Really Pretty Good

Today we are chatting all things nesting before baby arrives:

• Nesting rage

• Baby’s room plans —  biophilic design, grandpa aesthetic but modern twist

• Paint color and what I've realized about painting

• What else I've been doing around the house

• Transitioning into mostly SAHM and realizing nesting is kind of my job now and how that feels   

• Glucose test update

Links:

I’m going to share all about my second trimester experience and my baby shower which was this past weekend! I’m in the last week of the second trimester so we are entering the home stretch. And the second trimester was pretty different from the first so I hope you enjoy this little update for some easy listening today!

This week’s episode is a quick and cozy list of some ways you can decorate for fall if you haven’t already. I struggle to decorate for fall and have it end up feeling really impactful, so I thought others might be in the same boat and maybe could benefit from a little brainstorm list of decor ideas in case it gives you any inspiration for your own house. I’ll focus on indoor because for outdoor I’m just going to assume we are all doing the pumpkins and mums thing, and if you live in a warm climate maybe you’re going with fake plants or you’re willing to replace them throughout the season.

I think the three keys to decorating for fall are dried plants, earth tones, and hygge. So here are some specific ideas for how to implement those three things and make your house feel ultra autumny.

Sharing my thoughts on the underwhelming fashion month that was Spring/Summer 2024!

So to explain this episode about fashion let me start off by saying that it’s the start of the football season and last year around this time I made an episode called How To Care About Sports because I always feel like I’m missing out on the conversation this season of the year and even though I don’t naturally care about sports I realized there’s a part of me that kind of wants to because you know, if you can’t beat em, join em. 

So my friend who is an editor at FOX Sports came on and joined me to give her perspective on why sports are interesting to watch and kind of gave me the 411 on how to find interesting relationships among the players and character stories to care about so that it’s a little bit more like reality tv for me haha. And I admittedly have enjoyed it more since then and have followed some players or players’ wives on instagram and I might even try to watch some games this year on my own to see if I can become genuinely interested by the time of the SuperBowl. 

So, all that to say, it is ALSO the biggest fashion season of the year right now, so I think all the sports fans out there deserve an episode about how to care about fashion and fashion month. I’m sure there is some cross over of people who care about both already, and if you follow my content I probably don’t have to convince you to care about fashion haha, but I actually thought it could be a fun chat even if you do like fashion already to share some of the ways I like to make it even more interesting to follow fashion month besides just “oo pretty dresses.”

So whether you love fashion already or are just waiting to send this episode to the sports lover in your life and say “hey I listened to your episode now you listen to mine,” I hope this episode leaves you inspired to find extra entertainment and enjoyment in the fashion world!

I would personally think of three subtopics of fashion that I find interesting: high end fashion events, influencers and celebrity style, and trend cycles. I think the easiest place to start is with those high end events, so let’s go through the fashion schedule which is the order and location of fashion shows and fashion month that is usually about the same year after year, and then we can talk about celebrity style and then trend cycles.

Today I thought it would be fun to chat about a new fashion trend I have been seeing everywhere for the last several months, specifically ever since Sofia Richie’s engagement and wedding, and the trend is being called “old money” style. 

I think this could also be described as Upper East Side Style or basically it’s like east coast wealthy preppy style.

I feel like there’s a conversation you could have about whether or not this is problematic to strive for, but, deeper cultural issues aside, I’m in the camp that on the surface level at least it is a very pretty style and I aspire to wear more of it. ” meets “I’m still fashionable and feminine.”
And just in general, whenever it becomes trendy to be more preppy, I am a fan, because my personality is preppy, so all the ultra relaxed, didn’t try too hard, casual styles are not as natural for me to get into.
So let’s jump into a 3-part chat about old money aesthetic: First, diving more into what the trend is and why I am enjoying it, second, what items I would shop to put together a capsule wardrobe that is the old money aesthetic, and third, how I think the look can be achieved without the actual old money budget.

Sharing all about my first trimester pregnancy experience -- the hard parts and the fun parts!

I know everyone says this when they announce their pregnancy, but I’m excited and kind of relieved to share and not have it be a secret from the internet anymore. 

So I’ll give you all the updates today on everything so far and will probably be making some more content around pregnancy here on the podcast as well as the rest of social media throughout the pregnancy. I’m going to try to keep it fairly positive content overall because I feel like there is a ton of negative pregnancy and motherhood content out there, which has affected me negatively, although I will say this episode starts off with some deeper, more stressful stuff because I had a lot of anxiety this first trimester.

