Looking for inspiration + ideas for things to do with kids in Metro Detroit? Tried and true suggestions that real moms actually do? Here they are! Hungry Howie’s appreciates Moms and joins LittleGuide Detroit in spotlighting a local Mom each week in the #MomLife series. To take one thing off her plate and give her more time for fun, Hungry Howie’s is giving each week’s featured Mom a free pizza dinner for her and her family to enjoy. Thank you Hungry Howie’s for being the Official Pizza of Moms.

Are you following @mydesignhaven on Instagram? Mary is the mom to two little girls, an interior designer, and the founder + owner of My Design Haven. 

Meet Mary

Hello, Hello! I am Mary Shamow, a creative entrepreneur, interior designer, and business owner of My Design Haven. I am a wife to Bradley and a mom to two beautiful little girls, Paityn (6) and Reese (2), and our Goldendoodle, Charlie. 

 

My Design Haven was created to capture the hearts of home decor and design lovers! My website features ‘The Shop’ carrying a wide variety of home decor from different stores on the web all on one hub. Rather than having multiple browser tabs open and flipping from site to site, you can conveniently and efficiently shop all of my favorite finds with different styles and price points. 

 

In my early years of motherhood, my determination to be a mom and an entrepreneur weighed heavily on my heart. I graduated college 8 months pregnant with Paityn. Most people said I couldn’t do it, that my dreams were too far out of reach because I just had a baby, but they were wrong. Nothing is ever too far out of reach if you’re willing to work hard for it! With lots of help and direction from God, my free time in Paityn’s first year of life was dedicated to researching ways to do just that. This is when I discovered eDesign. All the research led to the beginning of building my brand and my business from the inside out where it quickly took off! eDesign has been the highlight of my journey since 2015 and my most recent venture has been opening up my online store! Doing eDesign and creating a shop has allowed me the freedom to work at my own pace while raising my babies!

 

Followers on Instagram message me constantly asking for home décor recommendations and ideas for their spaces. This is where I came up with the idea to point them straight to my site that categorizes a collection of retail home décor products that I would source for my very own clients. 

Favorite Ways To Spend Family Time:

  • The kids love to do smores as an after-dinner snack. We’ll sit by the fire before bed and make smores and chat about our day and the days ahead.
  • I am a total Mario party fanatic! Playing video games with my cousins is one of my favorite childhood memories and every now and then I get to play and create new memories with my kids.
  • Playing with kinetic sand for a fun sensory experience.

 

Favorite Places To Go:

Favorite Bedtime Stories:

Favorite Family Friendly Restaurants:

Best Park/Playground: Municipal Park (Rochester)

We love spending our time at the Rochester Municipal Park! The kids love the throw rocks into the river, walk the trails, and play at the playgrounds. Paityn also likes to bring her bike to the park and ride her bike around from playground to playground. We do this about once a week!

Best Family-Friendly Annual Event: Troy Daze (Troy)

Troy Daze is a must-go for us! We love supporting our local community and join in on the fun of carnival rides, food trucks, and more!

Your Mom Must-Have: A folding toilet seat!!!

Total game-changer for using public restrooms for kids!! Our toilet seat folds into a small seat that fits into our diaper bag. I keep it in a Ziploc bag with sanitizing wipes to wipe the seat down after each use.

Best Fall Destination or Event: Woodside Bible Church Truck or Treat (Troy)

Woodside Troy (also the church we attend) hosted a trunk or treat event last year for the kids, and we had a blast! Everyone got so creative with their trunk décor, it was so awesome to see! Reese was featured in their photos for wearing a handmade sushi costume (yes, I took the whole costume thing a bit too seriously because I love sushi, and a one-year-old doesn’t have an opinion on what to be for Halloween quite yet! Ha!). The kids had a blast, it was such a great event!

“Pat Yourself on the Back” Accomplishment: Learning + Accomplishing Something New

At the start of my business, I had limited resources to building my brand. I couldn’t afford to hire a professional to create what I had envisioned. This forced me to apply myself to learn how to do it all on my own. So much of my free time in between parenting went to learning how to build my website. Everything you see on my site was self-taught! It took 6 years to get better and better, but I did it all on my own simply by watching YouTube tutorials. Just as I said before, nothing is ever too far out of reach if you work hard for it!

Our #MomLife Series is Presented by Hungry Howie’s – the Official Pizza of Moms!