From Then to Now!
Recently someone asked me to write about how I became interested in food, entertaining and fashion and why I decided to start a blog about it. This post is my answer to that question?
I have always loved to cook, but became seriously interested in food when I was about 20 years old. I was very young and newly married and I started making homemade cinnamon rolls to sell to anyone that would buy them. I would make the cinnamon roll dough when I got home from work, roll them out and put them in the pan before bed. I would get up very early to bake them and take them with me to work to deliver. I worked in an office and people always wanted fresh, hot, cinnamon rolls. Shortly after that, I discovered Martha Stewart. I wanted to do everything that she did, and I give her total credit for inspiring me to want to live a life filled with delicious food and be surrounded by beauty!
Image from The Recipe Critic
After my daughter Lauren was born, I quit my job to stay home with her and that was when I began to do some small catering jobs and really tried to make everything look as beautiful as Martha did! Slowly my business grew, and soon I was catering everything from luncheons to weddings. I found myself a single mom during all of this and had to rely on my catering to pay the bills. There were many nights that I didn't even go to bed, especially around Christmas. I had so much to learn about how to say no and also how to charge for my time.
Image from Pinterest
I got married again and continued to cater, still not charging what I should have for my time and ingredients, but staying as busy as ever. I had two more daughters soon after and eventually realized that it was just too much to try to be a mom and have a catering business. Looking back, I probably could have done it if I had been a better business person, but I gave up catering for the time being. I still cooked for my family and really enjoyed trying new things. We bought a bigger house and I was fortunate to have a fabulous kitchen and I really had a chance to experiment with new recipes.
While living in our new (old) home, I also had the chance to develop my love of decorating. I had and still have the best designer and she has taught me so much about design. Together, we made that house come together with a mix of old and new, and my style started to develop. I realized that I love an eclectic mix of furniture and accessories and also that I love color. I began to buy decorating books and pour over magazines, tearing out pages and trying to replicate rooms that I had seen in magazines, in our home.
Five year later, we moved again, into the house that we live in now. The girls were very busy, which meant that I was too, but I still continued to cook. We had an old and antiquated kitchen that I lived with for several years and finally was able to gut and redo from the ground up. We are still working on this old house that we live in now and I have so many ideas that I am slowly working on. I think that living in an old house is a wonderful thing because it allows you to take care of and preserve history. My vision for the house is constantly changing, but I still love a traditional look...with a twist. I never want our home to feel stuffy or old, but to continue to live and change.
I posted here about our home being featured in the upcoming holiday issue of Southern Home Magazine! I can hardly wait!
Our living room and dining room from Leigh Jones Interior Design.
I believe that when you have a love of beauty that it spills over into every area of your life and that includes fashion. I can remember as a teenager, keeping every issue of Vogue that I could get my hands on and reading those issues over and over again. As an adult, I began to develop an obsession with shoes and that clearly continues to this day. I am as girly as they come and love makeup and clothes and anything related. I try to keep up with trends and incorporate them as age appropriately as possible, although I truly believe that every woman should wear what makes her feel beautiful. I am currently working on a series of blog posts about developing a personal style. I hope you'll continue to check back and read those posts as I publish them!
I love this adorable outfit from Anthropologie!
All of this brings me to today, and the reason that I started Crazy Blonde Life. I have always known that my three beautiful daughters would be leaving and creating lives of their own. I wanted to start something that would fill my time and allow me to write about and share the things that I feel passionate about. I never expected to love blogging as much as I do and I never thought of it as a business or expected that catering would be a part of it. My blog will officially be 2 years old next month and bySuzanne Catering has become my second catering business. I am beyond excited about what life has waiting for me.
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