Saturday Spotlight: Life Behind the Blogger

 Saturday Spotlight: Life Behind the Blogger is a feature done each Saturday that introduces you to a blogger you may already know or a new blogger for you to get to know. This feature gives you a peak into the personal life of the blogger.  Getting to know the special person behind the beautiful blog.

There is so much talent and inspiration in blogland so enjoy getting to know these talented bloggers each Saturday.

Lisa from Texas Decor

Happy Saturday.  This week I am introducing you to Lisa from Texas Decor.  I have just recently met Lisa and just fell in love with her sweet Texas personality and her DIY skills.  The minute I found her blog I knew I wanted to get to know about Lisa.  Please enjoy getting to know Lisa then hop over to her blog to see some of the Wowsie DIY projects she shares!

Hello! My name is Lisa and I blog over at Texas Decor. Kris was so kind to invite me to participate in this fun series. Thank you, Kris! I thought I'd just kind of start at the beginning and move forward. 

I'm a native Texan, born and raised in the Houston area and I've lived here my whole life. I have one sibling, a brother two years older than me. 

I married young, at age 19. We had a lovely wedding in 1990 surrounded by family and friends. I loved planning my wedding and I couldn't wait to become a wife and mother. I can't believe we've been married almost 25 years now!

Here's a never before seen pic of me on my wedding day...

My husband is a deputy fire chief. He's been a fire fighter for a little over 25 years. 

Here he is getting ready to do a presentation in my son's kindergarten class, many years ago. 

Right after we married, I worked for a home builder doing data processing, then later on I moved to the accounting department. After that I worked in a bank for a short while until we decided to start our family. I was very much looking forward to being a stay at home mom. 

Our first son was born in 1994. We didn't find out the gender and it was fun to be surprised at the birth.

Our oldest son at one year...

Then almost exactly 5 years later, we welcomed our second son. 

Our youngest son, age two...

Our oldest is now 20 and is a junior in college getting his bachelors degree in business (supply chain management, to be exact).

Our youngest is now 15 and is a sophomore in high school. He's interested in all things computer related and also movie production. It'll be interesting to see what kind of degree he wants to pursue. 

  We've lived in three homes since we got married. These are some pics of our second house. This was when I first became interested in gardening. 

See those yellow flowers below surrounding a purple plum tree? That all happened because of a Target ad. You see, I was browsing the ads one day and Target had an advertisement of some outdoor toys in a backyard. In the pic, there were a ton of yellow flowers surrounding a purple plum tree and I thought it was so pretty, I recreated it in my own backyard. :) 

These were taken before digital cameras, so I had to take a picture of the pic in the photo album, so the quality isn't that great. Sorry about that. :)

Below is another pic of that same backyard.

My mom is a Master Gardener for the Houston area. She's the reason I got interested in gardening. I remember she used to have tons of yellow lilies lining our back fence and she would clip some for me to take to my teachers at school. 

Below are some pics of my mom's gardens.

And here are some pics of my own backyard...

I've always been interested in interior design too. I have kind of an interesting connection to Frank Lloyd Wright. You see, my great grandmother met Frank's sister when they both attended the Chicago Art Institute. They became friends and after my great grandmother got married, she and her husband moved into the house next door to Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois. 

My grandmother was born while they lived at this house. Although my grandmother was quite younger than the Wright children, she was still invited to parties at their home and she remembers going to a recital in the music room at the Wright house once. 

My great grandmother was a very successful illustrator and was even named top female artist one year. Once, Frank Lloyd Wright's sister needed help to finish illustrating a book she was contracted to do (I think she became ill) and my great grandmother finished it for her with no credit. My great grandmother did a lot of advertising illustration too. 

Anyway, after the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation took over Mr. Wright's home and studio, they eventually bought my great grandmother's house next door to use as their offices. 

My grandmother was always interested in design (maybe she got that from living next door to Frank all those years ago) and she passed that love on to me. I remember how I loved watching shows like The Brady Bunch and Bewitched, not so much for the show itself, but for the design element. I loved to study their houses and gardens. I was always interested in how they arranged their furniture and how they landscaped their fake backyards. Remember Alice's red kitchen and those striped awnings in front of Samantha's house? Those are the things I recall about those shows. 

I remember the first thing I did when we got our very first computer was to print out the floor plans for Samantha's house on Bewitched. Funny, but true. :) Some website had all kinds of simulated floor plans from famous TV shows and I loved browsing it! I could spend hours pouring over floor plans. 

