The Most Stylish Yogurt

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Breakfast, lunch and dinner - I have eaten yogurt for every meal, especially since I have been pregnant. It's almost as if I can't get enough dairy and calcium. Lately, I have been eating yogurt even for dessert thanks to Stonyfield Farm's latest creation Oh My Yog triple layer organic yogurt with cream and fruit at the bottom. MMMM! It's the prettiest yogurt I've ever eaten.

We all know that stripes are in style, and the color blocked, striped packaging drew me to this tasty treat. Yes, I'm known to buy just because of packaging. I'm a stylist. What can I say? haha. Then you take a bite and you realize this is the most on trend yogurt around with it's ombre color effect. To celebrate this stylish cup of heaven, I've partnered with Stonyfield Farm to share beautiful ombre and stripe inspiration on Pinterest. You can follow along with us here https://www.pinterest.com/alexandraevjen/stripes-ombre-oh-my-yog/.

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My favorite flavors are Wild Quebec Blueberry, Pacific Coast Strawberry, Gingered Pear. I love adding granola to them or even crumbling up ginger cookies and putting them on top of my pear yogurt for dessert. You can find your next stylish dessert or breakfast at your local Whole Foods or Sprouts. Tell me which flavor is your favorite!

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Photos by Gina Meola

*This post is sponsored by Stonyfield Farms.

How to Use Pinterest Group Boards Effectively

Group boards are a great tools for collaboration. When I became a user of Pinterest in 2010, I quickly saw the value of sharing inspiration with my personal styling clients. I was so happy when Pinterest rolled out the ability to share a board with another user not too long after Pinterest's launch. Rather than sending images back and forth, making Polyvore collages and making mood boards in Photoshop, I could make a group board with links directly to commerce sites where my clients could purchase their suggested wardrobe pieces. But, can you use the group board feature as a marketing tool for your business? Yes. Should businesses have group boards with influencers? Yes. How? Keep reading... BENEFITS TO HOSTING A GROUP BOARD:

1| You have an additional people helping you populate your Pinterest account with great content.

2| Your board is seen on your contributors' profiles, which increases brand awareness

3| You have a different consumer eye and perspective contributing, which can help you relate to a different type of audience.

TIPS ON SELECTING YOUR CONTRIBUTORS:

1| Review your contributor's Pinterest profile to see that the content they share is in line with the lifestyle of your businesses.

2 | Other than having a lot of followers, find out the engagement statistics of their Pinterest profile. Do they get a lot of repins and comments? That will tell you if the content they find for you would be of interest to your audience as well.

3| Choose someone who has a similar audience to yours. You want them to help reach your ideal customer, so they need to understand who that is. (Age, location, gender, etc.)

4| Create an incentive for them to contribute. Either compensate them for curating your board with product, money or allow them to share some of their work or products with your audience to cross promote themselves. This will help ensure proper care and time for their contribution.

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IMPORTANT THINGS TO NOTE:

1| The content a contributor shares is seen only by the followers of the host's board (a.k.a. your followers). If you are wanting the pins to be shared with contributor's followers they would need to host the board.

2| Choose no more than 5 people to contribute to a board at a time. Quality control is important, and that's harder to manage when you have a lot of people sharing at one time.

3| Create guidelines for how often you expect your contributor to pin. Decide how many pins total over a period time they should share. Do you want them to share at least one pin per day? Is there a time during the day and/or when your audience is most engaged? If so, ask your contributor to share their content within that timeframe.

4| If you are worried that your contributor may share something against your brand guidelines, consider making a group secret board that you contributor pins to so you can review the content before it is made public. Just remember, the more steps you ask your contributors to take the more time they are devoting to the project. Make sure to compensate them accordingly.

Have more questions about hosting a group board? Please comment below or feel free to email me, alexandra@avestyles.com.

