The Ruby Slipper Project is a dream realized by founder and president, Sheila Grubb. 

This is her story and our mission:

When I was a little girl, my father’s business went through hard times, and our family’s dwindling finances forced us to move to a lower income neighborhood outside of Brunswick, Georgia. Our family of four moved into a tiny, non-descript three-bedroom house with chipped paint inside and out. Landscaping was non-existent, unless you counted a single oak tree and a huge magnolia.  A year after we moved to Peninsula Avenue, my father died suddenly of a heart attack.  I was eight years old. Although he worked for an insurance agency, something went awry. No money was forthcoming to help my widowed mother raise either my 16-year-old brother or me. My mom, who had no training to be anything other than a housewife, scrambled to immediately find a full time job and prayed for the best.

 

Mom never uttered a word of complaint. She used what she had and a lot of elbow grease to transform that little house into a cheery, quaint place we called home. She landscaped the front, planting pass-along perennials from neighbors, and painted my room a beautiful sky blue. What little we had was in place, and every accessory was placed just so.  I know my mom learned this principle from her mother, Ruby.  She and my grandfather Landon lived in rural South Georgia, in a farmhouse that his father had built.  My Meme, as she was called, always kept a spotless house with furniture and accessories purposely placed. I fondly recall sitting in her tidy living room, gazing at the beautiful figurines that she loved and the pictures she and my aunt Alice painted. 

 

In recent years, inspired by my mother’s determination to spruce up our once dreary surroundings, I have used my own interior design talents to cheer others in trying situations. During a visit to my aunt Alice, she asked my sister and me to re-arrange her house.  In a single afternoon, we created a space that she was proud of. Upon surveying her freshly redesigned living room, she said, “I want to have company over now.”  That felt good to hear. 

 

When a beautiful young woman named Robin, a 20-year-old friend of ours from church, contracted a malignant brain tumor, a group of us banded together to collect furniture and accessories to decorate the apartment she shared with her new husband during the last months of her life. She and her adoring husband Javan spent some happy days in their lovingly decorated apartment.

 

Seeing how improving surroundings can lift one's spirit, sparked a dream. The Ruby Slipper project will grant interior design makeovers to worthy individuals.   With donations of gently used furnishings and accessories combined with my interior design know-how, I’m confident that we can accomplish some miraculous makeovers. Some would say that people need food and money, but I believe that a family also needs a place to call home, a place where they can make memories.  I see a little girl dreaming of her future in her princess pink room under a lacy canopy.  I see a single mom relaxing in her own cozy retreat, enjoying the fact that for the first time her children have their own beds to sleep in at night. I see a mother rocking her newborn, terminally ill child in a room designed especially for that baby.

 

I know that in the end all the furniture and accessories will pass away, but memories last a lifetime. A sense of pride in their homes can inspire families and those facing difficulties to strive to make the best of their situations. Besides, like Dorothy said, there’s no place like home.