, sleep better, AND feel extremely blessed to have Abi as a new sister and FRIEND!!!!! She is so sweet and kind! When I met her, I knew something was so special about her! I will continue taking Juice Plus for life! 

If you are struggling with chronic fatigue, arthritis, sleep deprivation or sleeping too much, Juice Plus is your guy. You will really appreciate it. They also have capsules and gummies! If you have any questions, please reach out to me🥰 I would be happy to help you on your health journey!! 

Have a wonderful weekend and I’ll see you next Friday!

love you, mean it!

peace☮️

MY ON-ONE Playlist!

Happy Wednesday, cool people! 

I hope you are having a wonderful day and are getting some Vitamin D! The sun is shining bright where I am for sure. There are days in life where we feel on top of the world, like we can accomplish ANYTHING! AND then some days, we are fighting for our lives. I have experienced both but today was one of those days where I felt like I could conquer the world. I was going to get my nails done and I was just feeling so bossy on the way there. Here is my playlist that I had playing on the way there...These are all 90's and 2000's Hip-Hop tracks. I hope you enjoy!

10. No Problem-Lil Scrappy

09. In da Wind-Trick Daddy

08. Blow the Whistle-Too $hort

07. Wipe Me Down-Boosie Badazz

06. Shine-Lil Wayne

05. Get Like Me-David Banner

04. Money Maker-Ludacris

03. ASAP-T.I.

02. Bout It, Bout It-Master P

01. Freakum Dress-Beyonce

It is Temple Tuesday! My 1st Disaster Recipe!

Happy Temple Tuesday, my love!

I hope that you are well and are having a great day so far😃I was thinking of what kind of content to bring to you guys today and then I started researching a few weeks ago topics that might be relevant to food and millenials for such a time as this! My content is for everyone but I speak from a millenials perspective because I am one. Before I became a professional writer, I was an educator for around 8 years. I taught abroad and all of the United States and hopefully touched hundreds of childrens lives. I really enjoyed my time as a teacher but it was only my calling for a season. God pulled me out of the teaching world in 2022, right as the Covid pandemic was ending! I will always remember my time as a teacher. I learned alot about myself during those years and I will always remember the impact the kids made on me! 

Between 2013-2016, I was a teacher in Eastern, North Carolina. It was a very rural part of the state. Our principal would give all the staff a free turkey for Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. One of those Thanksgiving's, I could not make it home to visit my family so I decided to cook the turkey on my own. I had mac and cheese and collard greens as my sides. I got the recipe from my Mom. Because it was my first time making all 3 of them, the turkey came out really dry, the greens were not properly seasoned and the mac and cheese was runny😓 In the black community, we put vinegar on our greens to add flavor! I tried that but they were still bland as I don't know what. I ended up throwing all of the food away and I think I cooked some chicken soup in the crockpot to replace my Thanksgiving meal. 

The moral of the story is, we all have more than one experience with a disaster recipe! I definetely bake more than I like to cook. Maybe it is because I do not have any kids yet. When I get married and start having kids, I am sure that I will become better in the kitchen! Nourishing your body properly takes alot of trial and error. I have started following tons of food influencers on IG and I also love The Kitchen and Girl Meets Farm on the Cooking Channel! The best of the best cooks have made mistakes in the kitchen and I believe that is what gives them their badge of honor! 

Keep Cooking, you guys! 

I hope you have a great Tuesday and I will see you next week💜 

love you, mean it. peace☮

Delayed Gratification💪🏾

Happy happy Mindset Monday, everyone!

I hope you all had an amazing and truly blessed Father's Day! We took my Daddy to a resturant named Clyde's in Clarksville, Tennessee. He really likes the vibe and the food is amazing! They had a good playlist yesterday and we had a great time just talking, eating, and laughing! My father is an associate minister at a local church in Clarksville! He has been in the ministry for about 12 years now! I have learned so much from him about God's way of blessing us during and after a storm. That is the thing that most of us do not understand is that storms in our lives do not come to break us but to shape and mold us, to bless us, to equip us to share our testimony with the world and to ultimately, prepare us for eternity! I have seen and experienced many storms in my young life. None of them I would have been able to survive without a strong foundation in Christ that was built by my parents but mainly my Father! He is such a kind and gentle, loving father who has taught me that waiting on God always has its challenges BUT the rewards it produces are so valuable!

