Renovations at the Store ... Busy, Busy, Busy

If any of you came by the store over the past several days you found us closed for renovations. We were closed for 3 days in order to clean, paint and rearrange the store. We have only been open for 1 year but it was time to change the colors of the store and add some interest.

We painted the store a beautiful khaki color with light chocolate accents. We stenciled beautiful Fleur de Lis around the top above the crown moulding. We also refinished the Cash Wrap and Archway in a venitian plaster with an awesome antiqued brick red faux finish. It is an unbelievable transformation.

We did all of this work in 3 days with the help of some family and friends who were kind enough to lend their creativity and hard work to the process, and we can't say thank you enough.

If you live in the area, I encourage you to come by and see the finished product. If you are a website customer, just give me some time and I will have pictures on the site. Of course we are all very tired, but very pleased with the outcome.

By the Way, I will be pouring the very first "production" of Esteem Canldes on July 6. The time has almost come to present them at our store.

Candles Are Coming Soon . . .

Hello Everyone, I just wanted to post today to give you an update on our candle line. We have been testing and retesting to get the perfect fragrance line for our candles. We have finally poured our last test and we are ready to start production. The name of our candles are Esteem Home Fragrances. It just has a nice ring to it, don't you think? I will be posting soon with a list of fragrances that you can expect to see on our website soon.

As you very well may know, Esteem Home Fragrances is our new "additional" venture since Hurricane Katrina. In retrospect, I find it very interesting the way life changes because of such a horrible disaster. I can say with all honesty that the three of us would have never considered opening a home decor and gift shop pre-katrina and we certainly would have never considered a candle making venture.

I will be posting links soon to my other blog about Entrepreneurship. This blog is still under construction right now, but it will chronicle out journey as "forced" entrepreneurs in a post-katrina world. It should be quite interesting.

New Items on the Website

Hi Folks,

Just a very quick post this morning. You know how Monday's are. I hope everyone's weekend went very well. Just wanted to let everyone know that we have New Items up on the website. Please check it out and let me know what you think. www.gracesmoon.com .

Post again soon,

Tim

About Grace's

Hello All . . .

This post will hopefully introduce you to the people behind Grace's. First, we are all originally from St. Bernard Parish Louisiana and ended up in Humble Texas because of Hurricane Katrina. St. Bernard Parish was devastated by Katrina, we ended up with 14 feet of water at our home and of course lost everything. However, despite this tragedy we are very grateful to be where we are today. The people of Texas have embraced us and supported us in our efforts to rebuild our lives here.

There are three of us who own Grace's Unique Gift Boutique and surprisingly enough we didn't own a gift and home decor shop in Louisiana. We all three had different careers, one a counselor, one a personal banker and the other a computer technician. It seemed an exciting idea, since we had to start life over that we should start with a new career that we thoroughly enjoyed. Grace's was formed and we have worked diligently to offer our new community quality products at very affordable prices.

Probably the number one question we are asked is "who is Grace?". Grace's was named after our dog. Her name is Gracie. She is a beautiful buff cockerspaniel. We all love animals and wanted to make sure we incorporated our pets in our store.

Now you know who we are, let us know about you. Leave your comments to this post and let us know about you and by all means give us your opinion about our website and our store (if you have been in to visit us.)

We look forward to hearing from all of you!

Happy Mother's Day

Mother's Day is here. It is a time for us to reflect on everything our Mothers are to us everyday. I find it a little sad that most of us wait until this one day each year to appreciate our Moms. However, I am proud to see so many people coming into the store and logging on to our website to buy their Mothers something special on this day.

As many of you know, my Mother and Grandmother passed away in August of 2005 but I still honor them everyday of my life and I try to do something extra special on Mother's Day in their memory.

This Mother's Day Eric, Sean and I have volunteered to help out a friend of ours who owns Roma's Cucina Italiana. She is a little short handed this year and we have volunteer to be servers, bartenders, bus boys or anything else she needs us to do. I feel like my Mom and Grandmother would be proud of us for helping out a friend.

If you don't have any plans for Mother's Day, please come spend it with us at Roma's Cucina Italiana. It is located at the intersection of W. Lake Houston Parkway and Upper Lake in Atascocita. Reservations are NOT required.

Handmade Candles

Okay, the first test of the handmade candles has been a complete success. We made two different scents. I poured only 5 candles of each scent as a test. We placed a tester of the candles on our Candle Warmer in the store and we have already sold out of both scents. We will be introducing some new special scents and candles soon so stay tuned!

New Merchandise in the Store

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we have just rearranged the store for Mother's Day. If has a new look and a bunch of new products. I have added some of the new products to the website. Click here to check out the website. We have added some beautiful new artwork and some new jewelry to the store. Also there are some new candle fragrances on the horizon (I am making them myself). I promise they will be GREAT. I will let you know when they are ready.