THANK YOU, MOM, FOR MAKING ME ONE OF THE 30%

When I was little, all I wanted to do was draw. I would sit for hours and draw the covers of my Disney movies. My Mom bought me every drawing medium you could think of – crayons, charcoal, color pencils, markers, etc. I remember my first set of ‘expensive’ colored pencils. They were from a small art shop downtown and I might as well have won the lottery that day. Much like today, all I wanted to do was create things.

My Mom saw this quality in me and she fed it every chance she got. I was in every art class in school and every art class in summer school. If there was an Art Cart event at a nearby park, we were there. Every gift was an art supply. I could sit for hours and paint, draw, sculpt, cut, and paste.

The trend continued into high school. I remember going into the art studio as soon as I got done eating lunch. I would spend the remainder of my lunch period gluing tiny pieces of glass onto a wooden frame to make a mosaic mirror or making glass beads with a blowtorch. One day my Mom came home from work with an application in her hand for the local Dairy Queen. She had seen in the newspaper that they were hiring a cake decorator. She knew if was the perfect job for me. I filled it out, got the job, and spent the remainder of my high school years decorating cakes at not only the Dairy Queen, but the Piggly Wiggly as well. (Yes, the big time in cake decorating, I know! ;)

When it came time to discuss college, it was never a question. I was going and I was going for art. I don’t even remember trying to make this decision. It was like everyone, including myself, knew all along that this was the direction I was taking. I didn’t realize how lucky I was to simply KNOW what I wanted to do with my life until I saw the many college students around me struggling to figure out what they wanted to do with their lives, starting with their generals and hoping to figure it out by the time they finished their first two years.

So here I am, an adult. Like most of the world, I spend about 1/3 of my life working. According to Forbes.com only 30% of Americans actually like their jobs. So, I guess what I am trying to say is, THANK YOU, MOM - for making me one of the 30%. Thank you for noticing my passion and nurturing it. Thank you for guiding me into a career I love. I only hope to notice my own children’s passions and nurture them in the same way.

As parents, we all know feeding our children's passions in not always cheap, so I have teamed up with Consumer Crafts to give away a $100 gift card to consumercrafts.com! Consumer Crafts is my go-to online craft store with everything you could want or need at the best prices. 

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