Just a note to let you know that my store, Elizabeth House, www.elizabethhouse.us, was selected as one of the top 50 retail stores nation-wide by the retail trade journal, Home Accents Today. My store was selected out of 23 stores in the category with sales less than a million dollars. The award reads as follows:"Try to define a Star of any kind is tough, as true in retail as any place. The star store has its own distinct personality, usually a strong entrepreneurial owner who puts his or her stamp firmly on the product mix, the merchandising and the store's role in the community. This year, the Home Accents Today's 50 Stars share all of the these characteristics, but also are fiercely independent in their approaches to retailing. We congratulate the 2006 Stars."
How exciting and what an honor to be selected. Also, congrats to my dear friend, Debbie Dusenberry for having her store, Curious Sofa, selected as well. Visit her store in Kansas City and give yourself a real treat! She is one very talented lady. Her website is www.curioussofa.com .
I feel truly inspired by so many of you and continue to challenge myself as a business owner. I thought after being open for almost four years now, things would be easier - but they aren't. New challenges, issues, and problems to solve face me every day. But living a creative life and trying to make a living from it has its worries and its rewards. I choose to focus on the rewards.It is my dream that one day I will be a true inspiration for other women searching for their creative side and living their passion. I have been inspired by many women who shared their wisdom and encouraged me when I felt defeated.
I hope someday that one of you will write me or (or call into my national design show!) to tell me how much I inspired you to live your dreams as well. Someday, I hope to be in a position of not only inspiring others, but to actually be able to help make those aspirations a reality. Who knows? Maybe that will really happen.For now, we creative women need to support and give to one another as we continue our journey.
Basically, we all have same need: we just want to be accepted for who we are. The challenge? To discover who that person is. I am up for a challenge, are you?
from my house to your house,
Elizabeth
2 comments:
Dear Elizabeth,
You know, I have been reading your blogs after discovering your ad in Romantic Homes magazine, and I have to say I was enchanted, intrigued and inspired by your blogs, which I generally never read. Like you, I am divorced. I started a new life when that happened. I have no children, which is fine because my work takes me all over the country. But all that doesn't matter. What I wanted to tell you is how much what you write, warts and all, has touched me, and I wanted to thank you for bringing yes, a business venture that is lovely, but more than that, a sense of a real woman, with real feelings and a real life, getting on with hers in a wonderful way and being able to share her joys and her pains-in-the-butt with the rest of us who are struggling along on a daily basis with no one to keep us going but ourselves. Kudos, Miss Elizabeth, and may you live long and prosper.
Ransom Elizabeth Daniels
Dear Ransome,
I am just now getting in from being out all day with appointments and work and it is almost 10PM... I am about to go down to my workshop and finish up a project that is due tomorrow - which means another 3 hours or so of work. And here I am, getting ready to change into my work shoes, but I stop to check my email and I find such a wonderful email from you! I am so very, very tired tonight, and your email lifted my spirits so much - what a nice thing to have on my mind as I go paint in a few moments. Thank you for taking the time to write - you made my day -and night! :-)
Love,
Elizabeth
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