Graduations, Engagements, and Other Evolutions....

This time of year, Flourish is always filled with women shopping for special events like bridal showers, weddings, engagement photos, graduations, and more!  It's always fun to help them find dresses and outfits for such monumental occassions, and we love seeing the photos of them wearing their special Flourish purchases too! 

This year, though, the season of change and occassions has been felt first hand at Flourish. Shelby, our sweet, youngest team member at Flourish graduated high school this year.  Here is a photo of her looking absolutely stunning and wearing Flourish of course!  In fact you can purchase this dress here: http://flourishboutique.com/gabrielle-dress-in-hot-pink.html

Shelby, one of the Flourish girls, rocking the Gabrielle Dress in hot pink for her senior pics!

Nicole our store manager has three, yes three, children graduating this year!  Two sons from high school and one son from 8th grade. My own son graduated from kindergarten too!  Sarah, our team member who is on leave had a sweet baby girl last week.  And, Brianne, one of our Flourish girls graduated from Saint Mary's College, my alma mater, just a few weeks ago....only to get engaged just last night as well (also wearing Flourish of course, although this dress recently sold out, so sorry!)

Brianne, and her fiance Pat, on the night of their engagement!

So, needless to say, in addition to helping everyone else find cute outfits for those big moments, we Flourish girls have been joining in the fun as well!  As a result, the idea of change and evolution has been on my mind a lot....I can't stop thinking about those liminal moments in life where you cross over from being one thing to another....from dating to engaged....from just you to being a mom......from being a busy parent to being an empty nester.....from being single to married.....from being a student to a graduate, and so on.  These moments stand out in our memories and nowadays in our facebook timeline too...

It seemed only appropriate that Flourish too, undergo a graduation of sorts...or an evolution so to speak. Flourish will turn 4 years old in just a few weeks.  This is hard to believe in some ways.  It seems like only yesterday it was my dream instead of my reality.  Now, we have been in business for the same amount of time someone goes to highschool or college.  Flourish has certainly done it's own growing up and changing...we've moved to a better location, we've expanded, we've added a dynamic website store, and much more....when I think back on all these steps I feel like a proud momma watching a slideshow of memories. 

Here I am on the very first day Flourish was opened: July 8, 2008: Sure has changed a lot!

This past week though I have been brainstorming and thinking about ways to continue to perfect and make Flourish even better.  I met with some consultants down in Indianapolis this week to get some outside ideas and opinions. Some of their ideas really jumped off the page to me and will push me to really take the store to the next level.  Some of the suggestions are as simple as ways to improve our accounting and book-keeping.  Other suggestions though were to carry larger stocks of best selling items so that people get a better chance of getting their size and making all the work to put something on the website be more worth our time and energy (often times things are selling out so fast that we only have an item up for a day or two).  This will help save us time and resources but it will also make your shopping experience more enjoyable at http://www.flourishboutique.com/. 

There were many more wonderful ideas that I cannot wait to nurture.  I take so much joy in our store....it is my passion and my ongoing, evolving dream.  I hope you all are finding similar joy and having your own life changing, special times....  that's what this life is all about:  drinking in the moments with our loved ones,  and following and manifesting our dreams!