Goodwill to All...

Ok, kids are in bed, have my laptop, my husband is mumbling something about the turkey he ate being bad….but for right now…I’m blocking it all out. Just going to sit, take a deep breath, and focus. I haven’t been here in a long time. So…hello.

When I look at the last date that I wrote on my blog, I’m a bit shocked, surprised, saddened but also excited.  There’s been so much going on these past few years that even getting back to doing a favorite thing such as writing is such a joy. I guess there couldn’t be a more perfect time for me to sit down and write this next entry.

Since moving to Detroit from Omaha, NE, almost 12 years ago, I’ve been so overwhelmed by the sense of “community” here. So many people think of Detroit as being everything it is in the news…and it can definitely be that…but it’s so much more. It’s the people here that make it so special. The people that mix and melt and mesh together that make me so proud to have the chance to raise my children here. I actually feel more at home here than I have anywhere else and many people that I’ve known for years have found that difficult to understand.

Growing up in Nebraska, it was just my mom, my sisters and I. My father left us when I was 12, I had a sister that was 5 and a very baby sister that was 6 months old. We definitely lived on the “wrong side of the tracks” in our part of Omaha. There was that divide between the wealthy kids and us kids from our area very far away literally and figuratively from the “rich kids.” My dad was gone, my mother struggled to get by, and also struggled with her mental illness. She tried to keep it all together while keeping food on our table. We survived with the help of some very saddened grandparents, WIC, Food Stamps and very generous, anonymous angels from our church.  I remember asking myself…will the shame I feel ever disappear? How will I ever meet a friend outside our neighborhood that will accept me?  How will I get out of this abyss?

We needed to shop at thrift stores out of necessity. At the time, it was so horrible for me…as a teenager, there was an embarrassment that set into my soul in the beginning that was almost unbearable. The pain of even thinking that someone would find out that I had to shop at a Goodwill or Salvation Army was just simply too much. But there was nothing we, as a family, could do. I remember so much about these stores back in the 80s. I can almost remember the smell of some of them. I can see the dirt underneath the racks, the condition of the items coming in.

About this time, “Pretty In Pink,” with Molly Ringwald was released in theaters. That movie changed my life. When Molly’s character, “Andie,” is faced with the heartache of watching her father endure hardship in his life, she does what she has to do to get by, by making her own clothes, etc. I thought to myself…I need to make this experience work in order to get through these high school years. I would only purchase clothes at the thrift stores with labels that said Gap, Liz Claiborne, Guess, etc., with the babysitting money I earned. That way, if anyone from school asked me where I got my shirt, pants from, etc., I would just remember the tag on the label so I wasn’t completely lying. When you’re buying things for $1.00, you can sure get a lot of clothes. By the time I was in high school, I remember one of my friends said…”Wow, Christy…you must be so rich, I never see you in the same thing twice!” I thought to myself…if you only knew. My house is such a wreck, our washer and dryer are in our kitchen.   

As I grew older and our mother became increasingly ill, she ended up needing to be placed in and out of mental hospitals. She would get so sick, get lost and the police would find her in the snow two weeks later, completely barefoot. It devastated our family. When the police ended up putting her in a state hospital and one of their “doctors” ended up hurting her…my younger sister and I drove two hours to this hospital, in our Goodwill outfits, sat across the longest conference table you could ever imagine, and I threatened the head of this hospital to go to every TV station, radio station and newspaper in the state until they released our mother to us so we could take her to a different hospital.

And all of that was done in black pants and a black and turquoise jacket that I picked up at Goodwill.  I was 25 years old. I’m 41 now. It’s amazing these moments that stick out in your head…and how the moment can be so intense that even your clothes are burned in your mind.

Goodwill was a matter of survival for my family. Now it’s kind of “hip” to shop at thrift stores and trust me, I’m still a thrift shopper…love vintage clothes, the thrill of the hunt, etc. But deep down inside of me…I’ll always have that ashamed, little girl that remembers what it was like to have my “secret.” But now that little girl realizes the joy of being able to grow up and move on and not care one bit about what people may think. There is no more fear.

