Monday, December 17, 2012

Balance is where it's at!


Sometimes, when I go back and read my posts on here, I realize it sounds like all I do is work (lately anyway). This is not true. Matter of fact, that couldn't be further from the truth. I do get  a lot done in the work realm. 

I love my work, but really the main squeezes of my life are two very important M's. Meg and Mambo. Each day, I spend time with Meg and Mambo. I have been walking about three miles a day. I spend time talking with friends. I write letters to my brother. I relax and watch tv. I am currently obsessed with Chicago Fire. I tuned in at first to see Lady Gaga's boyfriend, Taylor Kinney. I have straight girlfriends, who refer to it as Chicago Yum. Turn in, you will see why. Now I am totally hooked. 

I watch Project Runway Allstars. I will watch the regular season in January. I wish my Denver buddy, Jenny Taylor could watch with us! I watch my lady tigers (LSU baby) anytime they have a home game (via an online service that shows live/HD games, thank you technology). We will likely get down to Baton Rouge sometime in the spring to see a few games, live, in person and decked out in purple and gold. 

Meg and I go exploring. We talk about what we want our next house will be like. The plan is to buy a fixer upper. We would love to keep our Denver house if we can & buy a fixer upper in Asheville. We will see. We are in a lease on the rental house (location of photo below) until August 1st of 2013. We have been happy to be free of house projects for a while. I am starting to miss them. (Yes, I am CRAZY, I know).

Meg and I celebrated our 10th anniversary about six weeks ago. We spent a few days in Charleston together. It's was so much fun. We are closer than ever, happy than ever, and we can't wait for the next ten years together.
What I have learned about success is that it's great, but only if you have someone special to share it with. My Meg and Mambo are the reason I do everything I do, every day. I am so lucky, it's ridiculous. 

Thursday, December 13, 2012

very, very bad blogger girl!


As you can see by the date of the last blog entry things have been beyond busy since we got back. I have been busier in the last three months than I have in my entire career. I would say I am blowing up! It's amazing! 
I unpacked us in 2 days so I could launch the new Dunleith website less than a week after arriving. The new site is a big hit. Check it out. The site is wonderful and the photography amazing. Meg and I spent 3 days making these photos last May. It was worth the work for sure. You can book online now, you can see the beautiful rooms, and you can read all about Dunleith and her historic past.
I have created a number of new logos since being back in Asheville. I am in love the new Mother Earth Produce logo. So are the clients. They are SO happy about the new look. That is my number one, main goal, happy clients!

I redesigned the website for Mother Earth Produce. The Mother Earth Produce website. I just finished up the new van graphics for Mother Earth Produce and man the van looks great!  Meg photographed the van a couple of days ago for me. I will post photos of the new look here very soon.
I am working on a logo for Lobo Builders. I had a blast working on this one. I had so many ideas. The client is still trying to decide which one is the one. Stay tuned!
I taught my first of many "How to use Facebook for business" classes in late October. The class went very well. I have a whole series of classes planned for next year, mostly the classes will be about how to use social media. The social media world is changing faster than you can say tweet! 
I am launching my "How the hell to be a foodie and be Gluten -free" blog in Feb or March of 2013. I am working on recipes, photos, and other cool content right now. 
I made over the small measure blog for my friend ashley adams english. I love the design of this blog & Ashley. She is so very awesome and an incredible friend. Ashley Adams English and her amazing blog, small measure
So as you can see 2012 was a very successful year for me, personally and for my work. 2013 is going to be a super year as it's my ten year anniversary of running my own business.  I am so lucky to be on the verge of 10 years of doing what I like everyday. I could not have done it without a lot of love and support from my wonderful clients, my amazing friends and the ultimate partner, Meg Reilley. Happy Holidays to all! 

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Life is sort of back to normal.

Well, normal is a pretty big stretch, seeing as I have blue hair right now,  I work in my pj's as a graphic designer everyday, and I  am a woman with a wife. That's my normal and I adore it.

Life is pretty good lately, although I have been struggling with re-entry to my long time home of Asheville. I don't find struggle to be a bad thing, more like an opportunity for growth and enlightenment. Well, most of the time I see things that way. Change does not happen without a lot of struggling for me. I don't necessary love change, but I do like it as each time I go though a big change, I am lighter, and more balanced on the other side.

Since moving back to Asheville, I am slowing down, working a little less, playing a lot more. I feel like I am getting back to my life before I left Asheville, but I am complete different.

