Wrap it up. I'll take it.

Great news... for the most part. I have received word that a woman I had been wanting to work with has agreed to consult with me for my tour. Wahoo!!! The only bummer is that I will have to keep her involvement "under wraps" which puts a damper on the plan I had to access her readership for word-of-mouth advertising and tour sales. I had also wanted to access one of the publications she works for to get some exposure.

Oh well. I'll do it on my own with her on-the-ground help in Paris.

Man! The more I think about it, this secrecy thing really stinks. I was hoping to use her involvement as "leverage" for getting advertising money and as a sales point for potemtial clients.

This is just more fuel for me to do this on my own. I am happy to have her help, but I don't need "outside" support to make my dream come true. This has always been my tangle with getting this tour off the ground in the first place.

Time to shift it into high gear and boost myself up as perfectly capable of pulling this off.

Yay me. ;-)

Baby steps. Must keep going.

It's hard to get a lot done when your 9-month old is learning to crawl and doesn't sleep a lot. It's 8:41 right now and I've been ready to go to bed for a half an hour.

That being said, I'm getting a lot done. My budget is coming together. My neighbor very generously has designed the look of my soon-to-be launched web site for free and she's going to do my business cards. How wonderful is that? (It looks great too! I'm thrilled)

Let's see, what else have I gotten done?

_________

I actually just leaned my head back to think about how to answer that question and fell asleep.

This is going to be hard. I will be an excited and excitable stress ball until I get home from the tour in March.

See, not only do I have to worry about getting everything up and running for the sale of the tour (and then of course the actual tour), I need to worry about how in the hell I am going to do it with my baby girl in tow. I already have my dear friend coming as my nanny and assistant, but I'm just really worried about the time I will be away from her when we are there. We spend so much time together now that I'm afraid it'll be scary for her. I know it will be for me. I trust my friend absolutely, but I will miss my girl so much when we are there. I just wish she could be with me the whole time and experience everything we will be doing. I'm not sure my guests will be down for that, huh?

Oh well, she'll become accustomed to all of this over the years. IT could be worse; spending time in Paris with your mom and dear family friend a few weeks out of the year, every year when you're growing up.

Oy! It's 8:50pm. Off to bed.

Holy Crap!!

So I followed the advice of the guy at Kinkos and fished on Craigslist for logo designers...

OVER 100 RESPONSES!!! I am overwhelmed.

I have found a woman in Finland, of all places, who does some nice stuff, with the brother of a friend and former coworker, and a guy will do work in trade for bacon.

This is very encouraging. There are people out there that want to do business with me. Yeah, they're in the receiving end of money that I don't have yet, but they liked what ideas I had.


Nice.

__________

On another note, It's been days since I e-mailed the gal in Paris that I want to work with. I'm getting nervous that she has changed her mind. Bummer.

C'mon baby! C'mahhhn!

Getting 'er done!!

E-mailed Hélène re: des recettes
Posted Craigslist call for logo designers and responded to one person already.
E-mailed Wordpress about buying F-MT URL

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Weird. It doesn't look like that much when I list it like this. But I'll tell ya, it took a lot to get all that done!



I'm proud of myself.

Failing Forward

Failures are not final.

Perspective. It's how you look at failure that will determine the outcome. If you look at failure as a bad thing going into whatever you are going to risk, you won't take the risk. If you look at failure as a learning experience, or as something that is natural and a part of life, than you you will take that risk, risking not only failure, but success.

It's going to be OK.

I found the dream apartment!!

I LOVE the apartment I just found for my tour. I just sent a request for information hoping that they will allow children and that they can arrange the rental of a crib for the babes. The kitchen ROCKS!!!! The location ROCKS!!!!!!! The price is AWESOME!!!!!!!!! (even with the exchange rate!!!!)

I am so jazzed! I was going to wait to move forward with anything until I heard from my Paris contact, but I realized today that I don't need someone there to be my contact. It would be awesome, but it's not necessary. Anyway, if it doesn't work out with her, there are plenty of people living in Paris looking to get paid for exactly what I'm looking for in an on-the-ground person. I just really want this gal. I like her style, I like her writing, I thing she's got a good heart and will lead us in the direction that I'm hoping to take this tour.

I'm building an empire here, people. One baby-nap at a time. Come hell or high water, I'm doing this tour Marsh 22-26, 2010. It's about God damned time!!!!!!

YAY YAY YAY YAY!!!!!

Baby steps feel like giant strides: and Cockamay Inc.