I had a connection to Goodwill Industries of Detroit last year and went to them with this idea of having a fashion show. What Goodwill did for me…what SO many people have done for my sisters and me in our lives…I’ll never be able to repay them all. But in some small way, if there was anything I could do for Goodwill, this was an idea I had. But wouldn’t you know it…they already had it on their radar. This is now the “Second Annual” Goodwill Fashion Show and I’ve told people that I have big dreams for it in years to come. Their “Shop For Jobs” program is phenomenal, especially in this area. That’s why I feel so at home here. You’re giving so much more than money to Goodwill when you’re purchasing items from them. You could be giving back someone’s dignity again. Someone’s hope, their self-worth. 

If you’ve finished this to the end, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

If not, I understand. I’m this wordy in person as I am on paper.

If you’d like to attend an amazing Goodwill event, please come to our fashion show on April 27^th, at 11am, at their new store in Dearborn. It’s going to be such a great way to give back to our communities. Please see our poster (here) for more info.

Have a WONDERFUL day and happy shopping!

T.I.M.E. - What Can I Sell to GET MORE OF IT??!!

It's Sunday night. It's 10:30pm and I've been thinking a LOT about time today. We never have enough of it, do we? I want to go to bed right now, actually, but I really just want to sit here and write. I need to fold laundry. But I want to write. I need to write out a few thank-you notes...but I want to work on my blog. Oh...I'm also watching/listening to, "MOVE THAT BUS!!" on Extreme Makeover Home Edition so I'm sure I'm about to start bawling any second too...but I can always make time for that. :) (Oh yeah! Totally crying now...hahaha!)

Do any of you have crazy little ones? No, I mean C.R.A.Z.Y little ones??? Like the ones where you look at them and wonder if you should go back to the hospital and ask for your money back? Like...Uh, where's the return policy? I've asked Chris over and over again if he's SURE Ava came out of me....Hehehe... I look for strange markings on her to see if maybe aliens took my real baby and dropped this one off. A marking on her that might read, "SUCKAH!" HA!

Tonight, for example, we were at my in-laws for our weekly Sunday dinner. At the end of the evening, we were having the girls say goodbyes to the grandparents, great grandma and some of Ava's great uncles that were there. As Ava was about to say goodbye to one of her dear great Uncle's...Uncle Tom....I could see wicked little wheels turning in her head as the wicked little smile began to appear on her face. "Say goodbye to Uncle Tom, Ava," I said. "Bye Bye, Uncle BUGGAH!!" she yelled at him as she laughed hysterically!! Uncle Tom tried not to burst out laughing himself....but it's difficult in between her burping and the thousand times a day she makes herself toot and laughing about pooping and potty-ing. Honestly, I think she may get kicked out of pre-school next year. I fall into bed at night just from sheer exhaustion of disciplining her! People in the grocery stores will say..."Oooohhhh!! Cherish the time you have with her...It goes so by SO FAST!!" I say..."Yeah, I need her to be 18 so she can move out of our house." Haha! Maybe the aliens will come back for her by then.

Honestly, though....I LOVE this girl. I just was NOT prepared for my little boy in pink. Sigh. Beside her full-on potty talk? The cute saying she says now is, "I LOVE my family! It's the GWEATEST!" So, I don't want to sell her EVERY day.

We all want time to speed up or slow down. Time for this or for that. Time to stand still. As much as I joke about it, my little ones are growing up so fast and I admit, it's a relief and a heart-break all at the same time. Lexi turns 6 this Tuesday and Ava just turned 3. I'm always looking for a shortcut to maximize every second of the day. Take, for example, our deck table. We had two, back to back, that were made of tempered glass and both shattered. We finally got smart about it and decided NOT to buy any more glass tables and pick up one made of rod-iron. I found one at Home Depot today for $199.00. Done deal. Pick it up tomorrow. Well, Chris decided he wanted to "make" a new table-top. WHAT? Why???...just get in the car and go PICK ONE UP!!!!!!!! Honey. :) But no, he said..."You, of all people, should want to do this with me. Let's make a new table-top out of tile!!" SIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!! He's right. I hate it when he's right. I hate him for being able to use both parts of his brain. He can build a house with his bare hands, probably do all the decorating for it too, and then use a mathematical algorithm to cure cancer. Annoying...in a good way. :)

He drew a diagram, went to Home Depot, got everything to get started and voila...we're starting our family project to re-use our old frame from last summer's deck dining table to turn it into this year's tiled family table. I'm actually excited now. I'm excited to slow down a bit to see how we'll do this together. How Lexi, Chris and I will work together and Ava will set fire to it and blow up our entire deck. Better just have her move in with Grandma and Grandpa for awhile. :) To be continued......

