love & squalor designs: The Beginning of the Beginning...or Getting to Know You

If you are reading this, you have probably found our store at http://loveandsqualor2.etsy.com/. Isn't http://www.etsy.com/ wonderful?!? (more on that later)

Katie and I have spent the last three months planning and the last two weeks stocking our store and now that we've come to the end of the first fortnight--as my English husband would say--it feels good. Really really good. We set out to do something and we did it.

To celebrate that, we are holding a big sale at said cyber-store. Buy any set of 8x10 photo mats and get a second set 50% off. Any set of 8x10s. Seriously...take a look. There are more where these came from:

We're hosting our first major sale because we like to shop and when we shop, we especially like to get things on sale. Aren't your new shoes just a little bit more lovely if they were half price? Our photo mats will be too--although they are pretty lovely at full price.

But we're also hosting a sale because we are grateful. Grateful to have made a plan and seen it through to this point. Grateful to have an outlet for our creativity. Grateful to have an opportunity to get meet up as friends and do something that makes the quality of both of our lives better.

Grateful to be at the beginning--together.

The beginning is something I know about. Together is something that I have learned to count on, especially when it comes to Katie.

At this time last year, I was days away from my wedding. I had a lot of out of town guests. I had a big white dress. I had a very VERY nervous groom. And thank god, I had Katie. Even when I wasn't sure whether my fiance was going to show up, I knew Katie would. And she would have all the stuff I'd forgotten to bring--like nail polish and breath mints.

On the morning of the wedding, Katie turned up in the bridesmaids dressed I'd picked. She wore her hair the way I made her. She did my lipstick. Then she did it again. WITHOUT COMPLAINT. And when I waited, hidden from view, for my grand entrance--and I couldn't see whether or not my fiance was even there--she turned to me and said, "He's there and he's smiling."

In that moment--and in a thousand others before and since--she saved me. She has been there with me in the love and the squalor of my life.

A year later, the quivering bride and the nearly absent groom seem very distant to me. My husband and I aren't those people any more. We're more stable, more familiar with each other--and definitely more casual. But I am reminded this week, that we have made it a long way from the first day and still my husband and I are only at the beginning--the beginning of the beginning.