YES

This image, although odd, represents so much to me. This image is me taking a chance on myself. This image is me daring to dream bigger. This image is me saying yes, even though at times I feel not enough. This is me mailing paperwork to make my love of making homes beautiful a reality. This is me taking a step towards becoming an interiors business. I have continually debated if this is my so called calling. It has kept me anxious and second guessing for years. I did not get my hand writing in the sky, but I had some beautiful opportunities come my way that I simply said yes to. The more I said yes, the more I felt my place being mapped out. In hindsight I wonder if that is all God wants us to do? To say yes to the small little gifts He put inside us and take the journey with Him and watch it bloom. Over the last decade I have gone into design and have always found myself stepping back whether due to fear or the circumstances that surround. Every time I am in the midst of creating a home for others I feel like my best self. I come alive. I have had a decade plus of honing in on my process, my aesthetic, and learning what I love about the interiors business and what I don’t. This business will fit who I am and I hope in turn it will attract the similar. As the month progresses you will see a few changes here to my site, but Two Ellie will remain the same. The place where we share me-too moments, stay inspired, and the best place for me to ramble. Maybe this new journey of mine will flourish. Maybe it won’t. Either way I said yes and am going to see where it leads.

Have any areas in your life where you just need to say yes?

Dream Again

I’m in a odd place. A place that is a little uncertain on where it will lead. One that I wonder if I am brave enough to follow. A story that I often tell my children, but often forget it applies to me too. The truth is simple “Is anything too hard for the Lord” {Genesis 18: 12-14}. I am at this place where I see myself at a split in the road and I can chose to go the direction in which is comfortable and easy to wander down or one that may be a little hard to climb, but will potentially open up to something even more beautiful. In genesis 16-18 God comes to Abraham and declares that his barren wife Sarah will give birth to a son in their old age. Sarah over hearing this ‘laughed silently to herself and said, “How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such a pleasure, especially when my husband is also so old?” {Genesis 18:12}. The Lord goes on asking {paraphrasing Genesis 18: 13-14 here} “Why did Sarah laugh, why did she doubt? Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return and about this time next year Sarah will have a son.” Granted I am not pushing 100 like Sarah, but I am enjoying my last year in my 30’s. I am also not requesting a real life human baby, but I so desire to give birth to a new dream. This year I am putting actions to this dream, this dream that I have always had good intentions for, but fail to put great planned action too. I am great at floating and allowing circumstances to shift my course, but this year I want to set my feet firmly on that narrow path and start walking, moving, dreaming bigger. I write this not just for myself, but for those in their teens, 20’s 30’s, 40’s AND beyond. Let’s take those dreams together and birth them this year by taking our intentions and putting them into actions. Even the smallest steps are better than taking none. I would love to hear what your big dream is? The one that seems almost impossible.

My Dreams:

• to become a greater storyteller

  • Action needed is to actual write more

• to have a creative business that helps other succeed

  • Action needed is to polish said business plan and take steps to actually achieve it

• promote other women and their creative endeavors

  • action needed is to go request a simple shoot and interview time

When I actually type it out it sounds so simple, yet I have spent years with ideas swimming in my head and like I have said circumstances continually have me putting it all on the back burner. This year I am declaring as the year of moving forward. Now I sincerely hope that you all will give me a light nudge if you happen to see a week go by without a single post. If you happen to see me fall off that Instagram train. This is me asking you to help a sister out, because apparently I don’t have enough stamina of my own. I would love to do the same for you. Let’s dream greater together.

fourteen

photo by rylee hitchner

Today marks fourteen years of marriage. Some days it feels like yesterday and other days it feels like an eternity ago. Some days it's hard and other days it's near perfection. Some days we really have to work to connect and other days we fit like a glove. As we navigate through this life I am grateful for the simple fact that we are both in it together. We are both forever choosing each other. We are both striving to be better not only for each other but for ourselves. I think it's important to forever remember that two whole people make for a better team. We find the beauty in the ebb's and flows. We married as practically kids and as the white hair starts to spring {him} and the lines get a little deeper {me} I know that he is mine and I am his and I wouldn't want it any other way. That even includes the days he leaves his whiskers on the sink, again. 

* this photo may be from a few years ago, but will forever be one of my favorites.