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Is It Really an Age-Defying Moisturizer?

Who are the cosmetic companies targeting for age-defying moisturizers?

I just use a moisturizer with UV protection but a friend who is barely over 30 uses an age-defying moisturizer. Something doesn’t sound right here.

Are we really that preprogrammed when we’re younger to fear growing older?
Or do cosmetic companies teach us to fear it?

For cosmetic companies, the younger they can hook us into the idea that we don’t want to grow older, the longer they can sell the product. With this thought, I did some looking into just who the cosmetic companies are targeting with these age-defying cosmetics.

On Revlon’s site, I clicked on the Age Defying Moisturizing Concealer. That took me to a page showing these four women.

 I have trouble believing any of them are over 30.


At Olay, they have a questionnaire. I give them credit for asking your age before suggesting products. But that’s about it.

I filled out the Olay questionnaire as a 20-something that moisturized constantly but was worried about wrinkles and wanted the most advanced skin care.
In response, they suggested a skin care routine of 5 products.

Three of those products were AGE-DEFYING!

For a 20-something woman!


Will targeting these products to women in their 20s and 30s really help them stay youthful looking into their 70s? Or is this another example of an industry creating and feeding a fear?
I think it’s the latter.

But then that’s the non-age-defying me happy in my own skin.
(Well, most days...)
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Growing Older Not Growing Old


 
Above are screen-captures from Dancing with the Stars.


Is Kirstie the same calibre of dancer as the other 2 finalists?
No.
Has she proven something ?
Yes!

A lot of people have the mindset that if you are over a certain age or weight that you should sit on the sidelines. Some people even have this idea about themselves.

Kirstie has proven the old adage “Where there's will, there's a way.”

In the compressed schedule of the show, she and her partner have had to make allowances for her age and nimbleness. Given her drive and a bit more time, these could have been overcome.
As much as we hate to admit it, it takes more effort to make and keep our bodies nimble as we age. That slice of chocolate cake takes up residence much faster and more stubbornly than it did before.

But as Kirstie shows us, becoming nimble is possible if we really want it.

There is a difference between growing older and getting old.
Kirstie has shown us that she admits to growing older but will not admit to getting old.

Hooray for her!

My husband and I have done ballroom dancing weekly for the last 6 years. A year ago, the cost made us go to once a month. We've gotten so out of shape! We just recently found a way to go back to once a week and Kirstie's spirit puts me in the right mood for our dance lesson tomorrow night. I can't wait to hit that dance floor!
 

How Much Longer Can They Ignore Us?

A new report by Nielson highlights statistics showing the Baby Boomers are a huge market. This should come as no surprise to anyone but it is interesting to see that market researchers may be waking up and noticing.


This chart from the report shows that the once “preferred” market target audience of families with children is only a third of the US households.
Of that third, about 30% are Trailing Edge Boomers (parents born between 1956-1964) with children under 18 at home.

So if we add the 49% of Baby Boomer households without kids with the percentage with kids,
Baby Boomers make up 59% of all US households.

I wonder when the marketing world will start understanding that ignoring us is not in their best interest?

Brain Candy, Sometimes You Just Need Some

I’ve been reading a lot of serious, non-fiction technical books lately. Top that with having a head cold for the last few days and my brain was fried.

I needed a mental vacation … some Brain Candy.

For me, the best Brain Candy is a well-crafted romance novel.
  • I don’t have to follow any plot like I would in a suspense thriller.
  • I don’t have to follow the logic of an idea like I would in a technical manual.
  • I don’t have to keep track of when, where and who like I would in a biography.

In a romance novel, I just get to coast along, enjoy the scenery and anticipate the “happily ever after” at the end.
A pure mental vacation!
Brain Candy at its finest

So yesterday I was perusing the “romance shelves” at Amazon. With all the media attention lately about the Royal Wedding in the UK, I decided I wanted a romance with a royal theme.

I stumble upon an independent (“indie”), self-published author, Elizabeth Lennox. Her book cover jumped out at me because it was different, a black background with 2 people’s portraits. The story description for “Mistress to the Prince” sounded like exactly what I was looking for.

With “indie” authors, the books tend to be really good or really bad. At $3 for a Kindle book, I tried it. This author falls into the really good category. The story was well crafted and enjoyable. Exactly what I needed for my mental vacation.
I will definitely go back for more of this author's enjoyable books. She may be self-published but she writes better stories than a lot of the authors being published by the big publishing houses.

Find her books on Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Elizabeth%20Lennox

(The only negative I have about her book was in the Kindle formating. In about 3 places, a few sentences got jumbled up. I could figure out what was intended but it did momentarily pop me out of the story. This type of thing seems to happen a lot in indie books.)
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Who Am I?

