You know the saying…

“When life gives you lemons… make lemonade”

Well life has thrown a few lemons at me and I am learning how to turn those lemons into some wonderful lemonade! This weeks happy thoughts come from my personal experience. All this weeks printables are freebies. You can find more of my freebies HERE!

I don’t really get too personal on here but as I am getting to know some of you I felt it was important to share so you could get to know me better. Afterall, there is a real human being behind inkhappi. Her name is Jillene {ME}! I decided to turn one of my toughest life experiences into what we will call some “happi lemonade” Hahah sounds pretty good. Right!?? Recently, I began sharing some of my personal experience with this HERE, and this post is about “the rest of the story”. Well up until NOW, which is where it starts getting a bit more interesting! Ha! You will see…

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“When life gives you lemons… make lemonade”

this is my lemon story…

For the first fifteen years of our marriage my husband and I had a dream of working together and possibly having our own business before it finally came to be in 1999. It took a blood clot to my husbands lung after having his appendix out and almost dying to slow us down and get the courage to make this happen. We were not going to let that “lemon” being thrown at us to take us down so we started our own business, “Cabinet Connection”. Almost immediately we loved it and knew we had made the right choice. Kirt always had work because he really is “the best” at what he does and he is such an honest and reliable person. He is also the hardest working man I know to this day. We never even had to advertise, we always had work. It was not luck that made that happen it was good honest hard work and dedication! Within the first 5 years we moved and expanded our business 3 times. Up until this point we never had to use business credit. In 2006 we were forced to expand once again and we were able to have our dream business location and showroom built. Real Estate was great at the time, and we had quite a bit of instant equity. We were also able to invest in some land that we planned to build some homes on in a property business we also took on. At the time, the economy was great and business was profitable. 

Yes it does!

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Then…

comes the lemons…

An unforeseen and uncontrollable situation occurred. That was in 2008-2009 when the economy crashed! The first to get hit was small business, the building industry, and real estate. Yep. In other words: our cabinet and our property business. At first our builders who provided much of our work started going bankrupt. Our new build business went to a halt leaving us with remodel and insurance work which was less profitable. People quit paying us what they owed to us…. that includes even larger companies. It was horrible. We spent almost a year seeing what we didn’t want to believe. Kirt and I talked about it in our own quiet little world believing in ourselves to keep the dream alive. Then came our BIG mistake. A mistake that we could possibly make again because we believed in ourselves and thought we could beat the economy and anything else in our way. WE WERE WRONG. If only we had gotten out sooner when we saw the early signs, we could have paid off our debt and walked away with a very nice profit and nest egg. Instead we lost a tremendous amount in our real estate making it impossible to get out. Ultimately, we were forced to go bankrupt. So it is. We decided to short sale our home and cut our losses. We lost quite a bit of real estate as well as our business. There are many more unpleasant details that I will not share but it was definitely the toughest trial we had yet endured.

But…

There is always, always, always, something to be thankful for!

{There is ALWAYS something to be THANKFUL for}

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We had each other and we knew we could still live a happy life. We still had what was most important… our family, our faith, our values, and ambition. We WOULD be ok!!

We were fortunate to find a nice home to rent near our recently married only daughter. It was the first time we had rented and not owned a home in our life. We had to swallow a bit of our own pride.

Here we were empty nesters, still in love, with many dreams yet to accomplish.

And we were getting a new fresh start!!

So what do you do?

You choose to move forward.

You choose to remain positive.

And you choose to to be HAPPY!

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We “happily” lived in our rental for three years. We enjoyed getting a grandson who became a major highlight for us as well as being close to our amazing daughter and son-in-law. Kirt was blessed to have plenty of work during this rebuilding time. Now that the bankruptcy is behind us, he is able to officially have his own business again! He has now partnered with our best employee from Cabinet Connection and although small, they are doing very well! Yay! And I was able to fulfill a dream of my own, to have an online business {inkhappi} and doing what I most enjoy. Creating happi, positive things for myself, and others, to enjoy!

We are almost to the NOW… but not quite. When we hit the three-year mark in our rental we had to make a decision to renew our lease. We are able to buy a home in one year from now due to bankruptcy law. We have been saving all we can to put into our future home and investments. After pondering all things, Kirt and I decided we would spend this next year in an apartment. Downsizing, simplifying, and spending as little as possible because we are so close to being in our own home once again and we want to put as much as we can into it! 

So…

Now…

For the first time in my life at 50 I just moved into an apartment. A decision we made for a brighter future. Right now I am taking a little break from unpacking and turning my new little place into a home. I love decorating and this is a bit difficult as it is less than half the size of any other home we lived in. But it will be a home. I will share some of my ideas for apartment living, organization and décor on here. Yay!

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When Life Gives You Lemons… thats my story!

So now I have shared some of the lemons that were thrown our way and how we are dealing with it. I have posted it on the internet for all to see, boy does that feel good! ( hahah) What am I thinking?!! Hopefully my story will encourage someone to know that they are not alone in their battles. We all have our own battles. And we can all “choose” to be “happi” in spite of those battles.

Enjoy it!

Jillene