Tonight, Yoga-urt had its TV debut on ABC’s TV Show “Eye on L.A.”.

I was so excited and nervous all day because even though I felt the taping went well, I didn’t get to see the clip so had no idea how it would come together. My goal was to represent Yoga-urt well and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

The day they came was a typical crazy day in the life of Melissa! I still have my day job as a Producer in the theme park design world and so I was in client meetings all day. I snuck out just before lunchtime to head to Yoga-urt for the shoot and then raced back to work afterwards for more client meetings.

That’s the story of the last few years for me – from theme park design to Yoga-urt and then back again. My life is absolutely crazy juggling both and bringing my A game for it all. Plus so many other challenges that no one really knows about.

But Yoga-urt has my heart and always will. Every time I’m there, someone thanks me for bringing it to life, tells me how far they drove to come, that they tell all of their friends & family about it, and it means the world to me.

This was a milestone for Yoga-urt and me. My journey bringing Yoga-urt to life has been such a roller coaster ride. But this was definitely a good moment and I’m glad I got to share it with everyone!

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I’ve been wanting to post as so much has been happening and I’m hoping to do one more this week too!

So how am I and Yoga-urt doing? Yoga-urt has been doing well thanks to all of you and this unusually warm winter (that is until this week). We’re having a good start to the year and are having a lot of fun right now with our 3rd Annual Month of February Pint-O-Rama.

Last week, we made a big change to our exterior – we got rid of the chalk wall and replaced it with a mural. Believe me, this was a hard decision as the chalk wall was one of my favorite parts of the store. I LOVED reading your messages, the inspiring quotes, the beautiful drawings, etc. I was obsessed with this wall and wanted it to inspire people and make them feel good.

But, the wall would get messy so quickly. People would sometimes write over other people’s beautiful messages and drawings, kids would scribble, and it was hard to keep up with it. It was a lot of work and very stressful for me. Sometimes I’d be at my day job and look at the camera and see kids scribbling all over it. Made me so sad.

So I decided about 6 months ago that I wanted to make a change – but what would it be? I hired a L.A. Muralist I had seen on Instagram to work with me on it, but I still had to come up with what it would be. I had a few ideas that she mocked up, but we weren’t getting there. So I paused, took a month or so to not think about it and then came back to it.

I researched a few walls in L.A. and the hearts spoke to me. At Yoga-urt, I feel like we are serving love. Yes, it’s organic/vegan softserve/icecream, but when we do it right we are serving you love. That was always the goal of Yoga-urt, to make our customers feel loved & happy.

I always knew I wanted to incorporate the beautiful words in our flavor names on the wall – Zen, Bliss, Serenity, Harmony, Power, Abundance, etc. as they are feel good words, so it was clear they could go in the hearts. And then one of my team members mentioned adding cones beneath the hearts and I thought it would be great to do that on a few of the hearts to show that the hearts represent the softserve/icecream – serving love!

As for the colors, some were from our brand/logo and there were a few new ones too.

I’m really happy with the wall. It’s beautiful, I feel still inspiring, makes you feel good as you enter the store, and is meaningful to me. What more could I ask for.

As for how I’m doing, I’m okay. Not going to lie and say I’ve had an easy few weeks (or years really), but when challenging situations come up you need to go through them to get to the other side. I’m in the middle of a few challenging situations, but I see some light at the end of the tunnel. And regardless of where this journey takes me, all I can do is learn from my mistakes, try to do better, and stand up for myself. It’s amazing really that I’ve come so far on this now 8 year journey and I’m so grateful to all that have supported me.