I didn’t always dream of being an interior designer. In fact I’m not quite sure I even knew what that meant. But I knew I wanted to design something. My love for art started at a very young age. I never played sports. Never a cheerleader. Never kicked a ball. Never hit a ball. Never threw a ball… I wanted to be a fashion designer. Because to me, if you were creative but couldn’t quite paint like Monet, fashion design was the next best thing. As the daughter of an accountant, I didn’t grow up visiting home stores or helping pick out paint colors. It just wasn’t her thing. So for me, fashion it was! As a freshman at the University of Georgia, I started out with a major in international business. Makes total sense right!?! Yeah, not so much. Without a fashion program I was kind of lost. So my sophomore year I transferred to American Intercontinental University in Atlanta where they specialized in fashion design. Although I liked it, I didn’t love it. But I remember this day like it was yesterday. I was walking through the halls and came across a hallway filled with elevations and renderings done by the interior design students at AIU. I was mesmerized. I can still remember exactly what those renderings looked like. I remember telling Mark and my mom that day that I was transferring back to the University of Georgia and changing my major to interior design. In that moment it clicked. My love for art, my love for design, my love for color, my love for fabric, my love for prints… It all came together in one Kairos moment. The following year I doubled up on art classes to build my portfolio for UGA’s design program and was one of 24 students accepted for the program that following year. And I can honestly say I loved every single minute.
Fast forward quite a few years later and Mark and I had built a successful Kitchen/Bath business, had a baby and although fulfilled in most ways, I still had this raging passion for something creative. As most of you may know my story from there, Addison’s Wonderland (the children’s bedding company) was born from this drive, this passion and this love for design. I truly felt that God had set everything in place for that business. That company. And it would all work out like a fairytale. And it started to I guess. For the most part. Business was growing, I loved designing and then came Shark Tank. Being on national television promoting my company was a complete dream come true. But I’m not going to lie. Not getting a deal seemed like a huge crushing blow at the time. The publicity was amazing and to be honest, they were super wonderful to us given that they didn’t invest. It wasn’t the end of the world but it seemed like the start. And then soon thereafter our marriage and personal life was hit like a wrecking ball. It was all just too much. And in that moment, my fairytale was over. I wanted to give up on it all. Every single bit of it. I wanted to start over.
Yet every single time I mentally tried, God intercepted. There are so many exact moments I can recount feeling emotions and living moments that weren’t explainable by any other reasoning than the hand of God saying don’t give up. It literally took every single thing that I had to get through that year. And every single thing I went through that year to fully open my eyes. To see that I was just going through the motions of what seemed normal, of what seemed like working crazy hard for a huge payoff, of what seemed like the acceptable way to fulfill a design dream. But I was stressed. My family was stressed and my marriage was stressed.
The fact was that I love design. I’m completely over the top obsessed with designing. But for whatever reason, God decided that it wasn’t the time and it wasn’t the place to fulfill that dream. Not yet. The hard times continued. Got better but continued. We needed a fresh start and decided to move. I was so torn at the time. I’d loved our home. Loved our life. But I knew we needed a fresh start.
I’ve determined that it takes hitting rock bottom to finally get to a point in life where you just don’t base your life on what other people think anymore. And I truly think that that is step one to fulfilling a dream. The day that I’d been through so much that I finally just closed the door on the portion of my brain that lived my life based on the assumption of what other people would think about what I was about to do (whew that was wordy!), I was set free. I obviously can’t say that I’m completely numb to every word and every thought made by someone else but I’m closer than I ever have been. That day was the day that I truly started to go for my dreams. The start to Addison’s Wonderland in 2011 was absolutely the day I “started” going for my dreams. But I’ve learned that I just wasn’t driving the right vehicle then toward those dreams. Or maybe I wasn’t taking the correct highway. Or I was trying the shortcut and I needed to take the long road home. You see, I dream big. I want to be a designer. But not just any designer. A designer with a signature. A designer that makes a statement. I can’t describe exactly why but I’ve just always had these big dreams. Not because I want to be known or want to be “famous”. To be completely honest, it’s not that I blog or share simply for people to comment or compliment my work. Although I love it and I love all of you. It’s just a desire to make, create and see my work come to life. I’d design my home the exact same even if no one ever even saw it. It’s an extreme love for creating a work of art. In an interior.
Are you following me? So when God placed those hurdles in my life, I decided to jump over them rather than crawl under. I wanted to crawl under. So so bad. I wanted to crawl under the first one and hide. But God saw more in me. More in my “gift”. Everyone has a gift. Some, and I’d say most, go unfulfilled and unrealized forever. And I honestly believe it’s 100% out of fear, out of worrying about failure and what others think. But guess what, just like you can re-paint a wall or re-color your hair, you can also change the path of your life. I realized in that moment that there will always be bigger and more beautiful homes, better designers, someone smaller, skinnier, way more beautiful, more wealthy, luckier… Now one has it all and me sharing my life was that scary first stepping stone to my goals. To putting my style out there. That house move that I resented so much was the start to realizing my dreams. The day we started those renovations, I came alive. My passion had reignited and having released this fear of judgement, I started to share my work on social media. Once again, not for comments or likes or envy or boast. Simply because I loved it, I was proud of it and I wanted to share and inspire. At that same point, that same month, I was saying goodbye to Addison’s Wonderland. I had given it over to God to re-envision my path. And it hit me and it hit Mark and even some of you guys on social media. That I should start a blog. And so I did. Without fear of judgement I decided to put it all out there. My house isn’t my “house that I want everyone to drool over”. It’s my canvas and by darn, I want to share it. With the world. What better way to make a statement and create a signature than with MY home, MY vision, MY style and 100% of ME. And from that day on, things have fallen into place. So far at least. Before, my vehicle was my bedding company and today I’m driving my blog. On a path to who knows where but I just now know that it’s exactly where I want to be. Being a “blogger” isn’t necessarily my final place but it’s a spot along the way. I do hope to blog my journey “forever” but my journey is evolving every single day. What started as the hardest times in my life and a move that I resented so much has evolved into my design dream… a home renovation, my AW blog growing by the day, a blogging gig with Better Homes & Gardens, a house flipping gig with my hubby that we’ve always hoped for, a historic home renovation, and on Friday honestly my longest and biggest dream of all… a feature spread of us and our home in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine: Color Made Easy. All because I let God take the wheel and shut down the aspects of my life that weren’t working. I was holding onto AW with both hands on the wheel as tightly as I could hold. “Hiding” behind a bedding company hoping it would fulfill my dreams. When in reality, I needed to step out in front, show the world what I love and embrace the talents that I was given. I feel so blessed to be where I am today. The road is always winding and you never know when hard times may be just around the corner once again. But I do know that I finally have a better understanding of how those times can all just be a part of the plan.
So… Better Homes and Gardens will be at our home tomorrow and Friday to style and photograph our home and I cannot even tell you how excited I am. Possibly even just as excited to experience the process as I am to see it in print. I have gotten the go-ahead to share all of the behind the scenes details so stay tuned! It’ll ALL be on the blog soon!
XOXO, Brittany Hayes
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