Hope this is a fun listen for anyone who loves babies and a helpful listen for anyone going through their first early pregnancy experience.

Today I thought it would be fun to have a quick chat about my personal style and clothing rentals. I was looking through past episodes to see what people listened to the most out of curiosity and almost all of the top episodes were fashion-related, and it’s one of my favorite topics too! We’ve chatted a lot already about how to find your own personal style on previous episodes so I’ll link some of the relevant ones below in case you missed any of them, but for today I thought I could just give an overview about me specifically and what I think my own style is because I’m sure it could change in the future but over the past year I’ve felt a lot more settled into a groove with this, and maybe it will give you some inspo or just be a nice little fun escape for your morning! 

I also will touch on my experiences with renting clothing because whenever I mention that I do that every month it’s usually a little conversation starter and people have questions about it, so I’ll just share a few things about that too and why I’ve been liking it!

Other Fashion Episodes:

I thought I would share some of the things I’ve been doing to try to get re-inspired and help myself out of this burnout slump that is so easy for us to get into. And by the way there are other reasons to be in burnout… I think perfectionism is a big reason as a whole, life transitions, not accomplishing goals as quickly as you expected, having unreasonable expectations from someone else that you can’t meet, just overall being physically exhausted… so many ways burnout can sneak up on us. 

One thing that I have learned though is that burnout is not always a sign that we need to completely stop and change paths completely. Sometimes that can definitely help, like if you did listen to that episode with Lindsay, for her that ended up being a really great option to make a pretty big life change. But other times that’s not possible or it’s just not the best choice. So I’ve been learning that it can be ok to push through that burnout feeling and try to really problem solve around it vs what I used to do which was always give up on things or change gears and run with my emotional momentum.

Okay so let’s jump into 5 things I’m doing to help myself get out of burnout mode.

Karen Haller FRSA is a leading international authority in the field of behavioral color and design psychology. Karen’s area of speciality is in Human-Centred Design and how our relationship with colour, design and nature affects and influences us, as well as how businesses and designers can use it to influence positive behaviour and well-being. She consults, collaborates and creates with companies who want to investigate social problems and seek new ways to improve human experience in balance with nature. Karen also authored bestseller The Little Book of Colour: How to Use the Psychology of Colour to Transform your Life (out in 14 languages). Karen trains design professions in colour and design psychology and will be creating online courses for people who are looking to discover how to use colour in their everyday life, how to feel more comfortable - and confident - using, choosing, wearing and surrounding themselves with colour. Karen’s work been featured in the Independent, The Times, Glamour, The London Design Festival, and more.

We talked about what things affect how we perceive color, why we might disagree with someone about what color something is, the actual psychological effects of different colors on our minds and bodies and how we can use color in our outfits, environments and even in business to hack our emotions and wellness. And for those of you who feel like you’re just a neutrals person, we also touched on where neutrals can be used too. 

If you’re interested in using color in your life or life a good psychology hack, I think you’ll enjoy today’s episode.

Karen can be contacted via her websites:

A highlight reel of the first year of the podcast! Here are links to the full episodes of those highlighted in this one:

This week I’ve been planning an episode coming up that will be with a very special guest on our one year anniversary of this podcast. I can’t wait to share more but for today, with the one year anniversary being only a couple of weeks away, I thought it would be a fun time to start reflecting on the past year and to share everything I’ve learned from podcasting for the year and my tips for anyone else who has considered starting a podcast.

Tonight as I’m recording this, the Met Gala is happening, and this is actually my first time really paying attention to the met gala other than looking at photos afterward but this year I’ve been watching all of the big fashion events a bit more and in the process learned more details about the Met Gala that I found interesting and I feel like it’s always nice to have something sort of shallow and just fun to listen to mid-week so I thought this could be a good topic to dive into today. 

Today I thought it would be fun to chat about transitions because I’m in a long transition right now and I think that we are all going through transitions pretty frequently in life. If you work in social media at all there is an extra level of this I think because the trends and algorithms change so often that your business model sometimes feels like it has to change along with that. But even if you aren’t in social media, like I talked about in the last two episodes, lots of life just moves and changes very fast these days so I thought it would be helpful to talk through some of the things I’m doing to help myself get through the chaotic feeling that transitions bring and come out the other side in one piece.

Welcome back to another episode of really pretty good podcast. This week in fashion we are just wrapping up NYFW Bridal where we got to see all of the top couture designer’s take on wedding looks for this season. I’m actually recording this before the event has happened so I can’t speak much to the trends we saw but I will definitely be sharing on Instagram so if you’re interested in seeing my thoughts there, you can follow me @reallyprettygood. 

