About Me

Hi, I’m Vivienne and thanks for joining me here!

I’m a mom of three small humans who store gemstones, acorns and chicken bones in their coat pockets, and eat their weight in dried mango. We live in the New York Lower Hudson Valley where the morning skies are pink, and acorns for hoarding in one’s pocket are aplenty.

I’m a native New Yorker (childhood on Staten Island, high school in the city), and I like my pizza thin and my bagels crusty. My husband hails from Yorkshire, England and together we’ve lived in NYC, Miami, expanded into three in Colorado, moved to California as four, and finally arrived in the Lower Hudson Valley as five. We are done moving. Definitely done expanding.

I’m freelance now, but for years, I worked as a creative in advertising at places like Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and Mad Dogs & Englishmen, and I’d do things like make TV campaigns, invent products, create stories and watch how people paint burgers to look more appetizing. But above else, the part of the job I’ve loved most has been to come up with ideas and better, more entertaining ways of saying and doing things.

Three kids later, I still love creating and coming up with ideas, except these days, a lot of it revolves around parenting and kids.

Childhood these days has a tendency to be more screen-filled, solitary, sedentary, and stressful than many of us would like, but it doesn’t have to be. We can make it more creative, imaginative, active, free, and all those other wonderful things about childhood that you and I remember. The time to play. The freedom to explore. The space to escape into our imaginations — we can bring all those things back. All it takes is a little creativity and an open mind.

You never know what’s going to bubble up here at Magic Porridge. It could be warm, it could be sweet, or it could be spicy or sloppy — whatever it is, there’s always something bubbling up. Check us often, and hopefully we’ll send you away with something good. Thanks for reading!