Tuesday, March 5, 2013


Wow. March 5. Today is the anniversary of my cousin Yvette’s death and the anniversary of our grandfather’s death. My grandfather died in 1957 from lung cancer. Yvette died in 2009 from adrenal cancer.  They have both been on my mind all day. This evening ideas collided and probably much from a little poking by my beloved cousin, I started to created greeting cards – for breast cancer patients. My sister had been after me for a long, long, long time to make cards out of my pictures.  Her 29th again birthday was in January and I surprised her with my very first prototype of a thank you card.  I made her cry, doesn’t take much for us anymore.  I even named my “line,” Pink Chair Cards & Photography by Gina Marie.  The Pink Chair comes from a picture I took on my nieces farm of a dinning room chair, painted pink without it’s legs, and hug from a chain to make a swing.  That day I spent with her I remembered her beautiful mother that had just passed from breast cancer….

So last week I sat down and created 3 more designs, an Alamo one, a birthday one, and a sunflower note card.  They arrived in the mail today and I was tickled at how cute they were.  When I got home today, I decided to try my hand at a full size folded card since I got a coupon in my email.  I scrolled through my pictures and found one of the traveling pants, that young stage four breast cancer ladies had signed from around the country.  I had the privilege of watching a 28 year old sign them here in San Antonio.  Right in the middle of the picture was a pink ribbon and the word HOPE. That was it, I was on a role and 3 breast cancer card designs later I took a break and checked my facebook.

My nephew, Yvette’s son had asked for memories about his mom so I filled in my high school fun memories. If my light wasn’t on in my room, the light bulb above my head would surely have been visible!  She’s poking me again - Facebook, I thought. I’ll create a facebook page to promote the cards – yes cart and horse and all that stuff – but I was excited.  I created the page and had to, just had to enter an address.  Seeing that this is a work from home thing, I wasn’t going to splash my address on facebook, so I used San Antonio as my street address, and San Antonio, Texas as the city and state.  I had to enter a phone number as well.  I played around with the page adding the picture of the pink chair and then hit edit on the information tab.  I was able to delete my phone number, yeah, and then a red bar comes across the screen over the map of my “address.” The message says it couldn’t pinpoint my address on the map.  

The map point, the little red bubble that shows where you are, is pointing almost exactly to the corner of Guadalupe and Laredo streets. These streets are not in my zip code, I’ve never mentioned them on facebook, but at that very corner is the home where my grandfather lived until 1957.  I almost fell out of my chair… my pink chair.