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The Amalfi Coast is a dream place, and when I saw it for the first time, something shifted in me.  I knew I had to live there.   -Lauren Birmingham

Born into an Italian-American family of great chefs, Lauren Birmingham has an innate love of food and family.   As a child growing up in Cranston, Rhode Island, she spent hours swinging in a hammock under a cherry tree,  reading the classics.  This fascination with reading, combined with her passion for travel, inspired Lauren to explore Europe as an adult.  On a trip to Italy’s Amalfi Coast, she came around a corner in her Fiat 500 and couldn’t believe her eyes.   “Thecolor of the houses built into the mountains was like confetti.  They were the prettiest pink, blue, and yellow, and the color of the Tyrrhenian Sea was an unmatchable shade of blue. It’s a magical place, unlike any I’d ever seen in my life.”  From that moment, Lauren came back to Positano as often as she could,  running her PR business from a rented studio while developing her Cooking Vacations Italy culinary tour company.   cooking-vacations.com.  Along the way, she met and married an Italian race car driver named Rino Piscitelli.  At the top of her career,  she decided to write a cookbook that would include the recipes of 5-star Michelin Chef Andrea Migliaccio and become a 360-page labor of love.  Says Lauren:  “ It took years to travel around the Amalfi Coast and Capri, interviewing in Italian and then translating into English, plus the recipes had to be translated from metric to imperial.”  Aptly named It’s A Dream Place: Stories & Recipes of Food, Love & the Amalfi Coast, this interview with Lauren will set your compass toward the next flight to Italy!   #amalficoast #italy #food #michelinchef 

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Family comes first & chocolate comes second! – Cheryl Salto

We’re back in my cozy living room with the fireplace roaring for another edition of The Story Behind Her Success.  In the spotlight, a registered nurse and mother of two who makes chocolate treats all day long in her home kitchen, for special occasions.  Check out Cheryl Salto’s yummy chocolate delights here:   www.candyundercover2.com/shop.  Her entrepreneur story started back in 1998 with her original company, Candy Under Cover.  The small, home-based business took off like a rocket and Cheryl was able to sell it for a nice profit.   These days, she’s renamed the business Candy Under Cover 2 and word about her creations continues to spread far and wide. In 2024 she took home the gold medal in the Best of the West contest and even placed holiday orders from the Boston Celtics!   Although her husband kiddingly calls her Willy Wonka, Cheryl is determined to find a healthy balance between making chocolates, and savoring life. Says Cheryl:  “Family comes first, and chocolate comes second.”  Admittedly frugal, she explains in this interview that her initial investment in the business was small. “Some people want to go big.  I wanted to stay small.  It’s always been me, using my own pots and pans.  If anything costs me an arm and a leg, I’m not doing it.”   For down to earth advice about what matters most in this life, success as an entrepreneur and the sustaining power of faith, just hit that download button.   #chocolate #smallbusiness #homebusiness #entrepreneur #RN #faith

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This is a book about empowerment.  It’s about finding yourself within the rubble. -Sarah Elizabeth

Sarah grew up on a dirt road in rural Maine in a farmhouse built in 1770…an idyllic childhood until it completely disappeared when her parents divorced when she was in high school and her family as she knew it, fell apart.  “ As a young woman, the image of the white picket fence became a mission for me. I was convinced that I could build a life of control and stability.”

Sarah and her husband were both products of divorce, and were determined not to allow what happened to them happen to their children:  “ Our marriage didn’t work, but our family very much does.”

Sarah found herself saying yes to everything and only feeling valuable when she said yes to others.

It’s one thing to write a book, it’s another thing to put it out there for the world to read. The biggest source of joy is hearing from women who have read the book.  Women and men have said that they felt like they are no longer alone on their own journeys.

A divorce is the death of a family.  Originally, Sarah wanted to be an “author, an architect and a world traveler” but after her parent’s divorce, when her world was upside down, she decided to become an accountant.  A safe step, a solid future.

Once she started writing this book, “the words poured out of me”

I think motherhood broke me…in the most beautiful way. When you have children, you realize how NOT in control of your life you are.

Sarah would tell her younger self “just slow down. It will be okay. “