Guess what Leigh-Ann and I did yesterday?

We gave the studio it’s name!

Up until now Lune Vintage has had it’s beautiful window vinyl up, but because most of our business is done with international clients we haven’t felt a rush to put up a sign. We’ve just had a little one that we made quickly… until now! Putting the vinyl up was a really fun and special moment that makes me feel even prouder when I see our little space!

LA is a pro, she showed me the ropes :)

And then I just had to try!

(I’m a relentless cheese ball!)

I’ve never felt like anywhere I’ve worked before (no matter how lovely) has been the right fit for me, and after that happens again & again, year after year? It’s a really lonely feeling. It feels so good to have such a beautiful home away from home, to be using my strengths, and to have such a fun & sunshiney space to spend my days. It’s so much what I’ve been hoping for, and I’m so thankful :)

Two years ago, when we had just moved into our first house the coolest little vintage shop moved in up the street from me. I was beyond smitten. I remember walking in and being immediately dazed by how beautiful it was, and saying to the beautiful young owner of the shop “I’ve never seen a shop that’s this beautiful!”. Everything was arranged into perfect vignettes of vintage kitchenware, furniture, and amazing clothes. The space was impossibly tiny, but it felt spacious and like there were treasures everywhere  just waiting to be found.

“Jesse, I want to be her when I grow up!! I think that was her little son in the store with her!!” was all I could manage to squeak out when we left. I went every weekend and bought one thing with my tiny budget for fun things.

One day Jesse saw my dream bike (vintage baby blue Schwinn cruiser!) outside the shop and we were able to scoop it up. I was so excited I had to show my blog friends, so I popped open my new blog and posted about it and about how Lune Vintage was on of the most beautiful places on the planet.

Around the same time my friend Amber (with the cool ‘smile’ hand tatto!) sent me the link to a blog she thought I would like because “She’s awesome- so crafty and cute! And she lives in your city!! Her blog is called Freckled Nest. You’re welcome.” I almost didn’t believe her at first- there was a blogger who lived in my city! She even posted regularly, and seemed to be making her living full time from design. Her blog was inspiring and creative, and her personality was sweet and disarming. I was hooked. Lune Vintage and Freckled Nest were my first reads every day.

I read Leigh-Ann’s blog all the time, and started exploring her sponsor’s and friend’s blogs. It was like I stepped into a parallel reality. I started finding the most beautiful craft, design, and personal blogs run by amazing young women who seemed so confident and strong in themselves. Many of them had side businesses and young families, beautiful vintage furniture and incredible fashion sense, quirky and interesting lifestyles and photos of either late night parties or early bedtimes with their children. They were totally normal and completely otherworldly in the same moment, and while they lived all across Canada and the US, in my mind they all lived in the same space- and it was just around the corner if I could work hard enough and dream big enough.

I started focusing on making my blog reflect my interests more, and trying to make every post a little more “me” than I had before- and then one day Leigh-Ann announced a course called Indie Business! It was exactly what I was looking for, and the biggest surprise? That the owner of Lune Vintage was one of the teachers! I was hopping up and down with excitement and registered right away – I even made a countdown to the day it started in my day planner. :)

During the course I gave it my all, I asked questions and soaked in everything I could. I decided that I was going to become full time self employed in two years, and worked out all the details of A Little Thistle – from what I would sell, to the name and the branding – using the guidance of the class and my classmates. And without my knowing it, Jill had found my original post about the bike and her shop, and she really loved it. She had even told Leigh-Ann about it when it happened, and recognized me in the class. Leigh-Ann started visiting my blog, and within a few weeks of the class ending I got an e-mail asking it I wanted to meet up for coffee…

Sometimes first steps can feel impossibly small. Buying a new bike, posting pictures to your blog, or enrolling in a class? These are all things that you do because you’re excited, or because you’re in love with something, or because you need a dream to escape into for a while but they aren’t supposed to lead to anything. Looking back, I’m so glad that I walked into that little vintage store around the corner and bumped into Jill in her beautiful shop, and that Amber sent me the link to Leigh-Ann’s creative and playful online space. The moment I found them, and even though we didn’t know each other, I felt like I had a choice: I could will and work my dream life into existence or I could walk away.

