The Big Day

What does a chocolate cake covered in popcorn and losing your job have in common?

Read on!

I wanted to share with you all that Monday March 8th between 2:00 and 3:00 PM EST is the big day for the book, Picture Me Cooking, to make its debut on QVC.

I can't tell you how amazing it is to me that something that started as a random thought is now real and on the vehicle I most coveted early on...QVC!

Will it be a success? I hope so!

If it isn't well let's just say I am not thinking that way - at the end of the day the satisfaction of finally doing something with an idea is worth something to me
(and put an end to my husband sayin' stop telling me all your ideas and do one...think I actually began writing the book out of spite lol)

Four years ago I was job eliminated after 19 years of hard work and success.
Banking was changing, tightening the belt and over 1000 positions were being cut.

I seriously think I was in medical shock for about 40 hours...then I was like...oh well...that's just life pointing me in another direction.

Three days later I had a quick thought...more like a flash:

When I was 9 years old I made a cake from a cookbook I received for Christmas.

I vividly remember carrying that crazy cake out to my family, I was so very proud and confident about the whole thing, for whatever reason it is forever burned in my mind...anyway now that I am a Mom I thought about that cake and wished I had a picture to show my kids (4 and 2 at the time) and then recreate the same cake with them.

I wondered why there were no kids cookbooks that combined photo storage and recipes.

I just seemed common sense to me in that moment...we preserve and capture so much of what the children in our lives do...why not the wonderful time families spend in the heart of their home? I know for me, some of my very best memories took place there.

Four days later I began writing the book. I was waking up in the middle of the night writing ideas and thoughts down, it was so very exciting.

Not more than 2 weeks after I was let go I got the call that I needed to come back, same job, same pay, like it never happened - so I did but it took 4 moths of red tape for that to happen. Well you know the book went onto the "shelf".

About 6 months later I went out for drinks with a few women from my neighborhood.

I said to them what do you think about getting together once a month...each of us come with a "pitch" for a product or service and I guarantee you we will go to market w/in 2 years with it.

Three of them were interested, we met, threw ideas around and settled on one.

We did some research and two of us were not that passionate about the idea, so we began to rethink it.

That's when one of the women said Colleen, tell them about the book you told me about...and I did...They were in, instantly.

We were 4 women who really didn't know each other very well.

A banker, a marketing consultant, a woman who in a former life had been a chemist and had just gone back to work as a chemistry teacher after 12 years at home and a SAHM. We are so very different from one another, don't know if outside of these circumstances if we would have been friends, but each had a strength and something to add to the project.

As women, we were daughters, siblings, wives, mothers, friends and employees BUT we wanted something for ourselves....some additional validation if you will.

This project gave that to us. And BOY!! What fun our kids had helping, cooking and tasting along the way!!

Funny how the book never entered my mind as a business idea.

I was soooo excited, I said this book will get on QVC and it will sell 1 million copies...that's me the positive thinker, I swear sometimes by will alone I think I can make things happen lol!

Well...the book is real, we are on QVC....now about the million copies...who knows. Books 2 and 3 are outlined and other ideas are in the works.

I have tried for 20 years to get an idea group together, I said it to my family a long time ago, said it to friends once and once to a group of co-workers...well it took 3 other Moms to make it happen.

I have always felt that in life we are all standing under an apple tree....we are looking up at those delicious red beauties and wondering...if you don't put your hand up, try to reach for one and pull, you will never know what it tasted like.

I reached up...let's see what happens :)

Think of me this Monday if you can and send out some positive mojo!

Thanks so very much!!

Colleen