Monthly Column

Hey everyone!

I now have a published monthly column online on Positively Feminine. Here is a link to my very first column: http://www.positivelyfeminine.org/professional/sg/summerwork.htm. Check it out and let me know what you think.

I hope that this finds you all doing well and enjoying the summer!

Love to you all! Stephanie

I Feel Like a Model of Beauty When I . . .

"am reflecting God’s love onto the world, being a patient mother, loving wife, healthy woman and forgiving human being. I believe beauty is something greater than appearance. It’s being real and letting your inside appearance influence your outside appearance. Model beauty on the inside and the outside will follow."

When do you feel like a model of beauty? Post your answer on my blog. I cannot wait to see what people have to say.

The above response is one of my friend's answers. She answered this question to complete her "Model of Beauty Search" entry form. This is a contest that Mary Kay is currently running. I am VERY excited about it because there will be four grand prize winners who will receive the following: airfare for two to New York City, transportation to and from their hotel, lodging for their time in New York, a professional makeover & photo shoot, and FINALLY . . . a $500 shopping spree!!! Cool, huh? If you want in on this deal, you need to schedule a makeover with me so you can get your entry form postmarked by this Saturday, September 15th.

Mary Kay's Model of Beauty Search

While I cannot participate because I am a Mary Kay consultant, don't you think I could be a model of beauty??? I absolutely LOVE this picture of me that my director took on her pontoon when we were out cruising her lake in April after a meeting. I cannot believe that I was wearing a tank top in April here in Minnesota. CRAZY!!!

I just wanted to let everyone know that Mary Kay is having a Model of Beauty Search contest. All that is required from you is to get together with me for a FREE (yes, I did say FREE) makeover. We take a before and after photo of you and put them on the entry form. That is all there is to it! Simple and easy, huh? For your effort, you will have a chance to win a professional photo shoot and the opportunity to be featured in a 2008 edition of The Look (Mary Kay's quarterly catalogue), a professional makeover for the photo shoot, a trip for two to New York City for the photo shoot, and a $500 shopping spree. Doesn't that sound like fun? There will be four grand prize winners, and in honor of Mary Kay's 45th anniversary there will be 45 first prize winners who will receive products from our new body care collection.

Email me today at sgulland@marykay.com to schedule your makeover. The deadline to enter the contest is September 15th (entry must be postmarked with this date)! I only have appointments available from mid-August until September 14th, so send me the email right after you finish reading this post. Feel free to forward this post to your friends as well! If you have friends who are interested in the contest and they do not have a consultant, we can all get together at one time and you can earn FREE (there is my favorite word again) Mary Kay products. For friends who already have a Mary Kay consultant, they can contact their personal consultant for the makeover.

I am looking forward to hearing from you!!!

Mary Kay Career Conference

Last Friday, March 23rd and Saturday, March 24th, I spent time with my Mary Kay girlfriends at the Minneapolis Convention Center learning how to better serve my customers. It was very inspirational, motivational, and fact-filled. I walked away with a deeper desire to be more like Jesus with my customers and serve them with excellence.

I still have not processed all the pages of notes that I took. I am looking forward to typing up my notes into word documents to help me process everything that I took in last weekend. I will probably spend a significant amount of time doing this tomorrow because Ed will have the car all day. He has a meeting with a CEO and the other employees of a consulting company located in Uptown.

Pictured from left to right: Senior Consultant Teresa Scholtz, Independent Beauty Consultant Stephanie Gulland, Executive Senior Sales Director Joyce Danger, and Team Leader Jill Overby

What's Happening?

To the few who read my blog, you have probably given up and do not check very often for new postings since they have been few and far between. I apologize for my lack of updates. However, I had to let something go when I was nannying. There was simply not enough time in the day. My last day of nannying was last Friday, March 16th. As much as I loved the kids and miss them, I feel like my life has more balance again. I also feel like my priorities are back in order: God first, family second, and career third --- Just like Mary Kay taught the very first beauty consultants.

I have spent my first full week retired from nannying with getting organized, clearing out clutter, and cleaning. My major chore was tackling Mount Washmore (the approximately ten loads of laundry that I had been putting off doing). Procrastination is SO NOT a good thing! I am happy to say that using FlyLady's techniques and ideas that my house looks better than it has in months. For more information about FlyLady, visit http://www.flylady.net/.