Here's Chris getting started on the table today after returning from Home Depot. (prep work)

The piece of wood wouldn't just slide in (above) so he ended up having to take the legs off.

Making the holes all around the bottom for the new brackets.

New frame is on. Need to go to The Tile Shop tomorrow to start picking out our goods. :)

Buck up, Campers...it's Gerber season....

I'm back. Had to take a small blogging hiatus of chaos that seemed to have no end. You all know those days. The days where you wake up thinking, "Um. I really don't know how I'm going to make it through until 8pm tonight. Or maybe even until the end of this century." And suddenly, it's a month later before you've woken up from the Chaos-Coma. With meetings and meals and switching between princess pull-ups and Elmo underpants and phone calls and laundry and rides in the car to the grocery store where you're not entirely sure how you ended up there because you drive there so often you're just on auto-pilot...and it's actually a scary feeling that you made it there at all because your eyes were open but they might as well have just been blacked out since you have no recollection of what you saw. (Is that the record for the longest run-on sentence?) Did you see Spring blooming all around you and hear the birdies chirping away or did you see purple polka-dotted alligators doing a dance by the side of the road? Who the crap knows? All you know is you ended up in a grocery store parking lot and if you don't get grapes, Wheat Thins and milk, someone will surely be Capital P.O'd at home.

I'm so back-logged on blogs right now I want to cry. Because writing is one of my favorite things to do and once I started this blog, everything started racing like little Ava's nose during allergy season (starting right now, poor baby) and then my little friend here had to sit in the MacBook dark abyss for longer than I had ever hoped for. I have a list of items I need/really am dying to blog about...but at this point, I may not be caught up until Christmas. But that's ok...the ideas I have can continue to be written on my bank deposit slips, napkins, the backs of pictures the girls make me...hehe...(please don't tell them, ok? So bad....) Then the ideas make it to the leather bound book that Chris and the girls gave me for Mother's Day last year that's getting filled with lots of various things....songs I hear and need to buy, names of paint colors, maybe someone's phone number (not that kind of phone number, put your phone down and stop spreading rumors, good grief)...random things. Not very organized.

So, let's get to something I wanted to talk about. Spring = flowers, right? I watched one of those crazy "Platinum Wedding" shows the other day and it was literally a $1.3 million wedding. The budget for the flowers alone was something like $200,000!!! But I have to say...they were the most EXQUISITE yellow, pink and orange roses and other flowers in the same hues that you have EVER SEEN IN YOUR ENTIRE LIFE ON THIS PLANET!! Really and truly...and there were trillions of them...for this outside wedding truly fit for royalty, which was basically their "theme." Yes, "royalty" was their theme. Not a certain color or Mikey Mouse (hey, whatever floats your boat) but....R.O.Y.A.L.T.Y. The only people that should have royalty as their theme should be Prince William and Kate Middleton, ok? Not Julie and Todd sitting on thrones up there on the altar that just registered at Tiffany's when most of the guest-list were hoping they were registering at Target. Ok, anyway, everything for this wedding was mind blowing but throughout the entire show, I just wanted to know, what on EARTH were they going to do with these trillions of flowers after the wedding???? Donate them to where?? Send them on a flatbed truck to every retirement home in all the nearby 4 cities?? Make funeral wreaths out of them for every tombstone in the tri-state area? It was going to be SUCH a waste to see all these gazillion flowers eventually turn BROWN and shrivel up!!! Hey...like I said...imagine me saying this in an Italian-Jersey very NON-royalty-like-manner..."Whateveh floats yah boat!!"

My neighbor, Anne, has a younger sister that got married a few weekends ago and since she was crowned "Amazing Matron of Honor," she was in charge of hosting the bridal shower last month. She had it at a great local restaurant and I was honored when she asked me if I would come up with the table decor for the two tables. There's nothing I love more than an intimate party and when it's in a restaurant, it's so much fun too! 17 women were invited and the restaurant would be providing the white table linens, of course, so I suggested we just keep it simple...some runners on each table and I'd put together some bright vases of flowers and I still have votives from my wedding that she could use as well. Pull junk out of your basements, people, and throw it on a table scape. You'd be stunned at how great Aunt Minnie's old tablecloth from 1960 just might look FAB today!

