Welcome to the April issue of This Awful Awesome Life. We hope you enjoyed our March issue. Thanks for helping us celebrate our first anniversary.

This month we were supposed to feature craft beers and Indy wineries in the Pittsburgh area, but once I started working on this issue, I realized there are too many great breweries and wineries to be reduced down to one issue. So, in the interest of fairness, we’ll be featuring some of these breweries and wineries throughout the year.

Now that it finally looks like spring has arrived, it’s fun to turn our attention to Opening Day – that wondrous moment when the clock stops and the umpire calls, “Play Ball!” We’re celebrating the start of the 2018 baseball season. Will you be in the stands this year cheering for the home team? To get the season started right, I’ve been watching a few of my favorite baseball movies. Take our quiz to test your knowledge of these films about diamonds – baseball diamonds that is.

Take a trip down memory lane and learn a little about the history of the Negro League Baseball and don’t miss our recommendations for great books about baseball for kids and adults. While we are examining great books about baseball, let’s include some other Pittsburgh sports as I review Glory Years: A Century of Excellence in Sports by best-selling author, sports historian, columnist, writing coach, and public speaker, Jim O’Brien.

Discover the world of craft beers and great food with Terry Kish as she visits Mindful Brewing in Castle Shannon.

Orlando Bartro celebrates the mathematic precision of flowers and Corey Flynn helps you put a little color on your spring plate with edible flowers and seasonal fruits and vegetables.

Are you hungry yet? Linda Cahill, our independent consultant from The Pampered Chef, has another delicious answer to “What’s for Dinner?”

We have a new guest contributor to This Awful Awesome Life. Please welcome Gail Neustadt who will be helping us find ways to live greener.

Speaking of greener living, it’s time for spring cleaning. I have a few tips on how to cut the job down to size and eliminate some of those harm chemicals while you are simplifying your life and redefining the spaces around your home.

We love it when people set a goal and achieve it, so we’re pleased to recognize Mike Lloyd, the winner of the Allegheny YMCA Spin-a-thon. Mike’s story – brought to us by our guest contributor, Maritza Balta, will have you dusting off those bike shorts and reaching for a fresh water bottle.

I’m excited to announce we have a new sponsor this year, please welcome mindset mentor and business strategist, Joy Bufalini. Joy was a guest contributor for our first issue.

She created Pittsburgh Women’s Mastermind™ as “a place for like-minded entrepreneurs to come together to support and connect while experiencing personal and professional growth” in 2016. Since then, she has been helping women achieve their professional goals through personalized coaching in her UPGRADE YOUR MINDSET program.

Joy will be a presenter at the Pittsburgh Business Show later this month. Don’t miss her program, “3 Keys to Positioning Yourself as a Leader w/ Joy Bufalini!” from 10:30am – 11:30am on Thursday, April 26th @ the Convention Center. Find out more information about Joy, UPGRADE YOUR MINDSET, and her upcoming presentation in this issue and look for interesting and informative articles from Joy throughout the year in This Awful Awesome Life.

Enjoy!

Fran