Introducing Millennial Moms Unfiltered: Passions, Career Changes, and Unfiltered Advice

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Millennial Moms Unfiltered - a podcast that promises to be your go-to for all things motherhood. We're Ashley and Brittni, your hosts and fellow moms, pulling back the curtain on our lives to show that it's perfectly okay to embrace a little messiness. As moms, fitness enthusiasts, party planners, photographers, and women's empowerment advocates, we're here to inspire you and let you know that you're not alone on this journey.

This episode is a rollercoaster of real, raw, and unfiltered conversations. We reveal our obsessions, from fitness to home renovations, and even jewelry making. We each share our past career paths and how we transitioned into our current roles. From Ashley’s lessons learned as a fitness coach and party planner, to Brittany's journey as a photographer and her newfound passion for becoming a tattoo artist, we hope these revelations will inspire you to pursue your passions.

It's not all work and no play, though, we also have a segment called "Unfiltered Advice" where we give our honest take on your queries. So, remember to keep those questions coming via our google form. As a close-knit community of moms, we're here to learn, laugh, and navigate the delightful chaos of motherhood together. So, buckle up and enjoy the ride with Ashley and Brittni in Millennial Moms Unfiltered!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Millennial Moms Unfiltered, where we show moms that they're not alone and it's okay to be a little messy. We're your hosts, Ashley and Brittany. On today's episode, we're going to talk about ourselves. Don't forget to like and subscribe and follow us on our socials, which will be in the show notes and, without further ado, let's get into it. Happy first episode. This has been it's been a little bit anxiety inducing for me. Yeah, me too, Because I am not. I set all this stuff up and hopefully it's actually recording properly.

Speaker 2: 0:50

I am not tech savvy at all, but to not very tech savvy people.

Speaker 1: 0:55

I've heard other people on podcasts be like I just recorded a whole episode and had to rerecord it because it stopped recording and I'm like okay, so that happens to people that that'd be doing this, it's probably going to happen to us. I mean, hopefully not the first time, but anyway, today's episode we're going to be talking about ourselves and introducing us and, like our backgrounds, why we started the podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:25

Why we thought people might want to listen to us.

Speaker 1: 1:28

We have each our own little following. So if you're from any of our social medias, you probably have heard it all. But you're going to. You're going to hear it again, so do you want to go first?

Speaker 2: 1:40

So I am Brittany. I own my own photography business. It's Bichon Studios. It started out as off the map photography, transitioned into Bichon Studios and I also had Blooming Babes as my Boudoir photography I guess like side thing for Boudoir segment, whatever you want to call it. So I started photography in like 2019, but before that I got my masters in counseling. I also worked in fashion retail. I also have my event management degree, so I've kind of been all over the place, which makes perfect sense. So I would start a podcast. It's just another thing to add to the list.

Speaker 1: 2:24

I'm sorry I'm messing with stuff. I need to stop doing this, Just picking all of that up.

Speaker 2: 2:29

So, yeah, I have my own business, boudoir Studios, actually in the process of transitioning to a new location. We have some exciting news about that coming up. I'm not ready to announce it just yet, but I am shutting down my studio on East Greenwich. But I'm still doing photography very much. I am at shoot, weddings, boudoir families, occasionally branding like a lot of women's empowerment stuff. So that's kind of where I'm at with like I really love the empowerment side, making people feel good Aspect of things. I'm a mom. I have two kids they're five and three. I'm married and I'm mostly a stay at home mom, other than the you know, owning a business and running a podcast. So, yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1: 3:21

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, You're they kind of do it all I do.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Oh, I'm a painter, I paint, I also have, like I do, murals and commissioned paintings and I'm just like crafty, which you will see with the new studio, I'll feel a lot of crafty stuff with that. Is it going?

Speaker 1: 3:39

to be airing in January, so you might already have announced the studio.

Speaker 2: 3:44

No, I don't think so.

Speaker 1: 3:45

Okay, Well, you know I was trying to get it out there for you guys.

Speaker 2: 3:49

I don't think I'm going to announce it yet. I think maybe I'll be like a new year's thing. So all right Well that was great.