Researching online what flowers were in season was really helpful (to save on cost), so we made a list and I called my friend, Stacey, at Uniquely Yours, in downtown Northville and she was able to order what flowers we needed. We picked up the flowers Friday morning so we could assemble all the arrangements Friday night for the Saturday shower. Stacey was kind enough to let us keep the flowers in large buckets full of water and then we just returned the buckets on Saturday after the shower. The only bulk flower we purchased elsewhere were the roses which Costco had huge deals on.

I have to just throw in here that I learned everything I know about flower arranging from watching my amazing mother-in-law. We call her "Martha" all the time (although she's not the mean Martha that would end up in jail...haha!) because she can just do it all...sew, garden, is a gourmet cook, can scrapbook, get out any stain you have anywhere on you, put together a table-scape like nobody's business and can put together a flower arrangement that looks like a million bucks. After being married to my husband for a little over 9 years, I just loved watching her make her flower arrangements and I started loving it too. Would do it for parties once I gained some confidence and voila...here I was helping my lovely neighbor all because of my sweet and dear MIL.

So, Anne and I started assembling the 4 arrangements Friday night. Anne wanted them in mason jars (very cute and casual idea for a spring bridal shower) so I thought it would be great to have the arrangements have the brightest flowers we could find in season and get the jars as full and as thick as possible. She also used double-sided table to put together plaid ribbon to go around the jars as well. As I put together the first arrangement, Anne got the confidence to try the second one....she did so great!! We actually ended up with some left-over flowers so I put together the last bouquet so they could have something to put on the "cup-cake table." I was so excited at how they turned out!

I have to also say that we sprinkled the flower food in each of the jars and Anne was kind enough to bring one home for me. I'm not joking here at all when I say that the arrangements lasted an entire WEEK!!! Well, my favorite Gerber Daisies didn't, but still...the entire rest of the arrangement looked incredible for that long!! So, as usual, I love getting flowers through Uniquely Yours and Costco's roses were amazing!! :) Don't be afraid to try these projects by yourself or with other family members! You can always look online for tips or check out books at the library! Just have fun with it! :)

And one more thing before I close this blog that's literally taken me WEEKS to finish....haha! You obviously don't have to have a 1 point whatever gazillion dollar wedding to wow your guests or the WORLD, for that matter. Remember back in 2009, a certain wedding party was filmed and put on YouTube of an entire wedding party dancing their way into the church to Chris Brown's, "Forever?" It wasn't a glitzy, glamorous wedding, just a simple and glorious affair with the girls carrying my forever favorite, Gerber Daisies, the men wore simple suits but the beat was in their steps and the joy on their surprised guests faces and there was so much LOVE when the stunning bride finally made her appearance?!! A moment so pricesless beyond words...still, these two years later... I STILL cry every time Jill appears at the back of the church and starts her dance down the isle to meet her groom!! A perfect, simple moment, video taped for the world to see. The most amazing part of it all continued AFTER the video went viral as well! They started their own website (www.jkweddingdance.com) and put their sudden fame to a wonderful cause - the prevention of domestic violence. Visit their wonderful site and you can get the great video and see that they've already raised $34,600!! Their little video has actually been viewed 65, 828, 772 times!! UNREAL!!! :) It actually makes me soooo happy too since all the girls are carrying my favorite GERBS! :) But take a sec to do a little dance!

Jill & Kevin's Big Day

So, what's the moral of this forever long story? I'm a complete suckah for weddings. Even for complete strangers. More for the $5,000 weddings though than the $1.5 million weddings. I need to pay more attention when I drive to the grocery store. Or maybe start taking advantage of their delivery services. Who really does that? Because I think that would be AWESOME!!! And last but certainly not least...I really think that if we all planted Gerber Daisies in every yard, in every vacant lot, in every open area where we could plant them? We'd have world peace. They would just make everyone that happy.... :)

Pics of the arrangements I put together for Anne's sister's bridal shower:

Getting the stems prepped: extra leaves off, etc.

Close up look at how beautiful these flowers looked before starting the arrangements.

