Cool Creative Chicks - Mareen

Welcome to the fourth interview in my monthly series (to be featured on the last Wed of the month) – Cool Creative Chicks. I am fortunate to know so many CCCs & wanted to share these gems with you & foster community. That’s why we’re all online right? So hopefully, you will connect with one another & make new friends or even just take away something from each interview

Today's guest Mareen is very special to me, as she was the very first person to comment on my blog (even before M got a chance) & make me feel welcome. We've been friends ever since & I am so delighted that she accepted my interview request. I adore her blog & get so much inspiration from her many creative endeavors. I've also made several of her recipes for German breakfasts & can attest to their yumminess! 

Hi, I am Mareen and I blog on eeny‘s universe (eenysuniverse.blogspot.com). I was born and raised in the beautiful south of Germany but I also call the US east coast home as I lost a part of my heart there during being an Au Pair for the most wonderful family for one year. 

Right now I am working hard on finishing my last huge papers for university in order to finally graduate in summer. Plus I am still deciding in with direction to go after graduation - which is actually the harder part. I am looking forward to a new chapter in my life. Hope it‘ll be a good one =)

You can also find me on Pinterest, Twitter and Instagram - look for eenysuniverse. 

-Your blog is so diverse & creative. I'm a huge fan of your Sunday Breakfast posts, digital collages, gorgeous photos, the recipes you share & your X-mas Workshops. Could you share with us how long you've been blogging, why you started & how you incorporate your creative pursuits into it?

I was reading other blogs for a long time and one day in September 2009 I decided to start my own little blog. I just thought I wanted to be part of blogworld, connect to other bloggers and share a bit of my world. I have always liked to create things, cook and bake for family and friends, collected quotes and so on, so why not share it with others and maybe inspire others to be creative as well. And I have to say, I am really happy I joined blogworld. I made a couple wonderful new friends and really enjoy blogging a lot. 

-How do you keep organized & find balance between working full-time, being a student, blogging & having a personal life? How do you carve out time in your very busy schedule to create?

That‘s kind of a hard question as I don‘t consider myself as being organized. Not at all. I would rather describe myself as chaotic and very easily distracted. 

Being creative is actually what keeps me balanced. After a long day studying, researching, or working I just need to do something for me. So I get out my paper, washi tape and twine and make a card to send to a dear friend or I search the web for new cupcake recipes to bake on the weekend or knit a cute hat or cook something for my family and friends. So it is not really like carving out time to create I just add this time to my daily life even if it means I will be up until 3 am. 

Same with blogging time. My key actually is, to blog about things that I do anyway and not to do things souly for the purpose to blog about them. If I cooked or baked something I think is worth sharing, I just snap a picture and post the recipe whenever I come around to do so. Same with crafts and DIYs - I create things because I want to give them away or want them for myself. I just keep my camera or iPhone around to snap pictures along the process. 

So blogging is actually something that just happens besides or better said within my life. I just document what happens along the way and if there isn‘t anything happening worth documenting, I just don‘t post anything. I want to keep eeny‘s universe something »pressure free« and don‘t want to feel like as if I have to come up with a new post every day. 

Actually in the beginning of my blogging life I thought about making a blog schedule for daily posts but I stripped away from it faster than I actually made up a schedule. The only thing really stable on my blog is my Sunday breakfasts - well, they just happen every Sunday and snapping a picture with my iPhone is the easiest thing to do, right? 

Having to do things makes me not enjoy it anymore and I want to enjoy blogging and keep eeny‘s universe my happy place that is part of my personal life and not leading my life.

-Describe your creative process & how you combat creative ruts/blocks.

My creative process is different for every creative project I work on. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and have this idea for something and I just jot it down in my notebook on my nightstand so I won‘t forget about it. Sometimes ideas come popping up in my head during a conversation with someone. Sometimes I just see a picture of something cute and think »oh, that‘s an awesome idea but I would tweak it a bit here and there« Than I start creating and along the way I change up little details, come up with new ideas and sometimes it looks totally different as the idea started at the beginning. 

I usually have a couple projects that I work on at the same time. There are so many different things I love doing: paper crafting, painting, drawing, knitting, writing, decorating/restyling, sewing... this list goes on and on.
So if I am stuck within a project and don‘t know how to take the next step, I just switch to another. 

If I have real creative blocks, I usually start baking. Baking is like therapy for me. I just love whipping up some cupcake batter or knead some pie or yeast dough, bake it, decorate it and share with family and friends. That makes me happy and when I am happy I am more creative. There is hardly anything a baking day can‘t fix =)

-What/who inspires you?

I am inspired by every day things - things I see on other blogs, Pinterest, in catalogs/magazines, books, movies, music, window displays or it just happens to pop up in my head. There are so many inspirational people out there but there is no single one in particular. My inspiration usually comes from a combination of multiple sources. 

-What are some of your future goals? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 

I was afraid this question would come up. It is a really hard one for me. As at the moment I am thinking a whole lot about it as soon there will begin a new chapter in my life and like I said above I am not sure about what will happen next. Right now I am not thinking further ahead than half a year because that time span seems to be the most important for me in my life right now. I have to focus on that.  After that I can plan further and think about a 5 year plan. 

My main future goals are to find a job that I love, keep on being creative, maybe have my own little family - be happy! 

For fun:

Oh this is going to be tough. I always have a thousand favorites.

Favorite beverage: mango smoothie

Fav dessert/snack/food: panna cotta, vanilla cupcakes and sushi

Fav music band at the moment (I know its hard to pick just one): Not hard at all to pick just one - Angels & Airwaves

Fav book: My MacBook - just kidding. The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder

Fav movie: I have two - it‘s a tie. Can‘t pick just one. Alice in Wonderland and The Pursuit of Happyness (yes, it is spelled with a Y =)

Fav boy celebrity crush: Jared Leto 

Fav celebrity girl crush: Zooey Deschanel  

Thanks so much for having me, Danielle. I feel very honored. Thank you.

xo.