Even when a step toward a dream feels small, it’s still a step toward a dream- and they add up.

This summer I’m having my bike restored, and I’m going to ride it to work every day. Seeing it outside of Lune Vintage in 2009 drew me into my dream life, and maybe if I park it outside the space we share with Lune Vintage it will draw another determined dreamer into hers. In the spirit of little steps adding up, it seems like the right thing to do.

Read Part Two Here! :)

Looking back at my one goal for 2010: slow down, I have to laugh a little. While I had good intentions, 2010 started slow and quickly sped up to a sprint. If 2010 was just one word, it would be stretch.

2010 started with some big challenges. I was taking courses in grad school and trying to figure out what I wanted in life, but by the spring I was trying to manage a lot of negativity in my personal life and was feeling unsure about the path I was on. I finished my university courses and put continuing them on hold in favor of taking online courses from Red Velvet Art and Freckled Nest over the spring. I found more and more inspiring blogs, and made friends with shop owners and creative people, and I fell in love with the idea of living that kind of a life. I daydreamed about opening an etsy shop, doing more design work and fell in love with writing my blog (again!). I decided to at least give it a chance and threw myself into my creative life whenever I could.

At the same time, I made a big personal step forward: I let go of trying to please other people and started really honouring who I am and what I need. I made a conscious decision to be as positive and focused on my dreams as I could possibly be- and when I did that, the good started happening!

I was asked to become a designer with Freckled Nest Design, and quickly I was designing for clients and learning more than I had hoped! My friend Moorea Seal and I launched an illustrated eBook + micro gardening project called Four Little Pots, and Jesse and I went on an amazing road trip across half of North America. I was so thankful that I got to see my friends from near and far over the summer and I was excited to show them my new tattoo, even if I had to give myself a confidence boost as I got used to how people reacted to it. It took a while for me to focus on myself instead of  people looking at my new tattoo, but I got the hang of it and over the summer my confidence doubled.

Over the summer and fall I stretched my comfort zone even further by starting to blog my outfits once a month in Six Months + Six Dresses. Soon after, my etsy shop launched and I got a big taste of what it’s like to be a small business owner. Jesse and I made sacrifices and agreed to chase down my dream of becoming self employed in the next two years, and all my spare time went to blogging, etsy, and design. I loved what I was doing, but my anxiety was sapping all of my energy, so I saw a doctor and was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I started treatment for it and realized that my life could be so much happier! Jesse and I worked as a team through my anxiety and my long work weeks, and while it was exhausting, this year ended up with my dream coming true. I was invited to join Freckled Nest Design full time, a change that would have me become a full time designer and blogger in 2011.

On the other side of this crazy year, I’m thankful for the gifts it gave me. I’m more calm and patient with my friends and family – and myself – than I have been before. I’m more relaxed and it takes so much more to rattle me than it used to! Negativity and disagreements have finally started to roll off my back like I’ve always wished they would, and I don’t hold onto hurt like I used to. I’m more able to just sit with things, even challenging situations, and work through them in my own time.

This year I don’t want to have any one goal, I want to embrace this perspective shift.

Personally, this year I want to become more myself. I want to dig deep into my passions and watch them develop, to root myself in the beautiful prairies and see what I can make happen. I want to keep doing my heart work, and becoming a better friend and kinder person. I want to stay steady and grounded through the good times and bad, and I want to be profoundly joyful and enthusiastic.

Online, I want to be a better blogger and community builder. I want my blog to reflect my lifestyle and inspiration and I want to spend more time reaching out, sharing, and building relationships. I want to comment back, have exciting conversations, explore tumblr and twitter more, and get to know my readers better. I want to make sure I communicate my sense of humor and goofiness better too, and to share more photos! I’m dreaming up features that will let me share what my amazing blog friends are doing, and find new ways to express my passions.