Losing Antonio has changed me forever. Lots of people have said, I don't know what happened. It's a complex story, but let me say this. WE DID NOT GIVE UP ON ANTONIO. Antonio gave up on himself. I have learned you can't force someone to make the right choices, believe me I tried and it did not work. You have to WANT to change, even if you are 15. Antonio is 16 years old now and almost a man. I haven't spoken to him since he left. I still miss him daily. If you want to read about what happened. See this post.

http://7luckyducks.blogspot.com/2011/08/hard-times.html

If you want to know more about how we are feeling about Antonio now, check out this post.
http://7luckyducks.blogspot.com/2012/07/what-i-am-diggin-on-this-week-gratitude.html


Meg and I are both SO happy to be home in Asheville. We are so grateful to be near our friends again. We are so happy to be back to a balanced life where spending time with each other, our friends and our sweet Mambo kitty are the most important things in our life. ta - ta for now!

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

home sweet home. Oh Yeah!

well, well, well, I know I promised to talk about the big news forever ago, back in July and here it is, nearly the end of August.

The big news is, Meg & I moved back to Asheville August 1st! Hooray. We are beyond happy about being home.

Don't get me wrong. Denver is a super city, but a large part of why we moved there was for Antonio to go to High School. Since that didn't work out we decided earlier this year, that we were going to rent our house in Denver out for a year and move home. We are looking forward to a year with no house projects!



We landed for the first week in Asheville in a beautiful cabin, 25 minutes north of Asheville in Fork's of Ivy. It was a magical place to re-enter our beautiful home state. It rained a ton while we were out there, and every evening was misty and beautiful. It was beyond amazing as you can clearly see in the photos. We plan to go back out soon and take photos of the inside of the cabin. The cabin got Meg and I both fired up about building what we have coined as our ultimate house.

Everyone including Mambo the cat loved the cabin. It was a quite, comfortable and relaxing place to land after packing up our life for the 2nd time in a little over a year and driving cross country. We ended up driving from Denver to Baton Rouge and back four times and back and forth to Asheville from Denver twice. Needless to say we are getting our money's worth out of the Kia Soul we bought back in early 2011.

The long term plan is to either renovate an existing house, or build a house from scratch once we sell the Denver house. Either way, the ultimate house will have loads of victorian influences, reclaimed wood/materials and other old, cool stuff included.



We are in a rental house that is a little cutie bungalow in Montford. We have been in the new house for two weeks today. We are loving it. The house sits near a bunch of quite woods and it feels like you on the side of a remote mountain but really you are about 2 minutes from downtown. It's perfect for us!

We were welcomed back by our friends with such enthusiasm. We are very happy to be so loved. Our peeps really missed us and we missed them too!

We are spending loads of time with those awesome friends of ours & settling in to the new house in addition to working of course. I am still swamped with work which is awesome and amazing. I am so very grateful for my wonderful clients.

I am curious who can guess which photos I took (with photo booth on my macbook pro) and which photos Meg took. Clearly, she is the professional.

Alright peeps. I am back to being settled and back to blogging way more often. Have an awesome evening!

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

What I am diggin' on this week. Gratitude...

I am very inspired lately. The sky seems bluer, the trees greener and life brighter than it has looked in a long time. Things are very good for me. I have a great wife, Meg. She amazes me every day with her constant effort to grow stronger, braver, and more awesome. I still have sweet Mambo the cat, after 15 years of snuggle time! I love my work and I have some super duper clients right now. My work has never been better. It's amazing to think about the difference a year can make.

 In a couple of weeks, Antonio will have been gone for a year. It's hard to believe I saw him so often before that. I miss talking to him a lot. There are so many things I wish I had said. I haven't spoken to him since he left, other than a couple of short facebook messages. He stopped responding to me about 6 months ago. I am not surprised. I vowed never to support him making (what I consider) bad choices & I am sticking to my guns. I likely will never make such bold NEVER statements again. I am 38 and still learning these things.

Losing him was so difficult, but necessary. One of Meg's sisters described trying to help him as fighting gravity. Wow, that was right on the money, that statement. Thank you Babs! We needed someone to give words to how it felt to work so hard and still lose him. Meg and I had to evaluate everything we deemed important in our lives after he left. I enjoyed being Antonio's mom. I don't want to be anybody else's mom.

We both believe that service work is the key to having a full spiritual life. It has been tough being without that for the last year. I am still not ready to take on any other service work right now.

