Hi, I’m Christie Halmick.
Once upon a time I was a kid just like you (were). I rode bikes, climbed trees and had acorn fights with my brothers. (Hmmm … maybe you didn’t have that exact experience. But if you did call me up ’cause we could be best friends!) I hauled wood, stacked hay and cried over Where the Red Fern Grows. I curled my hair for Sunday, carried my baby sister around all the time on my hip and spent every Friday night at my Grandma Marie’s watching Dukes of Hazzard.
When I grew up, I graduated some kind of cum laude from the world’s first school of journalism (Columbia, Missouri), created marketing materials for a CAD/CAM software company and art directed magazines.
Then I got sick, had surgery and sat on the couch watching Behind the Music and being comforted by Libby, my black lab. I did a little bit of freelance graphic design work here and there. But mostly, I spent time getting to know my Grandma Roberta and watching and listening to Jewels Branch, the creek that runs by her farm, gurgle by. I’d bring Grandma a Hardee’s chicken sandwich and her groceries. I’d stack her wood box full and dig up her dahlias for the winter. We’d lay on her bed, scouring Taste of Home for new recipes and she’d help me figure out what I was going to fix my husband Jamie for dinner. She’d tell me not to count my chickens before they hatched.
In 2003, my chickens hatched … and there were two. Beautiful, preemie baby girls, Loren and Adia, whom my Grandma Roberta got to hug and love before she passed away in 2004.
Since then, I freelanced in and around being a full-time mother of twins. In 2009, when my chickies headed off to kindergarten, I started Jewels Branch Creative, my own creative company. That’s where you find me today.
Behind the scenes of all this, providing constant support, is my husband, Jamie. Along with an alphabet soup of programming skills, he can do the highly impressive feat of parallel parking a school bus. He once won an Addy award, ran a 3D software company, and worked for a quasi-government entity. Currently, when he’s not playing guitar, writing songs or chasing after our kids, he’s busy with his own iPhone app company, tinkerbuilt.
