At Carlson Vineyards, winemakers Mary and Parker Carlson offer a taste of their Peach wine served warm with mulling spices (warm peach cobbler in a mug) – perfect for an autumn evening. Another favorite – and the winner of several awards – is their Laughing Cat Riesling, which is produced from 100% Colorado-grown Riesling grapes. With subtle notes of apple, apricot, and pear, it is a semi-sweet wine that is a perfect complement to light fare featuring prosciutto or ham, chicken, seafood, cheese and fresh fruit. Carlson Vineyards is open year-round for tours, tasting, and retail sales, 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., except Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day. For more information, call 970-464-5554 or go to www.carlsonvineyards.com.

Founded in 2001, Graystone Winery is one of Colorado newest vineyards. This intimate boutique winery produces Lipizzan Port II and III – Pinot Gris Port with blackberry and cherry notes, respectively, as well as a White Port. Located in Clifton, Colorado, a short drive from Grand Junction, Graystone’s charming tasting room and gift shop are open daily, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm, Sunday 11:00 am – 6:00 pm. More information is available by calling 970-434-8610 and at www.graystonewine.com.

Owners Stephen and Naomi Smith opened Grande River Vineyards winery in 1990. With the stunning Bookcliffs rising above the vineyard, it is the ideal setting for this award-winning vineyard. Grande River grows all of the grapes for their wine and supplies fruit to many other Colorado wineries as well as wineries in several states. Merlot, cabernet sauvignon and syrah – three prominent red grape varieties – together make up about half of Colorado’s grape production. After sampling their Cabernet Sauvignon, Viognier, and Meritage Red, it was hard to choose a favorite! Grande River Vineyards’ tasting room is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily. For more information call 970-464-5867 or go to www.grandriverwines.com.

A true destination winery, Two Rivers Winery, located just beyond the Colorado National Monument offers tours, daily wine tasting, and accommodations at the beautifully appointed Chateau – fast becoming a destination for weddings and events.

Two Rivers Winery produces just 12,000 cases a year using the five varieties of grapes they produce: Chardonnay, Merlot, Riesling, Port, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Owners Bob and Billie Witham maintain a pristine operation, complete with a comfortable reception area and floor-to-ceiling fresco murals in the winery and French country décor in the Chateau. For more information call 970-255-1471 or go to www.tworiverswinery.com.

Two Rivers’ Cabernet Sauvignon, one of the more complex and full-bodied Cabs I tasted on my vineyard tour, has a smoky finish and luscious blackberry notes – the perfect accompaniment to beef dishes and robust cheeses.

According to the Colorado Wine Industry Development Board, Colorado vineyards are planting:

Merlot, 19.3%

Cabernet Sauvignon, 18.6%

Syrah, 15.4%

Chardonnay, 11.3%

Riesling, 8.5%

Cabernet Franc, 7.1%

Viognier, 2.9%

Gewürtztraminer, 2.4%

Sauvignon Blanc, 2.4%

Pinot Noir, 2.3%

Other, 10%

Barrel Room at Two Rivers Winery

Known for its fruit producing mild climate and rich soil, new vineyards are being planted everywhere in the Grand Valley. Warm summer days and cool nights throughout the growing season provide ideal conditions for producing vines with maturity and balance.

Note: this article first appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of WE Magazine for women

or a State of Brain Chemistry?

There are safe, natural substances that can elevate your mood, reestablish good sleeping patterns, and give you a positive sense of well-being and energy

There are natural things that you can take to keep you brain happy and healthy. We all think about going to the gym to keep our bodies fit, but many of us don’t know how about keeping our brains fit and healthy too.

How Does the Brain Work?

Did you know that 50- 60% of the brains overall weight is pure fat? The rest is a mixture of protein and carbohydrates. Since the brain is mostly a fatty organ all fish and vegetable oils are important for proper brain functioning. The brain has the consistency of hard whipped butter. The fatty tissue of the brain insulates and protects billions of nerve cells called neurons. These neurons control bodily functions by sending information along super speedways in the body. They tell the lungs to breath, the heart to pump, and the stomach to digest. Nero-transmitters are liquid brain chemicals like Serotonin, Gaba, and Tyrophane. They regulate sleep, mood, energy, sex drive, concentration, and memory. Brain chemistry is like baking a cake from scratch. You need the right balance of ingredients for the magic to happen. It is the same way with the delicate balance in the brain.

