Pinterest Launch

Brightsiders!!! Today, I'm so excited to share a project that's been cooking for months: Holly & my episode of "Asking For A Friend" for Pinterest TV -- it launched on Wednesday!

Holly's here to kick us off with some background on the project, then I'm sharing a reflection on experience of bringing this to life. Today's B-side is a long one, so keeping this sanity check short to say hey hello hi, I love you, I hope you're taking good care of yourself. <3

Written while listening to the Best Playlist Ever Made, c/o Mike Hagberg.

As a perfectionist overachiever, I am not one to make a big deal of the cool things I do because I always believe that it could have been…..well, cooler. But if you’re reading this, it means that Bogs and my Spoak x Pinterest creative brainchild is now out in the world.

And it’s really special and kind of a big fucking deal.

Let me back up here and give some context on how this all came to be. Outside of being the Bside’s Witch in Residence, I’m also an interior designer. Through my journey of trying to figure out how to make my design dreams a reality, I stumbled upon Spoak – a tech platform and amazing community for design hobbyists, side hustlers, and professionals. It’s basically like…..if Photoshop, Instagram, and Etsy all came together into a superhuman and became like 10x hotter. It’s been a safe space to explore who I am as a designer and find some really amazing friends along the way.

When I first got the email about the Spoak x Pinterest TV Show opportunity, I KNEW there was no one I would rather do it with than Bogs. Not only because she’s my best friend. Not only because we had already put in the work to articulate our vision. But because I knew I could trust her creative instincts, her ability to get shit done, and her respect for the opportunity. And I was so right.

So we said YES. We produced a whole damn thing in A WEEK. We woke up at 6AM to go to the flower market. We had our first shoot location fall through at the last minute and we figured it out. We got manicures. We took an exhaustion nap. We got to feature some of our best friends. We ate takeout and drank champagne. We went all out. We did the damn thing.

When I step back and think about it, I realize that all the small steps we’ve taken as creatives (both individually & together) have all been cumulative. They have built the foundation that made this moment possible. If you have a vision or a dream – Put something out in the world. Call yourself what you are even when you don’t feel fully ready or qualified. Say yes when opportunity knocks. And magic will follow.

I couldn’t be more proud of us as creative partners, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead of us. The most special thing about this opportunity is not being able to shine as a designer, but to shine alongside my favorite person doing what we’re meant to do. We couldn’t be more excited to share this little slice of our souls with you all.

Love you, mean it
xx Holly

Holly and I have been simultaneously biting our tongues and exploding with excitement since the moment we found out we were cast in this series for Pinterest x Spoak, which highlights 12 pairs of friends collaborating on creative projects. The first round of episodes launched on Wednesday, and we are SO proud to be featured in a group of such talented creators (you can see all of them here!)

Now I gotta say, “manifestation” is a word that’s thrown around a LOT these days, but this experience was a reminder that sometimes you have no idea what kinds of opportunities you’re inviting into your life when you put certain energy into the universe. Let me elaborate and tell you a little story.

Holly and I spent this past holiday season together in Connecticut. Over the break I asked Holly if she’d creative direct a zine I’ve been dreaming up. I’ve been wanting to bring The Brightside into the physical realm for a while now, and 2022 felt like the right year to tackle it.

So we spent the holidays creating an elaborate vision board which included the type of content we want to include, how we want it to feel, look, etc. - and it just so happens that one of the biggest editorial features would be a dinner-party photoshoot, where we’d go full-send on a tablescape and have all of our friends model.

The primary goal of the zine is to bring The Brightside tenets to life - nontoxic positivity, kindness, unapologetic self-expression - and we chose the dinner party as the main editorial feature to emphasize the fact that you don’t need a major milestone for a reason to dress up, bring your besties together and celebrate life.

We left our zine-planning Christmas break energized and inspired, but as we settled into the doldrums of the winter in NYC I was more focused on surviving seasonal depression than anything else. January and February passed in a blur, and I hadn’t made much progress on putting ideas to paper. We had a loose timeline in mind, but no real concept of when we’d be shooting content or bringing this to life.

So when I got a call from Holly in early March telling me about the opportunity with Pinterest and Spoak, asking if I wanted to do this with her (and oh, we had to turn it around in a week) it lit a fire under us to get down to business and do the damn thing. Our dinner party was the perfect creative collaboration to highlight, and since we already had the vision set it was a no brainer. We rolled our sleeves up and got to work.

If someone had told us as we were putting together our vision board in late December that in just a few months we’d be shooting the dinner party to be featured on Pinterest, we’d have had a stroke. That’s what I mean when I say you never know what kind of magic you’re stirring up when you put your ideas out there – and when the magic finds you, you show up to it.

Putting this together in a week was an absolute creative firestorm sprint, but it was without a doubt one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It reminded Holly & me what it meant to show up with intention - we could have let the intense deadline riddle the experience with stress and anxiety - and we had stress, to be sure, but we were really intentional about showing up with love and gratitude for the opportunity and making it fun.

If there’s anything I want to emphasize coming out of this experience it’s this: there have been so many times, especially during the early months of this year, where I so easily could have just not written a newsletter or let my imposter syndrome get the best of me. So. Many. Times.

But I continue to show up to The Brightside because I believe in it. I breathe life into it, I ask for support from my friends – and this opportunity, this milestone, feels like such a cosmic nod of encouragement to KEEP AT IT, keep showing up - to whatever it is you’re doing. You just never know what’s on its way to you.

So take that small step! Show up to what’s calling you. It doesn’t matter if other people get it, or like it, or even care. Show up to the thing and watch what happens.

My 2022 mantra was be blown away - and this shoot without a doubt blew. me. away.

I'd be remiss to end this Brightside without thanking everyone who made this shoot possible. Hannah Dayan, Ally Perlman, Colleen Owen, Hannah VeShancey, Fatima Rakla - THANK YOU for showing up with a week's notice in your glammest of glam outfits, ready to support - we could not have done this without you.

And thank YOU, Brightside community, for being here, for reading, sharing, cheering me on. I feel privileged beyond belief to greet you in your inbox every few weeks. Thank you for making me feel loved, supported, and seen. I hope I can return the favor.

I'm trying to be on my best spending behavior these days... but I might not be able to resist this Baggu Visor