Speaker 1: 3:57

I did not think about how I was going to like do my thing. Neither did I. So I'm Ashley. I am a stay at home mom as well. I have three boys. I started off on Instagram as a fitness coach and I did that for like four-ish years. Then I started planning my wedding and I was really worked out about doing all the internet fitness things, because it's exhausting and there's just so much crap. So I was just like whatever? So I focused on planning my wedding and then, after I plan my wedding, I was like I think I want to be a party planner. So then I started a party planning business pop-up parties by Ashley. Am I still doing that? Not really. I started a podcast. I have ADHD, if you didn't already know, and it shows in my life.

Speaker 2: 4:52

I jump around.

Speaker 1: 4:53

Yes, it will show on this podcast. It's already happening actually. So I jump around a lot. My husband is super supportive of all of my things and he is the main breadwinner, so luckily I have the support and financial freedom to be able to do all of these things. But yeah, that was not super interesting. I feel like I've done some things, but why did you?

Speaker 2: 5:26

Okay, so you were in the fitness for four years. What got you into fitness?

Speaker 1: 5:31

I. That's a long story. So growing up I had an eating disorder and then was semi in recovery and got into bodybuilding. So I transformed my own body from then in sickly to a different kind of sickly and then when I really got into recovery I realized in the fitness space how much disordered eating and behaviors there was. And then I got certified of personal training and wanted to do better for other people. And then once I kind of got my shit together, I was like you know what I can help other people not do the extremes and all the fads, and that's kind of what built actually in the fitness.

Speaker 2: 6:28

What are other hyper fixations you've gone into? Because I feel like that's a huge, I feel like we could have a whole.

Speaker 1: 6:35

I'm still really passionate about it and I still do my own fitness stuff and I can do all of the things that I watch things online and I'm just like I definitely don't want to be in charge of other people's things. It's one of my passions but it's just like so mentally draining, so, yeah, but I think it's always going to be one of my things. That's not like a fleeting hyper fixation. Other fleeting hyper fixations redoing the floors in the house, painting furniture, making jewelry. I did that for a moment.

Speaker 2: 7:09

I have like 17 pairs of earrings. Nothing to do with that.

Speaker 1: 7:13

I remember what you were like. You guys almost started selling this on the shop.

Speaker 2: 7:17

Okay, and then just like no.

Speaker 1: 7:19

I'm not encouraged, but you don't talk about it either. You're like come up with all these really great things and they always come out really cool, and then you just like don't ever talk about it again, yep. And then I actually like I'm not a type of fixation doing it.

Speaker 1: 7:33

I get the idea and then I announce it to everybody. I'm like you guys don't say anything yet, but I'm gonna do this. And then, like the next day on Instagram. They're like guys, you'll never guess. You'll never guess what's gonna happen. I just changed my whole identity last night. All right.

Speaker 2: 7:49

My mom was actually the one who told me not to announce the new studio plans because she was like don't talk about it. Don't talk about, don't put that pressure on yourself, because then you're gonna like, if you don't get it done in time or if you change your mind, or you're gonna feel obligated to like have to do it. She's like just wait until you get like the actual ball rolling, and I was like Harry, she's going out with you.

Speaker 1: 8:10

It's like thoughts and opinions and stuff, Like I used to. I still do it, but I just I don't care, Like I'll literally come up with an idea of something I'm gonna do and then put up polls on my Instagram stories and then not do any of those options.

Speaker 2: 8:26

When someone tells you what you like, they'll tell you what they think you should do and you're like, yeah, no, that's, I needed to know what you wanted. So I knew what I wanted, but the I don't want that.

Speaker 1: 8:34

All the options I put up were viable options, like I was going they were all yeah, but then I come up with a better idea and then I just like do that. So I appreciate that people still like entertain the staff, that I put them up Like people who vote regularly on that shit, but I'm never gonna do any of them.

Speaker 2: 8:52

Yeah, I have people who still like entertain. I'm like I have constantly come up with something new when I so. I have my bachelor's degree in event management. I worked as a wedding planner for a little while. I decided I didn't wanna work nights and weekends. I'm gonna go into photography before I talk or maybe we're all ideas we're gonna go to work nights and weekends, so anyway, so I no. After I got my bachelor's degree, I worked in fashion retail for a little while. I did well, I did like merchandising. I worked for Forever 21 in Braintree. I did. I opened the pink store in that mall. I was the main, like the lead merchandiser and I loved it. But like I hate retail, like I was not doing another holiday season when people are like nice long retailers.

