Do you practice manifestation? I never used to, at least not intentionally. Back in high school my boyfriend and I used to lie on the hood of my dad's old Oldsmobile 442, gazing up at the stars and watching jets flying overhead. If your lawn furniture isn’t a broken-down car at least some point in your life can you really call yourself an American? We would imagine where those people were going ~ was it a vacation? Commuting to glamorous jobs? I would think of all the places I’d like to go in the future. Italy (check ~ I even worked there one summer) California (tiny check; I’ve had two long visits since we moved away in 1977). I would plant the life I was going to have: live at the beach, lots of kids (with names all picked out), artist and writer… The problem is, I didn’t plan on the husband part of the equation. Turns out they don’t just do whatever you tell them! Another thing I didn’t count on is how much the things I want change over the decades. I did become an artist and writer, but working for myself and not the big fancy publishing company I once envisioned, since all the publishing companies basically went down in flames in the Y2K era. Fact is, although running my own business and publishing my own art and books is a lot of work and a little scary and much less reliable than a paycheck, if I could go back in time and change my career path I wouldn’t. I cherish my freedom too much. And my husband and I find our tiny cabin in the mountains better than the swanky destinations I once aspired to. When I got older the Harry Potter books came out and I fell in love with the idea of that magical universe. How wonderful would it be to wave a wand and create whatever you wanted? Mrs. Weasley’s dishes washing themselves especially appealed to me! I never bought into “The Law of Attraction” or “The Secret” or vision boards or things like that but as it happens, even rejecting those notions, an amazing number of things I envisioned have come true. I had an epiphany a couple years ago when I attended a virtual summit where we were supposed to write out our life goals and rate ourselves on how satisfied we were with our progress in each area.
As I listened to everyone else’s goals I realized how many of my dreams I had already achieved, many before I was 30 years old. The other people (mostly younger than I) wanted to own a home, travel to China, write a book, start a business… all things I’d already done. I was like, wait, am I good at this? And a little while later I was like, this is what I do! It hit me ~ how much faster could I make to the finish line if I was acting with intent rather than just puttering along, reacting to life? How much more successful could I have been if I hadn't rejected visualization? That very day I started meditating. Now every morning I spend at least 20 minutes envisioning my ideal outcome for that day and the future in general. I got over myself and read The Secret and found out everything I could about manifestation. If you're religious it's like praying, but very intense prayer, with a deep focus on gratitude for the gifts you already have. A lot of fitness trainers say, "If you fail to plan you plan to fail". I have always agreed with that as far as meal planning, home organization, workout plans and things, but I never before thought of applying it to the future. I just sort of blundered into things as they happened. Now I find planning out my life in advance makes me more successful. Does everything I want just fall into my lap now? No, not yet. But I find all kinds of unexpected opportunities have opened up. Now when I’m focused on a goal unconventional paths appear before me. Remember in my last email I told you how bad I felt my first attempts at webinars and challenges were and how I was trying to improve? Guess what? Today I had a free one-on-one call with a new coach to help me plan out a new one and he set up another meeting for us because he thinks my idea has great potential! And if you enroll to be a Beta Tester for the new AI funnel builder you'll get a free discovery call with a coach to validate your business idea as well! Things like that happen all the time now. I don’t know if I’m calling them forward or if it’s just that my eyes are open to recognizing them. It’s kind of like being a magician (I always have been so disappointed I’m just a muggle!); I think about my destination and a map appears! It’s just a tiny bit like having a magic wand. I invite you to explore this idea of manifestation. I know at first it might sound weird or crazy, but I can tell you firsthand if you can suspend your disbelief and try it you might find it helps you. I recommend the Mindvalley YouTube channel. It’s free and they have a series of guided meditations for everything from making money to getting a good night’s sleep. I am not a Mindavalley affiliate and this isn’t a sponsored post: it’s just a practice that helps me and I want to share it with you. And of you try it out, let me know ~ how did it go? What goals are you working toward? Drop a comment and fill me in!