Interaction between hormones and brain chemistry

Men and women nearing and over 40 are having subtle changes in reproductive, endocrine, and sex hormones. These hormones are progesterone, estrogen, testosterone, and dhea. They do not only affect fertility and reproduction, they also affect the total amount of body energy, sexual energy, brain functioning and mood. The decline of these hormones are part of the natural aging process and affect all fatty tissue in the entire body as well as the brain. These hormones have a very intimate connection with neurotransmitters. For instance if you are going to bungee jump off the side of a cliff your heart rate goes up because the fear response signals adrenaline and epinephrine. These are hormones and brain chemicals that signal back and forth to each other.

This signaling goes on all day in many more subtle ways. For instance, when you want to go to sleep at night certain chemicals in the brain calm down to start a chain of events so that sleep happen. These chemicals and hormones together dramatically affect, mood, sleep, anxiety, panic attacks, fatigue and depression.

While some of the western drugs can be very effective for serious clinical conditions, these drugs may have many side effects and may be very had to withdraw from. High levels of stress and hormones changes can cause acute and chronic anxiety, depression, and insomnia. Natural products, Chinese herbs, and acupuncture, are proven to be very effective treatment. They may also be able to rebuild the systems that are deficient and causing the problems to begin in the first place.

Natural products that really work and can be purchased in Health Food Stores or Health Care Practitioners

Essential Fatty Acids: All seeds and nuts are essential fatty acids. These oils break down and make all sex and adrenal hormones. They are the good fats that help and stabilize all brain functioning. Flax seed, olive oil, avocado oils, and fish oils are the most common.

5-HYDROXYTRYPTOPHAN (5HTP): 5HTP is an amino acid that makes serotonin. Seritonin is one of the most important feel good hormones that regulate feeling happy and regulating sleep.

Taurine is an amino acid that can be used during the day to feel calm and peaceful.

Theanine is an amino acid that is naturally found in green tea and has been well documented for its calming affects. It can be used during the day and also at night to aid with sleep.

Tyrosine is an amino acid that stimulates energy, elevates mood, and stabilizes blood sugar

Melatonin controls the wake and sleep cycles. It can be used at night to help with sleep.

Dhea is produced by the adrenal glands and makes many other adrenal hormones. It may help with total amount of body energy, stop fatigue and greatly increase sexual energy especially for women.

Progesterone has been described as the “feel good” hormones. It is very effective in treatment of sleep, anxiety, pms, and irritability.

Chinese Herbal Formfulas: There are many famous Chinese herbal formulas used to enhance and stabilize mood, energy, depression and sleep. These are best prescribed by a licensed practitioner who will decide which formula is best for you.

Now all hormones and amino acids can be accurately tested though saliva, blood and urine testing. It helps to take the guesswork out of where the deficiencies are. Some of the top labs will also make suggestions as to which supplements are recommended according to lab test results.

A healthy life style, with a lot of attention paid to proper diet and exercise are of course the best way to regulate all body and brain functions. If you find that this is not enough, there are safe natural substances that can be tested and used to help with some of these acute and chronic problems. In my practice I have found that monitoring and regulating these substances make the natural treatment of mood, sleep, and energy, highly successful.

Dr. Barbara Custer L.A.C, O.M.D., runs a clinic in Mill Valley, California combining natural and western medical techniques. To effectively do this she uses Western Medical testing, nutritional programs, Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine. She is also doing Lab testing for hormones and neurotransmitters. If you are interested in optimizing your health, energy and happiness, please visit Dr. Custer’s website at http://www.drbcuster.com

Are You Making These 3 Mistakes Most Organizations Unknowingly Make?

Have you seen the effects of success blindness?

It is a condition where success can be your greatest impediment to growth and succeeding in the future. Success hides many ills. It masks fundamental weaknesses in the business. And can lead to poor decisions – decisions that could end up fatal to your business. We’ve all heard the adage – they’re throwing money at the problem. Well, today money is scarce for many. And simply stated many businesses literally can no longer afford to throw money at the problem to fix it.

