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by christina britt lewis | photography by angela statzer a friendly texan filled out our client contact form a few months ago. this is what he wrote... "Dammit Christina this is always the case. I live in a metro area of 5 million people and I finally find the designer and design company I have been looking for and you are in freaking NC. I cannot begin to tell you how great your redesigned rooms are. so... how do we make this work out?" followed by more words that had tim and me literally laughing out loud. he is a hoot and a half and from "dammit christina" we KNEW we would find a way to make this work out. but not gonna lie, i was scared. what if i didn't plan enough time? what if he was a friendly, funny, serial killer? but the thing that scared me more than poor time management or murder... what if i let him down?  the thing is...we never really forget how mean girls (or insert whatever voice of darkness is in your head) made us feel, do we? we are stronger, smarter, kinder, and better because of them, but their rejection is forever part of our story. so there was a part of me that imagined getting to dallas and finding out i was a real life drew barrymore in never been kissed. but tim says, listen to the ones who believe in you. for years, there weren't many. even my unconditionally loving parents thought we were crazy when we jumped off the ladder, sold everything, moved south, started over, lived uninsured, and invested every penny we ever had into this idea that we were meant to spend our lives giving our gifts back to the world. but there are more now. there are YOU GUYS now. the ones who believe in us say we are meant to help people love coming home. so off we went...  we believe in angela and kelly. they are smart, generous, fun, and ridiculously creative. their voices are louder than the mean girls in my head, the ones who say you are not good enough. their voices are the ones i listen to. their words are gifts. i could not and would not want to fly without them. hehehe...see what i did there?  (photo taken by delta ground crew personnel. no planes were damaged during filming.) we made a little stop on the way to the house. their first time...  ready, GO!  his home is beautiful! and he is as witty and fun in real life as he is on client contact forms. he is so not murdery. his taste is sophisticated and minimalistic. he stocked the frig with our favorite things. and best of all, he completely respected that we are at our best when we have freedom to get barefoot, turn up the avett brothers, and create in solitude. he moved out for two days while we redesigned his home. but first, we needed a few things...  there are so many fabulous stores in dallas. we may have gotten a wee bit distracted by things we loved for ourselves. look what we found at anderson's...   kasey burdell-saliba and ashley joyce at anderson's saved us so much time and money (more about that tomorrow) by telling us where to find the best of the best. you learn so much more by talking to people than you do by talking to siri. thanks to them, we wound up at the swankiest restaurant in town for dinner. they didn't seem to mind that we were all flip flopped and ponytailed either. our waiter, cole, and the manager at mexican sugar made us feel like design stars. i mean, look at this place...  the next morning we were up early and ready to rock the swagger wagon...  way earlier than the habitat restore actually opened. but this sweet texan let us in to shop for books anyway! not sure what is happening with those mats, but we felt welcome...  next we were off to meet tommy at weir's furniture, our client's favorite store. kelly and i fell in love with a chair there. angela has a very hard time tearing herself away from this little beauty....  we don't know if it's "pay way" or "pee wee" but whatever, we LOVE pei wei. and in dallas, they are on every corner. after tofu and veggies over brown rice for lunch, this happened...  somebody may have gotten a bit weepy and called it a "holy moment". i'm not naming names. it's easy to believe this is true when a fabulous client flies you to dallas to redesign a home. but if you had asked us if this was true during all those years when we had so little our kids qualified for free school lunch, we still would have said yup. truth. what you have when you spend your life giving your gifts back to the world is more than money. what you have are wings to fly... you don't have to quit everything and start over to give your gifts back to the world. you can fly right here and right now.
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