Speaker 1: 9:37

It's so bizarre because I've never heard anyone be like I love retailing. I love it's just, it's the best. I love working in retail. The people that still work in retail fucking hate it and they say it, but they're like I couldn't do anything else you could.

Speaker 2: 9:51

What. Those skills are very transferable. But like I was doing merchandising, so my schedule was six to two. It was wonderful. But then when they were like we're gonna have to start implementing holiday hours and I was like, mm, I'm gonna head out, no, nope. So I left there. I started working at a spa. I was just a receptionist there. But that's when I decided I wanted to get my master's degree. It's like, what am I doing with my life? I'm a receptionist and I don't know what I want to do. Not that there's anything wrong with being a receptionist, but I was just like I can't do this for this. My life business is too boring for me. So that's when I decided to get my master's in counseling.

Speaker 2: 10:27

I worked as a therapist with children and family. Then I worked with behavioral adults. I did outpatient. Then I switched to academic counseling. I worked for Johnson and Wales for a little over a year as an academic counselor and then I started teaching in their psych program for undergrad and then I got pregnant and I left mental health altogether.

Speaker 2: 10:48

I taught for a little while while I was pregnant with Kylian. So the whole first year that made was born. I did adjunct I think. I took on two classes that whole first year. But then I was pregnant with Kylian and COVID hit and they shut everything down and I could have done online teaching, which would have been my perfect opportunity to branch into online. But I was just like this is just too much. Like I have two kids climbing over me, I can't grade papers. It was too much. So I had already started doing photography part-time and that's when I decided to really ramp it up and do it full-time, but I've also. When I was in grad school, I had how many? This is a good question for people who like us how many business cards have you made?

Speaker 1: 11:34

So I actually have like a full box just sitting there because nobody hands them out. Like You're like I'm gonna fucking put them right there in this cute little holder and then, just like you, take most of those home because people like, look at it, follow you. If they're gonna follow you Business, it seems like a good idea, but there's just like you don't actually yeah, you don't actually use them. So if you're thinking about making business cards, don't just don't get up, and it's not even the money, it's like you're just wasting so much fucking paper QR code to keep on your key to. You know, right, I have the QR code on the friggin on the business card. So it's just why would I even take the car, you know?

Speaker 2: 12:15

So I have, I had business cards made when I was in grad school. They say like Britney Shawn, creative genius, but like, because I was like how do I like just to put everything on one card.

Speaker 1: 12:28

I really go into that for a second. So this morning I was trying to figure out posting what I wanted them to look like. So I sent her like three different variations of it and she's like hold on and then sends me something and it was just like spot-on, like what I, what I wanted, but just what I could not bring to the table. And I'm like this is why, this is why, yeah, and it really are like so just give those people what do you do, just like here, creative genius.

Speaker 2: 12:58

I do hair and makeup here I have like. My new hyper fixation is I want to get a tattoo gun. We'll see in a couple weeks that I have a tattoo gun or any new tattoos that I've given myself.

Speaker 1: 13:13

You literally said it later, like how can I like run down space and like have someone that does something else? And you're like I'm like mini tattoos and that's what started it, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 13:24

Yeah, I was trying to figure out another way that I could supplement income to keep the studio and I decided I was gonna be a tattoo.

Speaker 1: 13:35

Actually know somebody that like Kind of just like on the fly, got a tattoo gun and like.

Speaker 2: 13:41

The process is not as hard as you would think it.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Yeah, you totally. Just get it and just Practice you to give a like. A lot of this person had artistic skills, but the tattoos, there's no words. Alright, it was fucked up and I'll gonna tell you what I wasn't gonna be.

Speaker 2: 14:05

Get them from me already. I'm like I haven't even tattooed fake skin yet. Do not want to, yet like this is too much pressure. I mean I'm gonna, unless I'm tattooing myself to practice. I wouldn't trust me yet.

Speaker 1: 14:20

Yeah, I think I might. I feel like micro tattoos, like a little tiny heart somewhere. Yeah, I think those are pretty hard to fuck, but I'm not letting you write a word on me.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Well, like, okay, so a lot of tattoo artists this is a good point like won't do finger tattoos in Rhode Island anymore Like there's a lot that want to find someone. I'd like seek someone out and look, he blew out the heart of my finger.

