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91e0707
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Don't quit, and don't give up. The reward is just around the corner. And in times of doubt or times of joy, listen for that still, small voice. Know that God has been there from the beginning--and he will be there until . . . The End.
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christian-life
inspirational
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Joanna Gaines |
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af5ae82
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Whether you are in an eight-hundred-square-foot home or living in a dream house on a lake, contentment is found on the way.
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Joanna Gaines |
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7392a42
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sometimes second chances lead to great things. All of my doubts, all of the things I thought I wanted out of a relationship, and many of the things I thought I wanted out of life itself turned out to be just plain wrong. Instead? That voice from our first date turned out to be the thing that was absolutely right.
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Joanna Gaines |
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3a41135
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I don't think it's irrational or too conservative of me to think, Is it?
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Joanna Gaines |
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a68f21b
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The reality is that old houses that were built a hundred years ago were built by actual craftsmen, people who were the best in the world at what they did. The little nuances in the woodwork, the framing of the doors, the built-in nooks, the windows--all had been done by smart, talented people, and I quickly found that uncovering those details and all of that character made the house more inviting and more attractive and more alive.
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craftsmanship
old-houses
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Joanna Gaines |
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519d254
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Several days later I decided to go on a good long jog, trusting that Chip would not leave Drake again. As I was on my way back I saw Chip coming down the road in his truck with the trailer on it. He rolled up to me with his window down and said, "Baby, you're doing so good. I'm heading to work now. I've got to go." I looked in the back, thinking, But I didn't see a car seat. "Chip, where's Drake?" she said, and I was like, "Oh, shoot!" Sh..
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Joanna Gaines |
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7b88566
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Several days later I decided to go on a good long jog, trusting that Chip would not leave Drake again. As I was on my way back I saw Chip coming down the road in his truck with the trailer on it. He rolled up to me with his window down and said, "Baby, you're doing so good. I'm heading to work now. I've got to go." I looked in the back, thinking, But I didn't see a car seat. "Chip, where's Drake?" she said, and I was like, "Oh, shoot!" Sh..
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Joanna Gaines |
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f7c3ad7
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She cried. Again. That was sort of her thing during year one. If we ever write a marriage book, chapter 1 will be called, "She cried."
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Joanna Gaines |
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a94e2e1
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It's hard to describe the feeling that comes with starting your own business. It really is so much work in the beginning that you lose yourself in it. You lose your sense of time, and you can't believe how quickly the days go by because there's no time to focus on much of anything else. But then you open the doors, and it's like you've given birth to this new thing that didn't exist before. Then when it starts to flourish, well, that's just..
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opening-a-business
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Joanna Gaines |
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bd1cd9a
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Is Joanna Gaines here? We have a warrant here for her arrest," the officer said. It was the tickets. I knew it. And I panicked. I picked up my son and I hid in the closet. I literally didn't know what to do. I'd never even had a speeding ticket, and all of a sudden I'm thinking, I heard Chip say, "She's not here." Thankfully, Drake didn't make a peep, and the officer believed him. He said, "Well, just let her know we're looking for her," a..
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Joanna Gaines |
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d8d97a6
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Even locked doors can be unlocked in time.
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opportunity
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Joanna Gaines |
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fb8b186
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Chip and I were both exhausted when we finally pulled up in front of that house, but we were still riding the glow of our honeymoon, and I was so excited as he carried me over the threshold--until the smell nearly knocked us over. "Oh my word," I said, pinching my nose and trying to hold my breath so I wouldn't gag. "What is that?" Chip flicked the light switch, and the light didn't come on. He flicked it up and down a few times, then felt ..
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Joanna Gaines |
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c72dab3
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It was awful. It was three in the morning. And I finally said, "Chip, I'm not sleeping in this house." We were broke. We couldn't go to a hotel. There was no way we were gonna go knock on one of our parents' doors at that time of night. That's when I got an idea. We happened to have Chip's parents' old RV parked in a vacant lot a few blocks down. We had some of our things in there and had been using it basically as a storage unit until we m..
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Joanna Gaines |
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c3bd70f
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We did every part of this renovation together with our bare hands. Chip restored all of the wood floors, all the tile work--everything. I was learning as we went, but I definitely did my part. That house was gorgeous. Jo did an awesome job helping fix it up, and her ideas were great. There was a moment in the kitchen when I smarted off, though. I don't even remember what I said, to be honest, but Jo got real mad and started yelling. She was..
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Joanna Gaines |
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38e3812
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That was our first real "fight," and even now we both agree it was our biggest. Chip had smarted off about something, so my blood was already boiling, but when I slammed that bucket down, Chip says I became a ninja--the kind you don't want to mess with. Yet he laughed, against his better judgment. We joke about it now, like, "Well, I'm mad, but I'm not primer-in-the-face mad."