I recently had fun re-doing our master bath in soft grays. You can see that makeover HERE

We also did a big makeover on our master bedroom. There used to be a huge computer desk right in front of those windows below. I figured out a way to move the computer inside that cabinet and the printer went into a night stand. I was so happy to finally get rid of that big desk in there! You can click HERE to see the whole bedroom makeover. (including how we hid the computer and printer)

I truly am doing what I've always wanted to do, be a wife and mother. I really enjoy being home more than anywhere else and I love decorating my home.

I've been reading blogs for about 6 years now. I knew I wanted to start my own when I kept catching myself saying things like "If I had a blog, I'd talk about this home improvement project we just completed" or "If I had a blog, I'd do a post about this great sale going on." I've learned so much from reading blogs and I wanted to pass that on to others. I absolutely love to share money saving tips on my blog. We do a lot of do it yourself projects and I'm always willing to share how-to's and sources.

We just recently painted our kitchen cabinets and everything we learned came from reading tutorials on blogs. It amazes me how generous bloggers are in sharing their techniques and skills. 

Below is a "before" pic...

And here's the "after"...light and bright! You can click HERE to see the big painted kitchen cabinet reveal, along with a link to the tutorial.

I love to blog about home decor, holiday decorating, recipes, household tips, gardening and our pets. I recently put my home tour up on my blog and installed a little button on the sidebar so it can be viewed any time. It took me a year and a half to get that home tour button up, but I'm so glad I finally did it. 

I love to share steals and deals on my blog too. If I come across a good deal while out shopping, I can't help but share it with the world. Sometimes I'll stop right then and there and snap a pic of a good deal and post it to Instagram (you can find me on Instagram @texasdecor) or my blog, so others can get in on the deal too. I love when readers email me to let me know they got a great deal because I blogged about it.

Of course I can't leave out our sweet little Holly cat. She's two years old and is the cutest little thing. She has us laughing daily at her antics. :)

I grew up with cats. I got my first one at age 4 and took him with me when I got married. His name was Mitten and he was 19 when he passed. Here's a pic of our last two cats, Caesar and Chelsea...

They were 16 and 15 when they passed. They were indoor/outdoor cats. Holly is our first totally indoor cat. Holly makes it onto the blog every now and then and she even pops up on my Instagram feed. :)

Well, I hope I didn't totally bore you with all this! Thank you again, Kris for including me in your blogger spotlight. I feel honored to be included with all the other bloggers. :) 

~Lisa

Thank you Lisa for sharing your home, blog, and wonderful family with all of us.  This was a fun feature to get to know you better.  Have a wonderful rest of the week end everyone.  Thanks for stopping by for another fun Spotlight this week.

Kris

:)

Happy Valentines Day

Love is in the Air.  As we enter into the Valentine's Week I want to wish all of you a really wonderful week full of love and hugs and all things sweet.

source

Be sure to come back on Saturday for Spotlight.  I have another special blogger for you to get to know.

Happy Valentine's Day

Kris

:)

Saturday Spotlight: Life Behind The Blogger

 Saturday Spotlight: Life Behind the Blogger is a feature done each Saturday that introduces you to a blogger you may already know or a new blogger for you to get to know. This feature gives you a peak into the personal life of the blogger.  Getting to know the special person behind the beautiful blog.

There is so much talent and inspiration in blogland so enjoy getting to know these talented bloggers each Saturday.

Barbara from 21 Rosemary Lane

February 7th


It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Barbara from 21 Rosemary Lane Blog this week.  Her story will touch your heart in so many ways.  Please enjoy getting to know Barbara and then hop over to her blog to say Hi and see her beautiful blog.



Hello and happy Saturday Junk Chic Cottage and Must Love Junk followers! My name is Barbara and I am the creator of the blog 21 Rosemary Lane. I want to first thank Kris for the invitation to participate in this unique and interesting series which spotlights bloggers from around the blogosphere. What a great way to get to really know more about one another. We all have our back stories and well this one is mine, so here I go!

I grew up just outside of the city of Philadelphia in a little suburban town called Glenside. The same town in fact where my father grew up. My mother was raised in the coal region of Pennsylvania, in a place called Mahanoy City. I am the oldest of three children.

(kim, steve and me 1984)

Life was pretty normal for me in this little town of Glenside. I had my friends, went to school, played sports, was a cheerleader with my best friend Alison, and hung out at the dime whenever I could. All in all my life was filled with pretty much normal low key sort of kid stuff. 

