Pretty City

I thought it was about time to formally introduce Pretty City and how this blog came to be.

One year ago this week, after many, many months of being in a rut, I decided to start making some changes in my life. My youngest daughter, Nessa, had just turned 2 and she was ready to start attending the same little preschool that her four older sisters went to. She started attending school two days a week. It was both a sad and a happy time for me. After almost 9 years of always having a sidekick, my last baby was finally off to make friends and start learning in an environment other than home.

On those two free mornings per week, I decided I was going to start hiking and walking different areas of the city. I really wanted to get healthy...mentally and physically. After many, many months of being extremely down, I also came to the conclusion that I needed to take one additional day a week to help with this (on top of two mornings). So on Sundays, I started full day excursions in the Bay Area completing many trails that I had placed on my bucket list over the past 12 years of living here.

While out on my hikes and walks, I started snapping some shots with my phone, a Galaxy s6, to be exact. I started flooding my Facebook page with all of my findings, but it got to a point where I was posting so many photos. I started getting really into it, and I decided that it was too much for FB. So, I dusted off my Instagram account that I had initially started way back in 2012. I believe I had only posted something like 5 photos on it over the course of 4 years, so obviously it was all very new to me. When I started posting my photos from my walks on Instagram, I realized that my IG handle was not a very catchy or interesting one and definitely did not reflect what my new project had become. Since most of my photos were of the beauty that San Francisco and the Bay Area has to offer I thought it would be best to name my page PrettyCity. That name, however, was taken. I noticed that Pretty.city was available and so I went with it. So, in February, 2016, Pretty.city was born.

Since I had named my account Pretty.city, and this was a new creative outlet for me, I chose to not really include any photos of my family. After a couple of months, though, I started sharing a couple of my girls, shocking most of the people that followed me, that I had 5 daughters. As my account progressed, I started sharing more selfies, more photos of my girls, and also more written content.

I love to think of Pretty.city as an eclectic account that represents many aspects of my personal experiences in this beautiful city. My photos and written content are all based on myself, my family, and my life living in the very "Pretty City" of San Francisco. A blog was naturally the next step as my written content started getting a bit more substantial. I am a person who is constantly adapting, and continuously growing into something bigger and better. I don't really know what the next step will be, potentially a vlog, or more LIVE stories on Instagram, a podcast, or something else entirely different, who knows. I can tell you though, that you are going to be reading and seeing a lot more from Pretty City in the future!