Unemployed and wondering, "What's Next?!?"

My rustic sign. Need to work on my glue gun skills...

It's been 26 days since I lost my dream job, somewhat unceremoniously. While I've been grappling with all THAT, I've also finally had time to consider making Twig & Bloom, LLC a reality.

What the hell is Twig & Bloom you ask? Well, after my first few stumbling attempts at an elevator speech --- how the heck does one describe taking beloved hobbies and putting them inside a retail store? --- I spent some time this afternoon roughly crafting the gist of T&B. So here goes: 

Foraged greens bundled and ready for the home.

"Twig & Bloom represents a love for comfortable homes and glorious gardens. It is my wish to share the joy I find in those spaces with people who are seeking comfort and relaxation in similar spaces. Twig & Bloom is about finding unique décor – both new, upcycled, and handcrafted – to personalize Helena’s homes and bringing the beauty of greenery and fresh flowers into our homes and lives."


Yeah - it's still rough and barely captures the ideas floating around in my head, but bottom-line is that I love my home and I love my garden. My perfect day is puttering in both, creating a new vignette, pulling weeds, potting up a decorative urn, and rewarding myself with a delightful libation. I want to be comfortable inside and outside my home and it constantly amazes me that people who have beautiful homes and yards lack either the time (that would be me 26 days ago) or the imagination/vision to add warmth and joy to the places they inhabit.

Holiday pendants. Had so much fun cutting up the dictionary.

I also love my friends (I have outstanding shopping skills for those little things that add up into comfort). Small rewards of friendship are so hard to find sometimes in a small mountain town in Montana. The perfect card, let alone an affordable luxury that brightens someone's day can be a hassle to locate. So what do most people do? They let the moment pass - the amount of energy required surpasses the meaningful, but fleeting impulse to shine a ray of light into an otherwise dull day. 

Don't let the tidiness in this pic fool you.

Twig & Bloom, LLC isn't there yet. Right now it's a figment of my imagination and a basement full of "found" goodies waiting to be transformed and personalized. (And an upstairs nook crammed full of fabric, dried flowers, crafty papers, and jewelry findings.) There are so many things I would love to do with this idea, but it's a daunting undertaking and a scary proposition in the big bad world of Etsy, Amazon, and Google-it-until-it's-cheap-enough. 

Can a small town like Helena, MT support a creative outlet and retail store that trades in whimsy and happiness? That remains to be seen, but I keep plowing forward. First stop? Hopefully a vintage craft sale in Kalispell, MT on March 21st hosted by The Prairie Sisters. Shhhhh - keep this a secret. I still haven't submitted my first-ever, this-is-fer-realz vendor application, complete with pictures and booth set up and custom crafts and vintage items and...and...and...

I have the vapors now. Will finish my December margarita and call it a night.