Picture it…a young girl of 4 years old, travels across country to live with her aunt and uncle and four cousins who she’d never met…. All she had was a small suite case with minimal clothing. She was alone, scared and in need for a safe, comforting place to call her own.
She learned to create that space at the ripe old age of 4. For as long as she can remember, she has had a passion for home décor and cozy ambiance. She was born with a need to organize to perfection—always having a place for everything and everything in its place. That led her to clean, arrange, and rearrange her space and belongings in the tiny bedroom she shared with two of her cousins.
Her bed was an army cot. Today, most kids wouldn’t be happy about having an army cot for a bed, but she loved it. She pretended it was her house and, since she didn’t have a dollhouse, the space created by that old cot was the next best thing. She built rooms on top, using pillows for walls. Photos cut out of old furniture catalogues served as furnishings. Her dolls, many of which were paper, never complained. With 30 inches of space underneath the cot, she built another level of rooms “downstairs.” A stool with fold-out steps served as a staircase. By the time she was five years old, she had developed a pretty good sense of how a room should look and feel.
She grew up in that small town in Montana—a town that was literally on the road to nowhere. Winters were long, and summers were hot. Getting from one place to another to purchase anything had to be a scheduled event. When it came to home decorating, resources were especially limited but she didn’t let that stop her. She found ways to re-use and re-purpose ordinary things long before Pinterest became a household word.
As she grew older, she helped her friends clean and arrange their spaces. She added things that they found in secondhand stores, items we now call shabby chic. With a budget of next to nothing, she decorated her first apartment with old, discarded furniture, thrift shop items, and re-purposed household goods she already had, like repainting dressers, replacing or making lamp shades, and she made new covers for chairs and couches.
Later, she decorated a nine-bedroom bed and breakfast for a friend using the same, practical and inventive ideas. She also helped a company remodel its office space, suggesting locations for office equipment, arranging furniture in offices, and placing art work on the walls.
More recently, she and her husband, remodeled their little 1920’s home. Completing all the work themselves. They expanded the house from 900 sq. ft. to over 2,500 sq. ft. with only one wall of the original house remaining. Friends and family love their home and it has become a hub for many family gatherings.
After all these years, it’s still a burning passion of hers to make the world a better place by making personal spaces functional, stress-free, comfortable, and beautiful. She believes you can make any place a home whether it’s a tiny cracker box or a mansion. It needs to reflect who you are, what you want to surround yourself with, while making it purposeful, and gorgeous.
She has a BA degree in Business Management and Communication. She spent over 25 years as a Human Resources (HR) professional. During that time, she handled compensation and benefits. She also handled health, safety, training, and development. Other responsibilities included coaching and counseling managers and other employees, as well as hiring and firing them. Event planning was part of her job description, too. She loved her work. Helping people find their passions in life and matching them to ideal careers was one of her favorite parts.
Another passion, however, is writing. She created newsletters and has written articles for various companies. She’s even written and facilitated training programs. Over the years, she has published articles in local newspapers, and written short stories. She’s also published one novel and is about to publish a second.
Inevitably, she decided it was time to leave the HR world behind and focus on her two passions. She realized that she could offer her human connection and communication skills to help people with their remodeling and decorating wants and needs. That’s when the idea to become a freelance writer, focusing on home improvements, transpired. It was the perfect marriage of her two passions.
She joined American Writers Artists, Inc. She attended classes and honed her copywriting skills. Now as a freelance writer, she can provide B2B and B2C content and copy. With a well-established, innate ability to connect with other people on a deep level and experience remodeling and decorating, she can write emails, blogs, direct mail, newsletters, brochures, and more. She knows what your customers’ needs are for a safe, stress free, and beautiful environment. She can help get your products and services where you want them to be – inside the spaces where people live, eat, sleep, breathe, and work.
Anita laughed, “I remember when I was about eight, I used to repurpose my silky slips. I’d cut them into strips, and make bows or flowers, to decorate my walls, clothing and hair. That is, until my cousins started telling their friends that I wore my underwear on my head. Although it wasn’t such a popular idea back then, I now make good money writing about my on and off the wall ideas.”
