Purpose

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

It’s such a beautiful thing, the way that friends influence our lives. I’ve known I needed to get a library card of my own for quite some time now. In the summer, one of my boys enjoys listening to audiobooks while he reads along. In fact, the discovery of audiobooks has changed his entire attitude toward reading. But the first summer we tried it, we were buying them on Audible and other online platforms. Then one day, I was looking for a title that was a little harder to find and my search returned a result showing our local library had that audiobook available to check out. I’m not sure how I’d somehow missed the fact that public libraries offered digital audiobook rentals, but I was thrilled to find out.

Except that I didn’t have a library card.

I “phoned a friend” named Dad, and asked to borrow his library card. Within …

by Crystal Gornto Inspirational Leaders Inspirational Women Love In Action Love in Friendship Purpose 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

On Thursday night, as part of our annual GNO holiday party, I held the mic a lot less than is typical and I loved it. We got to hear from 12 other women on a huge range of topics to help us all get ready for this holiday season. We learned about everything from healthy (& shameless) eating, quick skin care, table setting, makeup tips, hair tricks, gift selection, and gift wrapping to connecting conversations to keep it positive during the holidays. It was a night chock-full a valuable insights to get us through the busiest month of the year. But there was a moment that was a complete surprise, even to me.

It was this one.

After I welcomed the ladies and gave away the first few raffles, I invited my beloved friend Libba to come share with the ladies. As I introduced her, I found myself saying. . . “This is …

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

When I arrived at our venue to set up Thursday night for Girls Night Out, I was pleasantly surprised to find the room decked out with festive holiday decor. A fully dressed Christmas tree reached up to the ceiling, and two life-size nutcracker soldiers stood guard at the front of the room.

We always bring our own design theme, but this was a welcome addition.

As is tradition during our Holiday Ready GNO, we needed to screencast a little closed circuit tv presentation of our hair & makeup artist’s tips and tricks, so that everyone in the room could see the techniques they were using on models, up close and personal. It’s also been a tradition that my camera skills, combined with a our not-so-professional equipment have sometimes made this part of the evening a comedy of errors. So this year, I was determined to get it all set up and do …

by Crystal Gornto Girl's Night Out Inspiration Inspirational Words Love In Action Love in Family Loving Others Purpose The Journey Through Life Leave a comment chat

Add life to your years

There’s always more to the story

The kind of friend who makes others fond of good things

You are a dream catcher

Courageous Leadership

Thank them for their service