We need a better approach, and it starts with creating a sound strategic vision as we work our way out of this recession. While your leadership team works on creating a *new* strategic vision, be careful to avoid these 3 mistakes that most organizations unknowingly make…

3 Top Mistakes Business Leaders Make While Creating Their New Strategic Vision and Direction

1. Failing to look at the organization’s current strategic vision for relevance and how the market has changed. Before you even start thinking about creating a new vision for your organization, you need to think about these two things…

Is your past/current strategic vision still relevant in today’s economy?

Has your market changed: for the better or for worse?

If you were selling subprime mortgages or providing goods and services to the real estate market then your market has changed for the worse. If on the other hand, you are selling goods or services to Apple, Walmart or Target, then you are likely doing reasonably well.

Strategy is multi-dimensional and what was successful in the past may not be successful in the future. Context and situation require change, at the very least, re-evaluation and validation. Without a current, sound strategic vision there is no direction for your company and forward momentum will become unlikely. Defining a strategic vision is the starting point as business growth resumes.

2. Failing to ask eight fundamental “business health check” questions. You see, far too often, small to medium size businesses fail to take an objective and dispassionate view of their operations when planning for their future. In many cases, they focus on only one component of the business, such as sales. How does this help you determine how to best position your organization for the future? You must ask these 8 questions…

What’s working now and how do you know?

What’s not working and how do you know?

What do you want to achieve?

What do you need to avoid?

What do you need to eliminate (“stop doing”)?

What do you need to safeguard/preserve?

What could you be doing to better prepare if an ongoing recession, and for the eminent rebound? (What else could you do to prepare for worse/best case scenarios?)

Then, what are your next best steps to sustain you now and position you for the rebound?

It is critical to ask (and listen to your team’s responses to) these questions when creating your new strategic vision.

And lastly, mistake #3 which is highly interdependent with #2, and most critical to execution- that is, operationalizing your vision to results:

3. Failing to *align* your leadership team with the new strategic vision of where you are headed. If only you or a few of the executives address the questions above in framing out and defining your strategic direction, it results in a gap – a lack of knowing by the very staff that will be making it happen (AKA: EXECUTING). Not knowing organizational priorities results in disarray due to individual agendas and priorities. (Think of individual employees as arrows pointing in different directions, verses focus and energies in a clear and common direction.)

For example, one of our leadership consulting clients was running a successful research business in the medical industry with a strong client base. The work product was good, as were sales. And for the most part clients were satisfied. What wasn’t working well was the leadership team. Why? Talented researchers were promoted to leadership positions with little (or no) management experience. This created a “learning curve” both for the newly promoted manager (learning how to be a manager) and their employees (learning how to cope with the new manager’s learning how to be a manager). The new managers that were thrown into a leadership role brought their baggage with them. That is the politics, behaviors and opinions they had as subordinates. No time was spent working to align the leadership team with the organizational vision and to align the team with itself. As a result, frustration grew – in both the new managers and the employees – and employee turnover became high. In a short time, clients felt the impact.

Lack of a commonly understood strategic direction leads to misaligned efforts and frankly poor decisions – and this can end up fatal to your business.

The recession has changed many businesses forever. What were opportune and successful strategies in the past will no longer work for many organizations. And believing you will soon return to business as usual is dangerous thinking.

Through addressing these 3 mistakes, you can re-surface from the recession by taking an intentional, dispassionate look at your current market situation, asking the tough questions, and defining a strategic vision that is desired and doable by you and your staff.

About the Authors: Sara LaForest and Tony Kubica have more than 50+ years of combined experience in helping organizations create a sound strategic vision that improves business performance. Failing to create a vision for your organization is just one way to sabotage your business. To uncover more common, subtle ways you are harming your performance, get their free report now at: http://www.kubicalaforestconsulting.com/resources.php

I am sure you will enjoy reading about these women and checking out their blogs as much as WE had putting this list of Women Bloggers to Watch.

If you do stop by their blogs, please let them know you heard about them at WE Magazine for Women. Our Mission is to Showcase Women, their talents, treasures and expertise focusing on Busy Women on the Move.

Enjoy!

Heidi Richards Mooney, Publisher

PS. This list of women bloggers to watch is dedicated to my daughter Alexis Lee Richards. Today would have been her 31st birthday!

