Hello World! Part Three: Starting

(This is part three of my blog introduction series.  Catch up with parts one and two)

To say something changed is a little bit of an understatement.  A lot of things changed.  We made a huge cross-country move from the southern Gulf Coast region to Idaho.  My husband got laid off soon after we moved.  We both worked minimum wage jobs for a few months until he was able to land a job in law enforcement.   I found out I was pregnant with our third child and we also bought a house...all within the last eleven months.

Needless to say, all the change and insecurity and frustration and doubt and craziness that happened somehow changed me.  Shaped my heart.  The weeks of stretching our budget taught me creativity and oddly, contentment.  Learning how to make new friends in a new town has given me courage and made me brave.  Taking on a leadership position at my job and learning new things gave me confidence.    

I honestly don't remember the moment I decided to set up shop on Etsy...for real this time.  Blame it on the pregnancy, I guess!  After years of on-and-off planning and over thinking, one day I simply decided it was time and I was going to do it.  This blog post gave me the extra shove I needed to just START, for once. 

As I said before, I had been doubting my skills and lacking courage to put my creativity on display for others to see.  I'm just me....nothing special.  I was right, I AM just me.  But turns out, Just Me is strong.  Just Me is creative.  And for the first time Just Me was fired up enough to take the plunge and go for it.  The fear that shackled my dream was gone and I was all of a sudden ready to create and share and hopefully, make my new shop into something special!

So now we have The Ruffled Pear.  And this little blog to go along with it.  It's not perfect but it's something.  We all have to start somewhere, usually somewhere insignificant and ordinary, from what I can tell.  But that doesn't mean we can't grow and make our business, our lives, something beautiful and inspiring.  We just have to start.