Spotlight on SheSpeaks Blogger - Rebecca B. Bird of Hello Pretty Bird

   By SheSpeaksTeam  May 05, 2015

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Rebecca B. Bird is a 31-year-old New Yorker with a fondness for colorful cosmetics, quirky accessories, and pretty much anything that makes life easier. You can find her budget-conscious beauty and urban lifestyle ramblings at HelloPrettyBird.com.

Rebecca recently participcated in our Gillette Venus campaign and is an active member of our community. We were anxious to find out more about her, so we recently caught up with Rebecca to find out about her life, in her words, and this is what we found out. 

$PullQuote$Where you can find me: Twitter - Facebook - Instagram - Google + - Pinterest 

I live in….New York City. Brooklyn, to be specific.

My niche is… Primarily beauty, though over the past year or so I've branched out and become more of a general lifestyle blog. I enjoy sharing things like easy recipes and frugal lifestyle hacks. I plan on doing more posts about activities in NYC over the spring/summer as well.

I write when….. I've had my third cup of coffee.

How has blogging changed my life: This is a tough one to answer, because there are two distinct “phases” of my blogging life. I wrote a (now defunct) non-beauty blog from 1999 until 2007—if you do the math, you'll realize that I was still a high school student when I started (no, my blog wasn't a LiveJournal, heh.) At the very beginning, a lot of blogging/website platforms didn't support comments (can you imagine that now?!) so strangers would reach out to me via e-mail to tell me that they thought what I wrote was interesting or funny. That was incredibly validating—and I think that encouragement is partially what inspired me to get a college degree (and master's degree!) in my twenties. I really wanted to improve my writing/storytelling skills. Keep in mind that I wasn't exactly the most motivated student prior to that... I barely graduated high school, if we're being honest.

As for my current blog: My blog has forced me to improve my photography skills a lot. People really care about the visual aspect of blogs now. I wouldn't describe myself as an ace photographer at this point, but if you look at photos I posted just two years ago, the difference is astounding. (Please don't look at them though, they're pretty darn bad.)

When I started blogging: I started my current blog in June of 2013.

How I see the future of blogging/social media? I anticipate there being a lot more emphasis on video and short-form social sharing. I was sitting next to my cousin's 13-year-old daughter at a social gathering recently, and she was immersed in Snapchat the entire time. The preferences of her generation will likely dictate what the next big “thing” is. I still hear people saying that they prefer reading text blogs with photos to watching video reviews though, so I guess there's hope for us old-fashioned types.

Where I work: There's a second bedroom in my apartment that I affectionately call my Woman Cave. It's a hybrid home office/makeup storage facility/electronics hoarding zone /place to dump all my clothes on my floor.

I am connected….Embarrassingly often. Five years ago I didn't even carry a mobile phone with my when I left the house, now I check my e-mail the instant I wake up. The good news is that I don't have to leave bed to do it! Thanks for existing, smartphones.

When I’m stressed, I…..Pace back and forth like a maniac. I'm sure my downstairs neighbors love me.

My favorite gadget is….My smartphone. It's a camera, messaging device, encyclopedia, TV and radio all in one—the sort of magical gizmo I could only fantasize about having when I was a nerdy little kid! And now I have two of them. I guess being patient pays off?

My favorite travel destination is….Tough to say—maybe New Zealand. The mountains are just so stunning, and there's a lot of interesting wildlife to see there too.

I do all my shopping….With a coupon. It's very rare for me to make a total impulse purchase—I like to scope out sales and coupons (both online and off) to stretch my dollars as much as I can.

My favorite TV shows: Louie, Bob's Burgers, 1박 2일. And Star Trek: The Next Generation, which looks incredibly dated now but still manages to have infinite rewatch value.

My favorite movie: I'm a HUGE movie buff with diverse tastes, so this is a really hard one to answer. I will say this: I'm a big fan of musical films—both splashy, old-school classics like Hello Dolly! (1969) and peculiar modern tales like Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and True Stories (1986).

Coffee or tea: Both. But probably not at the same time.

I love….My family, my significant other, writing, reading, bright colors, and living in New York City. Oh, and cooking and eating food. Who doesn't love food?

I dream about….Being able to travel for extended periods of time again. I spent a couple years of my twenties basically living out of a bag and wandering the earth—I'd like to do something like that again, except with a slightly nicer bag this time and maybe with my own room instead of sharing a hostel dorm with half a dozen drunk kids.

My latest SheSpeaks post: A Look at the New Gillette Venus Swirl Razor & Gillette Venus Olay Violet Swirl Shave Gel (+ Walmart Gift Card Giveaway)