This past April 10^th thru April 12^th I hosted a Shabby Chic Workshop.  My new book "The World of Shabby Chic" was to be the framework of discussion, as it touches on "my story, my vision & beautiful homes", therefor setting the path to discuss my childhood thru my business journey and then onto designing homes.

My village at The Prairie and also some of our corporate village team from Los Angeles prepped the Prairie for the arrival of passionate Shabby ladies from as faraway as Australia, Hong Kong, Canada and all corners of the USA.

Ladies started arriving down our long Prairie road…… with so much anticipation of the days ahead.

My first priority was to make everyone feel comfortable. The Prairie all by itself has big welcoming open arms, but I wanted to make sure all felt home, into the world of Shabby Chic. My promise was to share my journey, the ups and downs, the shoulds and shouldn’ts of the 25 years of my shabby life. Around 4pm we all started to congregate in The Rangers Lounge……and the shabby love began. With our common love of ‘the beauty of imperfection” there were no airs or graces…just lots of shabby tales to tell.

We could have chatted the night away but we had quite an agenda. The first of which was the tour of The Prairie, before dinner.

Strolling thru the fields of the Prairie with my shabby sisters was dreamlike for me as well as my guests.  We went into each and every room and I shared my story of how The Prairie came to be.

And then the “behind the scenes” of where shabby treasures get restored for reloving. I had just completed a few weeks of treasure hunting right before the workshop, so our work shacks had some “works in process" to view.

The sun was going down as our tour was complete, and soon it was dinner time. All shabby ladies were given one of my personal cameo as a welcome token…..  I love my cameos so it felt an authentic gesture to gift them to my shabby sisters.

Danny's homemade friend chicken was made with heart and soul, setting the standard for meals to follow...

After dinner we made our way to the mushy sofa area to properly introduce each other to each other. One by one we told our story of who we were, why we were there, and what we hoped to get from the workshop……Every person had their unique reason of what brought them to the world of Shabby Chic.

From that moment on I knew we had a special group…and what a privilege for me to have such a group for the weekend.  There was laughter, there were tears and there was lots of shabby love. Sometime before midnite we all went for some shabby slumber. SHABBY WORKSHOP: PART 2 - COMING SOON