2010
I wanted to sit down and take the time it takes to write out this post, for myself to look back on, but also for anyone who is starting off this next decade possibly a bit lost, insecure, and generally down and out. I wanted to share my personal story, because for me, this past decade CHANGED EVERYTHING. I really can’t emphasize it enough. I type this with tears in my eyes, because I started off this decade in a really sad place. I found out at the end of 2009 that I wasn’t able to graduate Dec 09′, my planned graduation date. At the last minute, I was able to pull some strings and was able to walk at my graduation, but found out a day before it that my Uncle had died of Cancer. It was terribly sad, especially for my aunt and my cousins who lost their husband and father, and so I graduated, and then hopped on a plane a few hours later to head to NY for my Uncles funeral. It was blizzarding the day we buried him, and I remember feeling so sad, and also so lost, without a direction or a purpose.
At the start of 2010 I moved to Bushwick, Brooklyn to start my life after college. I couldn’t find a job, so I started to work 35 hours a week at Blick art supplies, and was a hostess at a bowling alley after work. Eventually I got a 40-hour a week job working at the front desk of a kickboxing studio, and continued to work nights for extra cash. Matt and I were long distance, and we had just started to date. It was a really weird time for me – I lived alone in Brooklyn with a random roommate, I gained a lot of weight because I was working so many hours, and I felt like I was constantly grinding, without an end or direction in site. When Matt asked me to move to Nicaragua with him, I said yes. So 8 months after living in Brooklyn, I moved to Nicaragua and spent the rest of the year unemployed, selling my photography at a surfing hotel. If it wasn’t for this time of resetting myself, I would have never found blogs. I had endless hours to read and think about my next moves, and it was at this point in life that I discovered fashion blogs.
2011
At the start of 2011 Matt and I had moved back to Miami, and signed a lease on our very first apartment together in Coral Gables. I started my blog, and began to sell thrifted clothes on Etsy! I started the year off working at a Marketing company, but eventually left and went back to Fashion School to get my AA in Fashion Merchandising. By the end of the year I was in school, working at a local clothing boutique, and gaining traction from posting on Lookbook.nu. Instagram wasn’t around yet, but almost! In just one year my life had a complete direction, and while I was scraping by, I felt like I was working toward something!
2012
By 2012, the world of blogging began to take shape a little bit. Granted, I never ever could see what it would eventually become, but by 2012 I started to receive products from brands, and was already basiiiically doing the work I currently do, just not paid, and for fun! Matt and I moved to South Beach, Miami, and I started to work full-time at J.Crew as I finished up Fashion School. Matt was working at the time at a film rental house in Miami, and we were just starting our careers, but we had an amazing group of friends, and started to get into a nice groove. We cooked at home a lot, went on walks around South Beach after dark, and we got Claude this year in November!! I was still selling vintage on the side, in my free time, and I included one of my old product photos below!
2013
This was a huge year for us, because we got engaged!! At this point instagram had launched, and I was posting on the app every day! I was also updating my blog, but mostly for fun, and working full-time at J.Crew as a merchandising manager! We began to plan our wedding, and also plan for our eventual move to NY after we got married!
2014
In February of 2014, we got married in Tampa, FL. I was 26 and Matt was almost 26! He had just started to freelance full-time in the film industry in Miami, and I was working at J.Crew still. Shortly after our wedding, I made the switch to working in marketing as a social media manager. In August of 2014 we officially packed our things up, and moved our life to NY! It was where we knew we both wanted to be for work and for life, and we bought our first home (a small one-bedroom apartment) with all of our savings, and made the move! I got a job working full-time as a social media manager at a plumbing company, and Matt continued to work as a freelancer in the film industry. At this point in time, I was booking a few blog jobs here and there. I remember I did a job for Express, and Forever 21 was paying me $500 a month to blog for them!
