Wednesday's Woman: Chrissy Thomas

When Chrissy Thomas was growing up, she wasn't thinking about going into skin care. She wanted to be a dentist, and then she wanted to be in the operating room.

In March, though, it'll be ten years that she's run in Snellville, Thomas says she loves it. When she started, her daughter Ella was just three weeks old.

"There's nothing else I'd rather do," she said about her skin care business. "I don't get the plastic people here. You'll never find anyone here that's really got over-stuffed lips or unrealistic expectations, but it's people that just want to be healthy and be all that they can be."

She also gets to learn a lot about her client's lives, and being a social person, that aspect of the job also fits Thomas.

"I know their children, their grandchildren, their pets, their births, deaths," she said. "We really get to know our clients."

A graduate of Georgia Baptist College of Nursing, Thomas has always been in the medical field. Initially, she was a plastic surgery nurse in operating rooms at Egleston Children's Hospital, and then she moved into the adult side of things at Plastic Surgery Consultants in Atlanta.

"Never had a home life," she said, laughing.

When the doctors retired from Plastic Surgery Consultants, they told her she could keep the skin care part of the practice. She imagined it'd be just shipping things from home, but it's become so much more.

"Here I am ten years later, and it's just grown steadily since then," added the 41-year-old Thomas.

The Snellville community has embraced them, having moved the business here from Tucker six years ago. And, about a year ago, Thomas's husband, Sam, left his career in information technology to learn all about skin, too.

Doing the clinical side and the business side had become too much for this mother of two children, Dawson, 11, and Ella, 9. She'd get home late, and the family ate out more.

"Everybody was tired, stressed out," she said. "It just wasn't a good balance."

Now, she and her husband can better balance things out. Still, as a full-time business owner, mother and wife, Thomas doesn't do many activities outside of her business and family.

The family lives just a few minutes from About Face Skin Care, in the childhood Snellville home of Sam Thomas. Both are graduates of , and have been married for nearly 17 years.

Thomas holds her family in high regard, and the values of respect and fairness are especially important. And, it's her 83-year-old grandmother, Elizabeth McClure, who has greatly inspired her to stay the course despite any curve balls in life.

"She's the wisest woman I've ever known," Thomas said. "I always tell her that she's my hero. She'll come up with these one-liners when things are going rough in my life that resonate with me forever."

Living in Snellville, has been great, Thomas added. With her family by her side and many of her clients, who have also become friends, the city of 20,000 feels smaller to her now.

She is even seeing some of their old teachers, and her children's teachers, for example, at the the skin care business.

"It gives us a stronger sense of community for us to know so many of of our clients," she said. "We go out to dinner, and we run into people we know all the time."

To learn more about Chrissy Thomas and her business About Face Skin Care, log on to their website: http://www.aboutfaceskin.com/.