(circa 1971)

That was until summer after I finished the 8th grade. During the summer of 1975 I was diagnosed with large abdominal growth and had to have surgery that August to remove a 10 lb tumor. The tissue samples were sent off to various labs and all came back positive with some cancer cells consistent with a type of tumor called a teratoma. So as I began my freshman year of high school, I also started my first round of chemotherapy treatments. My parents were devastated, but my mother is a women of great faith, so she hung in there with faith and prayers, and her prayers were eventually answered. As it turned out, the chemo treatments saved my life. Then at the age of 25 I was re-diagnosed with multiple tumor growths, but again thanks to the chemo I received as a child the tumors were all benign. 

This series of events in my young life ultimately led me to the medical profession. After college I went back to school to become a Radiologic Technologist. Then at the tender age of 38, I went back to college again to become a Registered Nurse. 

I am here to tell you that it is never too late to do anything!

The same year I graduated nursing school I married this incredibly wonderful guy from New Jersey, my husband Chris (aka Mr. Rosemary Lane), and we settled down in Hunterdon County to begin our life adventures together.

(me with my sister Kim on our wedding day, november 30, 2002)

First we decided to do a little traveling so we went to...

London

Athens 

Bermuda

The great Southwest

and Niagara Falls

We even took a 10 day long trip to Ireland which is where my husband's family ancestry originates. 

We also knew we wanted a family, however given my past medical history plus the fact that I had just turned 40, we decided to adopt.

In 2003 we began international adoption proceedings and in 2005 we made the trip to Asia and spent a month in Semey, Kazakhstan adopting our two children, Grace and Michael. 

(leaving the orphanage december 5, 2005)

(our family day december 5, 2009)

Like I mentioned before it is never too late to do anything, so at age 44 I became a first time mommy.

You are also never too OLD to try anything new. As a matter of fact I beleive that the older I get the more brave I become in trying something out of my comfort zone. Instead of thinking "I can't do that", I think "Why can't I do that?" 

So the day before I turned 50 I celebrated my milestone by running in the New York City marathon!

(november 6, 2011)

Since I was a little girl I always loved anything to do with decorating and design. Whether I was admiring the beautiful architecture of Mary Richard's Minneapolis apartment, or the smart looking ensembles she would sport, I was always visually driven and drawn to design.

(MTM show)

And I was completely enamoured by decorating and cooking magazines.

My parents were also the original DIYers. They remodeled every room in both of the homes where I grew up. My mother would design it and my father carried out the construction of what ever project they were tackling. We lived on a very tight budget back in those days so my father would have to get pretty creative in finding any way he could to build it, paint it, mold it, or whatever else it, just to achieve the desired goal of the finished project. Hiring out was never an option for my parents. 

Well as they say, the nut never falls far from the tree!! 

As a grade schooler I would sit and draw for hours. Actually I enjoyed art all the way through high school along with the subjects of science, gym, and any cooking class I could find! According to my mother, I inherited the cooking and baking gene from her mother, my grandmother.

So in 2011 I decided to throw my heart and soul into blogging and created 


I not only had the desire to share some of my life's passions, but also wanted some way to document the precious time we had with our children while they were growing up. I want Grace and Michael to always remember what their home and bedrooms looked like, the adventures they had been on, how to make their favorite dishes, and of course some of my mommy thoughts and feelings. 

I consider blogging my greatest outlet for creativity and along the line I discovered how much I love photography as part of this creative process. For my 50th birthday I received a Cannon Rebel LED camera from my hubby, and then immediately enrolled myself in a photography class at our local community college.

(new orleans french quarter)

(cape may nj)

(atlantic city nj)

Lately I have also begun to really find my style ...

Not sure what you would call it. Maybe an ecclectic bag of painted and re-purposed cast-off items in a suburban cottage style, with just a touch of bling! 

(Or something like that.)

But whatever it is or whatever you want to call it, it sure does feel like home to me.

I would love it if you'd stop by sometime to visit me over at 21 Rosemary Lane.

Thank you again Kris for allowing me to share some of myself here in your Spotlight: The Life Behind the Blogger series.

Have a great weekend everyone!!!

XO

Thank you Barbara for sharing yourself with all of us.  It is so fun to see you live life to the fullest.  Love that you travel, have changed up careers and even with all the medical issues you still could have a wonderful family through adoption.  Loved sharing your story this week.  Thank you sweet friend.

Have a wonderful rest of the week end.

Kris