By the way, if you are a woman blogger who has been blogging for at least six months, feel free to share your blog. Please leave your blog title, the url and a one sentence description in the comments section. My team and I personally review EVERY Blog that is on this list before listing it, and would love to do the same for your woman edited, published, or owned blog.

And if you happen to be one of our bloggers to watch, CONGRATULATIONS! (You can download our new logo by right clicking and saving to your computer) or email me at heidi (at) we magazine for women dot com (no spaces) with “Send me the Women Blogger Logo” in the subject line.

Deciding your priorities can be a difficult task, especially when everything seems to be of utmost importance. First, you need to decide your “priority categories”. You can name your priorities in a way that reminds you of their true significance. You can designate them as

• High, medium, low

• Numbers, letters or colors

• Important & urgent, Important but not urgent, Urgent but not important

• Creative labels such as “I will be dead at the end of the day if I don’t finish…”, “Things will be easier if I complete…”, or whatever verbiage works for you

Second, remember that what is urgent to others may not be your top priority. In such cases, delegating, renegotiating, or saying “no” are critical skills to helping you prioritize. Third, consider that tasks that are really important are those that relate to your personal mission, vision, and values and to your professional objectives as applicable. Some questions you may want to ask yourself are

• Will completing this task matter in 1-2 years?

• Will not finishing this task have grave consequences for me or others?

• Is this item a piece of a larger job that is crucial?

Contrary to popular belief, not all tasks can be top priority. Yes, you have a job to do (personal or professional), however if you want to experience a higher quality of life, you must be able to determine what is truly important to you.

Prioritizing Pointers

Allow adequate time for your priority tasks by scheduling 50% more time than you think it will take.

Know the difference between tasks (which can be completed within a day), projects (which have multiple tasks and take more than a day to finish), and routines (things you do on a regular basis such as getting the mail everyday).

Re-evaluate priorities periodically.

© 2010 Janice Russell, CPO-CD. North Carolina’s first Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization, Janice Russell, and her firm, Minding Your Matters® Organizing, have built a reputation for helping business and residential clients organize their space, items, documents, and time using the flexible structure principle™. Janice’s workshops on topics such as tackling the “no time” trap, perishing paper piles, and stopping stuff from being overwhelming are dynamic, informative, and practical. Minding Your Matters® is dedicated to helping people achieve organization with lasting results™ in their personal and professional lives. Janice is highly regarded within her industry. She is a Golden Circle Member of National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and past president of the North Carolina Chapter of NAPO. Janice is the author of the book Get Organized This Year! and two audios: Stop Letting Stuff Overwhelm You and Tackle the “No Time” Trap. For more information, please visit www.mindingyourmatters.com or call 919-467-7058.

The Signs of Domestic Violence From Danielle Joy Linhart

But, the more we speak up and speak out about domestic violence the more women will notice. We just have to keep speaking up and joining forces more and more. The biggest step is to speak up if you feel like something is wrong in your relationship. Please speak to someone you trust and love if you feel as though something isn’t right. This is a vital important part in order to change the world regarding domestic violence.

Below is a list of attributes of domestic abuse you should be aware of:

EMOTIONAL ABUSE

1) Name calling, insults, continually critical of you.

2) Does not trust you and acts jealous or possessive.

3) Tries to isolate you from family or friends.

4) Monitors where you go, who you call and who you spend time with.

PHYSICAL ABUSE

1) Damages property when angry (thrown objects, punched walls, kicked doors, etc.).

2) Pushes, slaps, bites, kicks or chokes you.

3) Abandons you in a dangerous or unfamiliar place.

4) Uses a weapon to threaten or hurt you.

Why does domestic violence happen?

1) Abusers objectify women, unable to see them as people. They do not respect women as a group and instead, they view them as property or sexual objects.

2) Abusers typically have low self-esteem and feel powerless and inadequate, despite their successes in life (e.g., academic, professional, economic, athletic).

3) Abusers externalize the causes of their behavior, casting blame on outside circumstances (e.g.. stress, a bad day, his partner’s behavior, chemical dependency, etc.)

4) Abusers may be charming, outgoing, friendly between violent episodes. (See The Cycle of Abuse.)