But in honor of bridal fashion week I thought what better time than now to bring on a very special guest to the podcast, and that is Bridal Dress designer Carrie Baskaran of Carrie Ann Bridal, who also happens to be my younger sister. 

Carrie left her corporate job to design custom wedding dresses full time and then recently launched Carrie Ann Bridal’s first full original collection as well which includes 8 gowns, 2 overskirts, 3 veils and 2 casual bridal party dresses that are all classic looks with a twist, inspired by the Midwest bride. Carrie is based in Milwaukee but her collection is available online as well for those of you listening from somewhere else. 

I asked Carrie to join the podcast today to have a chat about how she got into her career as a bridal dress designer, her advice for brides who are just starting the process of looking for a dress, her thoughts on bridal trends, and a few little stories about her own wedding dress and love story. If you love love, love dresses, or love eavesdropping on two sisters chatting, I hope you’ll find today’s episode a nice fun listen!

A chat about how the fashion trend cycle is changing and what I think that means for Summer 2023 Trends

Lately I’ve been seeing a ton of posts about summer fashion 2023 and everyone seems to have a similar sentiment, that this year is kind of a weird one for a variety of reasons which I will get into, and no one really knows what we are wearing this summer. I thought it would be fun to explore this topic here and give you my thoughts on why this summer is a different one, what i think is happening in the world of fashion trends overall for kind of the first time in recent history, what trends I hear people talking about,  mer, and what I plan to wear this summer 

I find trends so fascinating because to me they’re like an outward expression of what our culture is going through together. So you know how we all know our outfits are an expression of ourselves and our personality and feelings each day. Well, trends are the same thing but for an entire culture. So i think they’re interesting to analyze and predict. That said, it’s obviously very ok to not care. Especially this year and especially in recent years in my opinion. And just because something is trendy doesn’t mean you have to like it and just because something is considered uncool now doesn’t mean you have to stop liking it. 

Today I’m so excited to bring on a guest who just completed an amazing project. Her name is Erin Carpenter, on instagram @erinv_carpenter and she and her husband recently finished buying and renovating a laundromat in Charleston which was really needed and used in the community but was in very bad condition. They got to know the community and their needs, turned the laundromat into a stunning absolutely gorgeous space that feels completely new, launched it with a free laundry day and then posted their project on social media where it now has a collective 15M views. I found Erin just a couple hours after they started going viral and reached out right away. Her page has since blown up so I feel very privileged to get to interview her today. We had such a nice chat hearing about the project, the importance of good design and the deeper impact it can have, her design process in general and basically just chatted about how we both love to make things feel cozy and beautiful. I think you’ll love this episode if you enjoy decorating or are looking for a way to use your creativity to make your own community better. Before you listen, don’t forget to follow Erin on instagram and tiktok @erinv_carpenter and tap 5 stars on this episode. Without further ado, let’s jump into my conversation with Erin.

Today we are chatting about Turning 30 because yesterday was my 30th birthday and I have a lot of feelings about it. I feel like I’ve gone very back and forth between being excited to enter a new decade and being depressed about how fast life is moving and kind of getting caught up in feeling behind or feeling like my youth is over. I’ve been chatting with friends who are in this same transition around this time and it’s always an interesting conversation to see how everyone feels, so I reached out to my group text of the 7 girls I lived with in college who have all turned thirty in the past year — I’m the baby of the group and the last one to turn 30 this week. And I asked them if any of them wanted to jump on the podcast to chat through this topic, so today I’m joined by two of my college roommates, Jordan and Libby. Libby works in the corporate world in Ohio and is expecting a baby this year, Jordan works at a non profit in Texas, And I am based in Los Angeles area freelancing in the entertainment industry. I’m used to mostly having conversations with others who are kind of freaking out about turning 30 so it was somewhat surprising and refreshing to chat with two people who are actually feeling really great about turning 30 and it was a good conversation to snap outside of my entertainment industry bubble and remember that first of all, 30 is still young, and second of all, aging is a really beautiful amazing thing. So whether you’re feeling good or freaking out I hope you find today’s conversation relatable and encouraging. 

A deep dive into women's fashion, pattern making and all the details on your clothing that you do care about but don't even realize or notice that you care about until you're wearing something without them. On today's episode I'm joined by Alison Hoenes, a freelance pattern maker and fellow podcaster. Alison shares behind the scenes of how clothing gets designed and made, her tips for understanding fit and how bad fit is a clothing issue not a body issue, her tips for building a wardrobe that fits you, your lifestyle and your values.

