hello and welcome to the you know how to live show my name is kate hammer and today we will have not one but two guests with us victoria and marcus ford victoria and marcus ford run the prepfordwife.com where they share home life diys and classic style from the sunny locale of cary north carolina just this month their kitchen was featured in country living magazine and today we are going to talk about how they've managed to balance running their decade old and highly successful blog with working full-time and re-watching harry potter films now wherever you're listening or watching from i'm so glad that you're tuned in and hanging out i hope you're ready for my favorite combination of things hopefully a bit of entertainment and of course some takeaways to improve how you work and play and do all the things you do in between please take a moment right now to subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review so that we can stay connected and with that let's bring in marcus and victoria ford hi victoria marcus thanks for being here hi thank you for having us yeah absolutely i loved meeting you both so i actually got a chance to meet the fords at the northeast coastal creative conference in newport rhode island in late september what a mouthful yes it was wonderful to meet you as well we liked you so much we were like let's do it again yeah oh my goodness yes we had such a good time i felt so lucky that we were able to not only enjoy the conference together um but do a couple of fun things like you know get some lunch together with some friends and things like that it was really nice to get to know you and i knew um when i was getting this podcast rolled out that you would be so fun to have on especially because i mean you know for anyone who wasn't there victoria was a panelist and she was awesome on stage but also talking to you two as a couple and hearing the story of how you met and all of that i was just like oh man they're the dream team we absolutely love you when we met you it's so much fun because for conferences it's always like yeah of course like the meat of the conference is fun but it really is like the connections that you can get behind the scenes that are really the part that make it worthwhile to just like put a real live human with a voice yeah it's always wrong that's our favorite part yes yes absolutely and that part that we kind of all crave the true behind the scenes you get that on overload at a conference you really get to understand where people are coming from and you know like what happens when they're not on camera which is you know 99 of our lives right correct yeah it's my favorite problem as well i've got a running joke that i'm chronically nosey and so to see that kind of like see the little like ins and outs is truly my favorite part i love that yes okay so i mentioned that one of the things that you shared is how you met each other and i do want to jump into the blog and how you balance that with your work and all that but can we just start out with a golden nugget because this is just like the world's most enjoyable story would you be comfortable talking about this topic how you met i will turn it to you oh will you i feel like you always turn it to me and then you're like that's not that's not what i actually have okay i i will yeah we'll start now to yes so we've been in the last 12 years i want to say and we met the third day of freshman year at a pool party is that right yeah we met at a pool party um for marcus apparently it was love at first sight for me not so much um at this pool party marcus was kind of sitting with his friends and he's like you should come and sit next to me and apparently i just said no thanks just kind of went about like the rest of my day totally embarrassed me in front of everybody it was just like it was embarrassing this is the bold face lie though it's not my intent but apparently that is what happened but apparently it turned out fine because we're married so it's okay you won it's good yes it's good yes that was the the very beginnings of like us together um like meeting each other but um i think later on i was like no i have to like i have to get victoria's phone number because i saw her earlier at like a another event you know they have these welcome events when you first get to college and like i'm pretty sure everything like kind of like blurred around her and like i was like oh like that girl is really beautiful but in the in the moment like i don't you don't think that it's like oh like love at first sight it's just like it's just something that happened i wanna i went about my day i just happened to see her see her again at the pool party so i was like hey you should come come sit next to me you should have a conversation she's like no don't want to do that so then later on later that week i was like no like i'm gonna still i'm gonna still try to get get with this girl so i um i saw victoria walking and i just started talking to her and um we had like a long conversation and she's like i was like i think you're to be i think you're going to be my wife like you're going to be bored yeah this was our this is my literal second conversation after the words no thanks yes and so she's like this is some progress really speedy progress yeah no yeah like because i just knew and so i was like i think you're going to be my wife i think you're going to be mrs ford and so she's like good luck with that and i was like yeah she was like i don't believe in marriage and i have a boyfriend and i was like oh i have a goldfish and she was like what and i was like oh i thought we were talking about things that didn't matter i don't care about your friend is he here like is he is he around this place because if he's not then we can we can continue to talk it's okay and i still marry him she still married me it just this cocky kid from brooklyn you know okay it turned out fine like he's great we're happy it's good like in spite of him so it's okay we're good i mean i gotta say like i don't think many people would hate their spouse saying i saw this person they were angelic and i had to marry them like this isn't a bad thing yeah it is absolutely what saves the story yeah yeah yeah yes i love it it's it reminds me so much of a movie where there's that moment of like tension or oh they're not gonna get along there's like a little fight or something oh yeah that was definitely it was an early 2000s yes yes disliked each other for the first two years yeah it was we uh so but like it was like fate like everything like our um our uh p.o boxes were like right next to each other we were the only two freshmen in a in a upper level like english class we were all the same classes because um yeah we were just like the only kids there so it's like meant to be that we end up together so we went to a southern university where everybody went home for the weekend and we were northerners that didn't have cars so like you walk into breakfast and it's like who's the only other person
yeah there was even more details are coming out now than the first time i heard the story like the mailbox is next to each other are you kidding right next to each other and so like our school didn't have like mail where you could get it in your dorm of course i think lots of schools
and we must have gotten there around the same time because they were right next to each other so it's like i've gone to the mailbox one day to get mail and he was like at my mailbox i was like oh how creepy is this this guy's like wow he's
his mailbox was right there so yeah it was like no matter what we were going to end up together long term but we became we became friends like you know it it just it just wasn't like oh it's going to be it was a smooth beginning but then but then a funny thing happened at the school they had to like clean out the the water pipes or yeah something like that they were certainly like flush them ourselves yeah so um so everybody had to go home for a couple days because you you know i mean the water was coming out brown it's like you probably don't wanna they either drink that water so well victoria's like hey look i'm going to go visit my grandmother for a couple days so that i can you know bathe and drink water and um i don't think yeah so she was kind of like well you gotta leave me here i was like you can come like you can come with so she came and it just so happens to be my uh my family's uh family reunion that weekend so oh my goodness way to jump in hey my mom's entire family whole family in 1000
yeah yes let's we like to get it done over here you do actually this is kind of like a running theme i think because you do i mean you're constantly completing projects and really like in the midst of so much more so you have jobs outside of your creative pursuit you have a lot that's going on that you have to balance in order to keep productivity in both of those areas i mean it's quite a lot to juggle and i think it uh it's a curious thing for many because we like this idea of having hobbies or creative outlets but there's always that question of how like how do we find the time how do we even know what we want to do as adults it's like gosh like am i allowed to have it personal interests like what does that even look like so i'm imagining you get this question from time to time from your readers but what what is your advice for someone who wants to have some kind of creative outlet or some other component in life beyond their work i think we're given different advice here but i think my advice time and time again is just start i find that the hardest part look at that every one thing just starts yeah it doesn't matter how good you are when you first start because i think a lot of the times like this idea of perfection and this idea of like what it would be and what other people have as it comes to what our creative outlet is will hinder us from just beginning start want to paint go buy yourself a dollar store set of brushes and a set of acrylics and take that day and do it because no matter what time is going to pass and you may as well have it leaving and living like a really full and productive life and it comes absolutely from a place of privilege i recognize that we have more time than most and that we don't have children and that our jobs are like willing to flex with us and that we really have this creative partnership that we're able to maintain without wanting to like scratch each other's eyes out in spite of that story we just gave and so it comes from like all of these places advantages but true just yeah it doesn't matter if you're good that day or if you have a photographer if whatever your creative outlet is yeah you need to start and once you get over that health like if you start start again keep starting if you take a break it's okay the break is not like the end of this world like you can start anew whenever you're ready and you really do have that level of control over it because the awesome thing about a creative outlet is it's a creative outlet no one's holding you to it you're not beholden to the idea of it it really is yours for the taking yeah and so that's our recommendation it's kind of just like get up yeah and make it happen doesn't have to happen a lot it doesn't have to happen consistently i think people think like because people blog for a living that there's this level of consistency you have to maintain you don't just doing it for the sake of doing it then whatever tempo you choose is the right one it's the right one yeah i mean we um we like kind of live by this thing where it's like you you will never be good at something if you're not willing to be bad at it so it's like oh yeah yeah so so you have to be willing to be bad at something before you're going to be good at it we're like huge harry potter fans and there's there's a scene where he's training the other um the other wizards and witches and uh harry potter is like you know every every great witch and wizard started where you are now so so whether you know whether you want to be really really really good at something or just decent at it those beginning moments are actually the best and most fun parts because they get you to the point where it's like okay i learned from that mistake moving forward i can you know i'll adjust yes the early parts are always my favorite activity it's my favorite when you are learning to watercolor it's my favorite when you're learning to blog because there's something really beautiful and just like really kind about doing something for the sake of doing it without an audience yes i remember without anybody watching and it was the literal most fun because if i messed up nobody really saw it if it was like a typo it's okay i'll go edit it later and no one would have seen it there's this level of freedom that comes like nobody watching that it doesn't get old so the beginning stages are really like go for it like try the thing that you want to try no matter what it is like you've got time to get good at it you've got time to get the gear and get the whatever you need that accompanies the activity but at the start it really is just a joy to do yeah and so i always recommend folks like just going for it totally you know when we're on these platforms like instagram as a consumer we are seeing all of these examples of someone performing of exhibiting what they have to offer whatever it is and so it gets us into this frame of mind of if i have a creative pursuit there has to be a sharing component and that's not always true right exactly i completely agree some of the best creative things you do will be for yourself um we are folks of a science background but also just have this innate sort of creativity that we live by but it still is like that creativity that kind of gives you like life and breath at the end of the day and so even if you're doing it just for yourself like i would have decorated my home the way we decorate our home even if there were never any eyes that would see it and if we never had a visitor yeah those are the best parts of creating or doing it just for yourself and for the love of it just it doesn't get old yeah yeah do either of you have anything that you pursue outside of what you share god we have so few hours in the day with them yeah um
