I don’t think I posted last week because we have been knee deep in cupcakes for the photo shoot for the cookbook and also the new menu items.
Christina and I started the shoot on Sunday the 7th and we worked straight through until 4 pm yesterday. Oh yeah we had one day off – Saturday! So it was a lot of work but worth it! The photos are really amazing.
The book’s editor, Zoe Maslow, and designer, Terri Nimmo, from Random House spent last Monday with us and popped over a couple of other times during the week. It was really great to work with them. One concept we learned from them was about “floating” i.e. sometimes the camera angle makes an item – in our case, a cupcake – look like it is floating above the surface rather than actually sitting there. I will attach two images for you to see what I mean – the one without the plate “floats”. Maybe you won’t find it that interesting but stuff like that has been keeping me busy lately.
FLOATING
NOT FLOATING
MOVING ON…
Now I am thinking about a Thursday night 15-20 minute talk for the Junior Achievement Young Governors’ reception. They are interested in hearing about topics such as risk (how to decide to take one?), mentors (who were mine?), failure (is it important?), my most challenging obstacles and my biggest accomplishment. What I find hard about speaking on these topics is linking what I have personally experienced with what might be relevant and interesting to the audience. We’ve all been in an audience where the speaker went on at length about having done this or that…and although it is interesting, it just doesn’t feel relevant.
Andrew and I like this concept called “distant elephant” which I read about years ago. The concept is about how decision making about a future event can be made in a more lighthearted way when the event is far, far away. For example, when you are asked in June to speak at a September event, it is a distant elephant, why, it is so small on the horizon, you can’t even see that little guy! So of course you say “YES, I’d be happy to!”. Then September comes and suddenly the event is this huge, hulking elephant right there on Thursday night and it doesn’t look so small and friendly. I must say, I am still very happy to be speaking at this event but I can tell you it is no longer a distant elephant.