2015
2015 started off as a tough year. We were recovering financially from renovating our small one-bedroom apartment, and Matt and I both worked a lot, so we didn’t see much of each other. I actually stopped blogging for a few months (this was the only time through most of the decade that I stopped posting). I was commuting round-trip about two hours a day, so it was so hard to find the time to take photos, but I also started to make a bit more money from blogging, so knew I eventually had to make some changes to free up some more time. Matt and I eventually decided to sell our apartment, and move to a larger apartment with the profit we could make, and by the end of 2015 I had found a new and much better job at the company letgo as their community manager (and was able to work remotely!) and we had moved into a home that we were much happier in!
2016
At the beginning of 2016, Matt and I were feeling GREAT. We both loved our jobs, and our new apartment. I was also starting to work with some amazing brands through my blog, like Madewell and West Elm to name a few. We felt settled in NY, and settled in work, and then we found out in March that we were pregnant with Hudson! I spent a large majority of 2016 pregnant, and I was also lucky enough to travel to Barcelona, Spain for work a few times throughout the year as well. At the end of 2016, on November 7th, I gave birth to our best gift, Hudson! We ended the year as parents, and it was truly incredible. 2016 was one of my favorite years of my life.
2017
This was a HUGE year for change. I enjoyed my maternity leave at home with Hudson for the first few months of the year, and continued to work on building my blogging clients. We took one of our favorite trips ever to California, and stayed in a VW Westfalia van, and when we returned I went back to work after my maternity leave. Shortly after returning to work, something inside of me told me that it wasn’t the right move to spend so much time apart from Hudson when he was just a baby. So two months after working, in June of 2017, I quit my job (which I loved!) to blog full-time, and I haven’t looked back since! Shortly after that, the opportunity to travel for a few months with KLM airline popped up, and we spent July and August of 2017 traveling to Italy, Denmark and South Africa. As if that wasn’t enough insanity for us (traveling with a 6 month old, I mean!) when we returned from all of our trips, we found the house of our dreams in our town, so we decided to sell our apartment and move AGAIN! We knew it would be our “forever home” and that it needed to eventually be renovated, but we were willing to live in the home un-renovated and save up money for a bit. Hudson turned 1, and I threw him a birthday party in our new home!
2018
At the start of 2018, when Hudson was 15 months old, he started to attend daycare so I could begin to focus on work a bit more again. It felt really incredible to see his growth from being around other kids, and the growth of my business! He only attended 2 days a week, and on those days, Matt and I would work on blog content, and completing work for clients. It was a year full of hustling, but I loved having the extra time to be with Hudson and the flexibility of my schedule. In September of 2018, it hit the point where Matt couldn’t keep up with the amount of work I was booking (he also works in the film industry!) so I hired my first official assistant Danielle! It was WILD how busy I was with work, and was something I could have never predicted when I left my job only a year or so earlier. In April, Hudson started to walk, which was a huge milestone for all of us! In November he turned two!
2019
I am going to do a full round-up for 2019 individually, but let’s just say we are ending the decade in a renovated home, with a 3-year-old and another little baby boy on the way! It is NOT how I would have predicted my decade would end ten years ago, but I am so so thankful for how our life unfolded over the past ten years.
Life is so unpredictable, and every hour, minute, and year we have to make so many small decisions that can lead us in directions we’d never think possible. If there’s one thing I continued to do throughout the past ten years, it was always to listen to what my gut told me, and to follow my heart. I never let myself sink into complacency. Matt and I had a lot of down moments, tough conversations, tough MONTHS, that we semi-brought upon ourselves because of change, travel, and things that made our life more complicated. But in the end, I feel like they were all completely worth it. I know it’s hard to think long-term and to see the big-picture, but the bigger picture is ALWAYS there, so please do not let yourself get stuck in small minutia, or tough weeks. Life has up years and down years, and we have to just enjoy the good moments when we’re lucky enough to see them. Thank you all so much for sticking with me for however long you’ve been here, and I’ll see you in 2020!