Playing Dress Up

When I was younger and asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said that I wanted to be a teacher. I loved learning; addicted it to it really… but soon realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a teacher. Sure, I loved kids and I loved learning but I didn’t love trying to teach someone else how to do something. I even set up a corner of our family room to be a mini sewing studio for my three girls one Christmas; getting them a sewing machine and all the tools needed to begin creating. They were excited. I was excited, until it came time to teach them how to create on their own. I’m not sure if they even really had the interest at the time (although I think two of the three wish I would have taken more time then, since they want to know now) and every time I tried to teach them something…I found myself scooting them out of the chair and just doing it myself.

Mom fail.

Teach a man to fish (sew) and they’ll fish for a lifetime? Um… nope. I’ll just do the fishing myself. That was the end of the sewing lessons. The corner soon became home to a TV and a video game chair that saw a lot more attention.

I loved that I could create something I dreamed up in my head but fashion design was not in the cards for me as a young mom. I even remember going into a DOTS retail store to apply as a manager with my credentials of a fashion degree beaming off my resume; within thirty minutes I was hired and I was excited to begin a life in fashion… albeit quite a few rungs away from designing for the runway. When I asked what the starting salary would be, she told me $10/hour. Um… what? I quickly responded “But, I have a degree.” To which she replied “Yes, I know… that is why it is $10/hour and not $8/hour.” Shortest fashion design career in history; I walked to the car, not accepting the position, and started looking for a job in administration…the field I worked in for the 20 years that followed.

Funny how dreams as kids are supposed to be waaaay more fun than dreams as a grown up BUT, mine was a bit topsy turvy. I love all things Alice in Wonderland with imaginations abounding and no limits; I wish that I had this mentality with my girls were still young and we could enjoy it together. I painted their rooms to look like Ariel’s underwater seascape and a Tiffany & Co. box, but when it came to being the fun mom and doing what I loved for a job…that didn’t happen; not until MUCH later.

After two failed marriages, a bout with breast cancer, surviving THREE teenage girls with just 11months between each one…I was finally getting to live the dream. It wasn’t the dream I ever had growing up; or even one I imagined as I got older but I realized it was a dream opportunity when it was right in front of me.

After living in Oklahoma for about three years; I was getting known for my boutique designs and was quite busy designing and building boutiques for my friends, and for family of friends, and for friends of friends…but it was time to settle down and do something for me. My best friend is a real estate agent, along with owning other properties herself, and knows of my love for boutiques and turning forgotten spaces into something more memorable and fun. She told me about a building on Main Street in downtown Collinsville, Oklahoma…just a couple blocks down the road from the very first boutique I was in…a few years earlier. It was a building about 100years old and was only 12ft wide x 45ft long; you see, my building was built in what used to be an alley. If you look at old maps from the city “back in the day” you’ll see an empty space next to that Opera House that is now a land developer’s headquarters upstairs and a bookshop downstairs.

We decided to drop everything…and I mean EVERYTHING. We moved from a 2500sq ft home to the 500sq ft flat above the boutique; my world was about to get a whole lot smaller AND bigger at the same time. Realizing the dream of Playing Dress Up as a job and living tiny in the flat above was never something I would have thought of, but now I could think of nothing else.

Wanna see what I did with the space that would give a whole new meaning to “working from home?”

Check it out.