Real Talk With Real Moms About Sleep

Sleep - it's the answer to all of life's problems. Angry? Sleep. Sad? Sleep. Stressed? Sleep. Tired? Definitely, sleep. When you wake up you are rested, calm, optimistic and ready to start the day full of possibilities. I've teamed up with other influencers and bloggers to talk about some big topics within the realm of motherhood, but to do it with honesty. So, first things first we're sharing our experiences with sleep or more like lack of sleep. When I don't get enough sleep I'm basically the opposite of everything mentioned above. I'm tried, anxious, always complaining, short fused and complacent. It terrifies me to think about what kind of mom I'm going to be to Elle when Levi (that's what we're naming our little man) arrives in the next month. At least Ryan can understand why his wife is so moody and Levi won't remember anything from the early days, but Elle, 3 years old, will have a harder time with this adjustment. I'm sure of it.

Thinking back to my first experience with Elle, so much of my sleep deprivation came from my struggles with breast feeding. I had a hard time getting my milk supply to come in successfully, and Elle wasn't getting enough milk. So, for the first month of her life I was breastfeeding and then waking Ryan up to supplement her with some formula or donated breastmilk (more on that topic to come). While he was bottle feeding her, I was pumping. It was about an hour long ordeal giving us only about 4-5 hours of sleep a night. We were miserable! At least during the day I could take naps while Elle napped, but now I have the responsibility of a three year old to watch during the day on top of being a solo-preneur. The fear of how I am going to manage this all without rest leaves me feeling paralyzed sometimes.

But on the bright side, I remember after two months Elle slept through the night successfully. She has been an amazing sleeper ever since we got through our feeding struggles. She still naps for 2-3 hours most days and sleeps from 8:30pm to 6:30am on average. I thought I would share what I know worked for her to help any moms out there, and I thought I would also share what didn't work well. I also want to say that I really welcome advice and opinions on what you found was a big help to getting your little one to sleep. Probably, the biggest thing that I have learned in motherhood is that a support system of other moms is invaluable - even one that is digital. So, please feel free to chime in!

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WHAT WORKED:

1. Velcro swaddles - They are the only thing that kept our little magician's arms from escaping and waking her up. Muslin blankets are great for many things, but I could not for the life of me tie a tight enough swaddle to keep her sleeping.

2. Swing - The swing was my best friend when I couldn't get Elle to sleep. I already have a swing set up in my living room waiting for Levi.

3. Pacifiers - I know they are controversial, but we used one and it really helped put her to sleep.

4. Routine - Babywise is a pretty controversial topic, and I read the books before Elle was born to see what it was about. I'm not a Babywise mom, but one thing that I did sort of adopt was the routine of eating, playing and then sleeping. A lot of times kids become reliant on feeding to sleep, and to avoid creating a comfort and dependency we just reversed the order to feed as soon as Elle woke up and then play and then let her put herself to sleep. Once she was a month old or so we started to try and keep somewhat regular nap times give or take an hour. This was helpful for me so that I could work.

5. Sharing responsibility - Men can't breastfeed, but they can change diapers, clothes and help put babies to sleep. Ryan and I agree that parenthood is a joint effort. We both have jobs to do and no one's job is more important or less important than the other. Both jobs need sleep to perform well, so we agreed to help each other and be a team as much as we could from the get go.

WHAT I PLAN TO DO DIFFERENTLY:

1. Not stress about the small stuff - Having the house being super clean and organized all of the time isn't that important for two months. I can be a neat freak, and I would find myself spending all of my time cleaning while Elle was napping. I deprived myself of time that I needed to rejuvenate my body and soul.

2. Delegate - I hired an assistant last week. I am hoping that she can carry some of my work load so that I can have a little more freedom in my personal life.

3. Get a king size bed - I constantly woke Ryan up while I was breastfeeding, and part of that was being so close in bed. We are really looking forward to a bigger bed for our soon to be family of four.