Have you had a perspective shift in the past year?

I’ve love to hear a way that you’re taking it from thought to action this month!

Mine is taking time every morning to find new inspiration online, I want to start every day with a little jolt of wonder. I hear that a sense of wonder is a key ingredient in big life changes. Wonder + cinnamon buns, obv. :)

This is the big surprise I’ve been working on….

That’s right, I’m becoming a full time designer + blogger in January! Leigh-Ann and I are so excited for our new adventure together, and to get to work in our gorgeous new studio!

Dates To Look Forward To:

Dec 1 – Leigh-Ann’s new blog design launch

Dec 13 – My guest spot on LA-TV, Leigh-Ann’s live streaming craft show

Dec 13 – The launch of the Freckled Nest Design, our web design HQ

January - LA and I starting our monthly video challenges

There will be lots more on this in the coming weeks, but for now enjoy our announcement and studio tour vlog :)

In the past few months I’ve been dealing with some tough personal stuff that’s been a big journey for me, and I really want to share it with you. I’m still very much working through everything, but I’m excited to be stepping in a positive direction. It’s a scroller and more serious than I usually am, so you’ve been warned!

When I think about it, it’s hard for me to imagine a life without anxiety. It’s hard to explain that it doesn’t feel like anxiety all the time- sometimes it feels like a nagging sense that I’m behind, and if I just worked a little harder I could catch up. Sometimes it feels like opening night, before the curtain rises and the butterflies are strong in my stomach. Sometimes it feels like not knowing where to put my hands when I’m talking, like I’m self conscious or am about to say the wrong thing. Sometimes it feels like I’m sea sick and the world is sliding out from under me, and sometimes it feel like barely anything at all- just like there’s the slightest weight on my chest. But it’s hard to imagine my life without it, as lovely and strange as it would be.

I just thought that everyone was like that, until October.

In the past few months, things have been fabulous on paper- friends and family are beautiful, work is great, I’ve been traveling and reconnecting with friends, and digging into the wonderful messiness of life, but day to day it hasn’t felt like that. Slowly things have been getting hard- I haven’t been sleeping, I’ve gone from my normal (being slightly anxious most the time, but it was manageable) to being extremely anxious, having trouble concentrating and with my memory, and being easily tired out. Things that have always been mild quirks of mine started to amplify to the point of making life less comfortable, and then it started to get exponentially worse.

It was a level of stress I can only describe as similar to a moment when you realize someone is breaking into your home, only it was like that from the moment I woke up until I went to sleep. I was agitated and exhausted, stressed and confused. I had negative thoughts that I didn’t want but had a really hard time keeping quiet. I had no idea what was happening and fewer words to describe it. I continued confiding in Jesse, friends and family and trying to manage it on my own, but in the end there was nothing to say other than “Something is wrong, and I need help!”

I made an appointment to see my doctor, and I cried hard when I had to wait three days to see her. It was so profoundly confusing, I knew intellectually that nothing was really wrong, but I felt like my body was on the verge of deciding between flight or fight all the time, and I couldn’t calm down. When I met with my doctor I was so relieved to see her I could have hugged her. We went through a symptom checklist and after answering “yes” to every question she asked, she said three words that made everything snap into focus:

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Those three words were exactly the ones I’d been trying so hard to find myself. It was a perfect fit, and more than that it was a diagnosis.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a psychological disorder much like depression, where you experience some level of anxiety at almost all times. It’s not normal anxiety- like being worried about a test or a performance- but an underlying constant, like a hum in the background of every day that might feel different from time to time, but is always there. The flare up I had in October was hard, but it was a huge opportunity to see that my level of anxiety has been high for many years, but I so was used to always feeling on edge that it didn’t seem strange to me, and there was always a logical explanation for my stress level. I felt like things were legitimately causing it, and often times they were real stresses in my life (I do live in the real world!) but when those stresses were removed, the feelings wouldn’t go away, they would calm down for a time or shift, and I would think that something else was causing them. Until they became too big for me to ignore.