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Joanna Gaines |
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cd786b0
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As I rode down the street with him to see what he'd bought, I was in shock when he pulled up in front of this tiny white box of a house. I mean --maybe eight hundred square feet. There was no cute front porch. The yard--front and back--was all weeds and overgrown bushes. When he opened the front door on that cabin-size house, I could see it hadn't been touched in thirty years. She cried. Again. That was sort of her thing during year one. I..
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Joanna Gaines |
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49ea685
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Then one day Chip showed up with the back of his pickup truck just loaded with old metal letters he'd found at a flea market--big, oddly shaped letters taken from various old signs. They were mismatched and rusty and dented--and I loved them. We tacked them up on the front of the shop, spelling out the name that would come to mean so much: The letters were uneven and looked a little handmade and ragged, but it seemed to work. I loved this..
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Joanna Gaines |
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aeb22fb
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On this particular afternoon, they all started teasing me. "You should go out to the lobby, Jo. There's a hot guy out there. Go talk to him!" they said. "No," I said. "Stop it! I'm not doing that." I was all of twenty-three, and I wasn't exactly outgoing. She was a bit awkward--no doubt about that. I hadn't dated all that much, and I'd never had a serious relationship--nothing that lasted longer than a month or two. I'd always been an intro..
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Joanna Gaines |
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e2ce338
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That's our new home!" Chip said, beaming with pride at his purchase. "What? You are crazy. We are not living on a houseboat." It quickly dawned on me that this wasn't a joke and Chip wasn't even close to kidding. I wasn't mishearing him. He was dead serious about making that boat our home for the next six months. I just about lost it. "How can we live on the water, Chip? Three of our kids don't even know how to swim!" --
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Joanna Gaines |
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fdcdeb2
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I felt good about having made the decision to walk away and lock that door. It's funny, though, looking back on it now, because one very simple concept in life never occurred to me as I was walking away: Even locked doors can be unlocked in time. I simply never could have imagined just how much God had in store for us, and I certainly couldn't have dreamed just how many keys to other doors God had already placed in our hands.
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Joanna Gaines |
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dfdcda5
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That's our new home!" Chip said, beaming with pride at his purchase. "What? You are crazy. We are not living on a houseboat." It quickly dawned on me that this wasn't a joke and Chip wasn't even close to kidding. I wasn't mishearing him. He was dead serious about making that boat our home for the next six months. I just about lost it. "How can we live on the water, Chip? Three of our kids don't even know how to swim! Did you think this thro..
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Joanna Gaines |
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2f37dbf
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One pretty amazing thing we learned early on was that the more time we spent together, the better our relationship was.
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spending-time-with-each-other
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Joanna Gaines |
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ea3d87c
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Best of all, as happy as Chip Gaines was, he seemed happiest around me. I'm a generally happy person. My mom says I was a happy baby. But it's a fact--I was always happiest around Jo. And I still am.
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Joanna Gaines |
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87b679d
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With all cameras on me, Chip released the blindfold and said, "Ta-da!" I wasn't sure what I was looking at. A shipwreck, maybe? On the back of a semi? "What is that?" I said. "I got this for you, Jo!" Chip replied. "That not be for me," I said. It was the ugliest, rundown-looking, two-story shack of a boat I'd ever seen. "What the heck are we going to do with a houseboat?" "That's our new home!" Chip said, beaming with pride at his purcha..
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Joanna Gaines |
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fad9665
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Well, I'm mad, but I'm not primer-in-the-face mad.
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Joanna Gaines |
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4167e69
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About four months into it, we were shooting hoops in my dad's driveway when Chip stopped in his tracks, held me in his arms, looked into my eyes under the starry sky, and said, "I love you." And I looked at him and said, "Thank you." "Thank you?" Chip said. I know I should have said, "I love you too," but this whole thing had been such a whirlwind, and I was just trying to process it all. No guy had ever told me he loved me before, and here..
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Joanna Gaines |
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f18b514
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Back in the late 1800s, when a place like this was originally built, you had to work with what you had, and you had to figure stuff out. You certainly couldn't Google it. You didn't have Internet. You didn't even have how-to books. You had to sit there and wrestle with it. You found this old spare part, you did this other thing, you hooked it up to a donkey, and you tried it out. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. But eventually you'..
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Joanna Gaines |
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175ab2a
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I think it's important to reiterate here that I didn't start out wanting to be a gardener, or a designer for that matter. It was trial and error and figuring things out. And sometimes you've got to try something outside of your comfort zone to figure out what it is that you truly love. Well, you could say that about you and me right from the start. You were never looking for the loud guy, and I certainly wasn't looking for the quiet girl...
