Recap: Quirky, Feminine, + Eclectic Brooklyn Studio

Hey Folks! I'm so pleased to announce that I am now a Houzz home tour photographer and writer. I've had a passion for interiors and understanding the emotional connection people have with their spaces for years, and I'm excited for the opportunity. So in honor of my new job, I started a new series, Recap, to show you snippets of my home tours, *yay*. Today I'm sharing with you the wonderfully quirky and eclectic home of Annie Mistak, an interior designer and founder of Brontosaurus Inc.  Here are a few pics from the tour. 

I love the way Annie mixes vintage and new pieces to create a modern Holly Golightly vibe. This is Annie's first apartment as a newly single gal, and she used pieces that showcase her vibrant personality and keen eye for detail. She makes quirky look chic with her spray painted dinosaurs and Grey Gardens inspired cat food cans. And those palm tree printed chairs! .

Get the full tour here.

My Burgeoning Freelance Writing Career

Well Hello There! So glad to see you. I've been wondering where you've been- ha! *wink*. Hopefully, you've been living life to the fullest and enjoying spring. Aside from chasing little ones and working a full-time clinical job, I've been busy transitioning to a more creative career, incorporating my passion for design, fashion, and style into my work as a psychologist. I know very few (practically none) who have done this, making the path a little more difficult but hopefully that much easier for anyone coming up behind me. Part of my plan is to offer creative consulting services which I've spoken about here. But another part of the plan is writing for online magazines and websites that cover my creative interests. It's all very exciting and really helps me to sharpen  my writing skills. Among the websites I've been writing for is The Everygirl, a popular website for 20-somethings looking for inspiration to navigate young adult life. I've written a bunch of wellness and other related posts for them. Below are a few:

Here, I wrote about how to deal  with difficult personality types. I enjoy making psychological concepts relatable to lay people. It really is a different, and  refreshing style of writing considering that most psychology articles are written for esoteric journals and often complicated by psychological jargon.  I based the difficult personality types on actual clinical personality disorders (histrionic, narcissistic, depressive, compulsive, dependent), but stayed away from discussing full blown personality disorders as I felt it was beyond the scope of the article. I wanted to strike a balance between being entertaining and informative; providing psychoeducation and introducing the readers to different types of people without getting too clinical, especially since most of that information can be found on other, well-known websites. Read the full article here.

I was really psyched to write about design psychology, a branch of psychology that focuses on meaningful and emotionally fulfilling design. It's a relatively new field and looks beyond focusing on the aesthetics or safety needs of a space to social and psychological  needs that push us to achieve a self-actualized sense of place. I incorporated some tools used in design psychology to helps clients create a "blueprint" of their ideal space, including creating a vision of an ideal space based upon past, present, and future sense of place, picking favorite objects that evoke meaningful memories, and getting rid of objects that do not have meaning. See the full article here.

For this piece I wanted to target over shopping and ways to cope with it. Over shopping is similar to other types of addictions in that you use a "thing" to avoid dealing with deeper level issues that are often harder to address directly. So as an alternative to faulty coping skills, I offered some tips for dealing with poor shopping habits such as figuring out the reason you over shop, what you're getting from it, and learning to use other, healthier ways of coping.  You can read more about the article here.

For sure writing can be challenging, particularly with my hectic schedule. But it is also super rewarding to have an opportunity to be creative. In addition to the The Everygirl, I have also recently been hired as a contributing writer for Houzz.com. I'm thrilled to be able to photograph and write about people's homes for the My Houzz series. I have a passion for interiors, and writing for Houzz is icing on the cake. So stay tuned for posts about my home tours! Until next time folks.