My girlfriend Tisha Deshields kept telling me about this cute place located down the street from her. She said, “Tami, you have to come check it out,its all pinky!” Well, yesterday afternoon I got a chance to go see this Pink Pastry Parlor that she was talking about. When we walked in I got the biggest grin on my face! It was decked out head to toe with pinkness!

I love going to all these cool places and so many of my readers email me about pink places to go to! I was truly in pink heaven! When you first enter the business there is a bakery that sells all sorts of sweets, like trouffles,cupcakes,cakes and soo much more. The lady behind the counter then said,Oh there is more! We went around the corner and there was this huge space that girls of all ages can have any type of party! If you want a spa party,tea party,cooking party,this is the place to go.

All the rooms were themed decorated and it was soo Pinktastic! I was unable to meet the owner of the business but I can tell she is going to be my new bestie lol. Please check out the pics and if your in the Norcross,Ga area please stop in for some pinkalicious treats or plan a party!

www.pinkpastryparlor.com

Now here is a woman that I love and gives me alot of inspiration, plus she is a great entrepreneur! Susan Taylor gives me goose bumps because she really has accomplished alot in the journalism world.

Susan Taylor’s Bio from her site:

Susan L. Taylor is synonymous with Essencemagazine, the brand she built—as its fashion and beauty editor, editor-in-chief and editorial director. For 27 years she authored of one of the magazine’s most popular columns, In the Spirit. As the driving force behind one of the most celebrated Black-owned businesses for nearly three decades, Susan Taylor is a legend in the magazine publishing world.

She was the first and only African American Woman to be recognized by the Magazine Publishers of America with the Henry Johnson Fisher Award—the industry’s highest honor—and the first to be inducted into the American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame. She is the recipient of the NAACP President’s Award for visionary leadership and has honorary degrees from more than a dozen colleges and universities.

A fourth-generation entrepreneur, Susan grew up in Harlem working with her father in his women’s clothing store. She founded her own cosmetics company, a first for Black women, which led to the beauty editor’s position at Essence. She is the author of four books: In the Spirit: The Inspirational Writings of Susan L. Taylor;  Lessons in Living; Confirmation: The Spiritual Wisdom That Has Shaped Our Lives, which she coauthored with her husband, Khephra Burns; and her most recent, All About Love, Favorite Selections from In the Spirit on Living Fearlessly. She is a much sought-after speaker, inspiring hope and encouraging us to reclaim our lives and create sustainable communities.

She is an avid supporter of a host of organizations dedicated to moving the Black community forward, but her passion and focus today is the National CARES Mentoring Movement, a call to action, which she founded in 2006 as Essence Cares. The National CARES Mentoring Movement is a massive campaign to recruit one million able adults to help secure our children who are in peril and losing ground. “Not on our watch!” she says. “Our children are the mothers and fathers of our tomorrows, and their future is in our hands.” The goals of the CARES Movement are to increase high school graduation rates among African American students, and end the violence in Black communities and the over-incarceration of our young. “Creating safe, top-tier schools in every underserved community in this nation is the mandate—and it’s doable,” Taylor says.

Susan is a cofounder of Future PAC, the first national political action committee devoted to providing a network of support and sources of funding for progressive African American women seeking federal and state-level political offices. She is co-chair with Danny Glover of Shared Interest, a capital campaign to raise money to build housing and encourage entrepreneurship in the rural areas of South Africa, and serves on the boards of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and Girl Scouts of the USA. She has worked passionately to help restore the lives of people in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region who were devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Madame CJ Walker

I am highlighting great african american business women since its Black History Month! I wanted to pay homage to some wonderful ladies that made a difference in my life that have either passed on or that are still alive!  First up is Madame CJ Walker!

From Madame CJ Walker’s site:

Born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 on a Delta, Louisiana plantation, this daughter of former slaves transformed herself from an uneducated farm laborer and laundress into one of the twentieth century’s most successful, self-made women entrepreneurs.

Orphaned at age seven, she often said, “I got my start by giving myself a start.” She and her older sister, Louvenia, survived by working in the cotton fields of Delta and nearby Vicksburg, Mississippi. At 14, she married Moses McWilliams to escape abuse from her cruel brother-in-law, Jesse Powell.

Her only daughter, Lelia (later known as A’Lelia Walker) was born on June 6, 1885. When her husband died two years later, she moved to St. Louis to join her four brothers who had established themselves as barbers. Working for as little as $1.50 a day, she managed to save enough money to educate her daughter. Friendships with other black women who were members of St. Paul A.M.E. Church and the National Association of Colored Women exposed her to a new way of viewing the world.

During the 1890s, Sarah began to suffer from a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair. She experimented with many homemade remedies and store-bought products, including those made by Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur. In 1905 Sarah moved to Denver as a sales agent for Malone, then married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman. After changing her name to “Madam” C. J. Walker, she founded her own business and began selling Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula, which she claimed had been revealed to her in a dream. Madam Walker, by the way, did NOT invent the straightening comb or chemical perms, though many people incorrectly believe that to be true.

