SHADE

The most wonderful thing happened to me this week.

My store opened on Thursday.

If you didn't already know, I work for the Gymboree Corporation. Over a year ago Gymboree bought out a women's clothing store called, Shade. Just after Shade left the mall (which I was SOO upset about because I loved their basic layering tees - seriously I almost cried) I started working for the Gymboree Corp. in one of their children's clothing stores, Crazy 8.

Almost 2 months ago I found out that we were going to re-open Shade - at MY mall.
This is the project that my district manager (love her!) picked me to be apart of. Originally I was going to stay at Crazy 8 working as a manager like I have for the past year and also work as a manager at Shade. I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to give all my time and attention to Shade - not that I don't love Crazy 8 but this Shade project is an experience of a lifetime!
How many people can say that they had the opportunity to build a new brand for a company? And be apart of the first store in the country!

Last week I found out that my district manager (again love her!) talked to corporate and convinced them to let Shade have a part-time assistant manager (there was no assistant manager position to begin with). She told them that she already had someone who would be perfect for the position. That person is ME!!

I am the assistant manager for the first and (currently) only Shade store in the USA!

I seriously cannot describe how wonderful and seriously amazing this past week has been for me. I feel like everything that I've learned during the past 5 years spent working in retail is finally coming together for this project. I've enjoyed every single second of this 40+ hour week and I can't WAIT to see what happens between now and January (as of now we're only open till after the holidays).

I feel like I can start to see what Heavenly Father has been doing with me over the past 5 or 6 years. And I can't even begin to say how grateful I am for how everything has been turning out. I truely believe that Heavenly Father knows the deepest desires of our hearts - because I can tell you, I would never have guessed and I didn't even realize it but I had been longing for this.

I found this quote on pinterst and it totally describes how I feel about my store (and I know that's like totally crazy and you probably think I'm nuts for feeling this way about a store but it's just everything about it): "And then my soul saw you and it kind of went 'Oh there you are. I've been looking for you."

I'm love with my store, it's like my baby. And our whole team is just fantastic. I just know we're going to rock it!

Check out the Shade website and you'll see for yourself how wonderful it is: www.shadeclothing.com