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Just call me "leprechaun" because, just in time for St. Patricks Day I have a pot of gold for you! The Mandaline Lucky Sale is happening now on eBay and Etsy. Don't miss this chance to score great deals on one-of-a-kind dolls and other great pieces. Shop using the buttons below.
I'm so proud to be a ClickFunnels affiliate, meaning I partnered with ClickFunnels 2.0 to offer terrific opportunities to my readers. Here's the latest from Russell Brunson (ClickFunnels co-founder):
My team just put the finishing touches on our BRAND NEW AI webinar funnel builder software!! And I wanna invite YOU to be one of the beta testers!!! See, if you’ve run even a single webinar in the past… you know how much time it takes to set everything up and write all the copy. I used to have to hire a dozen people just to get one launched (and it still took WEEKS…) But it was always worth it since webinars can be so insanely profitable. (It was a webinar that built ClickFunnels from $0 to 9-figures!!!) Well with our new AI software, you can skip all the headaches… And get right to the profits!! Leave the rest of the webinar funnel (pages AND copy) to our brand new generative AI software — I’m talking about the slides, webpages, emails, order-forms, everything… Written FOR you. And all based on PROVEN webinar hacks that have continually proven to make massive sales for over a decade. And done in as little as 60 mins from now!! Sound too good to be true? If you go sign up to be a beta tester… you can go see the magic for yourself!! I’ll even let you build out your full webinar funnel for FREE… AND unlock the $297 Perfect Webinar Training for FREE as well! Frankly, I can’t see a reason why you wouldn’t go try it out. ;) Doors are open right now… But won’t be open forever. So go and create your FREE account now (and get your webinar funnel launched in the next 60 mins!!!) Ah, it’s a tale both horrifying and heartwarming… Do you have a favorite pair of shoes? I do ~ my Fly Flot sneaker mules from Italy. They are SO comfortable and very hard to find in the USA. Today as I write this my shoes are sitting in the trash. Why, you ask, are they in the trash? Well, that’s thanks to Ming, our Himalayan rescue cat. Ming has recently taken to hiding in our closet. She’s very good at it. Even though I know she’s probably in there I can’t find her when I try to shoo her out before bed. Then, in the morning you open the closet door and she comes whipping out. We went through this last week and while she was trapped in the closet overnight she needed to relieve herself. My Fly Flot shoes were her litter box replacement of choice! I could smell as soon as I opened the closet she’d peed in there but the light is on the fritz and it was blinking and dim and I couldn’t see where. I stuck my foot into my shoe, planning to go out in the garage and get a flashlight and… it was wet! More than once the cat targeted my husband’s shoes, leaving dead or nearly-dead mice inside them. I think I would rather have that since it doesn’t smell as bad! I washed and washed my shoes but the smell just would not come out so I ended up throwing them away. Life is kind of revolving around shoes here, lately. I am in the middle of a months-long project listing doll shoes. I got a huge tub of Barbie and similar dolls and accessories and there are many, many shoes in the mix. A lot of them are unsold deadstock, evidently straight from the factory and never packaged. I’ve been researching them and listing them for sale with the Mattel item number whenever possible so collectors can complete their outfits with the proper shoes. So if Barbie’s your jam check it out below. Then there’s our track star. He’s 15 and growing like a weed. It seems like he outgrows his running shoes every week. So my shops are also getting full of barely-worn, very expensive athletic shoes. One pair of Nikes is still new because he outgrew those before he ever wore them! If you’re in need of men’s running shoes you’ll want to look below. Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful we can provide these shoes for him, but I do wish I could slow time down just a little bit! Shoes have a special place in our family. My great-grandfather came to America from Norway when he was 17, speaking no English and penniless. He found work as a sailor on Lake Michigan and worked all the way up to First Mate when he was struck by polio and paralyzed. My grandfather could remember riding piggyback around the yard one day and then his dad unable to walk the next. After that great-grandpa became a shoe salesman. He wasn’t very good at it and they had 8 kids so they were very poor.
