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Happy New Year! Welcome 2013!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! As we start 2013, I want to thank each and every one of you for being here with us and for being a part of this awesome adventure! Here is a little history on the birth of Southern Jeweled for those of you that do not know how we came to be… Southern Jeweled was not a spur of the moment decision, it was well over a year of “I really want to do this as soon as I can get it ready” an idea and process in the making. You see I (Lori) have been a vintage junkie my entire life. As my mother would say I just have “an old soul” like my dady and I completely agree. Half of the stuff I have came from him! Truly, I have always had old stuff that I loved to collect more of and then I married a man that loved to “pick” a little too. Our ideal date was to hit an estate sale or auction and then go to dinner before heading home to unload our finds and smile over the treasures and the stories they told!!!  After we married and combined our homes into one bigger one with a few acres, I had more room to put stuff! Then my youngest son got really into junking as well and oh boy did we pick! The problem was they wanted to re-sell stuff and I wanted to hang on to it and wasn’t really sure why? (Hoarder much?! Probably so!) I mean as much as I clean out and re-arrange our home, I still could never use it all. But! Someday... There was a purpose and I just knew it! ;) Then one day while looking through my favorite junk and crafting magazines there it was “Vintage Rentals”. Hot hot hot stuff in California and as I found out many other places but none within a hundred miles of here! So I started researching and planning and unpacking boxes and boxes of junk that I had been hauling around forever! Cleaning out an old trailer house that we have on our property and making room to display it all. Dragging it all over our property to play with ideas! Cleaning up some of it, painting some of it. Taking lots and lots of pictures and then researching a little more. After more than a year had passed since I had mentioned it to my husband he finally said to me one day, “what are you waiting for?” “The Real Estate market is down (as I am also a Realtor) and you have extra time on your hands that you haven’t had in a long time and you could use the money to supplement your Real Estate income.” My reply was “But I’m not really ready yet, I have so much more to do!” He then said, “If you keep waiting until you are ready, it may never happen.” “This kind of business will always be changing, building, growing in different directions, just do it!”  The light came on, my aha moment! His faith in me and my junk was all I needed to finally jump! I had built the website and the facebook page and was just waiting to push the publish buttons. March of 2012 we launched and what an exciting ride it has been! Of course I am still not ready… haha  As I said, I am a Realtor and my junking hours are limited but each month as the photogs and clients come and go, I manage to get ready for the next ones even if it is at midnight with a spot light outside! They don’t seem to mind the fact that we are always a work in progress and a mess at times as long as they can get to the backdrop setups and create beautiful pictures for their clients! Thank you all so much for your support and encouragement in this little junk sharing dream of mine! I love to create the setups and then watch as people play and laugh while getting those moments captured by their photogs! Thank you 2012 for all of the blessings that you brought! Welcome 2013! We may not ever BE READY, but we will GET IT READY just in time, each time, for the next event! So much fun ahead!!! God Bless you all!