4. Not tip-toe around the house - I was always so nervous to wake Elle up from her nap that I would find myself being extra quiet. Levi won't really have the luxury with his sister making all sorts of racket, and I think that's a great thing because it'll make sleeping through loud noises a lot more successful.

I'd love to hear what worked and didn't work for you and your littles. You can also read stories from several other moms in the list below.

http://www.couldihavethat.com/2015/08/real-talk.html http://apartment34.com/2015/08/finally-talkin-about-being-a-mamahttp://www.parkeretc.com/blog/real-talk-with-real-moms-sleephttp://www.adailysomething.com/2015/08/real-talk-real-moms-on-sleep.htmlhttp://www.therefinedwoman.com/real-talk-baby-sleep/http://www.smittenstudioonline.com/real-talk-real-moms-sleep/http://theeffortlesschic.com/real-talk-real-moms-sleep/

http://ourstylestories.com/2015/08/17/real-talk-with-real-moms-on-sleep/

Photos by Mike Olbinski

How to Visually Brand Your Pinterest Profile

As a Pinterest influencer with almost one million followers and being a Pinterest ambassador, I've had the chance to teach a lot of classes about how to use Pinterest as an effective marketing tool. I've also done quite a bit of account management for brands, and one problem that I immediately identify with most of my clients is that their Pinterest profile doesn't embody the feeling and essence of the brand itself. So, I thought I share some key things that can remedy that. Before you even open your browser do these things:

1. Identify your brand colors (ex: pastel blue, pastel pink and pastel green)

2. State your brand's purpose (ex: to provide a beautiful, fun and enjoyable bath time experience for kids and parents)

3. Identify the overall feeling and emotion tied to your brand's image (ex: clean, warm, playful)

Now, open up Pinterest on your desktop computer, and follow these steps:

1. Ask yourself, what cover images currently embody the feeling, brand message and palette of your business?

2. If you identify some that don't, open up each board, click "edit," click change "cover image", and then scroll through until you find a cover image that resonates with those three things.

3.  If you're not finding an image that you feel satisfied with start searching within Pinterest for your criteria within your board category (fashion, home decor, food, etc.). For example, when working with Be Good, a kid's bath and body line, I had a hard time finding content within their boards that was clean, soft, pastel and warm - all of the qualities they want to be know for. So, for the women's fashion board I searched within Pinterest to find "pastel fashion," and then found some images that met the brand requirements and pinned them to the board. I then went back and set the cover image.

Example:

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BEFORE

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AFTER

Extra things to double check:

1.  Do all of your titles fit or are they cut off? You want them to fit within the board pixel width and be 23 characters or less

2. Do you have too many or too few boards? The magic range I try to tell brands to aim for is between 15 and 30 boards.

3. Do your boards reflect the lifestyle of your brand? Share what the persona of your brand would eat, what spaces they would live in, where they would travel to, what they would wear, etc.

For more Pinterest tips and advice, click here. If you're in need of help setting up your Pinterest profile or strategizing your company's voice on Pinterest, you can always email me for consulting pricing. alexandra@avestyles.com.

eBay Fashion Event Curator

*This post is sponsored by eBay

It's almost fall fashion season!!! Can you smell it? I think it smells like leather. Don't you? I'm so excited for it, and I've teamed up with eBay to curate my own fashion sales event featuring finds from brands like: Chloe, Dolce Gabbana, and Michael Kors. Get ready for the fall season and stay looking chic all year long with everything I've selected. The nice thing about eBay is that you can easily find that Chloe bag you've been searching for, but get it for so much less than other retailers. Who doesn't love a bargain, right?

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I searched hundreds and hundreds of pieces, and I’ve narrowed it down to the best. The collection includes luxury as well as affordable items, unisex as well as women's, and accessories as well as clothes.

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Some trends that I'm loving the most right now are leather fringe, all white outfits, all black outfits and graphic patterns. Go shop it and tell me which item you're loving most!