Artful Living

Owner: Brenda Snyder
Address: 128 S. First St. (Pier 7), La Conner, WA 98237
Phone: 466-4933
Start date: June 1, 2000

Denouncing the drab practicality of “form follows function,” La Conner’s Artful Living offers a tasteful patter of pieces for those whose souls thirst for beauty. Located beside the Thomas Kincaid Gallery on South First Street in the Pier 7 complex, the shop offers home furnishings, gift items, artwork and collectibles, each of which fulfill owner Brenda Snyder’s reverence for imparting beauty and peace to our living spaces.

Snyder’s good taste and sharp sense of style are evident at every turn. Inside her shop, the eye takes in arresting Romanian glassware, handmade quilts from India, artistic linen pieces and the mystical posters of Michael Parks.

“You never know what you’ll find in here,” she states. Even the simpler objects — the candles, the cards and the small gift items — proclaim her urgency for quality and panache. The varied wall colors — eggplant, fern and cantaloupe — confirm Brenda’s ability to gather seemingly unlike elements together and merge them into a harmonious stream.

With its opening late last spring, Artful Living has become a logical evolution of Brenda’s creative talents. The endeavor bears testimony to her conviction that beauty and peace should be a constant presence in everyone’s surroundings.

“Everything you have in your home you should love,” Snyder states. “It should all please your eye.”

To that end, the faint fragrance of the day’s choice of aromatherapy candle can always be detected. Gift items that promote quiet restorative solitude abound, such as the pleasingly packaged and popular Body Teas.

“You can get great joy out of something beautiful and the cost doesn’t matter,” she affirms. “You can’t put a dollar value on what pleases you.”

Customers can therefore expect to find simple items of quality and beauty for a few dollars nestled beside the more costly articles — “an eclectic blend of stuff,” as Snyder puts it.

Brenda is no stranger to the Skagit Valley business climate. She co-owned the La Conner Thomas Kinkade Gallery for five years with Sherrie Gugel. The amicable parting with her business partner affords Artful Living its present space adjacent to the Kinkade Gallery. Her store now “provides an element that has been missing in La Conner,” she believes.

Prior to her gallery ownership, she operated a Sedro-Woolley gift boutique, Nor-Bren Interiors, and later, also with Gugel, Tea Roses and Turnips of La Conner, which paired the diverse styles of Victorian and country, again achieving the characteristic Snyder feat of forging unlikely unions.

Artful Living indulges Snyder’s playful spirit as well. She features a calypso array of area rugs derived from T-shirt swatches, and since they are exceedingly soft and richly textured, she laughingly urges customers to remove their shoes and socks so they can properly feel them.

On a nearby shelf, a striking beaded bag invites closer scrutiny. It’s too large for coins and too small for essentials; it’s a cell-phone bag that’s both practical and beautiful.

Artful Living persuasively lauds the merits of beauty and style. Often, customers come in seeking a gift for another and leave with one for themselves as well. It seems fitting. Since a thing of beauty nourishes the soul, it’s hard to overlook one’s own clamoring spirit.

 

Vital Chiropractic

Owners: Cheryl L. Schmitt, DC and Robert J. Schmitt, DC
Address: 1509-C Riverside Drive, Mount Vernon, WA 98273
Phone: 848-6755
Start date: Aug. 4, 2000

Viewed through one lens, we’re a slouching soda-pop-and-potato-chip-prone culture with the TV remote wedged firmly in hand. A sunnier view regards the national preoccupation with bottled water, organic vegetables and fitness centers as a steely dedication to good health.

At Vital Chiropractic, one cannot help but be infused with the spirit of healing and rejuvenated by the message that health truly springs from within.

At Vital Chiropractic, 1509 Riverside Drive in Mount Vernon, Cheryl L. and Robert J. Schmitt embrace the more hopeful view that we are indeed a health-seeking culture.

“Chiropractic care isn’t just for neck and back pain; it really addresses your whole body’s health,” Robert Schmitt asserts.

Both doctors of chiropractic (DCs) dedicate their life work to the restoration and maintenance of general health through regular chiropractic care.

Chiropractors examine the spine for the presence of a “vertebral subluxation,” a spinal bone that is out of alignment and therefore causes a disturbance in the nervous system. Wherever a subluxation is present, the brain cannot convey the vital messages to the body as well as it should. Vertebral subluxations lead to both a lack of health and/or a decrease in the patient’s expression of life. With subluxations, there may not even be signs or symptoms present yet to alert the patient that a problem lurks — symptoms are the last stage of sickness and disease. When a subluxation is detected, the chiropractor manually corrects the misalignment by performing an “adjustment” on the spine.

The basis of chiropractic care urges regular examinations and adjustments to prevent disease and maintain health. This approach is in stark contrast to the medical community’s focus on sick care.

The Schmitts met during their chiropractic studies at Palmer College in Davenport, Iowa.

“The chiropractic curriculum is a rigorous postgraduate course with five years of academic work compressed into a 3 1/2-year period,” Cheryl Schmitt explains.

Upon completion of their DC degrees, they traveled to Helena, Mont., to seek work, but opened their joint practice in Mount Vernon last summer. Both have undergone additional training in the use of the Gonstad technique, a specialized system of analysis and correction. The Schmitts also offer their patients a sophisticated spinal assessment that relies on a computer program working in tandem with thermography and surface electromyography. Patients benefit from this advanced technology for both evaluation and ongoing monitoring.

Cheryl and Robert promote family care in their practice. Many adult patients eventually bring their children in for care. Patients currently range in age from 2 1/2 to 70. Cheryl particularly enjoys working with pediatric patients.

“They respond really quickly. They seem to have less ear infections, get over colds quicker and are generally healthier,” she notes.

Since insurance reimbursement continues to be based on the medical model of symptom relief rather than optimizing health, Vital Chiropractic does not belong to any insurance plans but instead provides family wellness payment programs.