that's a hard one because we we try to share our lives as it as it as it goes we don't really like share anything that is not yeah something that we would normally do but if if it was something that was important enough to share it's probably been shared do we pursue anything outside of what we share um maybe cooking for me yeah i guess so i was gonna say marcus does like 95 of our cooking and it's good and it's beautiful and the internet never sees it because i am actually a really lousy wife for a person who has a blog that's named after like being a wife marcus does like most of our like traditional like home type activities and that like origins gourmet meals and no one ever sees it because i neglect to photograph it because he does the photography yeah um interesting okay we're good like if you're looking for someone to teach you like marcus has got your back it is it's not usually there's and it's like it actually connects back to what we were talking about where it's like the fun part of being creative is almost the part that you don't see because like there's a there's like what i present to victoria or or anybody else that i'm preparing food for looks totally different than like if i'm just making something for myself because in the moment like when i'm making it for myself i'm just trying to make sure like the flavors are good but when it's like somebody else it's like i want to make sure the flavor is good i want to make sure it looks edible i want to make sure that like it wasn't something that you just had two days ago or or what or that you're not allergic to so there's like all these things that you have to think about but when you are just moving just to create it's like i'm almost purposely trying to mess up the food because i'm like oh uh i know not to do that again like yeah don't put peanut butter and sardines together because that probably would not work yeah yeah i'm even a little upset that you said it at all that's terrible well victoria what a treat that's awesome yes is the best thing about this relationship when i first met marcus i told him i cooked and he said that's okay because i cook and i was like great so here we are i do cook which he found out years after we were already together but now i don't do most of it because he's already been locked in so cooking at the market it's easier for me it is so i i would i'll pick that up we that's how we tend to choose who does what and he gets more joy out of it like i can't buy that marcus enjoys himself cooking like he's got like his like tv set up like he's got like the ipad set up so he can actually cook and watch while he does it for me i'm like this is a burden that we have to feed ourselves yet again today like three years again every day but marcus like really enjoys it he's got like a knack for it the timing's right like with me it could be 45 minutes and we're still without food so yeah
yeah thanksgivings on me i will cook thanksgiving and christmas dinner those are the only times where i will tap in for sure yeah so yes for those i will tap in and i will do dinner yeah awesome do you do the whole turkey uh we don't do turkey in fact we do everything except a turkey yeah um we've got like chicken it's the south so we do ribs we'll do like the fried chicken we'll have like macaroni and cheese pork shoulder yeah a pork shoulder it's totally a southern thing you will do everything essentially but turkey yeah one one usually it's never like a bunch of people so like we don't ever need a bird that big but two just always like has like a a juicier flavor yeah people actually eat it i was pretty sad turkey is not that's not a hot taste except for the turkey wings turkey i was like but anyway that's my hot taste for it can you see we're already thinking about yeah we are currently in planning mode oh yeah oh yeah well it's great it's great that you've kind of come to this natural balance with tasks at home because yeah man that can be a real point of tension and for things to just kind of like happen to fall into place what a gift we're pragmatists at heart like with with if there's nothing else about i think our relationship it's always like we want to be the people that do the thing that makes sense so we're not people that like unnecessary thought to our lives we're not people that like produce things just for the sake of doing them um as far as like where it's like not gonna feed some sort of creative um appetite we're we're kind of like all right like we'll we'll look at something we'll discuss it between ourselves and it's funny because like people our friends will be like you you guys communicate without even like talking like they'll ask us a question and we turn our like look at each other and then we'll give them an answer like how did you do that how did you not talk but figure out like exactly what it is but we just spent a lot of time together and worked together in so many different ways we've worked as lab partners worked that and we've been in student government together you're saying you were my first co-worker yeah like in the adult world yeah so it's like ourselves oh you are literally a movie like this is chronically together i'm sure it is like codependency at this point however like we work so seamlessly together it just makes the most sense yeah for our lives and kind of the way that we live our lives so yeah for us at this point yeah we enjoy it yeah so can you share a little bit about what it is that you do during the day at work outside of this creative life yeah so i almost always work in hiv i will change roles um but always in some semblance of hiv medicine either for a non-profit for the government it depends where i'm at at the time but truly like my heart is at the heart of that work and so it changes based off of what season of my life that i'm in but it's a very different sort of um business from the business of influencing and i love it that way because while i might enjoy influencing it doesn't give me um something to feel strongly about with the exception of connecting like i don't ever feel like shirts and t-shirts will change the world and maybe they do for some people and for those people i always recommend it like if you feel strongly about like you've got like a project on your heart that you really want to do like i'm always supportive for other people but it's never what like feeds me fuels me and wakes me up in the morning so i always end up back in the business of hiv of some kind because i really do have a heart for like prevention and intervention awesome so what role do you play within that yeah so it change again changes depending on the year this year i'm marketer will i be a marketer next year maybe you think things oh ben okay awesome what about you marcus yes so i have like a very windy currently i just teach a lab at uh at our the university we went to um but actually so at the beginning of the pandemic um victoria i had a business with a friend um victoria was kind of like you're putting a lot into this business you shouldn't be running around you could be running the preferred white stuff you could be you know would we had discussed me not discussed the plan was always for me to go to medical school um and it still is that that's that's still the plan i'm not one of those people that's like oh i'm 35 i can't do anything else with the rest of my life because if you talk to somebody who's 55 they're like you're young you know we all we always have this thing where it's like i'm old at the age that i'm at and it's like no the people that are 20 years older than you are always telling you how young you are so um that's that's yeah that's still the plan but um we my partner and i were having issues at the at the office and um the business was growing but just like there's a there's a very uh specific way that i see um how business should be run um how you treat your employees what you provide to your customers and um anything outside of that is kind of like unacceptable to me so where it was like well you're working 60 70 hours a week uh you should probably just step away so i stepped away and then boom the pandemic happened so um right wow interesting timing yeah excellent yeah maybe like um two months two months yeah so it could not have been better timing yeah i had planned those i planned on stepping away for about two months um just checking in when i when i needed to but two months and then kind of coming back but that's right when the pandemics start to ramp up they were talking about closing businesses so it was like i haven't been back to the office since um and that that business has since closed but uh but so that's kind of where i am right now so it's kind of like probably the majority of like the business side of like what we do as far as the blog um that's probably it's that's under my umbrella but i don't really look at it as like work i just look at it as something that you know it's like chronicling our life that's what that's what how we started just so that if we ever had kids that they could be like oh yeah yeah like our parents are always squares you know like like they were we were hearing patterns doing science we're always ourselves yeah we tell our we tell our siblings like look when we have children we let them know that we were always like these like yes staunch we had more than that we were morphing we didn't like always
but yeah so that's that's where so i i kind of do the business side of preferred white at the moment but the goal is to uh to go back to school at some point um when things slow down i feel like i stepped away and then prepper wife kind of just kept going and it's like all right well if i have to go to another state to practice study for a couple years i don't know what we're gonna do so yeah i mean it seems like brands are just knocking down your door trying to collaborate i'm sure you have a lot to manage yeah yeah it's been more than it used to be we find ourselves um taking on the ones that are ones where we say like would we spend our own money on this yeah and passing on the ones where we wouldn't and so it's been a really fun experience getting to meet brands um i think whatever people are talking about brands they're talking about like the brand at large but there's a huge person yeah and so it's been fun to like meet the people behind the emails and like build that sort of connection so it's been nice yeah i always think that it's cool because like there will be somebody that some that there'll be someone that reaches out to victoria and won't tell her that i represent this brand or whatever and some and she'll share something like oh i love bees or whatever and they say oh i actually work for such-and-such company i'm connected with them i've always loved what you did how about i you know connect you with our marketing people and we get a lot of stuff that way so it's like you know victoria if victoria wasn't the type of person to stay up and answer dms when she could or like just be a genuinely nice person on the internet it's like you don't know who you're you never know who you're talking to and so i enjoyed that part like i we we recently got something um about a play that we love and the person was like oh i represent the the marketing for this play like we would you like to go and share and i was like of course yeah you know but we would never know unless we shared those things yeah yeah i mean there's a great lesson in that that can be applied pretty broadly yeah that whole feeling of you know we can we make a lot of assumptions about who we meet and who can potentially like do something for us but if we hold a different posture then opportunity is pretty limitless and it feels very different too yeah we tend to walk the world with the understanding that like everybody knows something you don't so um that's why it's so weird for us when people come up to us and they're like oh we love this and how do you do that i'm like we're just living our life like we don't we don't think that we can do anything that anybody else couldn't do um the you know it just so happened that we met and i have a certain set of skills victoria has a certain set of skills and those skills align but if victoria really wanted to like and this is probably doesn't bode well for my job now as as somebody that kind of helps run pepper white but she can do this without me and yeah she what she prefers
i'd like to not there are not enough hours in the day honestly to get it all done um which is okay because there's always tomorrow hopefully uh but yeah i'd rather not if we can help it but yeah i find that when we're kind of going about the business of our business and kind of living life yeah day-to-day or is truly when you meet people like it's never with an expectation of like getting something out of it or immediately and for this thing later on like sometimes it really is just the joy of meeting a person yeah and treating an individual and kind of going from there um i am by nature an introvert and so i have to treat every person i meet like an individual or else it just like really freaks me out um yeah it's working well for example we say more about that what do you mean yeah yeah so people always assume that introverts are shy which is not true because i'm not shy um but i am someone who gets my energy from like deep meaningful conversation i find myself skipping right past small talk and right to like getting to know people and some of that could be like i've been in the south too long but then some of it is just like the nature of the way that i prefer to interact with people it's like straight to the things that matter versus like kind of like that initial surface level type engagement and so whenever i meet people i'm i'm bypassing all of that like surface level stuff because it it makes it a little easier for me in that interaction to kind of get energy out of it versus it feeling like something where like oh god like this is work and that's across the board even if i'm at work like i don't want to feel like i'm at work like i want this to be like another portion of life we are awake and working far too much out of our lives for us to not enjoy it when we can so if you if you can you should and so that's kind of the way that i find myself enjoying it is if i can kind of get the energy i need out of every interaction no matter who it is yeah that's such a great posture i love that so considering all you do uh would you say that you have certain strategies or routines that allow for all of this to work not a one no yeah not a one and i think that's actually what's working for us like oh okay to say more yeah so i'm not some who was i telling that to oh my that's right i was telling her yesterday that i literally don't have a routine for everything there is nothing that i am consistent on like i don't wake up the same time every day there is no limiting consistency yeah yeah no at all if like if if you're gonna track my on the internet there's no consistency there's no day where i'm on there's very little like time where i'm consistently on and it gets it's harder and harder as prepper life gets bigger yeah but it's not my job and and that's kind of nice like there's kind of a like a real nice like organic way that you can live your life when you're not doing anything at the same time every day yeah and so yeah we have no strategies we have no consistencies we have no plan but you've got to remember that like this isn't like we're not like living off of this like it's just i i feel like if it was somebody that was like all right like i would like to take this very seriously and i want this to be like what i pay my bills with every month then you kind of have to have a strategy but our the we are always on the non-planned plan yes like where it's like you know and it works for us just because i we don't know why it works actually it's it's almost like like you'll see like a lot of girls like they'll be like