The skinny about what happened is Antonio doesn't understand the value of telling the truth. Basically, after he arrived in Denver, all of his stories fell apart. It was heartbreaking. It still stings a year later.  I am still hurt that he was SO dishonest with me so often. I had a false sense of what I had control over and what I didn't.

I miss this little guy. I miss the guy I thought he was. I miss being his mom, but I am happier now than I have ever been. It's just different than what I thought it was going to be like.

The five years I worked with Antonio taught me so much, but the best and most impactful thing was not to speak on an issue unless you personally have experienced said issue. I thought I knew what growing up in poverty in asheville was like. I didn't until I worked with Antonio. I thought I had great ideas about how to impact young black men before I worked with Antonio. My ideas to help him could not over come his background. I thought I had ideas about welfare and what purpose it served. My ideas about poverty and welfare have changed completely. I don't have any big answers, but I do have a clear image of the problems. The problems that exist in Antonio's world are vast.

I guess thats how life goes sometimes.  You live, you learn. 

I pray Antonio makes it to adulthood, relatively safe and sound. I pray that someday there won't be a hole in my heart where our relationship used to be. Time will tell. In the meantime I plan on focusing on every wonderful & amazing thing I have to be grateful for.... like all my great friends, my amazing family, my wonderful partner Meg, my most awesome of all cats, Mambo, and my wonderful life. I will let the universe work out everything else in it's own time. 







Thursday, July 5, 2012

Happy 4th of July!

I hope everyone had a super holiday. This week has been super around here. Meg and I went to Georgetown, CO on Tuesday to ride the loop railroad there. Wow, was it fun. The train is a steam engine built in 1912. It was originally running on a track in Maui. Wow, Maui to the Rocky Mountains. The day was overcast and cool, about 65 degrees. It was a lovely break from the 100 degree temps we were having last week here in Denver.

We tooled around Georgetown, CO after the train ride. It's a quaint little mountain town, in a beautiful valley with rocky mountains on both sides. We toured a hotel that had not changed hardly at all since 1875. It was like stepping into a time machine. The architecture is beyond cool in Colorado mountains towns as the boom for most of them was in the late 1800's. If you are like me and you like Victorian architecture you gotta get to Colorado and do some exploring. Leadville is a killer town for victorian house stalking. It's amazing how many victorian houses are in city of Denver too. A lot of silver tycoons had city houses as well as places near their mines in Leadville and other spots around Colorado. Check out the Baker neighborhood if you are ever in Denver proper. It has the best examples in the city. (in my opinion!)

The 4th of July was a laid back day for us. I worked some in the morning and then in the afternoon we had a family photo shoot. These photos say it all. We are a very lucky family and we love each other SO much. I have the cutest Meg in the whole wide world and the most handsome Mambo in the whole wide world. How did I get so lucky you ask? I have no idea, but I am grateful to have such amazing love and support.

Things in Denver are great. Things are getting ready to change. Today I am happy to be here, in the mile high city. ta ta for now!









Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Our Denver house! Photos! Yes!

well, I do keep my promises, but sometimes things take longer than I had planned. In the case of photos of our new house, it's taken me about 6 months longer than I thought, but hey better late than never, right?





Well, here you are. Our beautiful house. We both love this house. It's a real home. We are so lucky to have found the right place for our Denver experience.

Our house renovations are nearing the end of the line. It's a good thing because neither of us are really up for any more painting, caulking, fixing, or going to home depot for a least a year, maybe two. Justin is also pretty over sawing, building shelves, tiling stuff, and other random everything he ends up doing around here. Have I mentioned that he is world's best ass saver around?

We have some very special guests visiting over the next month, so we are very happy to be able to put our best foot forward.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Bon Iver & Feist at Red Rocks. Check that off my bucket list.....

Man, have we been traveling a lot. Meg and I  recently drove down to the deep south and did a photo shoot of the Historic Dunleith Inn in Natchez, MS. The photos will be used on the new website, in the new print advertising and on a brand new billboard. I am still loving this project.

Meg did an awesome job capturing the spirit of Dunleith. We had a great time on the property for three days and enjoyed getting to know the house and all of it's150 plus years of history.  The new site will be live in early August.

So as most of you know I am a firm believer in balance between work and play.  So, wow, can you say stoked? It's been almost a week since I saw Bon Iver & Feist in concert. I still can't believe I was actually there. I have seen Feist before and this time was just as good, maybe better. The venue could not have been better, Red Rocks in Morrison, CO. The company was the best in the world. Meg and I still enjoy spending time together after almost 10 years together. Our 10th anniversary is this October. We have a pretty special trip planned and loads of changes are happening later this year, but for now, I am happy to be here in Denver, where I can do things, like see my favorite musician  of all space and time.

