The vitaminwater zero project continues.  This time I finally get up close and personal with the three founders of the fantastic website urbanmamas.  Olivia, Hau and Sarah are each brilliant, busy ladies who have three kids apiece, and still find time to create this website/blog that is a super useful resource for tons of other mamas in the area.  I seriously don't know how they do it all.

However, as you will see from the video, one thing that has lapsed a bit in their lives is each mama's respective style quotient, which makes sense.  As devoted moms, these women always put their kids first, which is as it should be, but that does not mean they should never take time for themselves to feel pretty or pulled together.  I am a firm believer that occasionally making yourself feel good as a individual, makes you a better person and in turn a better, more fulfilled parent.

I'm not saying long days at the spa, or countless afternoons on shopping sprees, but as I mention in these videos, just making small little decisions to better yourself each day can have a huge chain reaction effect.  So sit back, get comfortable, and watch 10 minutes of my brilliance that of course starts out with the most fashionable reference in all the land:  A Turducken.

Recently I was asked to be on AM Northwest again to talk about Lands' End great back to school clothing for kids.  If you're a faithful reader/watcher of my blog, you know I've talked about a lot of Lands' End gear, but this is the first time I've ever talked about it in one of their stores.  It was actually a much easier experience than I thought it would be.

We filmed the segment at the Lands' End store in Sears at Washington Square a few days in advance of it airing, so we at least had the benefit of doing a couple of takes to get it right.  Surprisingly we had very little issues with shoppers messing up the segment, although one take was ruined by a little girl standing running into the shot, but what are you gonna do?

Anyway, all went well, and the kids seriously looked adorable.  Especially Breanna in that trench at the end.  I mean a ruffled trench coat for a seven year old?  Ridiculous... in a good way.

A local gay publication in Portland called Just Out very kindly asked me to be a fashion columnist for their publication.  The behind the scenes is I am good friends with one of their regular contributors, the fabulous Daniel Borgen aka Lady About Town, and he convinced them they needed fashion and I was the person to give it to them.  D-Borgen is always a stand up chap like that.

At first I was reticent to say the least.  Not only am I not a trained writer in the slightest, but I am good friends with some really wonderful, and truly talented, professional writers, which makes me worry I will be devaluing them by daring to claim myself a columnist. Especially from my dear friend Nan, a breezily brilliant, and always witty writer in NYC.  She's the real deal when it comes to fashion commentary.  What would this peerless peer think?

Ultimately I decided, "Why not?"  I've been slowly building my fashion brand in the Rose City in as many diverse ways as possible, and this would just be another feather in my fashionable chapeau.  So, it's with this disclaimer, I present to you my first piece as a columnist (that's right I used the term)- Advice On Fashion: A Disclaimer.

This week I went to Dave Scott's house out in Mo-La-Lla, and boy is that a drive.  Fortunately Dave and his wife Mary were very welcoming, especially while I was ripping Dave's closet apart.  Well, not so much ripping, but I did go over the good, the bad and the pleated with him to help re-direct his style sensibility.  To be honest Dave's closet was not as bad as I had feared, but there were some not so cute pieces as you'll see in the video.  Hope you find it fun and perhaps informative.  Next up will be our fabulous shopping trip to Banana Republic, the quintessential bastion of business casual.

The first part of this project has started!  KINK FM is moving offices, and their new building has a strict business casual policy.  Now, I think for a lot of people this wouldn't be a big deal, but keep in mind these are DJ's we're talking about here, and DJ's in the Northwest no less.  Sheila is fabulous 100% all of the time, so she doesn't need help, but her co-host Dave Scott.....  uh......  not quite so fab.  As you can see from this video of our first meeting, I have some work to do.  Check it out, my closet intervention is up next.  Had to go out to Molalla for that one.  And yes, Molalla is as remote as it sounds.