Today we’re chatting about another necessary evil of creativity and that is, dun dun dun… Taxes. I feel like if there is one thing that creatives universally dread, it’s filing taxes. And while it’s still pretty early in the year, there are a lot of things to start working on now to make taxes easier as a small business owner or freelancer, so I wanted to bring back one of my favorite guests, Ashley from Pretty Penny Accounting.

Ashley previously joined the podcast on Episode 16 to share her tips on budgeting with a fluctuating income and how we can manage our finances and bookkeeping with an untraditional salary. Today Ashley is back to share her tips for taxes and tax prep specifically for creatives.

We talked Tax Filing 101, write offs, 1099s and Schedule C’s, paying quarterly, sales tax, how to keep information organized and what information to be tracking throughout the year, how to deal with overwhelm, and how to know whether taxes are something you can handle on your own or if you might want to hire someone to help.

Loved this conversation and in case you miss this at the end I wanted to just reiterate here because I think it’ll help a lot: Ashley does a weekly Q&A on her Instagram @prettypennyaccounting every Monday, so she is a really great resource to follow and ask any of your quick accounting or tax questions and just follow along what other people are asking. She’s someone who really understands both the creative small business side as well as of course the accounting side, so she and her firm are a great resource to check out if you still have questions after this episode.

I feel like sports are such a huge part of our culture in America and also globally and I’ve never been a big sports person so I always feel a little bit on the outside when sports things are happening. I see so many people that seem to care so much about how their team is doing and it seems like such a unifying, emotional event that I am kind of jealous of and want to be able to care about too or at least not feel like I don’t know how to connect when people talk about sports. So for this episode I brought on my friend Sara Carlson who is an editor at Fox Sports. Sara is super easy to talk to and though she lives deep in the sports world, she totally understood where I was coming from so she was the perfect person to chat with on this topic, and I’m happy to say our conversation totally worked on me! I’m actually looking forward to watching this year’s SuperBowl coming up this weekend and have some ideas to keep up with sports in general in a way that I’m genuinely interested in. 

We talked about: 

• How to get attached to the storylines of players 
• Basic rules of football and how to understand the game 
• What to look for in 2023 Super Bowl 
• Why people get sooooo emotional about games and how can we appreciate that more 

Thinking through how to navigate confidence in your online brand when it overlaps so much with your own personal identity! Will share my thoughts on what has helped increase my confidence and then 10 questions to ask to help figure out your personal brand on social media/online. 

Explaining what exactly creative direction is, why you might want to hire a creative director, the difference between a creative director and an art director and more. Creative Direction is such a fun job and getting more popular, so hope you enjoy!

I moved to LA from Wisconsin/Ohio almost 8 years ago! Here are the biggest culture shockers I felt moving to LA and things I find funny/unique about living in LA and some stories from my early days right after moving here.

A virtual New Year’s Time Capsule: 20 questions to answer this year and every year. I was inspired by Billie Eilish’s new year same interview thing that she does every year. I answer these questions:

1. Name, age, family, job
2. any major events in the last year
3. a lesson from the year
4. something you feel proud of/thankful for/great about from the year
5. a regret from the past year
6. favorite project you did this year
7. go-to meals this year
8. what was your style this year/most worn outfit or clothing item
9. what color and length was your hair
10. best beauty product you bought
11. Best home product you bought
12. A favorite book 
13. A favorite movie or show
14. Favorite podcast or blogger/influencers
    ______
15. something from the last year that you want to bring into the new year
16. a traditional resolution for this year
17. Plans you are looking forward to this year
18. something new you want to try this year
19. a trend prediction for the new year
20. books / movies /shows on your wishlist for this year

Links (some links are affiliate links):

Today I’m joined by a very close friend of mine, Megan Nicole, who grew to multiple millions of subscribers on YouTube from her music covers and originals and has been doing music as a career ever since she was old enough to have a career. Megan has gone on tour around the world, played for Michelle Obama, attended the Grammys, the AMAs, and overall just has a really wide experience in the music world, not to mention I just genuinely love her fun, pop sound and colorful, funny, nostalgic music videos. She is such a talented song writer and has been a great support to me in my own career so I know you will love hearing from her!