I was diagnosed in mid-October, and I’m still very much at the beginning of my journey with this. Because I was in such an extreme state I’ve started on a medication to help calm my symptoms down, and the clarity and peace that I’ve gained from it has been exceptional- I feel like I’m myself about 70% of the time again, and while I have good days and bad days it’s lovely to be able to live more effortlessly than I have for a while. I’m also still in the process of looking back and seeing how this has effected me, and how long it’s been a burden to me that I didn’t have the ability to see.

Because the symptoms are such a mix of psychological and physical, people with GAD often wait for over ten years to seek help, and I can’t tell you how much I wish I’d had this diagnosis when I was 15 before it was so severe rather than when I was 25. But knowing what I do now, more than anything I feel excited. I’m excited to explore my treatment options, and to find a way to live with this that is comfortable and manageable. I’m excited to know that I don’t feel like this because something in my life is causing it, because knowing that means I don’t have to solve anything, I just have to wait for the feelings to pass. I’m so excited to be having fun day to day, to find writing easy again, and to have the words to explain what’s been too confusing for me to talk about until now.

If I can ask one thing from you, at the end of a very long post, it would be that if you have anxiety that is interfering with your life please talk to someone you can trust about it. A friend, parent, teacher, guidance counselor, pastor, doctor – anyone, just reach out. They might not understand what you’re feeling, but they can help you work out what a good next step is for you. There are lots of treatment and therapy options, and you don’t have to deal with it alone.

And just as an aside, thank you so much for reading my corner of the internet- while I haven’t been writing about this in the past month I can’t express how much your sweet comments and e-mails have buoyed me through some very tough days. I’ve been behind on replying to comments, but being able to scroll through your encouragement and thoughts every day has made me smile and feel truly grateful and lucky to have found all of you. Thank you so much. <3

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I’m not big on anniversaries or birthdays, on throwing parties or being the center of attention, but I think I must be going soft(er) because today I want to celebrate. It’s been two years married, five and a half as a couple, and I feel like we’re really getting it.

We’re sillier, more giving, less nervous, kinder, more excited & are learning who we are – and who we want to be. We’re making big sacrifices & big plans, refusing to grow up, staying up too late, encouraging each other & are trying to live with every inch of ourselves.

I have no idea where life will take us in the next year, but I know it will be full of crazy & wonderful surprises. I know we will be wholly unprepared, and that we’ll learn as we go. And more than anything, I know that it’ll be alright.

Full speed ahead! :)

I live in a small city, come from a small school and have worked in offices where I’m much younger than my coworkers for a long time. I love my life and my friends, but in the past year my core friends have moved to opposite coasts or have very limited time to be in touch, which has left me with some friend shaped holes in my life. It’s been something that I’ve been working through since the spring- I’ve been developing new friendships and putting myself out there a lot more.

Sometimes it’s so good to put the getting to know you aside for a little while and see people who already know your back story, where you don’t have to explain because the knowing smiles are already on their faces, and your quirks just make you more yourself.

Last weekend I went to Minneapolis to meet three girls I’ve met through blogging over the past three years – Mandy, Nora & Lisa. This is what our weekend looked like from my lens…

We had an outstanding time, from buying way too much wine to my packing my suitcase full of Old Dutch Ketchup Chips so they could get a taste of Canadian kitsch. It was a crying at the airport & wishing there was an island that all my favourite bloggers could live on kind of weekend, and the perfect end to a breathless summer.

As soon as I buy that island, I’ll let you know. Bring lots of books, reality TV show recommendations & polaroid cameras, okay? :)

There’s something about the music that I listened to when I was between high school and university that worked it’s way into my bones, and when I hear a Something Corporate song, from fun pop punk and sweeping epics, everything in me gets taken back to those days of endless maybes and lazy summers.