I must admit that I feel much more peace in my household. Ed even commented to me that it was definitely a lot less stressful for him to come home to a clean home. I am glad that I have been able to help create a peaceful place in our home, so Ed can come home from work and unwind.

This weekend I am attending the 2007 Career Conference for Mary Kay at the Minneapolis Convention Center. Tonight was a lot of recognition of accomplishments. Even with all of the recognition, I took tons of pages of notes. I learned a lot tonight, and I know that I will learn a lot tomorrow in my workshops. I am looking forward to being able to really process the information on Sunday and into the beginning of next week.

Please leave a comment and let us know what is happening in your life. If you have any prayer requests, please either post them or email them to us at gulland@wh-link.net.

Love you all! I must head to bed because the alarm will be going off at 6:00 am tomorrow morning to get ready and head out the door to the final day of Career Conference 2007.

Update --- Finally

Hello everyone!

This is going to be a VERY quick update because I am crunched for time. Here is the UPDATE: First and foremost, Ed is done with school. YAHOO!!!! We haven't really celebrated yet though. I don't think Ed will really be up for celebrating until he has a new job. Please keep his job search in your prayers. Pray that God would give Ed wisdom in where to spend the time applying. Also, he recently applied for a job that he would LOVE to have. Pray that God would open the door for him. He has been down because he hasn't gotten any interviews. I know that God has the perfect job for him, but it will be in His timing and not ours. Second, I am still nannying. The three kids are ages 7, 5, and 4. They are a lot of FUN! However, they keep me SUPER busy. I have the four year old all day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The other two I only have after school Mondays through Fridays. It requires me to be a lot more organized and stay on top of my routines Finally, I am working on treating 30 women to a facial in 30 days. I am taking on a challenge from my director with Mary Kay. I have one facial scheduled with one friend. Only 29 more to go!!! I am really looking forward to completing this challenge because it will be GREAT training for me!!!

Hope to start posting again more frequently! Thanks for those of you who emailed me to see what was up. My life has just been TOO full to take the time to blog. I hope to start doing it again though because it is really therapeutic for me!!!

I want to leave you with the words that I am focusing on for this year: "Progress not perfection in 2007." This is from one of my FlyLady emails. Check out her website at http://www.flylady.net/.

Love to you all!!!

Quiz For You

Here is a link to a quiz on my Mary Kay website:

http://www.marykay.com/sgulland/whatsnew/tipsandtrends/lipglossary/lipglossary.aspx?tab=whatsnew

If you want, you can post your results here in the comments or send me your results. If you would like free samples of your look, please email me at sgulland@marykay.com, so I can get those samples for you. You've got to love the word "free" and "samples," right?

I hope that this finds everyone enjoying the Christmas season. I will post more later as far as an update goes, but I wanted to give you guys something to do today! :-)

Only 27 Shopping Days Until Christmas!

I received an email from Northwestern Christian Bookstore announcing to me that there are only 27 shopping days until Christmas. Every other year, I would be FREAKING out right now and wondering which way was up. Thankfully we have simplified the holidays quite a bit in several different ways. First, I pick up presents throughout the year so I am not having to do everything in December. Second, I do not pressure myself to send out a Christmas card to every single person I have in my address book. While ideally I would like to get a Christmas letter out, I don't pressure myself to do it. Sometimes we send out a New Year's letter. :-) It isn't so much about the timing, but just communicated our love with everyone. Third, I DO NOT feel guilty if I do not make any Christmas goodies. There are always plenty at get togethers or there are always store bought ones!!! Fourth, if I do make Christmas goodies, I plan for what I can handle. Do I want a HUGE mess and a lot of time commitment, or do I want quick and simple with minimal clean-up involved. Finally, the biggest thing that has helped me with the holidays this year is FlyLady. For more information, please visit her website at www.flylady.net.

With only 27 shopping days left until Christmas, let me remind you that I can help with your gift giving needs. I love putting together gift baskets. We can make a themed gift basket (coffee, chocolate, beauty, you name it, I can probably do it). I can put together gift baskets with or without Mary Kay goodies inside. Call me 763-565-0606 or email me at gulland@wh-link.net to discuss further. I love forward to being of service this holiday season and helping to bring a smile to your loved ones face!

Future Artist?

What do you think of our Picasso? That is really the only artist's name that I know, so if you think that his drawings reflect another artist's style than you will have to leave that in the comments.