I’ve done a lot of thinking after my last post. That post was about answering the question: 

If I could do anything I wanted, what would it be?

I kept coming back to the same thing.
I love creating,
I love researching and
I love sharing what I know.

So how could I share?

As a child, I grew up listening to Peter, Paul and Mary sing ballads that embedded themselves in my mind.  Folk Music, maybe due to that early influence, has always had a pull on me.  Who among us can’t sing at least half the words to Puff the Magic Dragon?

When I discovered how easy the Bowed Psaltery was to play and that I could play Folk Music on it with relative ease, I wrote a how-to book so others could also bring back the music of their youth.

This is how I can share.

I can use what I know or research to create instructional books or videos that make it easier for others to teach themselves.
I’m sure this idea will be refined over time but it’s a starting point.





A New Name
So with that, I have renamed this blog the “Creative Boomer”.

The content in this blog will continue to be about things that interest me as a Boomer woman. It will also contain my thoughts as I refine my ideas for my business.

What do you think of the new header?
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http://tinyurl.com/3e9s853
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At 50, Did You Know What You Wanted To Be When You Grew Up?

Dr Shannon Reese is a psychologist who specializes in helping women launch entrepreneurial dreams. She has a chat session on Wednesdays at lunch time. Today I was lucky enough to be the only one on her chat.

She asked me questions about what I do and what I want to do. The “what I do” was easy. The “what do I want to do” was a lot harder.

What Do You Want to Do?
I have several things I’m working on to start a business but for the most part they are unrelated. The only way they are remotely related is that I see them all being for Boomer Women.

Why Boomer Women?
Starting in our late 40s and 50s, women are more able to focus time, money and energy on themselves. Family and/or career are no longer the top priority in our lives.
But other than knowing who my intended audience is, I have no clue for relating this blog to a custom bra making business or a how-to book on playing a folk instrument. I don’t yet know if they even can be related.
I’m looking for a way to make a sustainable business. The how of it is what I’m trying to figure out.

Do You Have a Ready Answer?
Dr Reese asked me if I could do anything I wanted, what would it be?
Would you have a ready answer? I didn’t.

My thoughts went to this how-to book I’ve been writing. I’ve loved the time spent on this. I love creating and I love sharing what I know. I’m a jack of all trades. I love knowledge. I love researching and learning new things. I’m an engineer. I can understand technical ideas and turn them into more understandable terms.
Could this be a business model?

The Boomer Woman’s Guide to …. ???

I’ve had thoughts along this line before.

Who knows maybe my next book will be:
 “I have an iPad, now what do I do with it?”

Creating books, videos and such to share what I know and what I have a desire to learn could definitely be fun. But could it be a business that makes money? That I don’t know.

A few of the things Dr Reese said as we were exploring this idea were:

“… the most important thing to do when you are starting out is your research.  Before you invest a ton of time and effort, much less money in a direction.”

“…make sure there is a need in the market, for which you can provide an
awesome solution that doesn't already exist.  And then figure out if there is a
very large portion of the population seeking to purchase what you are offering.”

“One great way to do your marketing is to go out there and talk to boomer women.  Ask them questions, find out what they want, where they shop, what they need in relation to the direction you are thinking about heading. ”


Thank you Dr Reese. You’ve given me some ideas to consider.

I think getting the how-to book out next month and figuring out how to market it will give me some data on whether providing this kind of training is something people are interested in.
And as Dr Reese suggested, I need to ask Boomer Women their ideas and opinions.

What do you think?
Are you interest in trying out hobbies if you could find a good source of information?
Would you like to have someone explain new gadgets and technology in terms that you could understand rather than Geek-speak?
Leave me a comment with your thoughts.
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tiny url: http://tinyurl.com/6frs5ot
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Are you insane?

The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing expecting different results.

For years we followed the advice to:
  • do well in school
  • get a good job with a big company
  • buy a house
If we followed this advice, we were guarantee the American dream and a nice comfortable retirement.
Well, I followed that advice and I don't see a nice comfortable retirement in my future.
Do you?

Enough insanity, I'm trying something different!

Now when I get home from my day job, I'm reading voraciously about:
  • how to start a business,
  • how to be an entrepreneur and
  • how to run an online business.

I feel like I'm back in school. But you know what? I feel more in control of my life than I have in a long time.

The book I've talked about in other posts is one of the ventures I am growing. Another is a custom bra business. These are two businesses I'm working on as I learn. I'm using them as my real-life “MBA” course.
My goal is to become a full-time entrepreneur. I know this will take time. But I've taken the first steps.