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Joanna Gaines |
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23b6f54
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Filling a room with the things you think you should because you've seen someone else do it that way or because you just want it to feel finished will never yield a home you truly love. You can make a room feel both beautiful and complete without filling every corner and surface with a bunch of random stuff.
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Joanna Gaines |
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313025c
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To this day, I am still not sure what it was about Chip Gaines that made me give him a second chance--because, basically, our first date was over before it even started. I was working at my father's Firestone automotive shop the day we first met. I'd worked as my dad's office manager through my years at Baylor University and was perfectly happy working there afterward while I tried to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. The ..
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Joanna Gaines |
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d883d6c
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We'd be walking downtown, and I'd hear, "Chip. Hey, Chip!" and I'd turn to see a person approaching us who, frankly, might have scared me if I was walking downtown by myself. Chip wouldn't be scared. He'd know the guy by name: "James! How's it going, brother?" It seemed as if every homeless guy in Waco knew Chip Gaines. On the flip side, every banker in Waco knew Chip too. And he talked to those two very different groups of people the same ..
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Joanna Gaines |
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d33778a
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Chip asked me about New York and what I wanted to do, and how long my dad had owned the shop, and what it was I loved about Waco. He asked about my sisters and my family in general, and what I'd done at Baylor, and if I'd known a few communications majors he'd run around with at school. (I told y'all he was chatty!) Somehow none of these questions seemed intrusive or strange to me at the time, which is funny, because thinking back I find th..
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Joanna Gaines |
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a328370
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I've always loved magnolia trees and their blooms--there's something so beautiful about a magnolia blossom. It demands attention, and you can't help but love those big, creamy petals and that fragrant smell.
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Joanna Gaines |
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0e46380
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When I finally calmed down, I saw how disappointed he was and how bad he felt. I decided to take a deep breath and try to think this thing through. "Maybe it's not that bad," I said. (I think I was trying to cheer myself up as much as I was trying to console Chip.) "If we fix up the interior and just get it to the point where we can get it onto the water, at least maybe then we can turn around, sell it, and get our money back." Over the cou..
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Joanna Gaines |
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c61136f
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When I finally calmed down, I saw how disappointed he was and how bad he felt. I decided to take a deep breath and try to think this thing through. "Maybe it's not that bad," I said. (I think I was trying to cheer myself up as much as I was trying to console Chip.) "If we fix up the interior and just get it to the point where we can get it onto the water, at least maybe then we can turn around, sell it, and get our money back." Over the cou..
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Joanna Gaines |
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d22bf79
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Chip had been in there for a few very long hours. I had all kinds of awful thoughts about what might have happened to him in there. What if he'd been roughed up? Strip-searched? Who knows what awful things could have happened in a place like that? I saw scary-looking characters come and go as I sat in that cold, concrete lobby, trying to make myself invisible. Finally, out came Chip. "Hi, baby. Thanks for bailing me out," he said. He sounde..
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Joanna Gaines |
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0d4afbd
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Chip asked me about New York and what I wanted to do, and how long my dad had owned the shop, and what it was I loved about Waco. He asked about my sisters and my family in general, and what I'd done at Baylor, and if I'd known a few communications majors he'd run around with at school. (I told y'all he was chatty!) Somehow none of these questions seemed intrusive or strange to me at the time, which is funny, because thinking back I find th..
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Joanna Gaines |
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60c2c1a
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We didn't know what made "great TV." We were just trying to make a living and trying hard to honor the craft we had both fallen in love with over the years." --
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Joanna Gaines |
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d036635
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I have to choose to thrive, even in the pain. Even when it's tough. ... We can do this. God has not brought us this far to let us down now.
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Joanna Gaines |
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608a564
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By the time Chip and I met, he'd managed to combine these two conflicting sides of himself: the kid who steered clear of trouble and did the right thing, and the kid who rode his Big Wheel full speed into the street without looking both ways. I had never met anyone like him. It's funny to me to think that the whole opposites-attract thing might have been programmed into my DNA. Just as my outgoing mother was drawn to my quiet dad, I was thi..
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Joanna Gaines |
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a750c29
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Between building the new house on our newly subdivided lot, continuing work on some small flip homes, and managing the rentals, Chip had more work than he could do himself, so he had put a crew of workmen together. "The Boys," as we called them, were a talented bunch of hardworking guys who were just as adaptable as Chip seemed to be when it came to making my crazy ideas become reality. I truly could say, "Hey, why don't we take that tree o..
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Joanna Gaines |
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48f699a
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You bloomed? I did. If I hadn't married Chip, I might not have ever bloomed.
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Joanna Gaines |
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f7f31c1
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That rotten houseboat turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
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houseboat
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Joanna Gaines |
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263953b
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Life isn't found on the pages of a magazine. Life is found in the glass of spilled milk and in the long, narrow hallway filled with socks and soccer balls.
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Joanna Gaines |