"Moments That Shaped Me: Fun Stories and Insights from My Past"

I grew up in the Central Valley of California, also known as the agricultural valley. I was surrounded by acres upon acres of farmland sitting at the base of the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains. It definitely was not the LA or San Francisco that everyone imagines when you say you're from California. I lived less than a quarter of a mile from the Kings river so as I child I enjoyed going to the river with my dog and catching things in my net and throwing them in my bucket that I could bring back to my old fashioned claw foot bathtub, also known as my pond. I lived on a two acre piece of property that was completely surrounded with rows upon rows of grapes grown to make raisins for Sun-maid. Acres of Nectarines, plums, peaches and all types of delicious stone fruit were all right there surrounding my home. To this day there is nothing like picking a tree ripened piece of fruit and eating it. So much so that within weeks of moving into our new home I immediately bought some fruit trees and got them in the ground...hoping to pick my own fresh fruits here in Georgia.

My mother was an amazing gardener and loved growing so many vegetables that she could go into town and sell some of her bounty to the local people who absolutely loved when she showed up with fresh goodies to be had. She was a very talented woman who knew how to do many of the good old fashioned trades like canning her fresh produce, freezing pre-blanched vegetables, or freezing sweet fruits in portions ready to make some delicious baked goods. She loved making candies and cookies at Christmas, a tradition that I grew to love myself. She was never scared to dive into home renovation projects while my Dad was at work, or get her hands dirty creating her beautiful Flower Gardens. These are all traits that I am so proud to have learned and carry on from the inspiration of my Mom.

My father was the Controller at a very large packing shed in the Central Valley for the majority of my life. His Boss had a race car so we spent many Friday nights driving to the local raceway to watch the races. I always enjoyed going into the pits, and will never forget that his boss would always have some Strawberry or Grape Welches Sodas in the Ice chest for me whenever we showed up. I felt so special because everyone else got beer but he always remembered my soda. It's funny the memories that really tend to stick with us. My Dad had a great plan to get all of us kids to go to college. When we were of working age, we all had to work at least one summer in the Packing shed. No air conditioning in a large metal Packing shed in a valley that gets up to 112 in the summer, sometimes working 12 hour days and not knowing your schedule for the next day till the end of your work day really made you realize that maybe college was a good idea because that was some hard work! It worked very well because we all ended up going to college! On days that my Dad was off work, we would often take day trips to the mountains for the coast, or sometimes we would all pack into the car and literally just drive around looking at pretty houses...I think that might just be what started my love of Real Estate!

I knew right out of High School that I wanted to be a photographer. I had taken every photography class possible, even hopping on a bus and going to another High school that offered a more advanced photography program. I learned photography using my Fathers old Pentax camera that he had actually taken with him when he went to fight in Vietnam. I still have it to this day because it is very sentimental. I went to college starting off in Visalia California at a local community college to get a lot of my general education classes out of the way, then I headed to Monterey California for a couple years and actually started to major in Marine Biology. I unfortunately found out the school I had moved to was not an accredited college yet, so all of those high level math classes I was taking and tough biology classes would not transfer to a different college if I decided to get my Masters degree. I took that as a sign that I was meant to follow my dream and become a photographer. The local community college had a great photography program so I studied all different types of photography mediums, learned alternative processes, many that are now pretty much obsolete with the coming of the digital era. While in college some of my art was displayed at a local art gallery in Carmel California, that felt like a big win. I loved living in Monterey, it is undoubtedly some of the most beautiful coastline in California! For fun I would often take off on adventures driving down the famous Pacific Coast Highway where I could take in all the stunning scenery. In order to continue my education I moved down to Long Beach California where I would finish up getting my Bachelors Degree in Fine Arts. I learned so much from taking additional classes that were more business focused while working my way toward my degree. I absolutely loved the ceramic arts and of course photography. You would think an art degree would be easy, but it actually had lab classes that were two to three times longer than traditional classes so it was a very busy class schedule. I ended up graduating with Honors. I absolutely HATED living in the LA basin. I was a small town girl and could not wait to get out of the busy and crowded Los Angeles area, as a matter of fact, I had rented a house back home 12 days before I even graduated college... I wanted OUT! It's funny because it was easier to get to college if I rode the city bus than to drive, at least 15 times in the short couple years in Long Beach I had so many people comment on how friendly I was, or to even say “You aren't from around here are you?”. People are not super friendly in the big cities and you could definitely tell I was not one of them.