My grandfather grew up and went to visit Norway in 1980. His own father had never returned or saw his parents or siblings who stayed there again. Grandpa was surprised when he arrived to meet a cousin he’d never heard of and find out he had an aunt no one ever mentioned. It seems his cousin, Anna, was born out of wedlock. In Norway that’s no big deal (traditionally once a couple became engaged they slept in the same bed with a ribbon dividing the two halves) but in America at the turn of the 20th Century it was a scandal, so my great-grandfather just never mentioned he had a sister and niece. It turns out he never forgot them, however. When Anna, by then a very old woman, met my grandfather she started to cry. She explained his father had sent her shoes all through her childhood because her family was too poor to buy them. She told him she could still remember the fin skoen (“fine shoes”) he sent her. So, Great-Grandfather, despite being so poor people left bags of food on the doorstep, sent shoes to Norway for the rest of his life unbeknownst to anyone in the family to the niece no one knew existed. It’s hard to imagine our abundance compared to the lifestyle most people had just a couple generations ago. We are truly blessed, even if sometimes we stick our foot into a wet-with-WHAT shoe! Years and years ago when I learned to re-string dolls I never imagined where that one skill would lead. At the time I was just trying to fix my mother’s dolls. Once I learned how I began buying dolls to repair and resell. It was a little hobby business; my children were very young then and I didn’t have enough time to make a living at doll repair.
I began recounting my adventures in doll repair in my Mandaline Artful Living blog, mostly just to keep in practice with writing as I felt I was becoming rusty. All of a sudden, people all around the world wanted to send me their dolls to repair. I became overwhelmed with work, so I decided to sell stringing kits with instructions and supplies to enable others to repair their own dolls. Still I had people wanting to send their dolls to me. I raised my prices to encourage people to buy the kits. And I raised them, and raised them, and raised them… and now I’m charging $100 per hour to string dolls and people are STILL sending them to me. Right now I have a studio full of dolls being repaired and I am expecting 18 more next week! It’s too much work for one person. I have now prepared a comprehensive stringing kit, with materials to string at least 5 dolls of all types and sizes and I’ve prepared and included a course to teach all the fundamentals. The stringing kit materials alone are worth $150 and it will save you over $200 in professional repair fees by teaching you to do it yourself. The course value is $197. I usually sell these kits for $65 but right now you can get your for $40 with free shipping (within the USA). Restore your dolls to their former glory, or start your own doll stringing business. Believe me, there’s plenty of demand! Just click the button below to get your kit. Happy Valentine's Day! Please be my Valentine... today only, I'm offering special treats for my closest friends. Click the button below to sign up & get your gifts delivered straight to your inbox.
How do you handle days when your only desire is to hibernate under the covers? That’s all I want to do today: sleep, or maybe curl up with a book or watch Harry Potter movies in my bathrobe. I certainly don’t want to stir myself into working.
We stayed up late to watch the Super Bowl’s overtime conclusion and I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning. And it’s rainy and dark and colder than it has been. And my Hashimoto’s Disease has been flaring up lately, leaving exhausted. I am supposed to be building my new funnel. I was doing great with it at the end of the week but then I put it aside and never picked it back up again. What, you ask, is a funnel? It’s a special type of website that sends customers directly to your offer instead of to your store or traditional URL with a maze of choices that misleads or distracts them. I wasn’t sure I needed a funnel until my mother brought home its importance to me. A few months ago I published my new Ultimate Zucchini Cookbook. I listed it for sale on Amazon, in my shops, and on my website and promoted it (with links to the sale page) on all my social media channels. This cookbook is a re-write of my grandmother’s original, which she wrote and “published” in the mid-20th Century ~ she typed it out on her typewriter and had it copied and bound into little paper booklets at a copy shop. I rewrote it with low-carb adaptations of the recipes included and published it as a much-sturdier