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Alert: Free Suze Orman Book

February 14th, 2008 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

Suze Orman is giving away free copies of her new book, Women and Money on Oprah.com.

You will be able to download a free copy of the book (pdf file.) The book is available in English and Spanish.

Ok, there is a catch.

The deadline to download this free copy is

February 14, 2008 June 27, 2008

5PM (Pacific Standard Time) /8PM (Eastern Standard Time)

To download Adobe Reader, go to Adobe Reader download page.

Download your copy ASAP!!!

Thanks “happy mom” for the update!!

Posted in Digital, Educate, Finance, Inspiration, Money, Women |

5 Comments »

Say Yes to NYX

February 12th, 2008 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

As many of you know that Mix Maven loves her MAC products, especially the new paint pots and the mineralized skinfinishes. (This product is a must have!!!)

MAC Mineralized SkinFinish

The uber-trendy brand has been rolling out new limited editions faster than young Hollywood go to rehab.

Specktra and my homegirl Yummy411 turned me on to NYX Cosmetics. A cheaper, yet quality cosmetic brand. I was impressed with a photo of fellow Specktrette’s haul. She got tons of the NYX Ultra Pearl Mania, which is similar to MAC pigments (loose color powder), among other NYX lip products.

NYX Ultra Pearl Mania - Source: CherryCulture.com

I hightailed myself to CherryCulture.com to check out the prices. (Sidebar: After I purchased online, I realized that I can purchase NYX Cosmetics at my local Ulta store.) I was impressed by the prices and I bought a couple of pearl mania loose powders in purple and black. I was totally impressed with the pigmentation.

I also purchased a couple of the eye brushes. The brushes range from $4.99 to $18.99 a fraction of top high-end brands. I was too pleased with the quality and softness of the bristles. If you cannot or do not want to spend tons of dough buying MAC or NARS beauty tools, get NYX brushes, including a professional line, you will not be disappointed.

NYX Professional Crease Brush

The next item purchased was the NYX (Felt) Pen Eye Liner. If I can use this pen liner, anyone can. The line looks quite impressive, so if you know how to do a well-done eye line, you will want to have multiple pens. The pens are available in 3 colors, Jet Black (I have), Dark Brown (On order) and Extreme Black. If you love the Amy Winehouse winged eye liner, use NYX (Felt) Pen Eye Liner to achieve this look.

NYX (Felt) Pen Eye Liner - Source: CherryCulture.com

Overall, NYX Cosmetics is a great brand. I am not saying that you should walk away from MAC, NARS, Urban Decay or other related, but know that if you have limited funds, NYX Cosmetics is a great and quality alternative. Check out a few swatches of NYX eye shadow on Yummy411.

Enjoy Maroon 5′s ‘Won’t Go Home Without You’

Mix Maven

Posted in Beauty, Cosmetics, Educate, Entertain, MAC Cosmetics, Makeup, NYX Cosmetics, Sale, Shopping, Skin Care |

8 Comments »

Do You Believe The Children Are The Future?

January 24th, 2008 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

Hey Pumps and Gloss-ers,

Mr. Maven and I were watching a program on C-SPAN, which featured US House Representative Danny K. Davis giving a speech at The City Club of Chicago. He stated that more male teachers are needed in early childhood development and elementary education. He said that boys often think learning is for girls because most, if not all, of the teachers are women.

So I suggested to Mr. Maven that he could do some in-kind contributions, i.e. reading, to local Headstart programs and elementary schools. I ran the idea by Mama Maven, a HeadStart teacher. She thought the guest story time reader was a great idea, so we set up a date for Mr. Maven to go to the school.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008 was the date that was set for Mr. Maven to read to the students, ages 3-5 years old. He selected, Do Not Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus!

The children were very excited about the book and Mr. Maven made the book quite fun and interactive for the children. He asked the children several times, “should you let the pigeon drive the bus?” The children screamed, “NO!!” The reading was too much fun for teachers, students and guests.

Mr. Maven will make more visits to the HeadStart to read to the children, our future!

I recommend that you nudge all your male loved ones (especially those who are making positive contributions to the society at-large) to participate in this type of in-kind giving. Bear in mind that interested parties will need to have background checks, BUT the process is well worth it.