After graduating college I went on to open my own photography studio. I owned and operated Human Nature Photography for 18 years. I absolutely love people and I loved being able to capture such wonderful moments in peoples lives. I loved photographing Weddings and over the years I had the honor of photographing over 400 of them. I also did photography of Families, Children, High School Seniors, Maternity Sessions, and Boudoir Photography. I have so many great memories that go along with all of those sessions. There is just something special about creating an image that can capture a fleeting moment, or a milestone in peoples lives. I knew I was capturing memories that would be treasured for years to come. I truly enjoyed what I did, and I was so proud to own my own business. All the skills I had learned in College really came through to help me run a successful business. I had taken classes in Accounting, Advertising, Business Management, and even creative writing. All things that enabled me to do anything and everything needed for my business. You are probably wondering...if she loved it so much why did she give it up? Once things became digital and it became the custom to just upload the sessions to a website for the customers to view their photos, I started to miss the moment of the reveal. In the beginning people would come to my studio to see their images for the first time. I would watch as tears of happiness flowed down their cheeks over the images I had created. It felt so wonderful to see that joy that my images brought to them. Well in the new digital era I had the joy of the interaction during the photoshoots or weddings, but I was missing that happiness of seeing them enjoying looking at their photos. With cell phones becoming so advanced, now everyone was a photographer, and things just were not the same. I also started to notice that as I got a little older my knees started to get bad from so many years of squatting and bending into weird positions to photograph children, weddings and everything in between. At that point I felt that the time had come to pass the torch to the next generation of photographers.

The Outside of My 1800 Square foot Photography Studio

One of my Old Phone book ads... remember those... actual books with phone numbers in them!

Now... you might remember in the beginning of my story that my family used to drive around looking at houses when I was a kid. Oh how I enjoyed looking at the different styles of homes, the beautiful landscaping that people did, just taking in the variety and the possibilites was exciting to me, even as a young kid. While in College I discovered that delivering Pizzas was a fairly lucrative job for a student. For all but one of my college years I delivered Pizzas. Man was that a fun job! But what was funny is the thing I loved most about it was that I was driving around looking at houses and listening to good music my entire shift. When people would open their doors I would get a glimpse into their inside world. Some clients would even invite me in to share their beautiful homes. I was not your average delivery person so I had lots of wonderful regular clients that loved me and always enjoyed seeing me. This kind of reveals why being a Realtor is the perfect job for me. I get to combine three of my greatest loves...working with people at very important stages of their lives, getting to go around showing them lots of beautiful homes, and the very best part is seeing that because of the great job I did someone can now move onto the next stage of their lives, whether that means moving on from the home you just sold, or moving into your new house that you get to make a home. It really resonated with the love I had for photography. Thankfully I had the experience of being self employed all those years because it takes a lot of dedication and self discipline to be a Realtor. You have to stay on your toes and be available to so many different stages of transactions all going on at once. While at the same time truly caring about each and every client and making sure that they know how important they are to you.

Once I decided to become a Realtor I really dove right in. I continued to run my photography studio in the beginning to be able to afford the advertising that would help get my career off to a great start. Once things were up and rolling, my career began to really take off! I sold 32 homes in my first two years of being a Realtor. Everything from Tiny mountain cabins to successfully facilitating the sale of a multi-million-dollar sprawling mountain estate! I had so many fun experiences heading into the mountains to show cabins that I ended up making that my specialty. I learned so much in that time, and I continue to learn as time goes on, being a Realtor you must constantly learn to be able to provide your clients the very best experience.

There are so many more stories that I would love to share. I decided that I wanted to write a Blog. That way you can continue to get to know me. You will discover how I ended up here in Blairsville, Georgia. You will see adventures and glimpses of my life leading up to the big move. But the best part is that you get to ride along on all the new adventures that I will continue to have in the beautiful North Georgia Mountains and the areas that surround them. I hope that one of my stories will inspire you to head out on your own adventure, or help you to experience things that will make you fall in love with the beautiful area I now call home.