Speaker 1: 14:39

I want to get a G on my ring finger for Giovanni, oh and because I love my husband and what better way to? As he texts me right now and I just think it looks so cute, but like I don't want to pay the minimum of like a hundred and fifty dollars, some places for you to put like a little tiny yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:01

Yeah, so I didn't know that was a thing, I didn't know people. So, yeah, a lot of places won't do them, so I got these three together piece, but equality.

Speaker 2: 15:11

Because it's hard to think those are like they get a lot of, Because they can like blow out and like I don't know there's it's like a lot of technique and a lot of tattoo artists will have like bigger needles and bigger guns. They won't do the really fine ones, but like permanent makeup artists have the smaller needles so they're used to doing that really thin fine line like brows. So I think not that it's harder, because obviously doing like a like giant back piece or or a porch, it's like yeah, it's a different skill. You have to have a really steady hand and stuff like that. So yeah, so I have a lot of hyper fixations and a lot of like interests, but right now the focus is the photography studio and the podcast.

Speaker 1: 15:50

Yeah, my focus is the podcast. I'm not asking me focus is the podcast, but I'll tell you what I throw ragers like Thanksgiving at my house is a fucking party Right, and the mixed drinks that I make are really fucking good, because I hyper fixate on like little, just details like that. Yeah, so I mean I learned a lot doing event planning, but party planning is amazing and, like you have a good following, it's great.

Speaker 2: 16:22

Are you like the Pinterest mom? Like the birthday parties have to be? Like, all the food has to be themed, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:28

Kind of Gio draws a line, though he's like I know we're gonna listen. If we're spending the money on this stuff, we're gonna get pizza, so I'll have like some. Like for Eli's fifth birthday. He had the dining theme and I did like cups of mud with like little dinosaur, like.

Speaker 2: 16:48

The feet. Yeah, yeah, mave's first birthday. I spent just her cake and cupcakes. I still have $500. Yeah For her first birthday. It was my first baby. Yeah, and like I, didn't even I had.

Speaker 1: 17:05

I was so like that was what 11 years ago, and I was not crafty, I was like I was just not, so he just got no cool birthday party. This was like this is like relatively new. The first like really decent party I threw was my baby shower with Eli. So what, like six years ago, five, five years ago, what was it being? It was just like baby elephants. But it was like it was hold on, get this, you're get this. The main color was white. Whoa, I know I was white. I moved that to off-white, but the main thing it was like white and soft blue, but like it was just it was cute. And that's when I was like, oh okay, I do cute parties, but I didn't like think about all the details, like no.

Speaker 2: 18:04

Yeah, my best party was when I was pregnant with Kylian and it was May of second birthday. We did a Toy Story theme and I was on point. I was like my cause. I was the month I was due with Kylian, so my nesting abilities went into throwing this party and it was. I had the boxes Like I, went out and bought like I'm not, went out, ordered on my Amazon like the perfect cube boxes and paint a hand painted made name to look like box, like toy blocks. Didn't use vinyl, hand painted. Yeah, see, that's nice. Nine months pregnant, my mom's like what?

Speaker 2: 18:41

are you doing?

Speaker 1: 18:42

Friends more and for that baby shower she made boxes and then put did you what's the name? Or did it say baby? I don't remember, but it was something like that Like, and I was like so cute, look at me. Next to my fucking dessert table, some kid I don't know who, I don't know whose child it was took a bite out of the back of the cake and that's a mystery that I still never saw. I don't know who did that, but there was a bite mark on the back of that cake and I was like at least it was the back, all right, fine, but I don't know who was responsible for that.

Speaker 2: 19:20

My calling wedding cake got dropped on the day of the wedding.

Speaker 1: 19:25

And then what? How big was it? Was it like a three tier cake?

Speaker 2: 19:30

It was like a three or four tier cake. See, that's why I didn't do that From Wright's farm. They dropped it on the way in. It was fondant, so like the fondant protected it, so it didn't completely smash, it just dented it real hard and then they lost the top tier. So the top tier was gone and they just sprinkled flower petals on top of it and it was a huge dent and they kind of like turned it. But when I knew it happened but we didn't tell her it happened, we were like let's just not tell her.