I feel in love with Bon Iver's music in the winter of 2009. It was a snowy cold winter and I listened to his album "For Emma" all winter long. His music says something I could never say with words. I can tell he has had his heart broken and he has been very low in his life, yet his music shines a beautiful light on that sadness. For me sadness is just as important as joy, as how do you know true joy without sadness?

 I am an artist and I feel all the range of emotions deeply and fully. I will take the sadness any day, so I can feel real love and joy. I consider myself very fortunate for the low times in my life, as they give me perspective about how happy I am today.

It's a rare cloudy day in Denver, our house projects are almost done and summer is here. We have a lot of fun things planned, like seeing Florence + the Machine at Red Rocks, riding the Georgetown loop train, and getting over to the Boulder Farmers Market.

Goodbye for now!


Tuesday, May 8, 2012

More B-day love & what the hell have I been doing besides blogging? A lot, that's what.

The epic b-day trip ended with a two days in Leadville. We had a great time checking out the amazing examples of Victorian architecture, and wandering around a couple of super killer antique stores. I am newly obsessed with purple glass from the 1880's/90's. It is clear when it is first made, but as it is exposed to sunlight, it turns purple depending on how much manganese was in the sand used to make the glass. Until about 1915 sand with loads of manganese was the sand of choice for making clear glass.

French Victorian example

see where this style gets it's gingerbread name. Looks good enough to eat.

Spindle love!

Glass is so much prettier than plastic don't you think?

Cedar Shake love. I want our Neo Victorian tiny house to look a lot like this. 

So, Leadville was beyond interesting. We also visited the matchless mine. If you are interested in the history stuff, this is where Horace Tablor made his fortune. This is also where Baby Doe Tabor lived after Horace died. There are still piles of silver mining leftover crap all around the mine. This crap is from the late 1890's. Can you believe it's still laying around. Crazy!

Here is me sitting on a pile of the leftover stuff.


Now we are back in Denver working hard. I am busy with design work, while Meg is busy working on the house. We have news regarding all of the house updates but that is another post.

Lately, we have finished the trim in the bathroom and kitchen. The kitchen floor is painted a great grey and looks awesome. We fixed two flagstone pathways that were a hot mess. Of course, by we, I mean mostly Justin. I think it's been like three posts since I said he was the greatest feller ever. Well, he still is. Today he put up the sun shades on the deck. Yesterday, he helped me and Meg get the backroom hardwood section of the 3rd bedroom ready to sand. He is also close to being able to lay new tile in the 3rd bedroom and the other bathroom.

What would we do without him you ask? We would be lost, that's what! Justin For President has been our latest chant around the house. He would make a great one by the way!

Someday I will take photos of everything. Someday when the house is clean. Wait, that may never happen but I will take photos!

Meg's sister is in town this week for a cooking class. We did a little day trip to Boulder on Sunday and had dinner here.  http://thekitchencommunity.com/  Can you say OMG, amazing food. I had this yummy roasted chicken with a meyer lemon sauce, over an amazing ramp mash. WOW. Thanks BABS!

Alright, next week, Meg and I are off to photograph Dunleith Historic Inn in Natchez, MS. The inn was built in 1856 so we are pretty stoked to capture the history and scale of the property.
Until next time!!

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Epic Birthday Trip Part II

Day #4 was a pretty lazy day. we walked all around the tiny town of and did a little hike outside the edge of the town. We rented "the Iron Lady" and did a whole lot of nothing.



Then Day #5 was my birthday. Wow. What a super day. We hiked up a trail right at the edge of town. with the most amazing view of the Crested Butte valley and Mount Crested Butte! It was chilly and sunny with some really beautiful clouds. The photos say it all.

After the amazing hike, we headed into town and picked up some gluten free crusts from a local pizza place called the Brick Oven. We went back to the house to make some pizza. As I started prepping for lunch, it started to snow. I would not have believed it was the same day, if I hadn't been there to witness it myself. The pizza I made had some smoked mozzarella, fresh basil and tomato sauce. I made a spinach salad with red peppers and olives stuffed sun dried tomatoes with olive oil and olive juice dressing. I figure having salad meant I could have all the pizza I wanted, right? After our late lunch we watched a movie. Then after the movie it started to clear up and we took a little snowy walk. Yes, this is the same day. It was unbelievable to watch the storm move in and then move back out. It's one of the prettiest things I have ever seen.

