Girl's Night Out | HeartStories

Add life to your years

The beauty eating the greenery at Girls Night Out? That’s my joyful friend Melanie. She brings laughter wherever she goes. She’s brilliant and wise. She’s serious about supporting parents as they navigate the unknown waters of raising kids.

But you can always count on her to bring the laughter.

Yesterday, as I watched a quick video of Mel and her husband Jeff promoting a parenting class they teach together at our church, I couldn’t help but smile at their joy. Those two seem to always be laughing. Case in point: While we had a house full of guests during a holiday party, they led their entire home group to our house to sing Christmas carols. Only Jeff and Melanie. . . they wore pantyhose on their heads. Yep. They were singing loudly in front of a crowd of mostly strangers, in stockings caps, like bank robbers. There’s a backstory of course. I …

Since the day I met Vanessa Corral, she’s been dreaming up incredible ways to help the women of the HeartStories community feel more beautiful in their own skin. She cares deeply about capturing the unique beauty of each woman. She wants them to see the best version of themselves, not only in their hearts, strengths and accomplishments, but also in the way they look on the outside. While most media tries hard to convince us that we should all look one way, Vanessa pushes back, insisting that physical beauty isn’t about a cookie-cutter stereotype.

One look at her site or social media, and you’ll quickly see that Vanessa fully embraces the incredible beauty in our diversity.

She’s been taking headshots of our beloved HeartStories Members at our annual Holiday Ready GNO for the past three years in a row. But lately, Vanessa has been dreaming specifically, about ways to add value to our treasured HeartStories …

by Crystal Gornto Girl's Night Out Inspirational Women Love In Action Loving Others Loving Yourself Purpose The Journey Through Life Leave a comment chat

When Vanessa shared her first look, “sneak peek” images from last week’s girls night out, this one made my heart smile so big. That joyful soul looking up at you is Lauren, the coordinator of all the things. I’m telling you, she keeps HeartStories running smoothly like an Olympic figure skater gliding in for the gold. It’s fast and furious, hard work. Obviously, it’s a lot just working directly with me, but she’s also coordinating all of our staff, sponsors, vendors, members and attendees. She shores up the platform that makes ALL the magic happen for our community, month after month.

And she could do it in her sleep, with one arm tied behind her back.

There’s so much happening behind the scenes to create our monthly GNO and Lauren makes it all seem so effortless. You’d think this is her full time job, plus some. But in reality, it’s her side …

by Crystal Gornto Girl's Night Out Inspirational Women Love In Action Love in Friendship Loving Others Priorities Leave a comment chat

I attended one of the community organized Girls Night Outs for our new neighborhood on Sunday night. I’m not officially signed up for neighborhood emails or registered in the app, so I got wind of it through some of the gals who are always in the know. When they invited me on Friday, I had my typical internal mixed reactions to a fun invite: “I’m SO tired, last night was my big GNO. Sunday night?? Boys are still home from school tomorrow! My to-do list is SO long. . . My Christmas Tree is still up!”

Every excuse in the book filled my mind.

But when I looked at the calendar, we were “free”. Because I value building community in our neighborhood and I adore the friends I’ve already made here, I watched my fingers type, “I’m in!” with a mixed sense of childlike excitement and a misplaced grown-up fear of overcommitting. It …

by Crystal Gornto Girl's Night Out Inspirational Women Love In Action Love in Friendship Loving Others Loving Yourself Motherhood Roadblocks in Life The Journey Through Life Leave a comment chat

It’s GNO night tonight and as I’ve been reflecting on this past year in preparation for the night, I remembered our Design Your Life GNO the first week of January last year. It was a vision boarding workshop focused on casting a vision for the person you wanted to be in 2018. It seems impossible that was an entire year ago! Entirely impossible, but it’s true.

Now here we are, heading into our Dream Catchers GNO tonight with a similar, but different, agenda.

Instead of vision boards, we’re making a fun modern version of dream catchers to be a visual symbol throughout this year that we are in control of what we allow to filter down into our lives. The legend of the dreamcatcher hung over your bed, is that a spider weaves its web inside the hoop leaving a specific opening in the center. It catches all the bad dreams in the …

by Crystal Gornto Girl's Night Out Inspirational Women Inspirational Words Loving Yourself Priorities Purpose Roadblocks in Life The Journey Through Life Leave a comment chat

I laughed as I looked through the album of photos we took with our little homemade selfie stand on New Year’s Eve. The contrast between the “not ready” and the “READY!” pictures is so hilarious, I had no choice but to devote this entire post to this idea.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a fabulous time.

We caught up on life, we told stories, and we laughed until we peed our pants. We ate, drank and were very merry. We played a hilarious new game. We also went to bed right after the clock struck midnight.

We are no longer spring chickens.

We’re all mamas with piles of stuff on our ever-spinning plates. Apparently so much so, that we even took this whole round of pics while Libba was in the other room! (Lucky for her, her mug missed this exciting post. Ha!) But even we noticed, while we were taking …

by Crystal Gornto Girl's Night Out Inspirational Words Love in Friendship Loving Yourself Roadblocks in Life The Journey Through Life Leave a comment chat

Girl’s Night Out

Add life to your years

There’s always more to the story

Seek joy and you will find it

Practicing friendship

You are a dream catcher