hard cover book. My mother decided to buy one. I don’t know if hers fell apart over the years ~ more certainly did! ~ or if she wanted the low carb recipes but she tried to order one from my website. I was planning to give her one for Christmas so I would have told her not to buy it but she didn’t tell me about this until afterward. Anyway, one night my mother caused me some angst because she called to tell me she pre-ordered my book when it was still in the pre-order stage. I hadn’t gotten any notice of her order so I asked for details and she said she didn’t have to pay because it was a pre-order. (That’s NOT how pre-orders work! She should definitely had to pay and it was discounted during that period due to the wait). Then she said she saw a notice when she ordered her book that my son also ordered a copy. I didn’t have a record of that either. Visions of hundreds of undocumented cookbook orders coming into my website flooded my brain ~ unfulfilled orders, customer complaints, Squarespace shutting me down… In a panic I texted my son to ask if he ordered my cookbook, which I thought would be rather odd because I don’t think he even knew about it… like most 25 year olds he doesn’t breathlessly follow his mother’s career! Turns out, he did not order it. Neither did my mother. What did she do? Why did she think she ordered it when she didn’t? Why did she think my son ordered it? We may never know. You would think following a direct link to a product and ordering it would be simple but for a lot of folks, it’s not. A great many people just aren’t used to online shopping. Then if you have a storefront with a ton of choices they might get distracted and start switching between products and become overwhelmed with choices. And then many platforms try to offer suggestions of similar products a customer might want before they’ve even completed their first order. Sometimes these are helpful but I’ve noticed they often have nothing to do with the thing I’m ordering. They might even show buyers a lower cost for the same product which ends up in a race to the bottom, price-wise, for sellers. You may know the cheaper product will take 2 months to arrive or doesn’t include all the pieces yours has but many consumers don’t look at anything beyond the price. They may not even realize they are going to a different seller if they click on one of those links ~ I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve gotten an angry message from someone who insists they bought something from me when they didn’t ~ even products I don’t offer at all! So, a funnel allows you to control the narrative, explain why your product is superior, and send buyers to an order form right there on the page without any distraction. It works for any type of business, from local services and restaurants to online stores. I’m making funnels for my best-selling products and then suggesting my stores for complementary items on the Thank You page. I am such a big believer in this concept I partnered with ClickFunnels to bring you a 5-day business training from industry leaders, including Daymond John of Shark Tank. It’s free and it comes with a free trial of ClickFunnels 2.0. Just click the button below to register. I am really optimistic this will be my best year yet, but only if I can manage to get myself back to work on this funnel. So please hit the comments and give me all your best motivational tips! Oh, and don’t worry about Mom ~ I gave her a cookbook for Christmas. Here at "Amanda's Adoption Agency" (aka Mandaline shops; I renamed us temporarily to reflect the huge number of dolls currently available), we take immense pride in offering a remarkable collection of vintage and antique composition dolls meticulously repaired by our skilled artisan, Amanda Boggs.
Each doll undergoes a meticulous restoration process, where they are lovingly repaired by hand, re-painted, re-strung, and re-sewn to restore their original beauty and charm. What sets our dolls apart is the attention to detail, as some even feature handmade alpaca or mohair wigs, adding a touch of uniqueness to each one. Adorned in exquisite clothing, these dolls are not only aesthetically pleasing but also ready to find their forever homes. However, it's important to note that there's only one of each doll available, so if you find a special companion that speaks to your heart, don't hesitate to make them a part of your family before someone else does. Welcome to the world of Mandaline dolls, where each creation is a unique and cherished masterpiece. We are thrilled to present to you an extraordinary rare gem - a fully restored full-composition 12-inch doll with the delightful Horsman Precious Baby face.