And how AMAZING the flowers looked once they were put together in the mason jars!

Once the cute ribbon was on the jars and we saw how the runner was going to look underneath them all, it was great to see how it all was coming together!

This is the arrangement I made for the "cup-cake table" with the left-over flowers we had.

Me - Making final touches to the arrangements. We did this all at Anne's house the night before the shower. Got it all done from start to finish in about 3 hours.

Tadahh!!

And how the tables looked at the restaurant where the shower was held. Anne took this for me. :) I also gave her some of the votive candles I had from my wedding and they are also on the table. She said the whole family just loved how the arrangements turned out and that made us both SO very happy! :)

Oh, So Very...

Grateful. Grateful is the word of the day. The word of the week, the year...ok, it's the word that exemplifies my entire straight-out-of-a-novel-life. But this was quite an exciting week for me and it really was the icing on the cake having my blog so graciously made over by my friend, Kelli Taylor, of Purple Tree Photography. Between Kelli and Cheryl Oz...those two have been helping me put my vision together of how I REALLY wanted this baby to look. These two are master-crafts-women. Between their paintbrushes, cameras and computers, they can make ANYTHING look good...even almost 40-year-old me....hahaha! Kelli had her work cut out for her, I PROMISE you, with me as a subject. "Wait, is my hair right? Wait...it looks fuzzy. Can I pull it back? Can I change my shirt?" I'm sure she couldn't wait to get to the "still life" part of the photo shoot...haha! It's one thing when you're getting your photo taken for your Christmas card (yup, those still need to be sent out too. Dang! Ha!)...just make sure there aren't too many wrinkles in everyone's color coordinated outfits, get the dried milk off of junior's face. Maybe use some spit to smash down Joey's bed-head. But these photos were different for me. This was a bit more exposure for me.

This is about my business. My heart and soul in this business. My family in this business. My friends in this business. Everything that represents me. Fuzzy hair and all. Kelli is so great at what she does. Really and truly. I can post something about her on FB to say...book something now OR YOU'LL BE TOTALLY STUPID IF YOU DON'T!! Blah, blah, blah...but I'm saying this really and truly. You get what you pay for here and then-some. You'll get patience, expertise, she WON'T make fun of your hair too much - HAHA! (she was honest with me though, which I appreciated, when I wanted to pull my hair back and it ended up looking pretty blech in the pics) and in the end? You'll get these incredibly gorgeous and natural light-filled photographs that you'll pass down for generations and when you're a grandparent you'll say..."I remember the day Joey cried the entire time through our session with Kelli but she brought out the best in him for these gorgeous photos and oh, look! I remember how she helped me fix my fuzzy hair!" :)

We set up everything ourselves that you see above in my banner. How it all turned out just blows my mind. Some simple behind the scenes facts: The fabrics are actually two amazing tablecloths I had just purchased at Target. The little white frame has a picture in it that Lexi painted when she was three years old. I keep it in our dining room. The art books are all ones I purchased at the last estate sale I went to (totaling all of, I think, $6) from Cari Cucksey, host of HGTV's, "Cash & Cari." And the candlesticks are ones I found at a flea market in Grand Rapids. The holes are so wide, it's tough to find a wide enough candle to put in them so I decided to place these little decorative votives on top of them and I really like how they look now. I found the votives at Ikea a few years ago during the holidays.

So, as you can see...you can really fill your home with little pieces of love and pieces THAT you love that don't have to break the bank. Hunting for all these treasures is the best part.

There are oh, so very many things to be thankful for on this almost Friday morning. I'm thankful for my wonderful friends, Kelli and Cheryl, that have been such a force of inspiration on this media journey and I'm thankful to you for stopping by to read this tonight...almost tomorrow morning. :)

No Trash Here. Only Treasure.

I'm actually going to "show AND tell" about some of the little projects I've been working on around our house lately. No, it's not enough that I have these two incredibly intricate and interwoven projects going on but the creative juices have been flooding our own home as well. We seem to only be able to handle all of these tiny, baby projects. The ones that take only an hour to accomplish instead of a week or a month.