5) Abusers may be extremely jealous, possessive, ill-tempered, unpredictable, cruel to family pets, and verbally abusive.

Danielle Joy Linhart is the author of From Deep Within A portion of the proceeds from her book will be donated to LoveIsRespect.org

In today’s world, women have made many wonderful advances as leaders in their countries, businesses, and communities. However, despite the fact that women currently dominate the field of higher education, the overwhelming majority of powerful leadership positions are still held by men. Moreover, women that have broken this barrier often feel that helping other women will undermine their own successes. Women leaders clearly face unique challenges in their battle upwards; The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership exists to respond to these challenges.

With this vision in mind, The Woodhull Institute hosts weekend-long Leadership Retreats at a beautiful facility in upstate New York, where women can escape from the stress of everyday life in order to nurture their dreams and goals, face their personal challenges, and build upon their inner power. Woodhull’s retreats teach professional development skills such as Public Speaking, Negotiation, Financial Literacy, Advocacy, and much more. Woodhull alumnae leave retreats with a greater sense of self-confidence, a network of over 2,700 female professionals, and a deeper understanding of ethics and leadership.

Women cannot afford to sit back and watch others affect the world in their place. Women leaders are everywhere; The Woodhull Institute’s mission is simply to supply them with a tool kit that will allow them to fly higher, with the support of an empowering community under their wings. If you are ready to become an effective woman leader, then The Woodhull Institute is the place for you.

Woodhull’s Upcoming Retreats:

Master Class Writers’ Retreat – August 27-29th 2010

Intensive Non-Fiction Writing Retreat – October 8-10th 2010

Young Women’s Ethical Leadership Retreat – October 22-24th 2010

For more information, please visit http://www.woodhull.org

LINDA RECOMMENDS:

These are some of the basic things you can do to start working towards greening your meetings, events and workplace:

Recycle badges after the congress

Drastically reduce printed promotional materials such as post cards and brochures dramatically in size/length and print on recycled paper with more information posted online

Where possible, locally grown organic foods should be used at event functions

Earth-friendly promotional products should be distributed at the conference

The conference program should be printed on the first few pages of the padfolio delegates receive at registration, resulting in one less printed brochure

Serve water in jugs and not plastic bottles whenever possible

Donate un-served food to soup kitchens, homeless shelters or other community service organizations. Donate all left over materials (such as bags, padfolios etc.) to a local primary school.

Collect and distribute leftover exhibit materials to charitable organizations.

Provide un-used office supplies and equipment to local schools or charitable organizations.

Set aside free exhibit space for local non-profit organizations.

Choose hotels and venues that have implemented green policies – don’t be afraid to ask. Most hotels have an environmental program in place, but do they do enough? Do they recycle their gray water? Do they collect rain water from the roof? Do they use biodegradable cleaning products? Do they encourage guests to re-use towels and turn off lights when not in use? These are simple things that most hotels are beginning to implement

Linda Pereira is the President of CPL Events, an event planning and translation company in Portugal. She is our International Travel Editor and also serves as International Liaison to Women in Ecommerce. For more information, visit www.cplevents.pt

The answer is to “focus” – focus on what makes you unique.

Let’s assume that you have an outstanding resume and that you make it to the top of the stack of resumes of people to be called for an interview. You, and maybe nine or ten other equally qualified people for the position, that is.

Because companies have so many candidates to choose from, they are interviewing more people so that they can select the “best.” When you are lucky enough to be invited to an interview, it is essential that you be ready to sell yourself, to let the interviewers know what makes you unique, what added value you can bring to the position—in other words, why you are the best person for the job.

Step 1.

List the skills and experiences you have that would be required in the type of job you are seeking. For instance, a technical job would focus on programs, languages, and platforms, etc.

Step 2.

Give some thought to those skills in which you excel, those that are referred to as the “soft skills.” These skills can be viewed as transferable– you can take them with you to any job you hold.

Step 3.

Next , think of the personal traits that make you unique. Maybe you never miss deadlines, or perhaps you are willing to do above and beyond what is asked, or perhaps you have a great attitude. (Don’t dismiss these traits–many people have been fired for negative personal traits rather than for lack of knowledge).

Step 4.

Make a list of those strengths and some examples of when those strengths have helped you achieve results on the job. It will be essential that you can not only identify your strengths, but that you also have examples and stories of times when you demonstrated those strengths in the past.