I hope that this note finds you all doing well. Our family is doing the countdown until Ed's last class for his MBA. On November 30th, he will finish his last "Strategic Management" class. Then all he needs to complete is his two Capstone class sessions in January. Yahoo!!!

David has been working on his writing, phonics, reading, and math. He loves doing addition and subtraction. Crazy, huh? He is working on worksheets that according to the developers of the workbook are for first grade. "WOW" is all I have to say! I am constantly amazed at how much he loves to learn. We are doing everything in our power to nurture this love, so he will continually love to learn and take on new challenges. I have seen way too many kids who settle on doing the easy work and never push themselves to their potential. I want David to be all that God created him to be.

I have been keeping a VERY FULL schedule! I had all kinds of plans for getting things done today, but right now I am going to give myself a break and lay down with a good book. :-) I have been trying to do one Mary Kay pampering session a week. It hasn't worked out to be that, but I will continue to try because I love the products and love the girl time!!! I also have been working full-time as a nanny to three kids: Matthew (7), Mary Kate (5), and Michael (3). They are completely adorable and full of love! Our entire family absolutely adores them and loves spending time with them. I also work once a week with the Covenant Kids Ministry at our church. Finally, I am adding to my plate watching my a friend's two kids occassionally. We are trading off time, so she will watch David for me some time without costing me anything. I like that deal!!! :-)

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my mother-in-law's home with her (Lois), her husband (Roger), Roger's son (Dan), Dan's wife (Amber), and their daughter (Mary). We had GREAT food and some AWESOME weather! The kids and I played kickball and other variations of the game outside for quite some time yesterday. I cannot seem to turn off my love and desire to play with kids even when I have the day off! :-)

We will be going to my father-in-law's (Jim) next weekend. I am not sure if we are celebrating Christmas with him then or not. We will be spending the Christmas holiday with my family in Mississippi. I am BEYOND EXCITED!!! It has been seven months since I have been down there, so the trip is well past due. I am looking forward to seeing my sister, Dawn, my brother, Travis, and my niece and nephew, Addison and Alex. I cannot wait to spend time with everyone!!! It is going to be pretty low-key, so that is another bonus! We will have some good relaxing family time (I am sure we will go to a movie or two!). It will be nice for our family (me, David, and Ed) to just have some solid quality time together as well. Ed is planning on having all of his projects for his Capstone class wrapped up, so it will be like he is already done with school even though he will technically have two more classes in January.

Please let me know what is going on with all of you. I am looking forward to hearing what everyone did for Thanksgiving and how they plan on spending and enjoying this Christmas season. I am hoping to take down all of our fall decorations today and get our Christmas decorations up. David is excited for that, and I am looking forward to listening to Christmas music!!! Remember, Jesus is the reason for the season! Don't let yourself get SO BUSY that you forget why we celebrate this holiday!

Dream Team at Chula Vista

This is only part of my unit in Mary Kay. My director, Joyce, is behind her husband on the far right hand side. Joyce is kneeling in the black suit. If you can't find me, it is because you don't know that I added blond highlights to my hair! Plus, I am throwing you off by wearing my glasses. I am in the front row to the left of Steve. What do you think of my hair?

Last weekend, October 28th through 29th, we traveled to the Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells for a fun-filled weekend of wonderful tips and knowledge on how to grow our Mary Kay business. I am more excited than ever about this opportunity. God kept showing me over and over again that He is part of this company. They don't just say that they put God first, family second, and career third; They actually live it!

I was constantly amazed at the caliber of women who are involved in this business. Everyone that I met was genuinely interested in me, and we all took the time to learn from run another during our breaks and around the dinner table. I am looking forward to a long career with Mary Kay.

Another thing that was a NEAT surprise for me is that these women LOVE to have FUN!!! Our sessions were not boring. They were full of knowledge and quite inspirational. Some of them were VERY HUMOROUS as well! I will have to say that the directors always kept us guessing about what they were going to do next. One of the directors actually gave her presentation in an evening gown, sash, and tiara. IT WAS AWESOME!!!

For even more fun, a group of us ventured down the water slides at Chula Vista. I cannot even put in to words how much fun this was. I felt like a little kid all over again. It was A BLAST!!! If you and your family ever get a chance to go to Chula Vista, DO IT! The water park was phenomenal!!!