yeah like the the my husband told me the corniest you know they gave me the corniest pickup line but for some reason it worked for him you probably heard the line before but for some reason it worked for him and it's like a combination of different things timing the clone he was wearing his height whatever it is or lack thereof um you know so you know we can't never want to tell people like oh you should do this yeah consistently because we don't we don't we don't recommend anything to anyone oh that's funny i was once upon a time a strategist and so for that i did i did need to do things when i needed to do them and it's such um it's such a part of my brain that actually does work but that i don't use in the slightest we tend to be a luck favors the prepared kind of folks over here where we're taking things day to day and it kind of leaves room for these like organic sort of interactions here and and granted like we are um we're easy going but we're kind of rigid in our personalities like we are very like a structured people and that we have the things that we will and we won't do like they're um like i think of like our blog there are certain not brands necessarily but certain avenues where we're like yeah no matter what we are not doing that like this is what we are not going to do then that leaves us like really wide open beautiful pool of things that we will do and the same kind of like strategy and content planning where it's like okay we know for ourselves like here are the things that we will not do within like our business at work we won't do this in our business with prepford white but like wide birth of things where then you can give them an option and so our strategy is the non-strategy now now would i recommend that to someone who's looking to full-time blog yeah probably not but it's kind of what works for us and that when we can we can and when we can't we can't yeah and some of it is just not being beholden to the internet yeah we don't want to be we want to be here in our home and in our lives and we don't want to be like like tailored down to the computer to the phone all times so when we can do it we can do it and when we don't yeah we don't we kind of make no apologies for the time in between for ourselves at least and i think i think too that that it goes it goes to say like the that shows like the value of sharing who you actually are first is like having to portray this person or this lifestyle that you don't actually have because then you then it's not work anymore like we obviously if i take our living room if there's like a pair of shoes on the floor that doesn't make the picture look look right i'll move those most yeah but like but like i don't have to like paint the paint the living room put up curtains put a lamp there like do all of these things because we're just sharing our life um and so when you already have those things in place you don't necessarily need to follow this regimen of like it's like telling it's like telling a a professional athlete that they need to have a regimen for working out when they're a professional athlete they're working out every day like they don't have to add that you know that extra work really interesting example actually yeah yeah yeah you're super old school though it's like it's like bloggers who used to like leave their house take a photo of what they were wearing that day and that's kind of what hits the feed like we kind of live our lives in that way yeah still where it's like all right yeah they like snap the picture we're going about our business yeah i don't think it works for everyone but it's kind of where we are and we have again we we know that we're really blessed to live to lead a life that is already um beautiful and and shareable and you all all of our friends i think that's another reason why we started doing what we did because a lot of our friends would be like you guys are really interesting though you guys need a tv show you are no it's like all right let's see where that is we don't i think it's a bit of like i think it's a bit of that like luck favors the preparedness where it's like oh your home is beautiful and it's like well yeah but every time we bring something into the home we try to bring things in that are beautiful it's its own like self-fulfilling prophecy yeah so we kind of totally play as well yeah well you know this idea that to have a strategy means there are there's like this very specific checklist like when i when i'm listening to what you're describing to me and i'm thinking about okay well is that a strategy or what would i call that it's like you live by a very very clearly defined set of values yes you keep firm to your priorities you have a way of sharing that you've established that you're comfortable with and so you're able to move all through all of that naturally yes um and so i think like what that what so how like someone how somebody could take that and interpret that that for themselves is like understand why you're doing something yes oh i love that yeah and i think that's the part that i don't think about often yeah but i do i do think about like the the why behind why i started and what we do so our why is rooted in kind of two things so we've got a why of like we realize there were no photos from the first five years of us being together and so some of it yeah yeah so they're just five years they're like two photos of us and that's it and and we've been together long enough for people to not have had smartphones necessarily like there weren't really iphones when we got together so there aren't a ton of like yeah so there aren't a ton of like photos of us in our first couple of years so we were like for ourselves for like you know the rest of our lives will do a little bit of a better job documenting but then kind of the more we documented the more we realized that there wasn't really anyone who looked and felt like us in the space that we kind of reside in on the internet like there are not very many black preps there are not very many black preps who are married and kind of lead their life the way we do but we know they exist we have seen them we know them we love them with our own eyes and we know they exist so we kind of just wanted to carve a little corner of the internet out for them or that little community who looks and feels like us and kind of wants to see themselves reflected and so that we do kind of ladders up to that in a way i don't think we think of it day to day because it's so much our true north that i literally forgot about it until you just said it like it's so much kind of ingrained in like what we do and what we share and who we are available and online for we always welcome other people into our little corner of the world but when i think about like the messages that really like resonate and mean the most always the ones where people are alive i didn't know that someone who looked like me who would exist and and so yeah that that really is our due north and our why and and we think about it so little because of how much we kind of aligned ourselves you know both of those things and i always forget that that's kind of like at the heart and at the strategy of what because you're not checking yourself you're just now no yeah yeah should i do a better job of tracking us yeah probably but do we no not not really we're kind of just like we've we've gotten into a groove at this point i think yeah awesome well we love it we're here for it there are so many fans and obviously you guys are operating in this very authentic and pure way it's very easy to see uh if you're not already following marcus and victoria both of them you absolutely should be i'm going to put their instagram handles in the show notes for sure uh but let's move on we have a couple of quick segments to do before we end our time together so let's uh let's do this or that where you will let me know what your preference is between two options okay okay we're ready yes and yeah and maybe maybe some you'll want to answer together maybe some you'll have very different views we'll see i feel like we're going to be on two opposite ends what what we'll see we always surprise ourselves yeah all right here we go all right so again it's just your personal preference read a book or listen to a playlist read a book listen to a playlist yeah yeah i am who i am or i'm always evolving
that's a good one that's a good one i think i'm always evolving i go ahead i think you are i think yeah yeah you are always evolving right yeah yes you are always evolving i am who i am yeah um yeah i am who i am there are photos of me at five looking exactly as i do now and there are like things that i say now as an adult where i would have said them at 10. i'm still growing but yeah i definitely am who i am like i am at my core who i'm gonna be yeah i think i think that's part of my personality is to always be we had a we had a friend over not too long ago and she was she was saying one that's one of her favorite points of like my personality is that i'm always looking for like the like the next better thing to like include in our lives so that we have a better life so the people around us have a better life just by knowing us yeah and so i think that that is yeah you're totally adapted i'm gonna yeah i'm gonna yeah i'm a grower yeah what a nice balance to have someone like moving forward and someone grounding it's nice it's necessary yes it's necessary victoria is very much like yeah and but i mean it but it like it flips like it flips every once in a while where it's like victoria may want to do something that's like ambitious and my goal is always for like if victoria is like i want to do this thing like my goal is always like figure out how to get it done yeah um but there are some times where i'm like can't do that right now but we'll do it like yeah we add these two things and mix this up and bring these people in and we can get it done that way um but yeah it changes we're not all the way one way but for the most part i'll say i'm the changer and victoria is like yeah she's she's the same one
okay awesome all right next one uh-huh re-watch favorites or search for a new show we watched yeah yeah we are yeah yeah rewatch yeah we are rooted in comfort i guess like yes yeah you're running a risk that you're going to hate things yeah it's like yes or i can watch very risky time yes and it'll be great i know that that's going to be a great movie yeah mm-hmm it is yeah is there some i just i mean i obviously have to ask is there some particular show that's like your go-to show
yeah over and over a bad tv tv bad i'm watching it um so i am currently in the process of watching teen wolf i recognize that that plot makes no sense half the time um i will watch one tree hill over and over and over again um i watched vampire diaries a number of times and i recognize that it could be better but i'm still watching it real housewives i'm watching it yeah rewatch yeah victoria well yeah she's a the queen of what's the dance movie what are those uh step up she watched like watch like stuff but again she knows that like i'm aware she's no like movie critic or whatever she understands but uh yeah and then the thing about like re-watching stuff too is like you catch things sometimes yeah that you never that you didn't see like there are things that like there are things in harry potter movies like we had a harry potter wedding like we harry potter in this household and we still catch things that like you know right so it's like and then where we are in our life in that moment makes us feel different about the thing that we're we are re-watching like i feel totally different about um home alone now as a person that's probably going to have the next few years versus like the kid that watched it back in the 90s you know totally yeah so that's why i think that we're always like let's rewatch that thing and see how we feel about it in that moment yeah i that is so true i watched home alone with my kids for the first time a couple of years ago and i remember thinking like you definitely don't leave your house without a child like that's not okay yes yeah and like the police don't like yeah and like the airline doesn't say like yes like none of that is possible nonsense that you've totally fed into as a kid yeah you're like this is not yes when you're here it's a great adventure when you're an adult you're like i wouldn't call the government parents like goodness they're just wow but when but when you like when we were watching it a few years ago like it's like look at those drapes like look at the colors now you know it's just like like all like red and green in the ground everything is red and green so well styled yeah like the house is incredible yes we love that like old 90s like for resale values we will not put it in our house however we understand if we ever get like a cabin or something like that oh it's going full really good yeah yes oh my goodness oh yep that's so enjoyable okay next one the more the merrier or more fun with fewer more fun with you more fun with you that's yeah we as few as possible
is that as few as as few as possible but the thing you know so like our parents like when we bought the newer this this house here they're like whenever they come they're like so when's the when's the barbecue and we're like hopefully never like
around the house and like but where are the fewer people we're like the fewer so we can be the more the mirror yeah like we can do a few people at a time for literally ever like yeah you can have a friend this weekend next weekend have a friend this weekend and it inevitably turns into the more the merrier but boy you got to stagger that yeah yeah yeah
if you ever talk to a friend or a close friend of ours you know that like we're the friends that it's like look like come to the house go go pick up pick a guest room we don't even have to talk like we will we'll see we don't even have to do it hey and it'll be perfect it'll be fine like this is useless in the house hotel where you can kind of like get away and feel like this is a safe space for you and yes and and that's it but yeah but like the whole like great gatsby like you know like have a have a party with a that sounds terrible that sounds like our worst nightmare actually yeah um i feel like publishing companies are going to reach out to you and be like we have writers that really need to finish their books can they please stay with you we hear it's very quiet environment
oh my goodness okay last one for this section okay here for humor or please be serious who here for humor really yeah i'm always happy to be tickled like i'm serious enough that i will kill other people around me yes true yeah yeah i i'm here yeah yes i'm a humor person yeah because i don't like i don't i think that i don't really like when people take themselves too seriously i was never like i even though i wasn't i wasn't like popular but i was somebody that like could interact with any person the senator the the kid and the kid in the corner that just wanted to read books the the athletes whoever and so it was like i never liked the kid that like took himself too seriously i actually went out of my way to make that kid feel uncomfortable because i can see that yeah yes you're not cool bro enjoy yourself