Step 5.

The next step is to make a list of 5 points you want the interviewer to remember about you – the ones that combined – make you unique.

When you walk out of that interview room, your interviewers may not remember all five of your points; but if they remember even two of the points that make you unique, you will be ahead of the game!

If you want to put together your five points and do it with the help of a new, quick, software tool – check out www.jobinterviewbrand.com

“Tell me about yourself” — could you do that in two minutes – and do a good job? Where would you focus and what would you want “them” to know about you. Presenting a new tool to aid you in being able to “talk about yourself” in a confident, focused manner — personal or professional. www.jobinterviewbrand.com – Carole Martin ~ www.interviewcoach.com

In this article, a woman-centred psychotherapist discusses the need to lose some extra weight, or learning to accept the ‘skin you’re in’.

Balanced Weight Loss by Esther Kane

Normally, I try to avoid talking about weight loss, being an eating disorders therapist- it can be a touchy subject indeed. But lately, I’ve come to realize that there is what I believe to be, a balanced approach to losing a bit of extra weight if you really need to for health reasons. How did I come to this realization, you ask? Personal experience of course!

Turning 39 recently has brought with it much appreciated wisdom, calmness, material comfort, and settling comfortably into myself- all of which I prayed and longed for in my teens and twenties and for which I am forever grateful. However, the not-so-easy-to-deal-with aspects have included graying hair, wrinkling skin, downward pointing breasts, and alas, weight gain. All of these have come as a major shock as somehow, I guess I had thought I would be immune to all of the side effects of ageing. But no, Mother Nature would have me learn otherwise. And while I am working really hard at growing older without plastic surgery, botox, or other toxic attempts to extend my youthful appearance, the weight gain has been a real doozy.

As it turns out, our metabolism slows down increasingly as we age and thus, our ability to burn off excess fat. I have never been obese and even at my heaviest, would be considered ‘average’ for a woman of my age, shape, and height, but the extra padding was getting in the way of my twisty-turny poses in my three times a week hot yoga class and my clothes weren’t looking as flattering as they used to.

Being an ardent anti-dieter and having had a history of a severe eating disorder in the past, I decided there was no way in hell I was going to starve myself through a rigid food deprivation regimen. Instead, over the past few months, I’ve really worked on the emotional side of things- coming to terms with the fact that I am, indeed, ageing- and that my body will naturally change it’s shape and size over the rest of my life. This is a hard pill to swallow in our shallow thin-is-in society, but a reality to which we must all succumb to someday and which is totally natural and acceptable. Overall, I’ve made a lot more peace with this fact and have come to accept (for the most part) that I have traded a young, lean body for the wise, calm, and successful woman whom I have become which is something to be really proud of and grateful for.

Add to that, keeping up with daily moderate exercise- I love and do Bikram’s hot yoga three times a week religiously- more for the stress-busting and inner peace and calm it gives me than for the calories burned. And I’ve tweaked my already healthy diet a bit more in order to boost my metabolism and achieve overall good health. I am aware that the goal is not to be skinny (my body isn’t made to be skinny no matter how hard I may try), but instead, to try and stay at my set-point weight, where I look and feel my best. This set-point changes over the course of our lives as our bodies change so make sure it’s realistic for your current age and body type.

It’s taken me about four months to lose the excess weight I had put on, and I now fit into my clothes the way I did before I gained that extra weight and it feels really good. Slow and steady like the good ‘ol turtle does the trick. And there has been no obsessing, calorie-counting, or beating myself up along the way. I really feel now that the fact that I truly love myself and mostly accept who I am and the body I have now have made a huge difference. Perhaps there is an easier, softer, and gentler way after all…

Esther Kane, MSW, Registered Clinical Counsellor, is the author of the book and audio program, “It’s Not About the Food: A Woman’s Guide To Making Peace with Food and Our Bodies” (www.endyoureatingdisorder.com) and “Dump That Chump”(www.dumpthatchump.com), and “What Your Mama Can’t or Won’t Teach You”(www.guidebooktowomanhood.com). Sign up for her free monthly e-zine, Women’s Community Counsellor, to uplift and inspire women at: http://www.estherkane.com.