Adding Bliss

What to Bring to an Audition, Besides Talent...

My Sundays are supposed to be my days off to relax and unwind, but usually end up being the busiest days of my week and this week was no exception. I woke up at six in the morning to finish a three tiered, seventy five serving cake for a 1st birthday party, deliver the cake in Brooklyn at four in the afternoon, totally missed a good friend's bridal shower and then headed to midtown Manhattan for a three and a half hours of auditions for my husband's production company. We met some great talent,  some not so great talent and maybe I was just sensitive because I've had a long day but a lot of the stress of the auditions could have been avoided with a little audition etiquette. If you're not an actor, with a little tweaking these principles work the same in job interviews, business conferences & book club meetings...

Who Will Hire Me & My ADHD?

Featuring Guest Blogger: Marquia Garcia

Hello, and welcome to my sob story (this is one of many).

Not only do I have ADHD, I am unemployed and I have been for about a year. I am a single parent and the only degree I possess is a PhD in Procrastinating, Anger and Day Dreaming. The first few months of unemployment went as so: take child back and forth to school, bike riding, job search, collect unemployment benefits, merrily stride through the park, window shopping, utter bliss. As the winter months slowly dragged on, I found myself falling out of love with my newfound freedom. I comforted myself with my literature habit, which is more like a drug (I’m a self proclaimed bibliophile), junk food, museum outings and the constant changing of my hairstyle. To no avail, I was without halt, slipping into an awful depression.

Spiritual Bliss: How Almost Losing Everything Helped Beth Find Her Bliss...

 

 

Featuring Adding Bliss guest blogger and one of my personal heroes: Beth Ann Caputo

The night before my bronchoscopy, I sat alone on the black leather couch I shared with my ex-boyfriend and tried with every fiber of my being not to cry.

Choking back tears always proved to be a serious feat for me and this time around was no different. I grew up in a household where talking about our feelings was as therapeutic as prayer is for an Orthodox Catholic. As an adolescent, I would have melt downs over an array of trivial issues several times per week. No matter how absurd, my parents always encouraged me to let it all out. At the time of my bronchoscopy, I had spent the past year living in a small seaside town in Ireland. Similar to where I live now, it provided a warm, inviting place to live but walk into any pub on the Main Street and you'd find people drinking away divorces, affairs and business deals gone wrong. Faking it became a new way of life. I judged these people; I considered them broken. Yet, there I was that night, wondering when my boyfriend was going to come home from the pub to tell me it would all be okay.

If I had a crystal ball that year, things around 7 Aubrey Court would have been a lot different. I would have known that eleven months after setting foot on the Emerald Isle I'd be faced with my own mortality. I'd be bald, over weight from steroids and poisoned. I'd see myself alone in a hospital room, struggling to move from the bed to the bathroom due to the tube that stretched from my left side into a device that was used to drain excess fluid from my lung and prevent it from collapsing after surgery. The sphere's reflection would show my body lit with tumours, the cancer in its earliest stage. Knowing this, I would have given up the fight for approval that I would never win. I would have found the strength to stand up for myself, buy a one way ticket to John F. Kennedy Airport and never look back. If I knew that my 23^rd year was potentially my last, I would have stopped making choices that made me unhappy.

Instead, I lost her.

What Students Really Learn From Their Teachers...

Every student has a teacher that made a profound impact on his or her life and changed it's course forever, whether it be negative, like Mr. Ostrowski, the English teacher who suggested a young Malcolm X take up carpentry and abandon his legal aspirations which disheartened him and led him into a life of crime or positive like Oprah's third grade teacher, Mrs. Duncan who by taking interest in a promising student (and letting her lead morning prayer) inspired her to become (arguably) one of the greatest teachers of our time.

The teacher that had a profound effect on me was Ms. Kent. She taught me English in middle school, which was and still is my favorite subject, though I can't give Ms. Kent credit for that; my mother taught me to read when I was four and ever since I've been devouring books like Skittles. Once I discovered  audio-books I became unstoppable.

But as an instructor Ms. Kent was special.

What You Need to Know About Gemstones: Amethyst...

So you found the most gorgeous ring in Soho and can't wait to wear it to a cocktail party the head of accounting is throwing her new loft in TriBeCa. You get to the party & ever so fashionably hold your cocktail glass to display your new treasure. Then it happens. . .

"That ring is gorgeous! What stone is that?"

"Ummmmm. . . purple?"

Yikes! Well, fret no more. I now present the girls guide to gemstones!

First on the List, my personal favorite … AMETHYST: 

 

How I Made My Own Wedding Invitations...

You are now reading the ramblings of an old married lady. With 7 months of wedded bliss under my belt I can confidently say I have his to marriage thing wired... seriously. Ask me anything!

No, don't ask me anything about being married. I know just as much about marriage now as I did when I walked down that aisle and that ain't much, but if you wanna ask me how I made my really awesome wedding invites, I'd be happy to share that info.

I got so many compliments and comments on my invites:

What Are the Five Pairs Shoes Every Woman Must Own...

"How many pairs of shoes do you need?"

It's a question every married or cohabitating woman has heard. It's something I hear from my husband everytime the mailman drops a large rectangular box to my eagerly awaiting hands. Of course it's a silly question, any rational human being knows they only need one pair of shoes, though I would never admit it to. I have over 40 pairs of shoes and I can make cases for every one.

How cute would a summer dress be without a pair of espadrilles?

How can I be expected to navigate puddles without a pair of Wellingtons?

These are my STATEMENT heels & those are my all purpose heels & that pair is for partying...

Yes they are both black pumps but these are sling backs and these are peeptoes...Completely different!!

How many pairs of shoes does my husband have? Five.

Five pairs of shoes: 2 pairs of work shoes, 2 pairs of sneakers & 1 pair of flip flops.

While I could never narrow my collection down to that one necessary pair, I started thinking about the 5 pair of shoes I couldn't live with out & came up with this list.

Why are Cakes So Expensive?!

 

This is a timely reprint from my Sugar Mama NYC blog. As more time goes by, the more we are saturated with cake shows giving a false reality of what it takes to make a complex and well constructed cake. Leading more people to demand Dom Perignon cakes at Pabst Blue Ribbon prices and it's more true now than it was 2 years ago when I wrote this:

Here's a re-enactment of a conversation I've had many times and I'm sure many other cake designers have too.

Me: Sugar Mama NYC. How can I help you?
Client: Hi, I'd like to order a cake in the shape of a (insert a extremely complex and detailed object).
Me: Sure, we can do that. How many people would you like to feed with this cake?
Client: Ummm, about 150. How much is that?
Me: Ok. (clickety clack of the calculator) That will be $ (what I think is very reasonable considering the time, material & labor involved.)
Client: What?! For a cake?! Does it cut and serve itself? That's way out of my budget!
Me: Ok. Maybe we can come up with an alternative design. What's your budget?
Client: About $ (pretty much what you'd pay for a cake for 150 people at your local Costco or BJ's)

This is pretty much where the conversation usually ends. I apologize and explain that I won't be able to accommodate their budget and offer more cost effective alternatives, usually cupcakes or another bakery.

So, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to explain how cakes, especially novelty & 3D cakes are priced and show that there's actually a method to what to some seems like madness.