After making my list yesterday, I confirmed that I now have a nanny/assistant for the tour, e-mailed my Paris contact to confirm that the dates I have selected work for her and started an FMT "Official" web page. I put that entre guillemet because I will be creating an actual web site, for which I already own the domain, in the near future. I hope to be able to afford some (very) basic help from a PR firm with logo creation and web design. Until then, I will be compiling information and content, and posting tour information on that blog. This is that site's sole purpose.

The site is: thefoodmindedtraveler.wordpress.com

I decided to go to wordpress because they have web hosting and you can get it in the cheap. It also seems like it may be easier and more stylish than what I am currently getting with GoDaddy. At least if I have to resort to creating my own site and managing everything on it, I will have something that's good looking, albeit not my ideal site. That will come after this first tour is under my belt and I have something to go to bank with.

How about this for a company name; Cockamamy Inc. This will be the parent company of all my little businesses that I will eventually have running... my tours, my book, my TV production company for my TV show, my jewelry, truffles, you name it. I look at the company name as a thumb to the nose to all of the people that ever made me second guess myself and my myriad of business ideas over the years (including me).

OK, time to pick up the house a bit. My mom is on her way to pick up the baby so I can go off to my day job and serve the people. I feel like quoting Bill Cosby right now;

"Grab a Coke and a smile and SHUT UP!"

Feeling good. Feeling proud

Today

This is a good day. It's a hot summer day in Seattle. The breeze is blowing. The markets are brimming over with summer berries and tomatoes, and I just signed my child support agreement. Lorelei and I are celebrating with tartines de jambon et brie, salade de tomates et basilique, and lemon-marinated olives. Ok, ok, Lorelei had bananas with pears and mangoes with a side of champagne grapes, but that seems pretty celebratory to me, huh?!

I am also having a great little effervescent wine, Fâmega, 'White Vinho Verde' (as opposed to a verde vino verde, ???) from Portugal. Yum!! It is perfect for a day like today. Run, don't walk to The Ballard Market, or wherever you think you can find it. It is PERFECT for a hot day like today.

I will be truly relieved when (and if) I receive the first child support check, but until then, I see this as a great step forward for my baby and me.

Anyhoo, I've had one too many glasses of Fâmega and I'm having a hard time concentrating. Off to grab a glass of water or three and make some dinner for my beautiful baby girl. My special, special gift from God.

DUH!! JEEZ!!! DUH!!

Here I am looking into my would-be (will-be) competition. Scouring food and travel magazines, the internet, news papers, BLOGS for food-tours and destination cooking classes just WISHING that there was one easy source on the web for me to refer to whenever I have a question. WHY I didn't think of compiling these things on a web site when I was planning on writing a book on the idea is beyond me. Now, the book would be a compilation of reviews of tours and classes that I and my crack team had experienced ourselves, but CHRIST!!! Why can't I pull them all together just for information's sake and review them all later?! I'll sell advertising space to big corporate travel companies, luggage companies, you name it. Hell! Got the world's next best whisk? I and my crack team will give your free sample a test and review it's amazingness right here on our "Things we love" page.

OK, I have some calls to make.

Business plan. Business plan.

Encouragement

So I am really loving Meg Zimbeck's style. She is a freelance travel and food writer based in Paris whose style and plays on words are very encouraging to me. She's quippy, fun, and holds her tongue squarely in her cheek while giving great advice in her column Affordable Paris on Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel online. Her website megzimbeck.com is a wanna-be Parisian's dream with daily pictures of and notes from the city of lights.

I guess I just need to keep writing, follow my heart, and know that I too can make something out of this.

Onward!

The Motherload, and DAMN!!

I receive e-mail updates from Budget Travel. Today I received an e-mail that had a list of 10 Top Paris Food Blogs. I, being the sucker for anything Paris, clicked on it immediately and began to hear the angels sing. I am getting so fired up about getting back in to researching for my own tours that these listings and their contents will be the source of so much great information, I am thrilled.

I was encouraged and worried when I saw that David Lebowitz is doing a tour that is set up very similarly to the format that I was planning; an all included, week-long tour of Paris incorporating other already-established food professionals, tours and classes. It was encouraging because someone is doing it, and his tour is sold out. Discouraging and worrisome because I had not seen any tours like mine, until today. There were just NO week-long tours in Paris to be found, at least not easily. Maybe that in itself should be encouraging. If it's not easy to find then that means that there is a market for it. I say that because I know I'm not the only fool looking for something like this.

Anyhow, I have a lot of reading to do... if the baby will let me.

Here are some of the blog sites I found. Chances are that, if you are anything like me, you have already seen and love a couple of these sites if not all of them. Either way, enjoy!!

David Lebowitz
Meg Zimbeck
Chocolate & Zucchini
Dorie Greenspan
Simon Says is cool for a few reasons, one being that there is a list of restaurants by arrondisement in Paris.