Today, I want to talk to you about delayed gratification! I spoke a little about this when I was writing for SHEEN Magazine in 2021. We are all using social media these days and the reels and pictures will have us thinking that everyone's life is picture perfect! No ones life is problem free and I really believe that you have to have a really strong relationship with God to understand that when participating in social media. I had to learn this lesson over time but it is locked in to my mind at this point and when I log into social, I have the mentality that I am posting for God's glory only! Delayed gratification is pleasure or satisfaction that cannot be experienced immediately, but that you must wait for or work for. I think the joy in waiting and working really hard for something that may be typically handed to someone else is rare! Most people are not willing to put in the work. My personal journey has been so rocky but I have been blessed tremendously by waiting on God to deliever what I need in each season of my life. I have had to perserve and develop lots of patience and endurance during my trials. It has taken me years to finally become a professional writer. I got my Bachelors degree in 2003. I just became a writer in 2024. That was one of my dreams and I had to work really hard to make it happen! I am such a better person for having gone through those delays, denials and trials. Ultimately, that recipe leads to massive success! 

The bible says that delayed gratification is the ability to resist a small immediate reward for something more valuable in the future. Hebrews 12:2 Instant success never lasts, my friend! It will make you happy only for a short time. The real blessing is in doing the real work when it gets difficult and leaning on God for strength and courage to get through your specific trial. He WILL bless you during and after your test. I know because he has done for me! Time after time, in my Cyndi Lauper voice! smiling.

You've got this, Love muffin!

I hope you have a wonderful day and I will see you guys next week!

love you, mean it. 

peace.

Women In Leadership!

It’s Temple Tuesday! My Food Philosophy.

Happy Temple Tuesday, everyone!

I hope you are well and have had your peach smoothie and chocolate chip granola bar this morning! That is what I ate for breakfast. I usually eat 2 boiled eggs or a bowl of oatmeal with butter and light brown sugar but I had a taste for something different today😉There are times when I am not in the mood for food when I wake up in the morning. I bought a juicer a few months ago from Amazon but I have yet to open it! There are times when I just get a cup of ice mixed with water and light OJ in one of my favorite mason jars. I am from the country and we use mason jars for everything!! AND then I sometimes drink pure, organic pineapple juice from Walmart. You can tell its organic because its in a glass jar. 

I always try to eat lunch, which is usually a salad with cheese and a protein. And dinner is usually salmon and some kind of starch. I have been eating salmon for dinner for years now! It makes me feel refreshed and it fills me up!

SO, I am telling you all of this because this is my food philosophy. My personal guide to eating, nutrition and wellness. I am from a very small town in Virginia and we did not have access to alot of different sorts of foods growing up. We made it work. It wasn't until I graduated from high school and enrolled at The University of Virginia that my food palate expanded. I was pretty much a vegetarian in college. I ate extremely healthy! I would say that that was the healthiest I have ever been inmy life. I ran like a maniac. Sometimes several times a day. lol. I ate lots of sushi, salads and peanut butter and jelly on bagels. I did not have alot of money to spend on food so I had to learn to shop on a budget. After graduating from college, I moved around alot. Life began to life and I became an emotional eater. My introduction to adulthood immediately started with trauma. During my periods of grief, I just found food to be so comforting. AND then in 2012, my twin brother, Julius saw me and saw that I was in need of a big change in my life. He told me about this weight loss facility in St. George, Utah and it turned out to be one of the Biggest Loser Resort facilities. He really loved me and wanted to see me happy. He paid a pretty penny for me to fly to Utah and spend 6 weeks retraining my mind on how to eat better. OH My Goodness, it was LAVISH!! We had a chef, trainers, therapists on call, hiking, a pool and just unlimited time to rest and reset! I learned how to swim there!! Every morning we had a 5 am call time to go hiking! We hiked Snow Canyon Park every morning. I met some of the wealthiest, most successful, kindest and most genuine people at the Biggest Loser Resort. We had a blast every single day. I think this was the first time in my life that I actually learned real self love and self respect

💓💓💓💓💓💓

We had group fitness classes together! We sang, danced, laughed, cried and were completely transparent those 6 weeks. It was so freeing. I met this dope chic named Sammy who turned out to be a former assistant to Beyonce!!! She was super cool and told me all these stories about Beyonce's work ethic and overall aura. After 6 weeks, I was ready to come home. I ended up losing 25 pounds during my stay. I will never forget my time there and all of the wonderful people I met. 

Now, I eat to live! I am still learning how to balance a healhy lifestyle while pursuing all of my hopes and dreams. I am moving my body on a regular basis. I go to bed at a decent hour. I am no longer an emotional eater. PRAISE HIM!! I am a more intuitive eater and I like to use different ingredients so that I can enjoy my food. I believe that when you truly enjoy your food, you do not have to eat as much! I eat real, whole foods and try to stay within the recommended guidelines for calories and etc.

Your body ia a temple--1 Corinthians 6:19

I think it takes alot of trial and error, along with prayer to learn how to eat better. If you are struggling to learn how to properly nourish your body in this season, do not be hard on yourself. It is a daily lesson and we can all do better. This is just a little about my food philosophy. Take what you need, love.

Take it one day at a time and be honest with yourself💗