Find Your Strength In Love,

Mix Maven

Posted in Books, Children, Educate, Energize, Goals, Reading |

2 Comments »

Remembering Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

January 21st, 2008 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

Video: Morehouse Remembers Dr. King

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Our God is Marching On” speech resonates still

By Marc Ramirez

(Source) Seattle Times staff reporter

Listen.

Listen — and you’ll hear the words of a man who was more than just an orator. Listen, and in those words you’ll hear not only yesterday’s struggles but the challenges of today.

Nearly 43 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a speech under the most trying of circumstances, forging rays of hope amid tragedy and strife of landmark resonance. On Monday, the Central District Forum for Arts & Ideas (CD Forum) will present “Our God Is Marching On,” a staged reading of that speech, at Seattle Center’s Center House Pavilion.

The reading is the fifth in an ongoing partnership between the CD Forum and Seattle Center’s annual holiday celebration. Past readings have included King’s most famous speech, “I Have A Dream,” as well as his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.

Through his words, a much broader picture of King emerges, showing a civil-rights leader who, steeped in the African-American church experience, addressed issues ranging from segregation and poverty to nuclear proliferation and the Vietnam War.

“All of those issues are relevant today,” says Timeca Briggs, director of Monday’s stage production. “We saw in the last couple of elections problems with voting, with who gets to vote and who doesn’t. … So this is the time for this speech.”

Selma march

By March 1965, the nation’s new Civil Rights Act was on the books. But parts of the South were slow to embrace such a paradigm shift. In particular, in Selma, Ala., African Americans faced corruption, intimidation and gerrymandering on their way to becoming registered voters.

Early that month, two weeks after the assassination of Malcolm X in New York, King and more than 500 demonstrators left Selma on U.S. 80 en route to the state capital of Montgomery to tell Gov. George Wallace their rights had been infringed.

But six blocks away, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, state troopers and sheriff’s officers attacked the group with bull whips and tear gas.

Prompted by media coverage of the assault, supporters from around the country descended on Selma two days later for a second try. But when King agreed to abide by a federal restraining order, the 2,000-plus marchers made the march purely symbolic, once again halting at the bridge.

That day, after the curtailed demonstration, James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister who had traveled from Boston for the march, was attacked outside a Selma bar. He died two days later.

On March 21, King and thousands more took to the road again. For four days and 54 miles, they braved pouring rain, roadside naps and “trying hills,” finally arriving in Montgomery, a place often called “The Cradle of the Confederacy.” There — like Jonah in the belly of the whale, as one historical account put it — King faced an eventual throng of 25,000 from the capitol building steps.

They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, “We ain’t gon’ let nobody turn us around.”

A history lesson

They were here to talk about voting rights.

But King saw the injustice they faced was rooted in the post-Civil War period, and he took his listeners there with him, giving focus to a speech at once broad and epic. “There were no laws segregating the races then,” King noted. But “toward the end of the Reconstruction era, something very significant happened,” he said. Segregation became a weapon used by Southern business interests threatened by the Populist Movement that had united both poor whites and African Americans.

If it may be said of the slavery era that the white man took the world and gave the Negro Jesus, then it may be said of the Reconstruction Era that the Southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. … And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. …

And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.

“Revolutionary”

This is a Dr. King many may not recognize. That’s what CD Forum director Denee McCloud sought when she chose this year’s production.

“I wanted something people had not heard,” she says. “This was a culmination of so many things that were going on. … He goes into so many things — where racism comes from, why we are here at this place. He talks about it in terms of class, of voting rights — which we’re still dealing with. There’s still people being disenfranchised. So in that way, I thought the speech was very powerful.”

Stage director Briggs and her six cast members aim to capture the speech’s religious rhythms, the call-and-response cadences King built his prose upon. The passage above, with its potentially controversial linking of religion to oppression, gave them chills.

“How very revolutionary and forward-thinking,” Briggs says. “How out of the box. He was just heroic. Somebody could read that as blasphemy — but he was courageous enough to be honest about the role that religion played.”

The imagery of eating Jim Crow also struck a chord. “We talk about food and feeding our bodies, but he’s talking about feeding your mind and your souls and your heart,” she says. ” … What we put in is kind of what we are. If we’re eating junk, our bodies are going to reflect that. And if your mind’s eating junk, you’re going to reflect that.”

Reaching out for unity

They were on the move now.

Today I want to say to the people of America and the nations of the world, that we are not about to turn around. We are on the move now.