yeah the humor didn't know what it's probably is too funny okay so the next segment is just rapid fire so i'm just gonna ask you some short answer questions what's something that you've read lately or that's a long time favorite that you would recommend to others oh um it's a kid's book but i always recommend it um i recommend the giving tree because it's a lot like marcus said with um the home alone where at every stage of my life i feel a little different about it so i think that tree needs boundaries like she needs solid boundaries but i'm like oh look how giving she is so yeah and now mine would be the giver like i've read that back when i was in like sixth grade but that's one of my favorite books and it um talks about how this kid like sees the world in a different way and he's special because of it and even though he thought that he was going to be like i'm going to be an engineer or i'm going to be like given this role because of the world in a different way he was given this like super special job that he would not have otherwise gotten so i think the giver is my favorite all the giving books yeah yes if it has if it has the word give giving or giver in it it's highly recommended
yes if you like it okay something you've watched lately that piqued your interest lately i mean we just told you we're re-watchers you know what you know what uh is one that we watch that we like talked about for a long time is um was it is is it married at first sight no which which was the one where they like it was the game it was a reality show where they they really don't see each other no we saw that one but there's another one where they get matched by oh man your mom would be so disappointed oh is it not married at first sight it might be very pretty it might be magic yeah i think that's what it is but it's a but it's a it's a show where they have these experts that match um that match couples based on their attributes and what they expect to have in in partners and i think like those brought up some like really thought-provoking conversations between just because like we work but that there's times when we don't know we don't understand why we work and then we watch other people they're like oh that's the reason why we work because people are crazy
yeah yeah i think that i think that's that's what that yeah i'll take it uh i watch the harder they fall which is that um
that came out recently and it's based off of real people the western has it has nothing to do with real people but i did go hunt down the ones that i didn't know and so yeah that was a chance yeah let's go with that yeah yeah a couple of good ones i like it and i haven't seen that so i'm going to write that down oh yeah yeah it's really good yeah it's it's awesome if you like a tarantino style movie yeah you like it well it without it's not as gory as yes but i level set that as like baseline yeah yeah like the feel of it yeah the feel yeah yeah oh well then i also have to ask harry potter special coming up the reunion 20 years are you going to do this yes absolutely going to spend the entire day oh yeah um maybe we'll have our siblings join us but if you don't then we'll like let harry potter weed them out yes yes we are absolutely doing it oh yeah see you next year love that i i saw the trailer well or whatever the promo i guess because i didn't really have a trailer um today and just about died so i'm with you guys yes awesome i was very excited i was like let me mute myself on this call so i can have the moment that i want to hit now yes i'm excited yes it's gonna be awesome okay do you have a favorite thing a product an app or a tool something that makes your life easier that you go to day after day that you would recommend to a friend
on product app or tool
yeah actually um yeah i'm getting full use out of apple's notes pad like like i'm i'm using it the way that they designed it to be used and i'm like falling asleep it's like when i have my best thoughts and so i will quickly lean out of like type into it yes i have all of these notes and things that i should have remembered during the day but did not have like enough breathing room to remember and yeah i'm keeping it pretty simple here like notes is really doing it for me yeah i like it
simplifying
you know what it is kate is that i used to be a terrible shopper like terrible shopper like i would buyer's remorse was like a thing that i used to go through all the time like i would spend money on something and get it home and be like sorry why like why did i buy this thing like or it didn't last long or whatever and so in the last like 10 years which is crazy but like in the last like 10 years i've like really learned to like hone in on what i purchased like what i use um i was gonna say the instagram save i am using those with a level of efficiency that is out of this world like if people are not using the instagram saved folders categorizers exactly to categorize stuff i don't know what they're doing like i have a folder for like things to buy for christmas like i've got a list for like marcus and i've got a list for everyone else i've got a folder of things to buy for myself yeah so when holidays come up i can like shoot it out to people like he go you don't have to ask for a list get like instagram folders
oh yeah quotes like videos i need to watch later when i have a moment of free time like instagram saved that's a good one that's got my vote yeah that is a good one in fact i'll tell you what i have an instagram folder for people i would like to interview obviously
yeah that's such a good idea oh i love them yeah i mean i'm with folders on instagram it took me a while to get there because i think they've been out for a couple of years but now that i'm using them i'm with you it's super super helpful yeah yeah it takes a second but once you're once you're off to the races it's like okay this in my cake folder i'm gonna put this in my shoe folder you have a cake holder i do i do have a cake folder i don't cook a little bake yeah so if i see a beautiful then i will save it like oh i'll go back to that cake later yeah victoria is a i'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons why she decided to marry me is because my great grand my great grandfather owned a bakery and this was during a time and in the country where black men did not own bakeries they did not you know until it was like yeah like this is in my blood i love a baked game yeah but her grandmother was a was a baker yeah so um but i i'm terrible at it but i'm i'm not good at chemistry either so oh that's not true you make a mean pound cake what pound cake is what is because it's like a pound of sugar a pound of butter yeah no it's not gonna fly anyway anyway we're just drinking yes sorry i'm sorry we're like no i i mean i'm here for this i'm really enjoying it personally my goodness all right so just a couple more questions what is something that people would be surprised to learn about you oh
i don't really have very many surprises my entire life for the last 10 years on the internet give or take yeah yeah um
yeah i guess it's like it's like common knowledge i've got this like sour patch kids type thing going where i'm like 95 everything is joyful and everything's funny and then i've got like five percent my family won't let me play monopoly anymore yeah i flipped the board once yes physically like yes yes yeah so so if you see monopoly yeah we see monopoly on our channel but i'm not playing i'm just taking the photo that day yeah um so yeah that's awesome i'm so glad you shared that every day where i'm like fun and friendly there's there yeah she she flipped the board she took the board we were playing with this one right before we started dating like for real and we were playing against this up we were playing with this other couple and victoria is beating everybody she's winning she's got she's got the property and so as the game goes on i come back and i start getting property i'm getting property taken from her and so she like i think the the uh the turning point was that i got boardwalk and i put a hotel on it and she was like forget this and she flips the whole board i was like you are a sore loser i come to come to find out later the friend that we were playing with was like you do know she was cheating right she was taking money from you i trusted her so much and she was stealing money from me i've gotten better in my mind yeah yeah yeah you don't really want to play a board game yeah victoria's it's not sorry it's not a uh it's not fun i don't know like i don't think i have one i i i will say like when growing up i wasn't like the nicest kid like i feel like now like i give off this like teddy bear huggable like gentle giant kind of thing but i think growing up i was i feel like i didn't really know like who i was yeah like you like you think the world should be this way and the world and so it's like all right like i have to like force myself to be somebody that i don't necessarily know who that is and i met victoria and victoria's like hey like you can't be that way because i can't be with a guy that's not nice yeah so you need to be nice and so perfectly nice now yeah yeah but other than that i don't have any i don't have any secrets that's really a wonderful thing though to have your partner influence you for good i mean i think we all have ways that we might desire to like tweak our person for better or worse but really like best case scenario is we help each other grow yeah in a good way and that's what and even when we talk to our siblings like when when they because they're still 606 single we got married younger so like our siblings are still like dating and they're not married yet and um but when we talk to people that they bring around for us to meet it's like you know like what are you doing to make our sibling a better person you know what are they doing to make you a better person like that you should want to be your best self for your for your person and um i can say i feel like my family can say that like i'm honestly a better person because victoria is around sometimes you're an older person like you you just grow up sometimes but but i don't want to say it that way because like you still got like 45 year old guys running around here like
yeah all right so that's our that's our rapid fire question yeah bless you we don't speak rapidly okay well it's far more enjoyable that you don't because honestly like the one word answers are oh a lot less fun anyways this is great okay so i just have one left though okay all right finish this sentence you'll never see me in flip-flops oh okay i mean i'm just gonna flip up have you yeah like when you like campbell like when you go take a shower yeah it was 18 and then yeah yeah flip-flops are not good for your feet they're not good for like the number of infections that they could pick up on that foam you're welcome run with this um so yeah i'm not a flip-flop gal sandals maybe a flip-flop never you'll never see me being rude to anybody like like i don't that thing where like people are like rude to like waiters or like people are like below then in whatever way like i've i've never understood that like my my parents will tell you every fight that i've gotten into as a child has always been because i'm standing up for somebody else like victoria's i'm the guy that like when i see people on the side of the road like looking for like a ride like a hitchhiker or like i'll go like out of my way like people people are like panhandling like i like go out of my way to like give them money but like you'll never see me like ignore yes like marcus has never met a stranger and marcus has never met somebody who needs him who he's not willing to help yeah so yes i i will co-sign that one yeah that's a good one yeah you'll never yeah you'll never see that now my flip-flop answer is shallow yes i mean it's not
the flip-flop
well also like victoria you're helping people i mean like you said people could be catching all sorts of crazy infections and diseases and you are preventing that you're welcome it's it's the least i can do it's just helpless
so if you get one takeaway from this episode i hope it's that you know
yeah yeah yeah it's okay it's slide you can even slide them on yeah they have uh birkenstocks now yeah that are like rubber yeah i mean oh yeah antimicrobial yeah there you go welcome join us yep you have been joined i'm joined up welcome welcome to welcome to the team and no flip-flop yeah so that's that's what i got all right well thank you so much for spending this time this has been a riot really fun thank you for having us so i appreciate it yes wonderful to spend time with you kate it was wonderful to meet you in the first place yeah this was absolutely a joy yes and i think that i also um while we're getting recorded and this is going to be put out i think that everybody needs to push kate to be the marvelous mrs maisel next year for halloween oh my goodness speaking of re-watch we were re-watching that and marcus is like i should message kate and tell her to be mrs maisel for halloween yeah i was like okay okay he was like doesn't she look like kate yes like the vibe i'm telling you you can pull it off so yes we'll see you next october 20th yeah we'll remind you at the moment so you can go get your costume yes less marcus tell me i don't even think she needs it i'm pretty sure you just get a dress i'm pretty sure she has a dress oh my goodness i i did tell marcus that i would give it a watch and i plan to i did a little like a quick dive on it to figure out who this person is and like what the similarity is yeah um and it from what i gather she's she's pretty quirky and she's um and i and i enjoy some quirkiness so i'm here for it her clothes are fantastic yeah the apartment's fantastic yes it's just such a funny show oh my goodness i hope you enjoy it if you don't it's okay we're not the uh
the aesthetic is barricade like awesome the aesthetic is there yeah i love it thank you so much again for being here really appreciate it it's been a blast yeah likewise yes absolutely our pressure thank you for having us those two are an absolute blast you can find a link in the show notes to connect with the four you can follow them on instagram at preferred wife and mark sports that's m-a-r-c-s-f-o-r-d
know you but whatever you do don't start another home project without first stopping by their website jam-packed with tutorials at preferredwife.com thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed your time with us today please share this episode with a friend then subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review season one of the show will include more chats top authors experts and influential personalities we will be serving up simplified applied psychology habit theory and quality of life tips and tricks that you can put into action right away until next week i'm kate hammer and you know how to live