A friend of mine just finished her first semester of culinary school. She too decided to stop the insanity and try something different. Kudos to you Michelle!

Another friend picked up and moved across the state to advance her life as an artist. Way to go Carly!

Do you feel that following the “rules” is like the definition of insanity, have you done something to stop the insanity?
Leave a comment and tell me what you're doing to redefine your life.
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A Post of Passion

I've been reading a lot on what makes a great blog. One blog I like to read is ProBlogger. They just posted about writing what you are passionate about.

The author was saying that he's started many blogs but the ones he's kept going for years have been the ones where the subject was one he was passionate to learn about.

If you think about it, that makes so much sense. If you have a hobby or project that keeps you enthralled, you can't wait to get back to it.

The how-to book I'm writing is very much a passion for me. I spent a lot of time discovering information when I was teaching myself to play the Bowed Psaltery. I dug deep into the Internet because I just had to know as much about it as I could find.

Then when I decided to write the how-to book, it practically wrote itself because it was a continuation of that same passion.

I may have to admit to growing older. But I never want to loose my need to discover, to explore, to be passionate about life.
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Doing the Happy Dance!

You can't see but I can't stop doing the Happy Dance.

If you saw my earlier post, you know my computer crashed and the one thing I lost was ALL of my family photos.

I sent the damaged hard drive to a Computer Forensic Specialist (the son of a friend). And Joy of Joys! He was able to reconstruct almost all of the photos!

Happy Dance!
...sorry I can't stop that...

My friend said his son spent 4 days reconstructing file by file. Wow!
Whatever computer wizardry he did, I am so grateful.

Happy, happy, joy, joy.
Somebody turn up the music, let's dance!

Your Life Was On That Computer When It Went “Poof!”


Do you use your computer a lot? Until your computer crashes, you don’t realize just how much of your life is contained in that little electronic mystery. Being a Baby Boomer, I didn't grow up texting but I've embraced technology and a lot of my life is on my computer.

  • All those emails that you put in organized folder in Outlook… gone
  • All those photos you took off the camera card… gone
  • All your website Favorites, the one you have no clue how to find except in your Favorites… gone
  • Access to your bank and the password you never remember since the computer fills it in for you… gone

That has been my life for the last 2 weeks. We revived my 6 year old computer long enough to pull files off of it before it had a final massive seizure and completely died.

The damaged hard drive with all my photos is at the specialist getting open-heart surgery. Since I thought the photos were safe on that hard drive, I hadn’t backed them up. Now I’m hoping this Computer Forensic Specialist (did you even know there was such a person?) can reconstruct all my family photos.



I think the rest of my computer life has been reconstructed. We were able to figure out where all those cables went to and reconnect most of them to the new computer. All the files, we were able to throw into the life boat as the old computer was sinking, have been safely put onto the new computer. I have most of the major programs I use reloaded. I think I’m ready to start living my life with a computer again.

The biggest lesson learned in all of this? MAKE BACKUPS!
Next time, there may not be time to get to the life boats….

Is your 3 year old Grandchild in default on a car loan?



That sounds like a silly question but child ID theft is becoming more of an issue as more of our lives go online.

 
Did you know that having information as simple as a date of birth and town of birth is enough to give professional  ID thieves a good guess as to your Social Security number? With more children conversing and posting online, that information may be too easy to get if we're not careful.

With a children's Social Security number, fraudulent accounts (in their name of someone else's) can be set up and used for years before they are detected. Who thinks to check a child's credit report before they start applying for college financial aid?
And yet you shouldn't check children's credit reports because just checking on them creates a report history which then makes it easier for ID thieves!

So how do you protect the children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in your life?
Unless you are getting credit or collection calls or letters in the child's name, the Identity Theft Resource Center (http://www.idtheftcenter.org/index.html) suggests waiting until a child is 16 before checking on their credit report. At that age, if there is a problem, you have 2 years to correct it before the child turns 18.
And in the mean time, monitoring what information your child puts out on the web is always a good idea.

So much to do!


If you read my last post about following my muse, You'll know I've been writing a how-to book about playing the Bowed Psaltery. I've been away from this blog for a bit. I decide that I'm going to follow through on writing my how-to book and promote it the best I can. Wow, there is a lot to learn about selling and marketing a product online!
There is so much to learn and I'm soaking it all up. In my search for knowledge I've started using Twitter. (I'm psalterymusic on Twitter) I'm finding lots of people on there talking about online marketing. It takes some reading to figure out who to follow and who to steer clear of.
I should be done writing the book in the next 2 weeks. There is so much to do between writing the book, taking photos for the book, setting up the book's website... Oh and there's that day job too!
Wish me luck!
I'll keep you posted on how it's going.
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