Today is a very special day! I am excited to share the newest part of my adventure with you. Most importantly, I am dedicating this journey to my Savior. I pray that I can serve others and share His love in every interaction and relationship I have. Jesus is showing me so much of who He desires me to be as His child, and I am still learning and growing as I follow Him in this adventure.
Eight years ago, my husband of one year, Doug, and I moved out of our little apartment and bought our first home. It was bad y’all… as in our dear, sweet realtor couldn’t hold back the heebie jeebies as she showed us the property. I could describe just how bad it was, but then you would all know for sure we were absolutely crazy for buying it and even crazier for moving right on in. If I had only considered starting a blog then of our adventures on that remodel journey… well, I feel sure that we would have been the perfect reality tv show. It would have been called How To Live With Lawn Chairs As Your Only Furniture For Two Years. But as months… ok years went on, we made it our home and I truly found so much joy in planning and designing every square inch. Even the underside of every shelf in every closet had a fresh coat of paint, we widened some doorways and walled in others, installed new lighting, replaced hardwood flooring twice (thank you leaking water heater), tore out old cabinets, salvaged other old cabinets, dug ditches and landscaped, and of course about a thousand other things. Much of this was with the wonderful help of our families’ contributions of expertise, sweat and sacrifice. We didn’t even have a TV… just seasons of The Office on DVD (hello, I could not have made it through without Jim and Pam by my side) which played on a laptop, balanced on a plastic table, with a bed sheet push-pinned to cover the window. Welcome to our Friday date nights. Anyways, when the projects were (mostly) done, enough to lay out some rugs and bring in the real furniture, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep! I was finally able to unpack and design with what I had been collecting for over two years! With no HGTV, Pinterest or Instagram, designing looked a lot less “organized and inspiring” and a lot more like “here are all the clippings I snuck out of the waiting room magazines and ok yes I did just take a picture of your bathroom for inspiration”. My Idea Notebook was overflowing with tattered fabric swatches and wrinkled sketches. My Sherwin Williams color swatch book traveled with me everywhere in my purse… pretty sure they finally gave up on me ever returning it.
About the time the house came together, Pursuing Eden started growing, and I’m talking about an all-in, have no life kind of busy, where people think you are either amazingly driven or dysfunctionally consumed. By the way, both were at times true. God has been teaching me a lot about balance. Within five years, we were growing at Canton First Monday, renting to hundreds of clients a year, buying an actual storefront, designing and decorating interiors, and gaining some fantastic employees. Then in 2014, God gave us our biggest blessing yet, our daughter, Arden Rose.
Through all of this, I have realized it’s time to branch out as a stylist to better serve you. In many ways, I’m doing the same things I’ve already been doing through Pursuing Eden, but now it is clearer and more defined.
I will specifically focus on styling events, photoshoots and interiors. Now, clients have more choices and options, and I am able to travel. Not sure exactly what a stylist is? Click on the website tabs to learn more! Did you know? A stylist is not an event planner or coordinator, but a stylist is a designer who works with props and decor to create a cohesive, unique space.
Happy you’re here!
KC
Photography: Brandi Smyth
Venue: White Sparrow Barn
Florals: Mandy Cathey
Styling: Me