In fact, Miss Chew, my first grade teacher, remembered me drawing them in her class.

Many people ask what prompted me to give up a successful 20-year career as a designer and art director to run my own business. Like many others, I would go to a horse show and want to bring back a souvenir shirt. Being constantly frustrated by the lack of good design, I found myself thinking, “I can do better than this,” and decided to give it a try. When I sold out at my first show, I was hooked!

Talk about being totally horse nuts. My husband Mitchell (Mr. Wonderful) and I even got married at a horse show! In the bottom left photo, here we are (with a friend) in center ring at the 1994 Arabian Region 9 Championship Show just after the wedding ceremony. A newspaper reporter from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram wrote a front-page article about our unique wedding.

Even the party favors at the reception had a “horsey” theme. Instead of rice, they contained rolled oats for tossing as well as cubed sugar for our guests’ horses.