We've been on the cusp of biting the bullet to re-do our kitchen and just when I think we're "almost there," we chicken out again. Why? You might ask? Well...let's see. Because we watched Chris' mom and dad and his sister and her new husband gut their kitchens and even though both kitchens turned out ah-MAZING!!!! The time it took getting there....they had no walls, no floors at times, dust in their eyeballs and underpants, men going in and out of their homes at all hours of the day (uh...sometimes nights too), my in-laws used their microwave for EVERYTHING...while it sat in their family room...it was so odd. Oh...and did I mention that both couples have no kids??? Ha! (Oh, wait...well, my in-laws have kids. They are my husband and my sister-in-law. Both of whom no longer live at home anymore, thank the Lord.)

See? That's why Chris and I are HUGE CHICKENS!! Where will we live and where will we go during the renovation that Chris and his dad will want to do? Yes, I KNOW they can do it but they'll kill each other and everyone else in their path along the way. I'll need a direct line to the Novi police department at all times and we'll spend $1,000,000.00 in gas (well over our budget) money for all the trips they'll both take to Home Depot. "No...honey. We don't need to hire contractors. I can do this myself," Chris will say. "Yes, babe, I know you can," I will say. "But we won't be able to handle the Dr. Phil-then-Jerry-Springer-show ramifications when this is all said and done."

There's really nothing like using your own home as a blank canvas though. A testing ground. A place where you can try that new paint, that roll of wallpaper or that new technique of whatever it is you found in that book you bought at Michaels. You just have to find the nerve to TRY.IT.OUT. You have to be brave. You have to not be afraid to be bold...or worry about what your friends might think. Because who knows?? You might start something that will sweep the country and you'll end up on Nate (Berkus)!! (Notice I didn't say Oprah?? Yeah, she's retiring so she's out. Nate is SO in!) :)

The other thing is...my bit of advice...PLEASE, PUUHHHLLLLEEEEZZZZZZ do not feel pressure to spend a gazillion dollars to jump into every trend that hits the stores each season only to find later that it's "out" in 6 months!! It's so very sad when I watch people do this and oh, by the way...half the time they don't really like this look anyway...they just feel they better have their home look like Julie's house down the street so they're not ridiculed for not keeping up with these so-called, "trends!" Have your own style! Be your own person and FIND GREAT DEALS!!!

When I went to the Cash & Cari FABulous estate sale last Saturday, I walked out of there with FOUR BAGS of the coolest finds for all of $36.00!!! Since I went on the second day, the entire house of treasures had been marked down to 20% off! That's one of the tricks to these awesome "weekend-long" estate sales. Some people really criticize these estate sales (or another person's garage sale) and say, "Why would you EVER go through another person's belongings like that?? It's like going through their TRASH!!" But to those of us looking for that one chair at a steal or that shelf that would look great with a new coat of bright paint and some funky wall paper on each shelf?? Those turn into our TREASURES!! And TRUST me!!! Those pieces of furniture will forever and always be more of a conversation piece than any true JUNK you'll find at Art Van/Nebraska Furniture Mart (same kind of place for all you guys back in NE)!! Hahaha! (Uh, the stuff I have from there is already scratched to the hilt and STINKS!! You stink so bad, Art Van. The furniture I have from you in my house reeks. I'm currently spraying air freshener around my kitchen table that I purchased from you!!)

So. The moral of the story is: A) Chris and I will eventually take the leap and get our new kitchen. B) NOTHING will come from Art Van. C) I will be searching high and low for the greatest deals of all time and the coolest style I can find from today and yesteryear, even if I have to get the stuff out of a dead person's home. Hehe. (That might not entirely be the politically correct way to say "estate sale" but it sounded funnier, so that's what I typed. Please forgive me, if I did indeed offend.) D) I won't care what any of you think even if I decide to glue pink gummy worms to the walls, paint the floor purple with yellow polka dots and have jello counter tops! It will be ours and we WILL LOVE IT!!! :) (Crescendo!!!!!!! And!!!! Silence. ) :)

I will now show you some VERY inexpensive ideas to try around your house. If you like them? Thank you! If you hate them?? THANK YOU! :)

The pictures you see above start with our stairway being just an empty, boring staircase with plain, white walls, some scratches and knicks that need to be covered and overall? An area that's just BEGGING to be decorated!! I wasn't exactly sure how I wanted to hang everything, so I started placing the items on the floor in various arrangements so I'd have an idea of what I liked and didn't like. That's why you'll see the various floor shots. My goal is to paint the entry way and staircase walls a chocolate brown (much to Chris' dismay...ha!)...maybe even have the walls striped and then take the artwork all the way up to the high ceiling, change out the light fixture to something much more contemporary, etc.