Speaker 1: 19:56

On my wedding day I told I was like listen, you guys, do you? You know what I want, what I expect. Anything that's going wrong, don't, don't, I don't care yeah so we didn't tell her.

Speaker 2: 20:10

And then she went to go when they were doing the cake cutting. She was like you can tell something, like she noticed something was off. But we were like, but look, your day's been so great so far, so like why be bad?

Speaker 1: 20:22

My hairdresser was telling me about I think it was a dresser's shirt or something like they fucked up the cake, like they put like teal petals on it, like just not even like it was a mermaid cake, it didn't even look like a wedding cake, but they like turned it so that you couldn't like see it in pictures and then it was just like white or whatever and shit like that happens all the time. And like what I tell people that are planning weddings or come to me with you know inquiries about party planning, something that's gonna go wrong that day Probably more than one thing but like nobody's gonna know because they don't have your vision, they don't know what you were planning. Right, it's hard to like let go of the reins.

Speaker 1: 21:04

I know, but you have to. You have to just be like YOLO.

Speaker 2: 21:12

My wedding day everything was pretty perfect. But, like, even when I was like setting up to like they were lining us up before the ceremony to go out and I could, I had this big like a palette with pictures of me and Pat all over it and all the pictures were like slightly crooked and I'm like staying there in my wedding dress, like my dad's next to me. I'm ready to walk down the aisle and I was like, oh, I don't go touch all those pictures.

Speaker 1: 21:36

Like- See, I made my like the same kind of like one palette picture thing, but I like thought it was gonna take me so much longer than it actually did. So it was sitting in my kitchen like area for so long Like I swear to God, it was like eight months. It was a ridiculous amount of time and so all of those, some of them fell, some of them were crooked, but I had enough time to like watch it happen beforehand to fix all those problems. On the day it looked great at my wedding but it was like probably dusty, probably dusty. That shit was sitting there for a long time. They like went in there cause all the glass yeah, I mean photographs. Well, there's some great pictures.

Speaker 2: 22:21

That's awesome. I was also supposed to have like this. Really well. I sent the designer. What I got were two very different things, but I hired people to do this. Like I wanted the whole barn door behind me covered in like sheer fabric and like twinkly lights, but I wanted like floor to ceiling. I got like a oh no, maybe like shorter than this. Well, just like like a photo backdrop stand with curtains on it. I was like that's not what I wanted at all, but it was a good day at the best wedding.

Speaker 1: 23:02

We somehow got really deep into wedding talk.

Speaker 2: 23:05

We did Well, because you part planned for a while and I did wedding planning.

Speaker 1: 23:08

Yeah, so it's like common ground. So that's what happened there. What else should we talk about? I feel like that's.

Speaker 2: 23:14

Talk about how I'm not drinking coffee tonight because it's too late and I'm drinking tea instead.

Speaker 1: 23:19

I have a coffee, and I brought my adder all just in case it got too crazy. There was. No, we didn't plan what we're going to talk about on the bout us episode, so we're kind of just really free ball of it. That's not the term for this, but that's. That's what came out. Yeah, it's on.

Speaker 2: 23:38

Whatever, free ball.

Speaker 1: 23:40

Wedding, it all hang out. We're at like 30 minutes so we can go 25. That's pretty fucking good. Yeah, I see, I say we call it a night on that one and move on. All right, all right, well, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2: 23:56

They are from our first. Yeah, does that mean?

Speaker 1: 23:59

it wasn't a disaster. It was kind of got to be at a great time.

Speaker 2: 24:02

Yeah, you get to know our personalities or we'll babble a little. This is probably the format of how it's going to go.

Speaker 1: 24:07

Probably going to get distracted a little bit every episode, because it is what it is yeah, but we do have segments at the end, like right about now, we would be jumping in to unfiltered advice.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Yeah, where you're going to ask me about something and I'm not going to hold back.

Speaker 1: 24:27

I'm just going to. She's going to call you on your shit, is what? Yeah, britt calls out your shit, and the show notes of this episode will put the link of where you can ask your questions. And on our social medias that's all linked on our link tree. We have our Instagram, facebook, tiktok, youtube, all of its link there and then anything that you can submit or things. Oh, I keep hitting this microphone, that's why that's there, but next time I'll use it, next time, but it really just I panicked, but anyway. So, yes, like, subscribe, follow all of the things and we will see you next week.