How We Started Building Mid Century Modern Coffee Tables

Elli at Lowes in the Van

      We started this little business, Tiny Lions Designs, two years ago in January 2014.  Actually, it probably started when I went to Lowes several months back.  I am always looking for a creative way to make a living, and those damn Etsy articles  “Quit Your Day Job” taunted me like a fast driving ice cream truck taunts a fat kid!  At the time I was waiting tables 3 days a week at Irene’s Cuisine in the French Quarter making full-time pay for part-time work.  It was great!  But I really longed to be my own master.  As the great Dylan says “I didn’t want to work on Maggie’s Farm no more.”  Inspiration hit when I picked up a tapered 6” table leg that was reminiscent of something I would have seen in my grandmother’s house.  It kinda took me back there like chocolate chip cookies and the smell of Taboo with cheap wine.  All warm and fuzzy with the thoughts of Gram, I dreamed up a coffee table that I could sell on Etsy.  I looked around for materials that I could use to build this as simply as I could.  I still wasn’t sure Jeremy was going to go along with my plan that I just dreamed up standing on the table leg isle of Lowes.  I had to keep it simple so even an unskilled girl like me could build it if my plan took off.  I loaded up my purchases with a half-baked dream of being my own boss and drove off into the sunset...

Sunset at the Fly on the Mississippi River

     Back to reality.

     You see this wasn’t my first attempt at entrepreneurship.  This wasn’t even my second.  This wasn’t even the first time I loaded up my cart with a hair-ball idea that was going to help me stay home AND provide for my family.  I had done this sort of thing before.  Jeremy had listened ever so graciously to my plans to start something big many times.  Something that was going to make us independent.  We were just one great idea away from traveling the world and moving to Costa Rica!  But this time, oh this idea.  It has taken us closer than no other. 

     Jeremy at the time worked as a carpenter for a company called Freeman.  Ironically, he was far from a “free-man”.  He worked 7 days a week for what seemed like pennies not from heaven but hours robbed from our family.  Have I mentioned he was also going back to school?  I hated his job.  He hated his job.  But this dream, this little coffee table that we built on our front porch and finished in our dining room was going to free us at last.   Or so I hoped....