Ohhhh....how I WISH I could tell you how LONG this project actually took with Chris getting involved!!! I actually video taped some of it to post out here!! I just need to figure out how to post videos...argh!! He's an engineer and I'm obviously of the art tribe so when it comes to this kind of stuff...we do NOT mesh well! I don't measure like he does...ok, sometimes not at all around here...but this project took HOURS once he stepped in....COME ON, MAN!!!! :) I love you....hehe!

Anyway...so I just have to say about the overall cost of these items. The two prints are a STEAL right now at Ikea!! BOTH posters together, in a pack, are $6!!! I still want to add mats to them though. Probably a bold color. The frames are $6 a piece, also at Ikea. The black square, shadow boxes I purchased at Target last year for $12.99 a piece and the decorative balls I purchased (there were 3 in a set, all sitting in a wooden tray) at a flea market in Grand Rapids for $8!!!! So, total cost of this wall: $48.00!!

In conclusion! Just have fun with your home! YOUR SPACE! Your oasis! It shouldn't be a place of stress and anxiety!! "Where will I get my draperies?? Where will I get my rugs? WHAT IF JULIE DOESN'T LIKE MY DRAPERIES OR RUGS???" Hey. Julie. Stop tormenting your neighbors and get a life, would ya? Thanks.

Fill your home with your heart. And some art.

Home is where your art is. :)

Christy

An Evening for Lisa

Ok, so I lied when I said my next blog would have some design work in it. So sorry. This one has a bit more "ponderings" but you'll understand why. I just couldn't go to bed without sitting down to blog a bit more. Some of my girlfriends and I from our moms group at church attended a benefit tonight in honor of Angela Hospice in Livonia. They're an amazing facility and if any family in or Livonia is ever faced with the difficult decision of needing hospice care for a loved one...there are true angels working tirelessly at this place. http: (www.angelahospice.org)

This was our first time attending but we were there for a very specific reason. One of the young mother's at our church passed away last month from a very long battle with cancer and we were there in her honor. Lisa was only 33 years old with a loving husband and two young children when her life was cut too short. When Chris and I first moved to Novi and started attending St. James it was pretty difficult not to notice Lisa with her beautiful bandanas on her head and then various wigs that she then wore as she battled the raging cancer. This went on for two years. She was consistently on the prayer list during mass when all the names of those who are ill were called off and the entire parish got to know her fight. As she was one of the founding members of our group, we knew her history and her struggle for her husband. At the end it was tough for him just to get help to pick up the kids from school and have their days be as normal as possible as they brought her home from Angela Hospice during her last days. We reached out to them hoping we could do anything possible. Cooking meals, one of our nursery instructors said she would even pick up the kids for him...anything to pitch in.

One of my last days actually seeing Lisa in church happened to be sitting in the pew right in front of them. She had changed so much and I actually didn't recognize her except when I saw her husband and kids so I realized who it was. She was walking with a cane and was no longer able to stand during mass and when she went up to communion (I can't get this picture out of my head)...she walked behind her husband with her head resting in the middle of his back for support while one hand held onto his shirt and the other grasped her cane. She seemed so weak. When she got back to her seat, I could hear her whisper to her husband and her children...asking that they all say a prayer together. I never saw her again.

The day we were in church and her name switched from the "...and please pray for the ill of our parish..." list to the "....and please pray for the deceased of our parish" list....it hit me and so many others very hard. I remember letting out this little gasp when they read her name. She had effected so many of us in our parish, whether we knew her or not, and it was horrible finally knowing that this 33 year old mother of a daughter, age 6, and a son, age 7, was now gone.

When we were at the wonderful benefit for the Angela Hospice tonight, we had some donations to give to them in Lisa's name from our moms group. The women we gave the donations to had remembered her name so it was a perfect ending to a perfect evening in honor of such a brave young woman. For all those who have lost a loved one to cancer or for all those battling cancer right now, I send many prayers your way. You're never in this alone.