Yes, we are on the move and no wave of racism can stop us. We are on the move now.

The burning of our churches will not deter us. The bombing of our homes will not dissuade us. We are on the move now. …

Like an idea whose time has come, not even the marching of mighty armies can halt us. We are moving to the land of freedom.

Despite the unnatural divisions King said had led to their circumstances, the speech breathes with hope, which production members say still resonates today. “Though he goes to some really radical places in the speech, he always comes back to remind his audience that the goal is not to divide, but to connect,” says actor Lin Lucas.

While CD Forum’s McCloud hopes the reading will showcase the breadth of King’s work, she also wants “to let people know his dream is still alive today. I heard somebody refer to [presidential candidate Barack] Obama not being Martin Luther King, but Obama is Martin Luther King’s dream. King is still alive, because his dream is alive.”

Briggs says she hopes it inspires people to think and act differently. “That’s what I hope to do with all my art,” she says. “At the end of the speech, he talks about that great day, not of the white man or the black man, but of man,” she says. “He’s still holding out hope. … He’s talking to all people, saying, we can come together. And that hope is always relevant.”

A seemingly inconceivable task. King knew his weary followers would ask: How long?

How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.”

How long? Not long, because “you shall reap what you sow.”

… How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Weary road

In his conclusion, McCloud says, King offers nothing less than a spiritual call to action. “He’s taking us and shaking us and saying, ‘Listen, people — we’ve been on a long march where we’ve been physically attacked. We’re pushing though a certain moment. It doesn’t matter that the Civil Rights Act just passed — look what’s happened here.’ People were tired.”

The battle, as he said, was in their hands. Against the current backdrop of an oft-divided, election-minded nation, the speech’s relevance remains.

Listen, King was saying. Listen. And in doing so, he invoked a song with spiritual foundations but whose lyrics carried a powerful, universal reach.

How long? Not long, because:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

His truth is marching on.

Within five months, President Johnson had signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Posted in African American, Educate, Faith, History, Holiday, Inspiration |

Tags: Dr. Martin Luther King |

1 Comment »

Rock The Vote

January 9th, 2008 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

I am very glad the holidays are over. I find it to be a very hectic time, as many of you do.

As you all know, January 8, 2008 was the first of 50 presidential primaries. This year, we, the voters, have many choices in both parties. (Please make the right choice )

Being a relatively new US citizen, I am still excited about the voting process. I vote pretty much every election. We all need to be engaged in our local politics as well as national politics. Some people say, “Oh I do not like all that political stuff.” But what they do not realize that government affects all of us, even if they do not care. God forbid, a law is passed that they do not like.

All that said, REGISTER TO VOTE TODAY!!!!

You can register online @ RockTheVote.com. Rock The Vote caters to a younger demographic, so the site is a good way to learn about election issues.

You can also refer to Declare Yourself – State By State Info. This site gives you information about your state’s primary and general election voter registration deadlines. This website has a plethora of voting information and you can also register to vote.

And my favorite resource is C-SPAN. C-SPAN airs many campaign speeches and events, so you can be apart of the process. Please note: If you do not have cable, do not fear because C-SPAN airs programming online. WooHoo!!

See you at the polls,

Mix Maven

Posted in Educate, Election, Energize, Government, Inspiration, News, Politics, Registration, Television |

5 Comments »

Iventory Time

December 19th, 2007 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

Hey Pumps and Glossies,

I hope the holiday season is going well for you. I know that many of us celebrate different holidays around this time, so remember that we live in a multicultural and multi-ethnic society. Happy holidays, everyone!

Ok, ok the new year is fast approaching and the time has come to do a personal year-end checklist. The checklist can include goals from 2007 that have been attained, goals you want to attain in 2008, financial data (monthly and holiday budgets), annual tasks/projects e.g. purchasing real estate, preparing for a new baby, finally working on the scrapbook and self-improvement, which could also fall under the goals category.

Really take the time to do this checklist and monitor your progress weekly or monthly. In the past, instead of making resolutions during the new year i.e. January 1, I would make monthly resolutions. Definitely helps to better track the progress.

When setting goals, think big! I think by writing down those big dreams, you will/may find a way to achieve them.