The house photo at the bottom is where we stayed for the week. Can you say amazing? The lady who loaned us the house is very generous. We are so grateful, as this trip was one of the top five vacations I have had. Year 38 is really off to an amazing start & I couldn't be happier. My next post is about our time in LEADVILLE, CO. Can you say Victorian goodness overload? Stay Tuned!




Monday, April 23, 2012

Epic Birthday Trip Part I

Usually, I take notes for later reference for my blog posts... or I write the post right away. This past week I didn't do either. I hardly logged on to the computer at all. I unplugged for almost a week. No facebook, no e-mail, no phone. I didn't write anything down. I didn't think about anything do with work or home projects. Unless it was an address of the taco place that had gluten free cheese and green chili tamales or gluten free pizza crusts in Crested Butte, CO.

Well, where to start? The last ten days have been super. I worked on a flagstone patio Saturday before last most of the day. It was super fun. It's about half way done.


Sunday we spent most of the morning at a walk in clinic as Meg stabbed her finger with piece of wood she called a splinter. I call it one big ass piece of wood. It's the splinter all other splinters aspire to become. The mother load if you will. The doctors at the clinic did an x-ray and sent her home with some antibiotics. I am glad we got it checked out, as her pinky looked like it was about to give birth to triplets. Mother and babies are all doing just fine! Ha!

Day #1 of the birthday trip....We drove from Denver, CO to Crested Butte, CO southwest on 285 to Buena Vista, CO. Then we drove over Monarch Pass to Gunnison, CO, then north to Crested Butte. Wow! Colorado blows my mind. The landscape changes from minute to minute. It's like driving though five states in one hour. Meg did not photograph the trip. She just experienced it right along with me. We listened to a lot of XM radio and laughed even more.

We arrived in Crested Butte in the early afternoon. Crested Butte is a town of 1487 (as of 2010) and it at 8,885 feet above sea level.We got settled into our friends house where we stayed for the week. We made a late lunch and sat around looking out at the view from the house. WOW!! Then we took a walk, and made dinner. It is amazing to have nothing to do but be together.

Day #2 in Crested Butte we walked around the cemetery right outside of town. I read the most beautiful poem about death on one of the graves.

Here it is : Why weep for loved one deceased? Our loss is his infinite gain, A soul out of prison released, and freed from it's bodily pain. With songs let us follow his flight and ascend with his spirit above. Escaped to the mansions of light and lodged in the eden of love. This beauty was on the graves of two children, a boy, Joseph, who was 6 and his sister, Florence who died at the age of two.

Day #3 was filled with hiking down to the slate river though mountain lion country. Meg and I sang our favorite vintage LSU cheer to ward off the big cats! The cheer goes...."Hot boudin, cold cous-cous, come on tigers, poosh, poosh, poosh." Clearly it worked because I lived to tell the tale of our walk!




The walk was amazing. There is still a ton of snow on the ground in Crested Butte. Really, things have just started to thaw out up there. We sat by the river for a long time and listened to the water and made mustaches with rocks. As you can see it's about the prettiest place on earth, and this winter. Can you imagine what a summer day must be like?

I will continue the post tomorrow. Next up, my birthday hike and a snowy afternoon. Then it's off to Leadville, CO! Stay tuned!





Thursday, April 5, 2012

Wow, has it been busy around here. I am working on four websites, 2 logos, a catalog, a number of print projects and a few other random projects. I can't believe how busy I am right now! I am so grateful for all the fun projects. I have been working on a new website for Dunleith Historic Inn. It's looking pretty super. Check it out!

We also are almost finished with the new bathroom. So close to photo time! Meg planted ten trees last week, and we are in the process of putting down weed barrier cloth on the whole back yard. Then plan is to build a new flagstone patio in the middle of the back yard, and mulch the rest. We will be planting all sorts of new plants, mostly drought tolerant pine shrubs, and native grasses.

We are also almost ready to paint the kitchen floor. It's the original hardwoods of the house, we had hoped to refinish them, but it wasn't possible. Both of us are stoked to paint them. It's going to look very cottagey. Too bad that's not a word, maybe it should be. We plan on painting them a cool light green color.

Then next up, is to re-do the other bathroom and put down tile and paint the hard woods in the 3rd bedroom.

Yeah, we are super lazy fools! Don't worry we are having fun too. Last weekend the Women's final four was in Denver. We had a BLAST.

Well, hopefully, it won't be 6 weeks before I blog again.

My birthday is in about two weeks and we have a killer week long Crested Butte trip planned. I promise not to be too busy to blog that week.