The great C.S. Lewis (seen above) once wrote: "God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

A Quiet Morning...

Happy Thursday, Everyone! It's a ridiculous 20-something degrees here in Novi today...not what you'd call a Spring day when the high is supposed to be around 30, but that's what you get when you live in Michigan. I have to say that I wouldn't care if was 20 degrees below zero though. I have the house COMPLETELY to myself!! Chris accepted a job at a new company and starts next week so we've had the luxury of having him home with us this week. Bless his heart...he said he couldn't wait to take Lexi to school every morning and take Ava to her "Mom & Tot" class this morning. So now I have approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes left of a quiet house. I'm not sure if you realize how talented I am...but I'm currently typing while doing cartwheels all over the house and through my yard...hehe.

So, I'm continuing to realize just how much I know absolutely nothing about technology. For those of you that already know me, you know that Chris purchased an iPhone for me about a month ago. My almost 6 year old knew how to use it within a day of it being charged because my sister-in-law and my father-in-law had already had one for a year. She's a bit frightening with it, however. I look at her and think she's playing this, "Angry Birds" game and it turns out she's filming me while I'm getting dressed. I have to go through all the movies on it at the end of the day and delete what's on there because the girl can forward anything...I'm sure she'll forward these to YouTube and before I know it, I'll be on GMA. Not needed at this point in my life. I have a bucket list but this is currently not on it.

I have so much to already do on this blog and it's already bothering me. The look of it, getting a banner...even just putting my logo on it yesterday made me laugh out loud. I was playing with the "gadgets" button and figured out how to get my logo out here. Little did I know my logo would end up being the size of my head. Need to fix that! My two insanely talented artist friends have been kind of enough to offer their time to help whenever they can (they're also insanely busy)...because even though I consider myself an artist at heart, this computer stuff really makes me want to cry. Chris could help me but his "engineer self" would come out and one of us would be sleeping at his parents' house for the night...ha! So, I have a lot of work to do here. I hope you can all be patient with me while I'm learning. :)

I don't know about you, but juggling everything is tough. This parenting gig is really the toughest thing I've ever done in my whole entire life. I have an almost 6 year old that's a truly old soul and says she already wants to be a teenager which makes me sad because she acts like it most of the time anyway. Kills me. Then I have an almost 3 year old which makes me spend a full-on FORTUNE in hair color. I'm not kidding you...I need to be hooked up to box of L'Oreal #240 for super gray haired women...no joke...haha! So, that with their activities and friends (yes, Lexi's friends are already calling the house for her...WHAT THE??!!) and turning 40 this year and finally figuring out what I want to be now that I'm almost grown up...is definitely a challenge but you just have to try to find a balance, right? Do we ever find that balance or do we just continue to smear on more cover-up under our eyes and drink a little bit more of a caffeinated beverage?? You know, I JUST started drinking (maybe one a month though) those frou-frou coffee-like beverages at the local coffee shops. My mom-friends that show up places with those in their hands look so cool!! But then I taste true coffee and want to throw up in my mouth.

I have really been blessed with this little business and my family and friends for supporting me when I really wanted to throw in the towel. I'm sure anyone trying to be a small business owner has hit a lot of bumps along the way. I just didn't know the small bumps would actually turn out to feel like huge, fiery craters with molten lava at the bottom where nothing ever gets out alive. Haha...ok, that might be a slight exaggeration. But man, when you're in the thick of wanting to throw in the towel after pouring your heart and soul into something for over a year (oh...and did I happen to mention also loosing all your money as well??) Yeah...uh. It pretty much sucked. But you live and learn and move on and then around the bend came two BEYOND fantastic jobs that I never in a million years would have thought could bring me such happiness. Including my very first commercial job for a retail space in Novi that when the grand opening hits...I truly might have to wear Depends, it's going to be such a blast...hehehe!

So...that's probably it for now...that's definitely telling you all about my current projects, a LOT of my ponderings...and hmmmm....now what about some "play". How about this:

I'm going to see if I can try to download a funny video of Ava and what she puts me through on a daily basis...hehe. I hope I can do this...it's from my phone. Cross your fingers. :) Next blog will be all about design, I promise. :)

(Hmmm...I've been trying this all morning and uploading this video to who knows where but it never ends up here...haha! Will try try again later...)