hello and welcome to the you know how to live show my name is kate hammer and today we will have not one but two guests with us victoria and marcus ford victoria and marcus ford run the prepfordwife.com where they share home life diys and classic style from the sunny locale of cary north carolina just this month their kitchen was featured in country living magazine and today we are going to talk about how they've managed to balance running their decade old and highly successful blog with working full-time and re-watching harry potter films now wherever you're listening or watching from i'm so glad that you're tuned in and hanging out i hope you're ready for my favorite combination of things hopefully a bit of entertainment and of course some takeaways to improve how you work and play and do all the things you do in between please take a moment right now to subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review so that we can stay connected and with that let's bring in marcus and victoria ford hi victoria marcus thanks for being here hi thank you for having us yeah absolutely i loved meeting you both so i actually got a chance to meet the fords at the northeast coastal creative conference in newport rhode island in late september what a mouthful yes it was wonderful to meet you as well we liked you so much we were like let's do it again yeah oh my goodness yes we had such a good time i felt so lucky that we were able to not only enjoy the conference together um but do a couple of fun things like you know get some lunch together with some friends and things like that it was really nice to get to know you and i knew um when i was getting this podcast rolled out that you would be so fun to have on especially because i mean you know for anyone who wasn't there victoria was a panelist and she was awesome on stage but also talking to you two as a couple and hearing the story of how you met and all of that i was just like oh man they're the dream team we absolutely love you when we met you it's so much fun because for conferences it's always like yeah of course like the meat of the conference is fun but it really is like the connections that you can get behind the scenes that are really the part that make it worthwhile to just like put a real live human with a voice yeah it's always wrong that's our favorite part yes yes absolutely and that part that we kind of all crave the true behind the scenes you get that on overload at a conference you really get to understand where people are coming from and you know like what happens when they're not on camera which is you know 99 of our lives right correct yeah it's my favorite problem as well i've got a running joke that i'm chronically nosey and so to see that kind of like see the little like ins and outs is truly my favorite part i love that yes okay so i mentioned that one of the things that you shared is how you met each other and i do want to jump into the blog and how you balance that with your work and all that but can we just start out with a golden nugget because this is just like the world's most enjoyable story would you be comfortable talking about this topic how you met i will turn it to you oh will you i feel like you always turn it to me and then you're like that's not that's not what i actually have okay i i will yeah we'll start now to yes so we've been in the last 12 years i want to say and we met the third day of freshman year at a pool party is that right yeah we met at a pool party um for marcus apparently it was love at first sight for me not so much um at this pool party marcus was kind of sitting with his friends and he's like you should come and sit next to me and apparently i just said no thanks just kind of went about like the rest of my day totally embarrassed me in front of everybody it was just like it was embarrassing this is the bold face lie though it's not my intent but apparently that is what happened but apparently it turned out fine because we're married so it's okay you won it's good yes it's good yes that was the the very beginnings of like us together um like meeting each other but um i think later on i was like no i have to like i have to get victoria's phone number because i saw her earlier at like a another event you know they have these welcome events when you first get to college and like i'm pretty sure everything like kind of like blurred around her and like i was like oh like that girl is really beautiful but in the in the moment like i don't you don't think that it's like oh like love at first sight it's just like it's just something that happened i wanna i went about my day i just happened to see her see her again at the pool party so i was like hey you should come come sit next to me you should have a conversation she's like no don't want to do that so then later on later that week i was like no like i'm gonna still i'm gonna still try to get get with this girl so i um i saw victoria walking and i just started talking to her and um we had like a long conversation and she's like i was like i think you're to be i think you're going to be my wife like you're going to be bored yeah this was our this is my literal second conversation after the words no thanks yes and so she's like this is some progress really speedy progress yeah no yeah like because i just knew and so i was like i think you're going to be my wife i think you're going to be mrs ford and so she's like good luck with that and i was like yeah she was like i don't believe in marriage and i have a boyfriend and i was like oh i have a goldfish and she was like what and i was like oh i thought we were talking about things that didn't matter i don't care about your friend is he here like is he is he around this place because if he's not then we can we can continue to talk it's okay and i still marry him she still married me it just this cocky kid from brooklyn you know okay it turned out fine like he's great we're happy it's good like in spite of him so it's okay we're good i mean i gotta say like i don't think many people would hate their spouse saying i saw this person they were angelic and i had to marry them like this isn't a bad thing yeah it is absolutely what saves the story yeah yeah yeah yes i love it it's it reminds me so much of a movie where there's that moment of like tension or oh they're not gonna get along there's like a little fight or something oh yeah that was definitely it was an early 2000s yes yes disliked each other for the first two years yeah it was we uh so but like it was like fate like everything like our um our uh p.o boxes were like right next to each other we were the only two freshmen in a in a upper level like english class we were all the same classes because um yeah we were just like the only kids there so it's like meant to be that we end up together so we went to a southern university where everybody went home for the weekend and we were northerners that didn't have cars so like you walk into breakfast and it's like who's the only other person
yeah there was even more details are coming out now than the first time i heard the story like the mailbox is next to each other are you kidding right next to each other and so like our school didn't have like mail where you could get it in your dorm of course i think lots of schools
and we must have gotten there around the same time because they were right next to each other so it's like i've gone to the mailbox one day to get mail and he was like at my mailbox i was like oh how creepy is this this guy's like wow he's
his mailbox was right there so yeah it was like no matter what we were going to end up together long term but we became we became friends like you know it it just it just wasn't like oh it's going to be it was a smooth beginning but then but then a funny thing happened at the school they had to like clean out the the water pipes or yeah something like that they were certainly like flush them ourselves yeah so um so everybody had to go home for a couple days because you you know i mean the water was coming out brown it's like you probably don't wanna they either drink that water so well victoria's like hey look i'm going to go visit my grandmother for a couple days so that i can you know bathe and drink water and um i don't think yeah so she was kind of like well you gotta leave me here i was like you can come like you can come with so she came and it just so happens to be my uh my family's uh family reunion that weekend so oh my goodness way to jump in hey my mom's entire family whole family in 1000
yeah yes let's we like to get it done over here you do actually this is kind of like a running theme i think because you do i mean you're constantly completing projects and really like in the midst of so much more so you have jobs outside of your creative pursuit you have a lot that's going on that you have to balance in order to keep productivity in both of those areas i mean it's quite a lot to juggle and i think it uh it's a curious thing for many because we like this idea of having hobbies or creative outlets but there's always that question of how like how do we find the time how do we even know what we want to do as adults it's like gosh like am i allowed to have it personal interests like what does that even look like so i'm imagining you get this question from time to time from your readers but what what is your advice for someone who wants to have some kind of creative outlet or some other component in life beyond their work i think we're given different advice here but i think my advice time and time again is just start i find that the hardest part look at that every one thing just starts yeah it doesn't matter how good you are when you first start because i think a lot of the times like this idea of perfection and this idea of like what it would be and what other people have as it comes to what our creative outlet is will hinder us from just beginning start want to paint go buy yourself a dollar store set of brushes and a set of acrylics and take that day and do it because no matter what time is going to pass and you may as well have it leaving and living like a really full and productive life and it comes absolutely from a place of privilege i recognize that we have more time than most and that we don't have children and that our jobs are like willing to flex with us and that we really have this creative partnership that we're able to maintain without wanting to like scratch each other's eyes out in spite of that story we just gave and so it comes from like all of these places advantages but true just yeah it doesn't matter if you're good that day or if you have a photographer if whatever your creative outlet is yeah you need to start and once you get over that health like if you start start again keep starting if you take a break it's okay the break is not like the end of this world like you can start anew whenever you're ready and you really do have that level of control over it because the awesome thing about a creative outlet is it's a creative outlet no one's holding you to it you're not beholden to the idea of it it really is yours for the taking yeah and so that's our recommendation it's kind of just like get up yeah and make it happen doesn't have to happen a lot it doesn't have to happen consistently i think people think like because people blog for a living that there's this level of consistency you have to maintain you don't just doing it for the sake of doing it then whatever tempo you choose is the right one it's the right one yeah i mean we um we like kind of live by this thing where it's like you you will never be good at something if you're not willing to be bad at it so it's like oh yeah yeah so so you have to be willing to be bad at something before you're going to be good at it we're like huge harry potter fans and there's there's a scene where he's training the other um the other wizards and witches and uh harry potter is like you know every every great witch and wizard started where you are now so so whether you know whether you want to be really really really good at something or just decent at it those beginning moments are actually the best and most fun parts because they get you to the point where it's like okay i learned from that mistake moving forward i can you know i'll adjust yes the early parts are always my favorite activity it's my favorite when you are learning to watercolor it's my favorite when you're learning to blog because there's something really beautiful and just like really kind about doing something for the sake of doing it without an audience yes i remember without anybody watching and it was the literal most fun because if i messed up nobody really saw it if it was like a typo it's okay i'll go edit it later and no one would have seen it there's this level of freedom that comes like nobody watching that it doesn't get old so the beginning stages are really like go for it like try the thing that you want to try no matter what it is like you've got time to get good at it you've got time to get the gear and get the whatever you need that accompanies the activity but at the start it really is just a joy to do yeah and so i always recommend folks like just going for it totally you know when we're on these platforms like instagram as a consumer we are seeing all of these examples of someone performing of exhibiting what they have to offer whatever it is and so it gets us into this frame of mind of if i have a creative pursuit there has to be a sharing component and that's not always true right exactly i completely agree some of the best creative things you do will be for yourself um we are folks of a science background but also just have this innate sort of creativity that we live by but it still is like that creativity that kind of gives you like life and breath at the end of the day and so even if you're doing it just for yourself like i would have decorated my home the way we decorate our home even if there were never any eyes that would see it and if we never had a visitor yeah those are the best parts of creating or doing it just for yourself and for the love of it just it doesn't get old yeah yeah do either of you have anything that you pursue outside of what you share god we have so few hours in the day with them yeah um