When doing your financial checklist, you will need to consider your estate, insurance coverage, investment accounts and taxes. A few years back, Mr. Maven and I tweaked our financial checklist. We thought about our short and long term goals and needs and how we could get those items taken care of. (Sidebar: insurance coverage for renters – Please oh please make sure you have rental insurance. The cost is quite nominal a year. When we were renting, we always made sure we had rental insurance, especially living in wood-framed homes of New England.)

Keeping accurate records is a must. Mr. Maven has been very fortunate that he was able to telecommute cross country from the corporate office. He kept all relevant bills and such, so he could claim his business expense on our taxes. If we had this stuff floating around, who knows what would have happened.

I wish everyone a happy new year. May 2008 bring you peace, love, joy, wealth, and many more blessings. I am looking forward to the time we will spend with you, our readers, in 2008.

Live Triumphantly now and in the ’08,

Mix Maven

Posted in Educate, Encourage, Finance, Goals, Holiday, Inspiration |

3 Comments »

Going to the Chapel

October 19th, 2007 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

Hey Pumps and Glossy Ones,

We, typically, think of the summer as wedding season, but that time is only the culmination of the planning and praying. This is the seasoning for plotting, planning, selecting and critiquing. You may ask, “Sexual Carob, what does that have to do with getting your freak on?” Well, I am glad you asked. (I love our readers!!)

Well, during the wedding planning process, couples must, must have pre-marital counseling. I think that wedding planning can show the true colors of bride, groom and families. (Check an episode or two of Bridezilla) Bride and groom must continue to keep the relationship strong and intact.

Premarital counseling examines the relationship and the readiness for marriage. Many topics are covered including:

Creating household budgets
Anger management
Roles of husband and wife
Personal and familial goals
Sex
Are children apart of the marriage plan?

Each topic and questions help the couples to answer, “why do we want to get married?”
One of the many books that has been recommended to couples is Dr. Robin Smith’s Lies at the Altar.

In this book, Dr. Robin asks couples over 200 questions i.e. do you want a pet, what do you like to eat for dinner, what religion or denomination will our children learn. Another serious question is “How often do you want to have sex weekly?” (Sidebar: You know Dr. Oz says that we should have sex 4 times a week.) These questions may seem mundane, but can turn out out to be deal breakers for married couples.

The truth about great marriages is that it takes a lot of work, a conscious effort to be aware of each other’s needs and desires, and plenty of good (exceptional) sex.

Adam Sandler from The Wedding Singer

The quintessential wedding song, Here and Now by Luther Vandross.

Have fun planning the wedding. Remember that your wedding day is not the most important day of your life, but the days, weeks and years to come. Take a 2-week honeymoon (if you can), one for freaking it up and the second for doing activities out of the room i.e. horseback riding, jet skiing, tennis, and outdoor nooky… woohoo!!

Keeping It Steamy,

Sexual Carob

Posted in Educate, Energize, Enlighten, Faith, Marriage, Wedding |

1 Comment »

Love Is When……

September 25th, 2007 | Author: Pumps And Gloss

Hey Pumps and Gloss-ers,

Before we jump into “Sex and Love Week,” please congratulate me on completing a Bachelor’s of Science-Business/ Marketing degree. The process was long and arduous, but I enjoyed every minute, even if I had frequent complaints. I want to thank my family and friends for their prayers, support and encouragement. I love you all!!

When I was a teenager the only “erotica” I could be seen reading was Songs of Solomon.

2 Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth—
for your love is more delightful than wine.

3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.
No wonder the maidens love you!

4 Take me away with you—let us hurry!
Let the king bring me into his chambers.

Songs of Solomon 1:2-4

I have always been interested in erotic literary works. In college, I was introduced to Noire Erotique/Black Erotica. This book is a must have!! This anthology includes prose, poetry and fiction on sex and love. One of my favorites from the book is the erotic horoscopes. (Sidebar: I am not a reader nor follower of horoscopes.) The prose describes how each sign likes to make love and what signs they are compatible with. A fun read!!

Another Book that I have is Dark Eros. This book is not as great as Black Erotica, but definitely worth the read. One of the poems in the book was written by a high school classmate. I am glad that he was able to parlay his amateur writings into published work.

These books showcase love, specifically, Black love in a more positive light. Many of the popular images (i.e. videos) turn our love into random acts of lust. Yes, we do care for and love each other.

Each book has helped to shape my view of sexuality. I learned that I do not have to settle for the virgin or slut roles. I can be lady and a freak all at the SAME time!!