I hope you all have a super day!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Road Trip overload!

Denver to Lawrence, KS to Saint Louis to Nashville to Asheville to Charleston, to Montgomery, AL to Baton Rouge to Tulsa, OK to Denver. We left January 17th and returned home yesterday February 16th.

We drove almost 4,000 miles. We had an awesome trip. Meg had a few photo shoots. I worked all along the way. We had a super busy trip, hence why I didn't blog like usual. I can't believe what we packed into a month long trip. We saw some friends, and family, flew a kite, ate gluten free falfels (here, best meal I have had in a year http://www.patatspot.com/) played on the beach, saw three lady tigers games, and helped Meg's mom get her hip surgery arranged and over with. Thank goodness Meg's mama had so many great kids. Meg's  three sisters and bro who live in Baton Rouge helped to get her to surgery and then are taking turns staying with her until she gets out of the hospital. She goes home tomorrow and it doing great!

We arrived back in Denver yesterday and I am so glad to be home. We have some exciting things going on around here over the next few weeks, so I promise to blog like a good blogger should!

Friday, January 20, 2012

Road Tripping Again!

Tuesday we drove from Denver, CO to Lawrence, KS. 562 miles of a wonderful day in the KIA soul with Meg. We laughed a bunch and listened to the XM radio. There was snow on the ground for the five hours east of Denver. About an hour outside of Denver is was snowing to the south of 70 west. The sky was grey and beautiful with sun streaming through the clouds. The ground was sparkly and amazing. It was a really beautiful site to see. I wish you could have been there.

We spent the night in Lawrence, KS. What a lovely little town. We had coffee and breakfast at the Merc Co-op, then took a nice walk around the JayHawks campus.

Then we drove 250 miles to Saint Louis. We have been spending the last two days with our friend, href="http://lisacolby.com/">Lisa Colby. She is an amazing jeweler, and she is about the sweetest person you will ever meet. Yesterday we hit up a couple of thrift stores and then had a great Indian/Korean/Napalese lunch in the grove neighborhood at  href="http://everestcafeandbar.com/">everest cafe. What amazing food. The neighborhood was super cute. It's called the Globe neighborhood. Why don't all neighborhoods have a super cute sign at the entrance?


Today it's a 300 mile day. We are off to Nashville, TN. We are going to check out the American Pickers store in Nashville because I am curious. Then we are going to have a late lunch at the Wild Cow veggie restaurant. They have loads of gluten free stuff and it's cheap. Then we are spending the night with some old friends of Meg. We are photographing their family in the morning, then we are off to my hometown, Asheville!! I am so excited to see all my friends. Look out Asheille, I missed ya!


Friday, January 13, 2012

The truth will set you free and be really awesome!

Today I wanted to write about something that has always inspired me. Truth. It may sound trite but from someone who hasn't always been able to be completely truthful about herself, it's a big deal to me these days. I knew I was gay since I was in pre-school, but didn't tell a single person until I was thrown out (this is a story for another blog post at a later date) of the closet when I was 21.

Today I am out in every aspect of my life. All my friends, family, &  clients know I am gay and I am married to my partner Meg. I am proud to be out. I know there are loads of little kids out there who are gay. Today they see all sorts of role models... from Ellen, to Elton John, we are everywhere. I was watching the people's choice awards the other night,  & in the first thirty minutes, there was Ellen and Neil Patrick Harris both openly kissing their partners on T.V.!!! It's so great to see opening gay, happy people. 

A fellow gay I have been super inspired by is Mondo Guerra. I don't know how many of you out there watch Project Runway, but you should start. It's an addictive reality show about fashion designers completing to win a load of cash to start their own fashion line.

Mondo lives his truth. In season 8, during one of the fashion challenges, Mondo reveled he was H.I.V. positive on the show. I was so impressed by this then and now.  I have had the opportunity to meet Mondo. He is a super down to earth sweet heart & is doing a lot of AMAZING work here with Colorado AIDS Project.


The Truth, it's where it's at. Take it from somebody who has tried it, it's awesome to be totally honest all the time.

I am off to finish up a few work things so I can start packing for our road trip. We leave next week. I will be blogging about our trip as always. We are going to be traveling from Denver to Saint Louis to Nashville to Asheville, NC to Charleston, SC to Baton Rouge back to Denver. Yes, it's a crazy trip as usual. While we are away, we are getting a new bathroom, complete with a clawfoot tub! Before and After picks in mid February. Happy Friday everyone!