that's a hard one because we we try to share our lives as it as it as it goes we don't really like share anything that is not yeah something that we would normally do but if if it was something that was important enough to share it's probably been shared do we pursue anything outside of what we share um maybe cooking for me yeah i guess so i was gonna say marcus does like 95 of our cooking and it's good and it's beautiful and the internet never sees it because i am actually a really lousy wife for a person who has a blog that's named after like being a wife marcus does like most of our like traditional like home type activities and that like origins gourmet meals and no one ever sees it because i neglect to photograph it because he does the photography yeah um interesting okay we're good like if you're looking for someone to teach you like marcus has got your back it is it's not usually there's and it's like it actually connects back to what we were talking about where it's like the fun part of being creative is almost the part that you don't see because like there's a there's like what i present to victoria or or anybody else that i'm preparing food for looks totally different than like if i'm just making something for myself because in the moment like when i'm making it for myself i'm just trying to make sure like the flavors are good but when it's like somebody else it's like i want to make sure the flavor is good i want to make sure it looks edible i want to make sure that like it wasn't something that you just had two days ago or or what or that you're not allergic to so there's like all these things that you have to think about but when you are just moving just to create it's like i'm almost purposely trying to mess up the food because i'm like oh uh i know not to do that again like yeah don't put peanut butter and sardines together because that probably would not work yeah yeah i'm even a little upset that you said it at all that's terrible well victoria what a treat that's awesome yes is the best thing about this relationship when i first met marcus i told him i cooked and he said that's okay because i cook and i was like great so here we are i do cook which he found out years after we were already together but now i don't do most of it because he's already been locked in so cooking at the market it's easier for me it is so i i would i'll pick that up we that's how we tend to choose who does what and he gets more joy out of it like i can't buy that marcus enjoys himself cooking like he's got like his like tv set up like he's got like the ipad set up so he can actually cook and watch while he does it for me i'm like this is a burden that we have to feed ourselves yet again today like three years again every day but marcus like really enjoys it he's got like a knack for it the timing's right like with me it could be 45 minutes and we're still without food so yeah
yeah thanksgivings on me i will cook thanksgiving and christmas dinner those are the only times where i will tap in for sure yeah so yes for those i will tap in and i will do dinner yeah awesome do you do the whole turkey uh we don't do turkey in fact we do everything except a turkey yeah um we've got like chicken it's the south so we do ribs we'll do like the fried chicken we'll have like macaroni and cheese pork shoulder yeah a pork shoulder it's totally a southern thing you will do everything essentially but turkey yeah one one usually it's never like a bunch of people so like we don't ever need a bird that big but two just always like has like a a juicier flavor yeah people actually eat it i was pretty sad turkey is not that's not a hot taste except for the turkey wings turkey i was like but anyway that's my hot taste for it can you see we're already thinking about yeah we are currently in planning mode oh yeah oh yeah well it's great it's great that you've kind of come to this natural balance with tasks at home because yeah man that can be a real point of tension and for things to just kind of like happen to fall into place what a gift we're pragmatists at heart like with with if there's nothing else about i think our relationship it's always like we want to be the people that do the thing that makes sense so we're not people that like unnecessary thought to our lives we're not people that like produce things just for the sake of doing them um as far as like where it's like not gonna feed some sort of creative um appetite we're we're kind of like all right like we'll we'll look at something we'll discuss it between ourselves and it's funny because like people our friends will be like you you guys communicate without even like talking like they'll ask us a question and we turn our like look at each other and then we'll give them an answer like how did you do that how did you not talk but figure out like exactly what it is but we just spent a lot of time together and worked together in so many different ways we've worked as lab partners worked that and we've been in student government together you're saying you were my first co-worker yeah like in the adult world yeah so it's like ourselves oh you are literally a movie like this is chronically together i'm sure it is like codependency at this point however like we work so seamlessly together it just makes the most sense yeah for our lives and kind of the way that we live our lives so yeah for us at this point yeah we enjoy it yeah so can you share a little bit about what it is that you do during the day at work outside of this creative life yeah so i almost always work in hiv i will change roles um but always in some semblance of hiv medicine either for a non-profit for the government it depends where i'm at at the time but truly like my heart is at the heart of that work and so it changes based off of what season of my life that i'm in but it's a very different sort of um business from the business of influencing and i love it that way because while i might enjoy influencing it doesn't give me um something to feel strongly about with the exception of connecting like i don't ever feel like shirts and t-shirts will change the world and maybe they do for some people and for those people i always recommend it like if you feel strongly about like you've got like a project on your heart that you really want to do like i'm always supportive for other people but it's never what like feeds me fuels me and wakes me up in the morning so i always end up back in the business of hiv of some kind because i really do have a heart for like prevention and intervention awesome so what role do you play within that yeah so it change again changes depending on the year this year i'm marketer will i be a marketer next year maybe you think things oh ben okay awesome what about you marcus yes so i have like a very windy currently i just teach a lab at uh at our the university we went to um but actually so at the beginning of the pandemic um victoria i had a business with a friend um victoria was kind of like you're putting a lot into this business you shouldn't be running around you could be running the preferred white stuff you could be you know would we had discussed me not discussed the plan was always for me to go to medical school um and it still is that that's that's still the plan i'm not one of those people that's like oh i'm 35 i can't do anything else with the rest of my life because if you talk to somebody who's 55 they're like you're young you know we all we always have this thing where it's like i'm old at the age that i'm at and it's like no the people that are 20 years older than you are always telling you how young you are so um that's that's yeah that's still the plan but um we my partner and i were having issues at the at the office and um the business was growing but just like there's a there's a very uh specific way that i see um how business should be run um how you treat your employees what you provide to your customers and um anything outside of that is kind of like unacceptable to me so where it was like well you're working 60 70 hours a week uh you should probably just step away so i stepped away and then boom the pandemic happened so um right wow interesting timing yeah excellent yeah maybe like um two months two months yeah so it could not have been better timing yeah i had planned those i planned on stepping away for about two months um just checking in when i when i needed to but two months and then kind of coming back but that's right when the pandemics start to ramp up they were talking about closing businesses so it was like i haven't been back to the office since um and that that business has since closed but uh but so that's kind of where i am right now so it's kind of like probably the majority of like the business side of like what we do as far as the blog um that's probably it's that's under my umbrella but i don't really look at it as like work i just look at it as something that you know it's like chronicling our life that's what that's what how we started just so that if we ever had kids that they could be like oh yeah yeah like our parents are always squares you know like like they were we were hearing patterns doing science we're always ourselves yeah we tell our we tell our siblings like look when we have children we let them know that we were always like these like yes staunch we had more than that we were morphing we didn't like always
but yeah so that's that's where so i i kind of do the business side of preferred white at the moment but the goal is to uh to go back to school at some point um when things slow down i feel like i stepped away and then prepper wife kind of just kept going and it's like all right well if i have to go to another state to practice study for a couple years i don't know what we're gonna do so yeah i mean it seems like brands are just knocking down your door trying to collaborate i'm sure you have a lot to manage yeah yeah it's been more than it used to be we find ourselves um taking on the ones that are ones where we say like would we spend our own money on this yeah and passing on the ones where we wouldn't and so it's been a really fun experience getting to meet brands um i think whatever people are talking about brands they're talking about like the brand at large but there's a huge person yeah and so it's been fun to like meet the people behind the emails and like build that sort of connection so it's been nice yeah i always think that it's cool because like there will be somebody that some that there'll be someone that reaches out to victoria and won't tell her that i represent this brand or whatever and some and she'll share something like oh i love bees or whatever and they say oh i actually work for such-and-such company i'm connected with them i've always loved what you did how about i you know connect you with our marketing people and we get a lot of stuff that way so it's like you know victoria if victoria wasn't the type of person to stay up and answer dms when she could or like just be a genuinely nice person on the internet it's like you don't know who you're you never know who you're talking to and so i enjoyed that part like i we we recently got something um about a play that we love and the person was like oh i represent the the marketing for this play like we would you like to go and share and i was like of course yeah you know but we would never know unless we shared those things yeah yeah i mean there's a great lesson in that that can be applied pretty broadly yeah that whole feeling of you know we can we make a lot of assumptions about who we meet and who can potentially like do something for us but if we hold a different posture then opportunity is pretty limitless and it feels very different too yeah we tend to walk the world with the understanding that like everybody knows something you don't so um that's why it's so weird for us when people come up to us and they're like oh we love this and how do you do that i'm like we're just living our life like we don't we don't think that we can do anything that anybody else couldn't do um the you know it just so happened that we met and i have a certain set of skills victoria has a certain set of skills and those skills align but if victoria really wanted to like and this is probably doesn't bode well for my job now as as somebody that kind of helps run pepper white but she can do this without me and yeah she what she prefers
i'd like to not there are not enough hours in the day honestly to get it all done um which is okay because there's always tomorrow hopefully uh but yeah i'd rather not if we can help it but yeah i find that when we're kind of going about the business of our business and kind of living life yeah day-to-day or is truly when you meet people like it's never with an expectation of like getting something out of it or immediately and for this thing later on like sometimes it really is just the joy of meeting a person yeah and treating an individual and kind of going from there um i am by nature an introvert and so i have to treat every person i meet like an individual or else it just like really freaks me out um yeah it's working well for example we say more about that what do you mean yeah yeah so people always assume that introverts are shy which is not true because i'm not shy um but i am someone who gets my energy from like deep meaningful conversation i find myself skipping right past small talk and right to like getting to know people and some of that could be like i've been in the south too long but then some of it is just like the nature of the way that i prefer to interact with people it's like straight to the things that matter versus like kind of like that initial surface level type engagement and so whenever i meet people i'm i'm bypassing all of that like surface level stuff because it it makes it a little easier for me in that interaction to kind of get energy out of it versus it feeling like something where like oh god like this is work and that's across the board even if i'm at work like i don't want to feel like i'm at work like i want this to be like another portion of life we are awake and working far too much out of our lives for us to not enjoy it when we can so if you if you can you should and so that's kind of the way that i find myself enjoying it is if i can kind of get the energy i need out of every interaction no matter who it is yeah that's such a great posture i love that so considering all you do uh would you say that you have certain strategies or routines that allow for all of this to work not a one no yeah not a one and i think that's actually what's working for us like oh okay to say more yeah so i'm not some who was i telling that to oh my that's right i was telling her yesterday that i literally don't have a routine for everything there is nothing that i am consistent on like i don't wake up the same time every day there is no limiting consistency yeah yeah no at all if like if if you're gonna track my on the internet there's no consistency there's no day where i'm on there's very little like time where i'm consistently on and it gets it's harder and harder as prepper life gets bigger yeah but it's not my job and and that's kind of nice like there's kind of a like a real nice like organic way that you can live your life when you're not doing anything at the same time every day yeah and so yeah we have no strategies we have no consistencies we have no plan but you've got to remember that like this isn't like we're not like living off of this like it's just i i feel like if it was somebody that was like all right like i would like to take this very seriously and i want this to be like what i pay my bills with every month then you kind of have to have a strategy but our the we are always on the non-planned plan yes like where it's like you know and it works for us just because i we don't know why it works actually it's it's almost like like you'll see like a lot of girls