The Women Behind the Bags - The Sara Handbag

This will be the first of my "Women Behind the Bags" series.

Sometimes I amaze myself with the clarity of my wit. Just when I think I will never again have anything of substance to blog about, the neurons in my brain decide to play nice and line up to fire with calculated aim and the proverbial lightbulb glows so bright it shatters into a billion shards of glass. Kind of a mess to clean up, but at least I get a great idea out of it.

Each Sunshine Handbag design has been given the name of a woman close to my heart. Some are true sisters by blood, others are sisters given to me by fate. They are all amazing, wonderful, classy, smart and beautiful and I'm going to introduce you to each one. (See why this was such a great idea - it's not going to be just ONE blog, but many blogs, hence the "series". I'm set for at least a week or two!

The first bag I designed was the Sara Handbag. Sara is a sister by blood - we share the same parents, unlike two sisters I will detail later with whom I share only one parent but love them all the same. Sara is younger by four years and lives in Golden, Colorado with her patient husband and three adorable boys.

She's incredibly talented artistically and isn't afraid to experiment with decorating ideas no matter how much work is involved. She's hung corrugated tin on the ceiling of her living room (it's awesome), painted a rug on the hardwood under her dining table (beautiful), and built a vanity for her half bath complete with an aluminum washtub for a sink (still haven't seen pictures of that one, ahem!).

She's a lover of all animals, has been caretaker of several odd pets over the years including a desert tortoise, several retired lab rats, a handful of noisy birds, some type of lizard thing that I definitely did not like and many dogs, the most current of which looks exactly like a wookie and I love him.

Sara is uncommonly generous and will always be the friend everyone feels lucky to have. Her neighbors can always count on her to deliver homemade cinnamon rolls and yummy breakfast burritos on New Years morning. And she doesn't think twice about dragging three kids to Target to pick up the magical floor lamp at Target that her favorite sister was coveting but unable to find (when are you shipping that to me, by the way?)

For all of those reasons and too many more to list, the Sara Handbag is more than just a purse. It is an artistically creative and generous way to keep close to you all the treasures in your life.