To promote her products, the new “Madam C.J. Walker” traveled for a year and a half on a dizzying crusade throughout the heavily black South and Southeast, selling her products door to door, demonstrating her scalp treatments in churches and lodges, and devising sales and marketing strategies. In 1908, she temporarily moved her base to Pittsburgh where she opened Lelia College to train Walker “hair culturists.”

By early 1910, she had settled in Indianapolis, then the nation’s largest inland manufacturing center, where she built a factory, hair and manicure salon and another training school. Less than a year after her arrival, Walker grabbed national headlines in the black press when she contributed $1,000 to the building fund of the “colored” YMCA in Indianapolis.

In 1913, while Walker traveled to Central America and the Caribbean to expand her business, her daughter A’Lelia, moved into a fabulous new Harlem townhouse and Walker Salon, designed by black architect, Vertner Tandy. “There is nothing to equal it,” she wrote to her attorney, F.B. Ransom. “Not even on Fifth Avenue.”

Walker herself moved to New York in 1916, leaving the day-to-day operations of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis to Ransom and Alice Kelly, her factory forelady and a former school teacher. She continued to oversee the business and to work in the New York office. Once in Harlem, she quickly became involved in Harlem’s social and political life, taking special interest in the NAACP’s anti-lynching movement to which she contributed $5,000.

In July 1917, when a white mob murdered more than three dozen blacks in East St. Louis, Illinois, Walker joined a group of Harlem leaders who visited the White House to present a petition advocating federal anti-lynching legislation.

As her business continued to grow, Walker organized her agents into local and state clubs. Her Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America convention in Philadelphia in 1917 must have been one of the first national meetings of businesswomen in the country. Walker used the gathering not only to reward her agents for their business success, but to encourage their political activism as well. “This is the greatest country under the sun,” she told them. “But we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice. We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible.”

By the time she died at her estate, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, she had helped create the role of the 20th Century, self-made American businesswoman; established herself as a pioneer of the modern black hair-care and cosmetics industry; and set standards in the African-American community for corporate and community giving.

Tenacity and perseverance, faith in herself and in God, quality products and “honest business dealings” were the elements and strategies she prescribed for aspiring entrepreneurs who requested the secret to her rags-to-riches ascent. “There is no royal flower-strewn path to success,” she once commented. “And if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.”

Come Dance the Night Away at Orchid’s Dance Lounge

You don’t need a dancing partner, just your best mom/girlfriends!

What: Enjoy a “Ladies’ Dancing Night Out” you won’t soon forget!

Atlanta, GA – Orchid Lifestyle & Events is having our first signature event:  Orchid’s Dance Lounge, which will be a “dance your feet off” soiree. This event is different because it is targeted specifically to moms and women over 35 who love to dance. And, you don’t need to bring a dance partner, just your best mom/girlfriends.  We will have a female DJ spinning music from many genres of dance music from salsa to hip hop to top 40, with classic music from the 1970s through today. There will also be a guest choreographer teaching exotic bellydance moves.

Why: You know women love “Ladies’ Night Out”. This takes it to another level!

When: Friday, January 29, 2010 from 9:00 p.m. until 12 a.m.

Where: The beautiful Georgian Ballroom at The Biltmore

817 West Peachtree Street, NW

Atlanta, Georgia 30308

Cost: Tickets are $25 and parking is $5 per carload. Ticket price includes noshing on tasty treats and being eligible for the giveaways. There will also be a cash bar and vendors at the event. Tickets are available online atwww.OrchidLife.Eventbrite.com. A limited number of tickets will be sold at the door.

2 lucky readers can win a pair of tickets! Just leave me a comment below.The winners will be notified and you will have 24 hours to respond,good luck!

If you love to dance, this is where you need to be!

And, don’t forget to wear your dancing shoes (or at least bring some)!

For partnership opportunities, please contact Lynn Lawson at LLawson@OneFunkyMama.com or call 404.474.2864.

Friend and Jennie Hart Robinson, workin the hats lol

So I was walking threw the gift show at Americas Mart when I saw the funniest thing! These 2 women standing in a booth with the cutest kooky looking  paper hats lol. I laughed so hard as I approached them and asked them what were they wearing.They were so cute and told me they were fun party hats. Well you know I love me some parties, so I listened in as they told me about their company Glory B Hats(website under construction).Jennie Robinson is the creator of the hats and she handmakes each and every one. The catch phrase is,”Try something fun on for size” lol. The hats are made of paper and I love how they used alot of recycled things to make their hats.

Me and Jennie

They said their hats are great for open houses,fundraisers,galas or corp events. They can also create a hat on site at your event! For more info about their company you can contact them at 478-952-4640 the site www.glorybhats.com is still under construction.

I love this company too fun!