I asked Megan to give us the deep dive on the music industry

• Including her personal song-writing process, from writing lyrics to choosing a producer, to mixing and mastering to running the business side
• how much it costs to produce one track (hint: it may be shocking)
• her tips for musicians who want to make it in the industry
• what it’s like working with her husband who is also a musician
• How she plans her music videos
• And lastly all about her new Christmas album that was just released

Check out Megan's new Christmas Album:

I made a list of my favorite beauty, home decor and fashion items. Almost all of them are under $50. I also tried to choose somewhat timeless options and things that I know have been available for sale over the course of at least a few years. so that if you're listening to this in the future most of these

Beauty:

Today is a solo episode with yours truly with some behind the scenes on my new YouTube show and my thought process/strategy around launching something new. I thought it might be interesting to share because this is an area I’ve grown so much in over the last few years, and I think launching something new like a project you’re really passionate about can be kind of overwhelming or at least can feel pretty vulnerable, and I feel like this can apply even to things like starting a new job or life transition or anything new and big that you’re sharing with others. I used to rely a lot more on hype and my own energy to get things done and I used to feel more pressure for launches to go really well and I think some things I’ve learned in the last few years have helped all of that feel a little less intimidating, and also helped me start to become more consistent in my online content as well instead of going back and forth between full steam ahead and burnout all the time. Now it’s more of a slow consistent drip.

Anyways I hope you find this episode encouraging if you’re releasing something new into the world or taking on a big project and have some nerves, have found launches in the past to not be as successful as you hoped, or if you’re just curious about the behind the scenes of my newest project, Really Pretty Good, the show, on YouTube.

Links:

Today is for anyone who wants to travel more, make a living as an influencer, or is curious about both. Today’s epsidoe is a chat with Nikki Tomlin, full time travel influencer and photographer who grew her social media over the pandemic and now gets to see the world as a job. We talked about

• How she went from her first flight at age 16 to full time travel influencer
• What growing her account looked like from 6k followers to almost 80k
• How she transitioned from primarily a photo account to including lots of video content with the algorithm changes
• How she gets aesthetic content while traveling when having to rely on non-photographer friends to shoot for her
• How she plans her travels
• Her tips for making traveling less stressful for people like me who want to love it but often feel overwhelmed by the actual travel part

As someone who loves the idea of traveling but gets stressed out by the actual process and also a fellow creative, I found this conversation inspiring and I hope you do too!

I recently started dedicating a lot more time into my own content so I’ve been on a bit of a kick to learn from other creators on how they tell great stories and how they create photos and videos that are really engaging. So today I’m excited to welcome Sebastian Gomez who is known within the YouTube world for being a really talented video editor. Sebastian always knows how to make me cry with a really emotional story and seems to really just pull on the heart strings with the most simple stories. I really wanted to learn from him how he’s able to pull out so much emotion in his videos and tell such engaging stories so he came over for taco night a couple weeks ago and we recorded this conversation.

There were so many helpful tips but I think my biggest takeaway was that it’s really about finding a great story before you even begin, and great editing is just the icing on the cake.

Seb shares everything about his process of creating a video from concept to shooting to editing to posting. So if you’re involved in storytelling of any kind, creating your own video content, or are just fascinated by the behind the scenes of a YouTuber’s life, I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

Attention all people who are trying to find their personal style, wish they were better at thrifting, or want to pull of bold colors but can never figure out how. Today’s episode is for you.

Today I’m joined by Valerie Metz, a former photographer turned content creator, mom of 2 and thrifted fashion goals. I’ve known Valerie now for about 7 years and she’s always been someone who inspires me creatively and is the epitome of cool. I love how Valerie plays with color and bolder looks in her fashion and always seems to be able to pull of looks that I would be nervous to try and make them look so effortless, so I wanted to have her on to share her thrifting secrets.

We covered her tips for thrifting successfully, her tips for pulling off bold colors in a more timeless way if you’re normally more of a neutrals person, and how she organizes closet sales on her own or as pop ups with brands.

Valerie had such simple, attainable, but helpful tips and I left our conversation so inspired, so I hope you enjoy today’s episode!

Links:

A cozy listen to my personal trend predictions!

Links:

Today, in honor of world mental health day, we are chatting all things anxiety. I am not a mental health professional and you should seek the help of a mental health professional if you’re struggling with anxiety or any other mental health challenge.

I thought it could be helpful, however, to share some of my story and experience because I used to have a diagnosed anxiety disorder and I do not have it anymore. My mindset around anxiety in general has completely changed in the process and there is so much I would love to tell my past self. So, if you’re struggling with anxiety in this season or if you have your whole life, I hope you will find this episode helpful. I’ll share:

• my story
• things that helped & things I wish I knew
• a few practical tips/hacks

Resources Mentioned: