Sunday, May 27, 2012

Just Published Tonight!!

  June 28, 2012

Happy Memorial Day!  Remember all service members, active duty, retired and veterans - and their families and loved onesYou are so appreciated.  Special hello to all of my military friends!

Well, my sister, Paula, published the website literally yesterday the 27th of June, and we are scrambling to get everything right on our profile pages (at least I am), and I realize that today (12:30am Mon morning) is ironically the 1 year passing of our dad.  We didn't plan this, of course, but how strange.  He would be proud of us and our hard work - especially Paula's. The three of us, Paula (sis), myself and our greatest talent Nina - our mother are on the website!  You can find us at http://www.yoursmineandhers.com/ .  Mom and sis have most of the items on there so far - so I am racing to put out items that I hope all of you will enjoy, of course.  However, I hope that you will  take notice of our gifts of unique creativity and awesome quality.  We are very careful in choosing our lightly used and vintage items as well.

My items on the site now are only jewelry.  I will be featuring handmade greeting cards, small flower arrangements, other small items like a distressed, hand stamped letter holder, a small hand painted side table, and later larger tables and chairs that will be distressed and maybe even embellished with new knobs...I can't wait to get started!  I have some fun and creative ideas that will be affordable. Oh, and more jewelry too!! 

I've always had a bit of a creative side and worked in women's retail clothing in high school and college.  I got to do displays and arrangements in the specialized boutique and was a complete "clotheshorse" then.  My mother always sewed and would sometimes make me clothes, but of course I wanted "store bought" clothes.  She never could get me interested in sewing.  I mean I did a few easy things and got the general idea - but my mom...she rocks at being a seamstress and I consider her a professional.  She used to work at a top of the line sewing shop and taught classes about how to use the computerized sewing machines and sergers.  She said they pretty much got her paycheck - LOL.  As sewing became more "techie," I became more intimidated.  Now that the techie stuff is not so intimidating,  I have a growing interest and very littletime.  (By the way, I forgot how much I used to embroider by hand with my Grandma).  I did like to sew on buttons by hand and mend little things.  OK, I've sewed some.  I may even sew on some of my greeting cards; a technique that sue is popular now.

When my creative juices really started flowing was during the preparations of my flower arrangements just before my wedding.  My husband's aunt was doing the arrangements (I had a mix of real and silk).  I picked out the colors and flowers - cali lillies were in then:) and she worked her magic.  I stopped by frequently to see how she was coming along and could not imagine having that good of an 'eye for detail' that she did - at least for silk flowers. 

{To back up a little, original credit for inspiring me was a coworker of mine in the dress shop. Her name was Margaret and she was very artistic and showed me how to wrap beautiful packages and make lovely big bows and even tiney ones.  I watched her closely as she arranged flowers for our large windows.  She was the first person to introduce me to the concept of designing in odd numbers.  This applies to lots of designs and I still use her advice today.}

Well, back to my wedding flowers.  Guess what I did with them later?  I had to take them all apart to fit in the U-Haul we were driving to our first duty station in Dugway, UT.  Believe it or not I put them all back together again, - some the same, but mostly my own creations that time!  She came for a visit not long after we left Shawnee, OK (where I grew up) and told me that she thought I had done a better job of arranging than she had!  I think she even meant it!  Well, there were several years of arranging flowers, making wreaths, etc.  Usally decorated my home and gave away sooo many things as gifts.  That was the beginning of my serious creativity and my confidence was growing...
...More very soon!

Thanks so much for reading. 

Renee

2 comments:

  1. Great Job, Sis! Look forward to hearing more!
    I know Dad's smiling down on us!! He was such a man's man, but I think he always appreciated our crafty talents. XOXOX

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are right about how he was always a 'man's man,' but you know he always appreciated creative talent (especially when it took hard work) whether it was done by a man or a woman. Like you also said, 'he always appreciated our crafty talents.' He commented many times on the cards I made him and also on some of the jewelry that I made or gave as gifts. That was the kind of praise he was good at giving! You may not get praise often, but when you did - it was sincere for sure! I miss him.

    ReplyDelete