When Mister found tickets to the 10 year anniversary show days before it was taking place, I knew it was the perfect time & reason to go. I haven’t gone on a road trip to see a show in forever, and I can’t think of anything more summery than that! So we dropped the puppies off with Mister’s family, piled into the car & hit the road.

This is a little peek at our trip…

It was a really fun show- wonderful and odd, because they are definitely a band I listened to a while ago & they broke up in 2005, so with no new music so it was more like going to a “best of” show, if that makes sense?

It seemed like because of that the audience was all over the map, from underage kids comparing notes on their favourite lyrics, to music fans with their “All Access” warped tour passes casually displayed, to huge punk guys with their lyrics written into tattoos. And by the end of the show even the cool kids at the back were letting on that they knew all the words.

Even to Punk Rock Princess.

Okay, especially to Punk Rock Princess :)

It was fun to be there, and a great little break from reality.

What was the last show you made a pilgrimage to?

Every now and then when I least expect it, it’ll show up. That little negative voice in the back of my mind that’s full of criticism. It used to be a really big part of my life when I was younger, I was convinced that everything I did spelled out one word: awkward. And I was so uncomfortable in my own skin that I’m sure I wasn’t that far off.

Lately I’ve been noticing that little voice coming back. If I get a haircut and it doesn’t turn out right I can’t shake the idea that “I don’t look feminine enough anymore”, or I’ll put my goals and dreams on the back burner in favour of catching up with everyone I can because I hear that little voice telling me that “good friends never say no”.

I’ve always tried to choose which kinds of thoughts I pay attention to. In my experience if you feed the good ones and ignore the bad ones, you can be in for a quality of life shift but lately my ability to ignore the bad ones and focus on the good has been slipping.

So I’m making a change.

This week I’m starting a big effort to be extra positive and stop buying into what that little voice has to say. If I’m awkward at times, I want to love that part of me as much as I love the witty and cute parts. If things are hard, why do I think it’s more valid to beat myself up than it is to be encouraging? I need to be my biggest cheerleader, because if I won’t get behind me, who will?

Sometimes I wonder what our lives would look like if we changed the stories we tell ourselves about who we are.

Are there any stories you tell yourself  that aren’t helping you be who you want to be?

ps – The lovely Amy from Just a Titch interviewed me today about leaving the entertainment industry last year, being confident & how to start over, you can find it here!

So, I’ve been keeping an amazing secret and I can finally tell you! It’s so good I even vlogged it because the written word can’t communicate my excitement….only using the word “excited” 15 times in a vlog can!

I vlog when big things happen, it’s a fact :)

ps – I filmed this when I was running on very little sleep, we had a crazy thunderstorm the night before and I was up all night! But that’s probably for the best, sleepy Kyla = more subdued Kyla and I would have been off the richter scale otherwise!

For those of you who can’t watch right away, my news is that one of my favourite people – Leigh-Ann has asked me to join her incredible company, Freckled Nest! She’s an amazing independent artist and was looking to expand her team, and through this crazy blogging world she found me, liked what I’m doing here and asked me to join her. :)

I’m doing Blogger, Typepad and WordPress blog makeovers and websites and my first project just launched…

[Visit Hillary's Blog]

This has been just a dream come true. Leigh-Ann is so talented, savvy and positive and I’m loving working with incredible clients and learning from day to night. If you’ve never stopped by  Leigh-Ann’s blog I would really recommend you do, she’s just wonderful.

[Visit LA]

So that’s my big news: I’m working as a designer with one of my favourite people on the planet and it’s all because of blogging!

If you’re interested in a blog makeover or a blog as a website please visit our portfolio and you can e-mail LA at FreckledNest@gmail.com or me at kylaroma@gmail.com to receive package and designer information.

Oh and one more thing: YAY! :)