I saw this on one of my recent Facebook memories:
"In elementary school when asked what I would do with $1 million, I always wrote buy a house with modern furniture and an in the ground pool."
I'm sure I found it written in something my mom had saved from elementary school. I have no memory if specifically writing that although I do remember that was how I pictured my life as adult.
What struck me, however, is that without a million dollars, I made this happen. As my hairdresser Amanda said, as she was cutting my hair last week, "You built it."
I'm sure in elementary school I thought it would take a million dollars to make my dream come true. But now what I understand is that it really takes a belief in a dream and the willingness to work toward that dream. I call my house, like I do my Chelle Summer brand, "modern design with a retro twist."
It hasn't always been easy. The hardest part has been the patience in learning to build something that might not happen in one day. It took me a long time collect the furniture, to figure out how some of it could be redone to be made new again, and also to select colors that worked in the rooms. There have been mistakes a long the way but I can see where the constant rearranging of my bedroom growing up, the Barbie houses my younger sister Denise and I built, and just the freedom to dream got me here.
There is always much more to do– and always something to fix and update– but when I look around, I'm proud of where I live and how far it came from essentially a blank slate with a lot of potential.
It's just one of my dreams I've made come true. There are more to come.