Recently I started working on a project with Vitaminwater Zero.  I'm tight with a person at Glaceau and we found this great project to work on that I'm really excited to start sharing.  Vitaminwater Zero is sponsoring a team of women from a fantastic local website called Urbanmamas to train for and run Hood to Coast.  Since Vitaminwater Zero is such a cool brand and has way more depth than just giving these ladies some free water, they have hired myself and two other people from the wellness team at Indigo to help better these women's lives along this journey.

Myself, Chrisanne, and Brad from the You team at Indigo are all working with the Urbanmamas on a one on one basis to help make their lives not only better, but easier as well.  Obviously I am doing fashion interventions, Chrisanne is a fantastic integrative wellness expert, and Brad is a super certified personal trainer, so each of us are whipping these women into shape in our own respective way.  KINK FM is also a partner on this project, so we're working with fabulous morning hosts Sheila Hamilton and Dave Scott.

One key component of all this is video blogging.  We all have Flip cams, which are super cool, and are documenting each  personal session along the way.  So, I thought I'd start sharing those video blogs on here.  First up is my bio vid.  Sorry it's a bit dark, I did the whole thing by myself, but the view is great on it, right?  Anyway, I'll be updating frequently with these video posts, so please do check back.  And I have some other things in the works right now that will keep me posting more often I swear!  Hope you like the vids, I'm the editor on all of them, so please feel free to (kindly) give feedback.

Below is the email I sent to McMenamin's COO of Pubs (apparently that's a title).  Is it sad I'm this riled up?

Hi Lars,

My name is Kevin Lennox.

I have been a long time and faithful McMenamin's denizen, regularly visiting Blue Moon, Ringler's, Kennedy School and Edgefield.

As such, I'm pretty familiar with your offerings, and I feel compelled to point out what a smack in the face your recently amended happy hour menu is.

You know, I could understand choosing to either shorten the menu or raise prices, but to do both at the same time wreaks of corporate greed, which seems diametrically opposed to the general McMenamin's ethos.

You're the cool brothers who do everything with quality, authenticity and above all, the customer in mind.

I suppose in this day and age of surcharges everywhere this kind of scheme shouldn't be such a surprise, but I guess it just shows McMenamin's did a better than most..... of duping me into thinking you truly did have the customer at heart.

Unfortunately I still like your beer, so I'll probably continue to drink it, but please know your customer confidence has shrunken by at least one, all because you felt the need to charge an extra dollar for fries.  Seriously McMenamin's?

K

I know I usually talk about fashion and fancy things, but I am insanely excited about the final Harry Potter movies, especially after seeing this trailer:

It made me think of my own reaction.  Which was me, in my underwear, jumping up and down in a hotel room.  Thankfully I was wise enough not allow any video of that.

I'm happy to report I've added another great show to the list of programs I've been asked to appear on.  This one is called Twin Cities Live and is based out of, you guessed it, Minneapolis/St Paul.  It's a really fun, easy talk show, with great hosts who were very nice to work with.  Whenver I go on a new show, I never know if the hosts are going to play nice with me or not.  It can be a bit awkward, but John and Elizabeth were super welcoming.  Unfortunately their site doesn't let me embed, but you can link to the segment by clicking on the still photo below:

Now for some behind the scenes.  First off, all the clothing was being shipped in via Fed Ex, and was supposed to be arrive the day before we shot this segment, but there were big storms in the mid-west, and the box got sidelined in Indianapolis.  Now, I don't know if any of you have ever dealt with FedEx in situations like this, but it can be trying to say the least.  Fortunately I've been in this situation a bunch of times before, so I whipped Fed Ex into shape, and the package arrived a few hours before the segment.

The next issue was arose when my producer, the lovely Melissa, wanted me to hold up a pair of the black pants I was talking about before the models came out wearing them.  Problem was I only had enough pants for all five models, no extras.  So, we decided I would hold up the pants to talk about, and then pass them off to the producer after the camera went to the first model, so she could rush the pants to the last model who was standing off stage pants-less.  Well I wasn't totally sure when the camera had moved off of me, so if you pay attention you can see me throwing the pants off to Melissa's waiting arms for Tracy, our last model, to put on.  Fortunately, other than that minor flub, it all worked out.