Introducing the newest addition to the Mandaline collection of precious dolls ~ a rare full-composition 12-inch doll with the adorable Horsman Precious Baby face. This little darling has been lovingly restored with meticulous repainting and craze concealing, bringing baby back to its original beauty. This baby can be a girl or boy, as the new mother wishes. Now available from Mandaline shops, this doll comes complete with a cozy layette set, including a soft flannel bunting blanket, cloth diaper, and a working rattle, all vintage. Fall head over heels in love with this enchanting baby, ready to bring joy and delight to any doll enthusiast. Don't miss your chance to welcome this extraordinary treasure into your heart and home. This one-of-a-kind beauty has been meticulously brought back to life by the talented Amanda Boggs, also known as "Mandaline." With her expert touch, this doll has been lovingly repainted and craze concealed, ensuring that Baby's original beauty shines through. The petite size of this doll makes it easy to hold, perfect for cuddling and displaying. There is only one of these magnificent dolls available, so don't miss your chance to bring her home. Click the adoption button now to make this lovable treasure yours today. Have you seen all the ads for some super-exclusive home fragrance system? They feature celebrities talking about how everyone who visits their home exclaims that it smells like a high-end hotel. Whatever that means. Two summers ago I stayed in a very fancy historic hotel in Chicago’s Miracle Mile and it reeked of weed, inside and out. The one slow elevator couldn’t keep up with the guests’ demand so we took the stairs to and from our room. Unfortunately my allergy to marijuana had me wheezing so bad I could barely climb up the 2nd flight. So, that's not how I would describe it! Anyway, recently I was indulging in my bad habit of reading trashy online magazines about “famous” people and one article caught my attention. Some lady I’ve never heard of who is “famous” for some reason I can’t remember ~ she might be on a reality tv show I don’t watch or married to some sports player. Anyway, the reason I clicked on the article is the headline said amidst whatever controversy is going on with her right now (she might be declaring bankruptcy, getting divorced, losing her house, going to jail or all of these, I wasn’t paying attention to that part) she spent $100,000 on essential oils. So I was like “what?!” And that’s why I read this story about the lady I’ve never heard of. It seems she spent all this money on the home fragrance system currently blanketing the airwaves with ads. The premise of the system is it goes inside your air vent system. It seems basically to consist of a diffuser you put in your air intake so it blows all through your vents. So, first of all, I am on board with essential oils, specifically Young Living’s, because at least one study has shown the chemical fragrances in 98% of home products are carcinogenic. This effect is enhanced when these chemicals are exposed to heat, such as in the clothes dryer or those little electric air fresheners you plug into the wall or the ones you melt in a little burner. Pure, all-natural steam-distilled essential oils, such as Young Living’s, not only freshen your home but may have therapeutic benefits as well. I certainly don’t want my “clean” home giving us all cancer! And it’s a great decision to avoid heat dispersal, even for essential oils, because that can break them down. You want a diffuser that disperses the oil with ultrasonic vibrations or passive means, such as air flow. But seriously, $100K?! Are they insane? Diffusing essential oils is the most economical way to use them because only a few drops can travel all through your house as the tiny particles of oil are blown around in the air. That’s why I can justify my more expensive splurges on oils like lemon verbena or Melissa (lemon balm); one bottle lasts practically forever. I can’t believe anyone would spend so much, especially if they are facing all the troubles this lady has. I have an even cheaper way than traditional diffusion: use your vent filters. Just sprinkle a few drops of your favorite oil over the vent filter when you change it out and as the air blows through your home the oil will be dispersed along with the scent, no crazy-expensive “system” required! Some more tricks: Add a drop or two inside the cardboard tube in your toilet paper when you change the roll. When the roll turns it will release the scent. Or put a few drops on your vacuum cleaner filter and you will release the scent when you vacuum. Or a few drops on a cotton ball inside your trash can… etc etc. The more you think about it the more opportunities you’ll see. A note of warning: undiluted essential oils will eat through plastic and take the finish off wood furniture so don’t use them on or in anything like that. I made a short video showing how I add fragrance to our air system to keep our home smelling fresh. And people do always comment about how great our house smells but they usually just keep asking “What is that that smells so good?” No one has ever said it smells just like a “high-end hotel”! Watch the video here. Then, I made another video while suffering from having stinky wet dogs running in and out of the house on a rainy day. Don't let bad odors rain on your parade – let me show you how to reclaim your home's scent and enjoy a clean, odor-free living environment. Watch that video here.
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AuthorMy name is Amanda, but my childhood nickname was "Mandaline". I am a mother of three turning my passion for creating into a full-time business. Archives
March 2024
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