like they'll be like yeah like the the my husband told me the corniest you know they gave me the corniest pickup line but for some reason it worked for him you probably heard the line before but for some reason it worked for him and it's like a combination of different things timing the clone he was wearing his height whatever it is or lack thereof um you know so you know we can't never want to tell people like oh you should do this yeah consistently because we don't we don't we don't recommend anything to anyone oh that's funny i was once upon a time a strategist and so for that i did i did need to do things when i needed to do them and it's such um it's such a part of my brain that actually does work but that i don't use in the slightest we tend to be a luck favors the prepared kind of folks over here where we're taking things day to day and it kind of leaves room for these like organic sort of interactions here and and granted like we are um we're easy going but we're kind of rigid in our personalities like we are very like a structured people and that we have the things that we will and we won't do like they're um like i think of like our blog there are certain not brands necessarily but certain avenues where we're like yeah no matter what we are not doing that like this is what we are not going to do then that leaves us like really wide open beautiful pool of things that we will do and the same kind of like strategy and content planning where it's like okay we know for ourselves like here are the things that we will not do within like our business at work we won't do this in our business with prepford white but like wide birth of things where then you can give them an option and so our strategy is the non-strategy now now would i recommend that to someone who's looking to full-time blog yeah probably not but it's kind of what works for us and that when we can we can and when we can't we can't yeah and some of it is just not being beholden to the internet yeah we don't want to be we want to be here in our home and in our lives and we don't want to be like like tailored down to the computer to the phone all times so when we can do it we can do it and when we don't yeah we don't we kind of make no apologies for the time in between for ourselves at least and i think i think too that that it goes it goes to say like the that shows like the value of sharing who you actually are first is like having to portray this person or this lifestyle that you don't actually have because then you then it's not work anymore like we obviously if i take our living room if there's like a pair of shoes on the floor that doesn't make the picture look look right i'll move those most yeah but like but like i don't have to like paint the paint the living room put up curtains put a lamp there like do all of these things because we're just sharing our life um and so when you already have those things in place you don't necessarily need to follow this regimen of like it's like telling it's like telling a a professional athlete that they need to have a regimen for working out when they're a professional athlete they're working out every day like they don't have to add that you know that extra work really interesting example actually yeah yeah yeah you're super old school though it's like it's like bloggers who used to like leave their house take a photo of what they were wearing that day and that's kind of what hits the feed like we kind of live our lives in that way yeah still where it's like all right yeah they like snap the picture we're going about our business yeah i don't think it works for everyone but it's kind of where we are and we have again we we know that we're really blessed to live to lead a life that is already um beautiful and and shareable and you all all of our friends i think that's another reason why we started doing what we did because a lot of our friends would be like you guys are really interesting though you guys need a tv show you are no it's like all right let's see where that is we don't i think it's a bit of like i think it's a bit of that like luck favors the preparedness where it's like oh your home is beautiful and it's like well yeah but every time we bring something into the home we try to bring things in that are beautiful it's its own like self-fulfilling prophecy yeah so we kind of totally play as well yeah well you know this idea that to have a strategy means there are there's like this very specific checklist like when i when i'm listening to what you're describing to me and i'm thinking about okay well is that a strategy or what would i call that it's like you live by a very very clearly defined set of values yes you keep firm to your priorities you have a way of sharing that you've established that you're comfortable with and so you're able to move all through all of that naturally yes um and so i think like what that what so how like someone how somebody could take that and interpret that that for themselves is like understand why you're doing something yes oh i love that yeah and i think that's the part that i don't think about often yeah but i do i do think about like the the why behind why i started and what we do so our why is rooted in kind of two things so we've got a why of like we realize there were no photos from the first five years of us being together and so some of it yeah yeah so they're just five years they're like two photos of us and that's it and and we've been together long enough for people to not have had smartphones necessarily like there weren't really iphones when we got together so there aren't a ton of like yeah so there aren't a ton of like photos of us in our first couple of years so we were like for ourselves for like you know the rest of our lives will do a little bit of a better job documenting but then kind of the more we documented the more we realized that there wasn't really anyone who looked and felt like us in the space that we kind of reside in on the internet like there are not very many black preps there are not very many black preps who are married and kind of lead their life the way we do but we know they exist we have seen them we know them we love them with our own eyes and we know they exist so we kind of just wanted to carve a little corner of the internet out for them or that little community who looks and feels like us and kind of wants to see themselves reflected and so that we do kind of ladders up to that in a way i don't think we think of it day to day because it's so much our true north that i literally forgot about it until you just said it like it's so much kind of ingrained in like what we do and what we share and who we are available and online for we always welcome other people into our little corner of the world but when i think about like the messages that really like resonate and mean the most always the ones where people are alive i didn't know that someone who looked like me who would exist and and so yeah that that really is our due north and our why and and we think about it so little because of how much we kind of aligned ourselves you know both of those things and i always forget that that's kind of like at the heart and at the strategy of what because you're not checking yourself you're just now no yeah yeah should i do a better job of tracking us yeah probably but do we no not not really we're kind of just like we've we've gotten into a groove at this point i think yeah awesome well we love it we're here for it there are so many fans and obviously you guys are operating in this very authentic and pure way it's very easy to see uh if you're not already following marcus and victoria both of them you absolutely should be i'm going to put their instagram handles in the show notes for sure uh but let's move on we have a couple of quick segments to do before we end our time together so let's uh let's do this or that where you will let me know what your preference is between two options okay okay we're ready yes and yeah and maybe maybe some you'll want to answer together maybe some you'll have very different views we'll see i feel like we're going to be on two opposite ends what what we'll see we always surprise ourselves yeah all right here we go all right so again it's just your personal preference read a book or listen to a playlist read a book listen to a playlist yeah yeah i am who i am or i'm always evolving
that's a good one that's a good one i think i'm always evolving i go ahead i think you are i think yeah yeah you are always evolving right yeah yes you are always evolving i am who i am yeah um yeah i am who i am there are photos of me at five looking exactly as i do now and there are like things that i say now as an adult where i would have said them at 10. i'm still growing but yeah i definitely am who i am like i am at my core who i'm gonna be yeah i think i think that's part of my personality is to always be we had a we had a friend over not too long ago and she was she was saying one that's one of her favorite points of like my personality is that i'm always looking for like the like the next better thing to like include in our lives so that we have a better life so the people around us have a better life just by knowing us yeah and so i think that that is yeah you're totally adapted i'm gonna yeah i'm gonna yeah i'm a grower yeah what a nice balance to have someone like moving forward and someone grounding it's nice it's necessary yes it's necessary victoria is very much like yeah and but i mean it but it like it flips like it flips every once in a while where it's like victoria may want to do something that's like ambitious and my goal is always for like if victoria is like i want to do this thing like my goal is always like figure out how to get it done yeah um but there are some times where i'm like can't do that right now but we'll do it like yeah we add these two things and mix this up and bring these people in and we can get it done that way um but yeah it changes we're not all the way one way but for the most part i'll say i'm the changer and victoria is like yeah she's she's the same one
okay awesome all right next one uh-huh re-watch favorites or search for a new show we watched yeah yeah we are yeah yeah rewatch yeah we are rooted in comfort i guess like yes yeah you're running a risk that you're going to hate things yeah it's like yes or i can watch very risky time yes and it'll be great i know that that's going to be a great movie yeah mm-hmm it is yeah is there some i just i mean i obviously have to ask is there some particular show that's like your go-to show
yeah over and over a bad tv tv bad i'm watching it um so i am currently in the process of watching teen wolf i recognize that that plot makes no sense half the time um i will watch one tree hill over and over and over again um i watched vampire diaries a number of times and i recognize that it could be better but i'm still watching it real housewives i'm watching it yeah rewatch yeah victoria well yeah she's a the queen of what's the dance movie what are those uh step up she watched like watch like stuff but again she knows that like i'm aware she's no like movie critic or whatever she understands but uh yeah and then the thing about like re-watching stuff too is like you catch things sometimes yeah that you never that you didn't see like there are things that like there are things in harry potter movies like we had a harry potter wedding like we harry potter in this household and we still catch things that like you know right so it's like and then where we are in our life in that moment makes us feel different about the thing that we're we are re-watching like i feel totally different about um home alone now as a person that's probably going to have the next few years versus like the kid that watched it back in the 90s you know totally yeah so that's why i think that we're always like let's rewatch that thing and see how we feel about it in that moment yeah i that is so true i watched home alone with my kids for the first time a couple of years ago and i remember thinking like you definitely don't leave your house without a child like that's not okay yes yeah and like the police don't like yeah and like the airline doesn't say like yes like none of that is possible nonsense that you've totally fed into as a kid yeah you're like this is not yes when you're here it's a great adventure when you're an adult you're like i wouldn't call the government parents like goodness they're just wow but when but when you like when we were watching it a few years ago like it's like look at those drapes like look at the colors now you know it's just like like all like red and green in the ground everything is red and green so well styled yeah like the house is incredible yes we love that like old 90s like for resale values we will not put it in our house however we understand if we ever get like a cabin or something like that oh it's going full really good yeah yes oh my goodness oh yep that's so enjoyable okay next one the more the merrier or more fun with fewer more fun with you more fun with you that's yeah we as few as possible
is that as few as as few as possible but the thing you know so like our parents like when we bought the newer this this house here they're like whenever they come they're like so when's the when's the barbecue and we're like hopefully never like
around the house and like but where are the fewer people we're like the fewer so we can be the more the mirror yeah like we can do a few people at a time for literally ever like yeah you can have a friend this weekend next weekend have a friend this weekend and it inevitably turns into the more the merrier but boy you got to stagger that yeah yeah yeah
if you ever talk to a friend or a close friend of ours you know that like we're the friends that it's like look like come to the house go go pick up pick a guest room we don't even have to talk like we will we'll see we don't even have to do it hey and it'll be perfect it'll be fine like this is useless in the house hotel where you can kind of like get away and feel like this is a safe space for you and yes and and that's it but yeah but like the whole like great gatsby like you know like have a have a party with a that sounds terrible that sounds like our worst nightmare actually yeah um i feel like publishing companies are going to reach out to you and be like we have writers that really need to finish their books can they please stay with you we hear it's very quiet environment
oh my goodness okay last one for this section okay here for humor or please be serious who here for humor really yeah i'm always happy to be tickled like i'm serious enough that i will kill other people around me yes true yeah yeah i i'm here yeah yes i'm a humor person yeah because i don't like i don't i think that i don't really like when people take themselves too seriously i was never like i even though i wasn't i wasn't like popular but i was somebody that like could interact with any person the senator the the kid and the kid in the corner that just wanted to read books the the athletes whoever and so it was like i never liked the kid that like took himself too seriously i actually went out of my way to make that kid feel uncomfortable because i can see that yeah yes you're not cool bro enjoy yourself
