5 years ago, I was simultaneously planning our wedding and staging my first $3 million modern home in the Oysters Shores community of East Hampton. That first staging project lit a fire in me that I was not expecting. I loved working with the owners to make decisions and trying to fill an empty space with comfort, beauty & functionality.

I’ll never forget Joe and I hustling in the days before our wedding to get all the furniture moved into the house. We didn’t hire a crew to help, we just did it all on our own. Talk about the best pre-wedding workout!

I literally put the finishing touches on the house and drove to Montauk for our rehearsal dinner. It was an exciting time, and naturally, I learned a lot from that project.

*below the barn: lululemon + SoulCycle collaboration*

After that summer, I went back to work at lululemon. I was intrigued by the investment they were starting to make in The Hamptons community with events and a functional yoga/event space in their store. Somehow, they trusted me with a side job of designing & staging a space in partnership with Soulcycle. This was so different from the Oyster Shores house but was thrilling. What would it take for me to turn a blank canvas into a store, juice bar and yoga studio?

In those early days, it often felt like I was building the stairs while climbing them. Somehow it seemed to work and the end result was beautiful (and always gave me a stack of to-dos for next time). I loved the work I was getting but decided it was time to get some formal training. So I started studying design at the NY Institute of Art & Design and waited for my next opportunity.

In 2018, our personal goals started to really take shape. Joe and I bought our first home in Hampton Bays, which we saw as a great rental property. We closed Memorial Day Weekend and immediately staged & rented it out for the summer. We moved out of our apartment that fall and into the Hampton Bays house for the winter. 3 months later we found another home in East Hampton that was the perfect fixer upper that I’d been dying to get my hands on.

We somehow managed to get the house and (again) closed Memorial Day weekend and got to work. We did minimal fixes just to make it comfortable to live in and planned for a bigger renovation down the line.

Fast forward to January 2020, I was 5 months pregnant and we made the late call to renovate the kitchen, bathrooms and refinish the floor before the baby came. I designed the whole thing and loved dreaming about the possibility in this little Springs ranch. I was so excited to see the whole process and was excited to have a fresh living space for the newborn days ahead.

Well … everyone knows what happened in March 2020. We tore up our kitchen --down to the studs-- and 4 days later NY shut down due to the pandemic. I was working from home thinking I’d be home for 2 weeks and then ended up never going back before my maternity leave started in late May. We were living and working in a construction zone for 3 months just praying we would be able to get the project done before the baby came. Delay after delay kept coming up. Every week a new list of businesses were shutting down. Joe literally put our cabinets together himself and finally, we were just waiting on the local granite shop to reopen so we could get our counter tops. In the end, counter tops were installed a week before my due date and baby was 2 weeks late. Talk about cutting things close.

Around that same time—very tragically— I lost my younger brother. It’s an incredibly sad story of addiction and losing support during a global crisis. My world was turned upside down and I was 41 weeks pregnant. I gave birth and 3 days later was his funeral. Everything felt so fragile. Life felt precious & fleeting. In hindsight, I was dealing with postpartum depression and anxiety on top of grief, but I somehow had the clarity in my sadness that it was time to only spend time doing the things I love. Life was too short and I wouldn’t waste it on someone else’s plans for me.

That August I buckled down and get my real estate license. Everything was done via zoom except the exam, so I had my airbuds in taking class while simultaneously changing diapers and feeding the baby.

I’ll never forget when it came time to take my exam. Aurora was 3 months old and I wasn’t ready to leave her yet. The testing site was up-island and would take at least half a day to get there, take the test and get home. Joe, being a huge support to me always, drove all of us to Happaugue. I ran inside, in my mask, to take the exam and he carried Aurora around the parking lot making business calls. I was anxious, nervous, excited, and ultimately, felt confident I’d passed. (I did, by the way)

In many ways, I’m still learning a new job but I also feel grounded in an industry I’ve known for a few years. I have many dreams for our future and our business, but for now I’m enjoying the flexibility of working during nap times and getting the opportunity to watch my little girl change week by week.

They really don’t stay small forever, do they?