yeah the humor didn't know what it's probably is too funny okay so the next segment is just rapid fire so i'm just gonna ask you some short answer questions what's something that you've read lately or that's a long time favorite that you would recommend to others oh um it's a kid's book but i always recommend it um i recommend the giving tree because it's a lot like marcus said with um the home alone where at every stage of my life i feel a little different about it so i think that tree needs boundaries like she needs solid boundaries but i'm like oh look how giving she is so yeah and now mine would be the giver like i've read that back when i was in like sixth grade but that's one of my favorite books and it um talks about how this kid like sees the world in a different way and he's special because of it and even though he thought that he was going to be like i'm going to be an engineer or i'm going to be like given this role because of the world in a different way he was given this like super special job that he would not have otherwise gotten so i think the giver is my favorite all the giving books yeah yes if it has if it has the word give giving or giver in it it's highly recommended
yes if you like it okay something you've watched lately that piqued your interest lately i mean we just told you we're re-watchers you know what you know what uh is one that we watch that we like talked about for a long time is um was it is is it married at first sight no which which was the one where they like it was the game it was a reality show where they they really don't see each other no we saw that one but there's another one where they get matched by oh man your mom would be so disappointed oh is it not married at first sight it might be very pretty it might be magic yeah i think that's what it is but it's a but it's a it's a show where they have these experts that match um that match couples based on their attributes and what they expect to have in in partners and i think like those brought up some like really thought-provoking conversations between just because like we work but that there's times when we don't know we don't understand why we work and then we watch other people they're like oh that's the reason why we work because people are crazy
yeah yeah i think that i think that's that's what that yeah i'll take it uh i watch the harder they fall which is that um
that came out recently and it's based off of real people the western has it has nothing to do with real people but i did go hunt down the ones that i didn't know and so yeah that was a chance yeah let's go with that yeah yeah a couple of good ones i like it and i haven't seen that so i'm going to write that down oh yeah yeah it's really good yeah it's it's awesome if you like a tarantino style movie yeah you like it well it without it's not as gory as yes but i level set that as like baseline yeah yeah like the feel of it yeah the feel yeah yeah oh well then i also have to ask harry potter special coming up the reunion 20 years are you going to do this yes absolutely going to spend the entire day oh yeah um maybe we'll have our siblings join us but if you don't then we'll like let harry potter weed them out yes yes we are absolutely doing it oh yeah see you next year love that i i saw the trailer well or whatever the promo i guess because i didn't really have a trailer um today and just about died so i'm with you guys yes awesome i was very excited i was like let me mute myself on this call so i can have the moment that i want to hit now yes i'm excited yes it's gonna be awesome okay do you have a favorite thing a product an app or a tool something that makes your life easier that you go to day after day that you would recommend to a friend
on product app or tool
yeah actually um yeah i'm getting full use out of apple's notes pad like like i'm i'm using it the way that they designed it to be used and i'm like falling asleep it's like when i have my best thoughts and so i will quickly lean out of like type into it yes i have all of these notes and things that i should have remembered during the day but did not have like enough breathing room to remember and yeah i'm keeping it pretty simple here like notes is really doing it for me yeah i like it
simplifying
you know what it is kate is that i used to be a terrible shopper like terrible shopper like i would buyer's remorse was like a thing that i used to go through all the time like i would spend money on something and get it home and be like sorry why like why did i buy this thing like or it didn't last long or whatever and so in the last like 10 years which is crazy but like in the last like 10 years i've like really learned to like hone in on what i purchased like what i use um i was gonna say the instagram save i am using those with a level of efficiency that is out of this world like if people are not using the instagram saved folders categorizers exactly to categorize stuff i don't know what they're doing like i have a folder for like things to buy for christmas like i've got a list for like marcus and i've got a list for everyone else i've got a folder of things to buy for myself yeah so when holidays come up i can like shoot it out to people like he go you don't have to ask for a list get like instagram folders
oh yeah quotes like videos i need to watch later when i have a moment of free time like instagram saved that's a good one that's got my vote yeah that is a good one in fact i'll tell you what i have an instagram folder for people i would like to interview obviously
yeah that's such a good idea oh i love them yeah i mean i'm with folders on instagram it took me a while to get there because i think they've been out for a couple of years but now that i'm using them i'm with you it's super super helpful yeah yeah it takes a second but once you're once you're off to the races it's like okay this in my cake folder i'm gonna put this in my shoe folder you have a cake holder i do i do have a cake folder i don't cook a little bake yeah so if i see a beautiful then i will save it like oh i'll go back to that cake later yeah victoria is a i'm pretty sure that's one of the reasons why she decided to marry me is because my great grand my great grandfather owned a bakery and this was during a time and in the country where black men did not own bakeries they did not you know until it was like yeah like this is in my blood i love a baked game yeah but her grandmother was a was a baker yeah so um but i i'm terrible at it but i'm i'm not good at chemistry either so oh that's not true you make a mean pound cake what pound cake is what is because it's like a pound of sugar a pound of butter yeah no it's not gonna fly anyway anyway we're just drinking yes sorry i'm sorry we're like no i i mean i'm here for this i'm really enjoying it personally my goodness all right so just a couple more questions what is something that people would be surprised to learn about you oh
i don't really have very many surprises my entire life for the last 10 years on the internet give or take yeah yeah um
yeah i guess it's like it's like common knowledge i've got this like sour patch kids type thing going where i'm like 95 everything is joyful and everything's funny and then i've got like five percent my family won't let me play monopoly anymore yeah i flipped the board once yes physically like yes yes yeah so so if you see monopoly yeah we see monopoly on our channel but i'm not playing i'm just taking the photo that day yeah um so yeah that's awesome i'm so glad you shared that every day where i'm like fun and friendly there's there yeah she she flipped the board she took the board we were playing with this one right before we started dating like for real and we were playing against this up we were playing with this other couple and victoria is beating everybody she's winning she's got she's got the property and so as the game goes on i come back and i start getting property i'm getting property taken from her and so she like i think the the uh the turning point was that i got boardwalk and i put a hotel on it and she was like forget this and she flips the whole board i was like you are a sore loser i come to come to find out later the friend that we were playing with was like you do know she was cheating right she was taking money from you i trusted her so much and she was stealing money from me i've gotten better in my mind yeah yeah yeah you don't really want to play a board game yeah victoria's it's not sorry it's not a uh it's not fun i don't know like i don't think i have one i i i will say like when growing up i wasn't like the nicest kid like i feel like now like i give off this like teddy bear huggable like gentle giant kind of thing but i think growing up i was i feel like i didn't really know like who i was yeah like you like you think the world should be this way and the world and so it's like all right like i have to like force myself to be somebody that i don't necessarily know who that is and i met victoria and victoria's like hey like you can't be that way because i can't be with a guy that's not nice yeah so you need to be nice and so perfectly nice now yeah yeah but other than that i don't have any i don't have any secrets that's really a wonderful thing though to have your partner influence you for good i mean i think we all have ways that we might desire to like tweak our person for better or worse but really like best case scenario is we help each other grow yeah in a good way and that's what and even when we talk to our siblings like when when they because they're still 606 single we got married younger so like our siblings are still like dating and they're not married yet and um but when we talk to people that they bring around for us to meet it's like you know like what are you doing to make our sibling a better person you know what are they doing to make you a better person like that you should want to be your best self for your for your person and um i can say i feel like my family can say that like i'm honestly a better person because victoria is around sometimes you're an older person like you you just grow up sometimes but but i don't want to say it that way because like you still got like 45 year old guys running around here like
yeah all right so that's our that's our rapid fire question yeah bless you we don't speak rapidly okay well it's far more enjoyable that you don't because honestly like the one word answers are oh a lot less fun anyways this is great okay so i just have one left though okay all right finish this sentence you'll never see me in flip-flops oh okay i mean i'm just gonna flip up have you yeah like when you like campbell like when you go take a shower yeah it was 18 and then yeah yeah flip-flops are not good for your feet they're not good for like the number of infections that they could pick up on that foam you're welcome run with this um so yeah i'm not a flip-flop gal sandals maybe a flip-flop never you'll never see me being rude to anybody like like i don't that thing where like people are like rude to like waiters or like people are like below then in whatever way like i've i've never understood that like my my parents will tell you every fight that i've gotten into as a child has always been because i'm standing up for somebody else like victoria's i'm the guy that like when i see people on the side of the road like looking for like a ride like a hitchhiker or like i'll go like out of my way like people people are like panhandling like i like go out of my way to like give them money but like you'll never see me like ignore yes like marcus has never met a stranger and marcus has never met somebody who needs him who he's not willing to help yeah so yes i i will co-sign that one yeah that's a good one yeah you'll never yeah you'll never see that now my flip-flop answer is shallow yes i mean it's not
the flip-flop
well also like victoria you're helping people i mean like you said people could be catching all sorts of crazy infections and diseases and you are preventing that you're welcome it's it's the least i can do it's just helpless
so if you get one takeaway from this episode i hope it's that you know
yeah yeah yeah it's okay it's slide you can even slide them on yeah they have uh birkenstocks now yeah that are like rubber yeah i mean oh yeah antimicrobial yeah there you go welcome join us yep you have been joined i'm joined up welcome welcome to welcome to the team and no flip-flop yeah so that's that's what i got all right well thank you so much for spending this time this has been a riot really fun thank you for having us so i appreciate it yes wonderful to spend time with you kate it was wonderful to meet you in the first place yeah this was absolutely a joy yes and i think that i also um while we're getting recorded and this is going to be put out i think that everybody needs to push kate to be the marvelous mrs maisel next year for halloween oh my goodness speaking of re-watch we were re-watching that and marcus is like i should message kate and tell her to be mrs maisel for halloween yeah i was like okay okay he was like doesn't she look like kate yes like the vibe i'm telling you you can pull it off so yes we'll see you next october 20th yeah we'll remind you at the moment so you can go get your costume yes less marcus tell me i don't even think she needs it i'm pretty sure you just get a dress i'm pretty sure she has a dress oh my goodness i i did tell marcus that i would give it a watch and i plan to i did a little like a quick dive on it to figure out who this person is and like what the similarity is yeah um and it from what i gather she's she's pretty quirky and she's um and i and i enjoy some quirkiness so i'm here for it her clothes are fantastic yeah the apartment's fantastic yes it's just such a funny show oh my goodness i hope you enjoy it if you don't it's okay we're not the uh
the aesthetic is barricade like awesome the aesthetic is there yeah i love it thank you so much again for being here really appreciate it it's been a blast yeah likewise yes absolutely our pressure thank you for having us those two are an absolute blast you can find a link in the show notes to connect with the four you can follow them on instagram at preferred wife and mark sports that's m-a-r-c-s-f-o-r-d
know you but whatever you do don't start another home project without first stopping by their website jam-packed with tutorials at preferredwife.com thank you for tuning in if you enjoyed your time with us today please share this episode with a friend then subscribe follow leave a comment or give a five star review season one of the show will include more chats top authors experts and influential personalities we will be serving up simplified applied psychology habit theory and quality of life tips and tricks that you can put into action right away until next week i'm kate hammer and you know how to live
