Hi friends! I am Areeba – the face behind Mint Candy Designs! During the day, I am a Clinical Psychologist in training. In the evenings and in my spare time, I love a good DIY or craft project, giving room makeovers, and sharing my every day life with you including motherhood, career, lifestyle and other random advice. I started this little blog in 2016 as a way to “de-stress” after long days in graduate school filled with research, statistics, textbook chapters and so much more. I found myself looking for a hobby, and being an over achieving academic who had spent all her spare time in libraries her entire life… I had NONE.
This page was born at the opportune time when my husband and I purchased our first home, and I was stumbling in the deep dark hole of Pinterest and Instagram for home decor inspiration. I started sharing my home decor journey here and there with no serious commitment in 2015 until 2016.
During this time, we got pregnant with our beautiful daughter. After she was born, and I was on a short (5 month) maternity leave, I turned to this page and my Instagram page for a sense of belonging. I was navigating a new role in my life, as a new mother, and very few of my friends were in the same life stage as I was then. This was both isolating and simultaneously terrifying – the decisions of what kind of pacifier to choose (and if to use one or not), what swaddle/bouncer/toys (etc etc) was truly paralyzing and I longed to talk to other mama’s who were in the same void of sleepless nights and clothes covered in projectile vomit as I was.
I was navigating a new role in my life, as a new mother, and very few of my friends were in the same life stage as I was then. This was both isolating and simultaneously terrifying – the decisions of what kind of pacifier/swaddle/bouncer/toys (etc etc) was truly paralyzing and I longed to talk to other mama’s who were in the same void of sleepless nights and clothes covered in projectile vomit as I was.
I turned to Instagram then, and found an outlet in DIY’s and of all things – food. With a newborn and no clue on how to handle a fussy one, one of the few things I could do (and had to do) was cook food. So I started a “hashtag” on instagram called #tastythursdaydecor which has over 5000 posts today! I shared a photo of a banana bread loaf I had baked in nap time, and asked others to share their photos with me. I think a grand total of 5 people posted and I chose one of them to “co-host” the following Thursday with me. That is how I started to cultivate a community on Instagram in 2016.
Since then, I have built a community of 40,000 viewers/readers across social media platforms of people who are on here for the same reason – to find others who are in the same journey as them whether it is in the search for the perfect sweater for the cold Canadian winter, or to talk to another person who’s toddler is in the same phase of saying “no thank you” as mine. We are all in it together and we are here to cheer the other on, even when the chai cup has been filled 5 times over and its only 9 am. That is what this community is about. I hope you are here to stay, and will join me in this little journey.
That is Mint Candy Designs my friends. You can expect a healthy dose of REALITY i.e. real life and unfiltered moments on here. I share everyday things that I love including home decor, design tips/tricks, DIY projects for every skill level whether you have power tools or not, recipes, career advice… basically my life. I also express unfiltered gratitude for each and everyone of you who has come to my little corner of the internet, because this little gig would not be possible without YOU. Your support/likes/comments/feedback goes a long way, and for that I am eternally grateful.
I hope you will stick around, and find this little space to be as wonderful as I think it is. You can catch up on what I have been up to by clicking through some of my recent projects and posts above. Also.. I love sending my peeps cute little notes and updates straight to their inbox. It would mean the world for me if you joined along in these. All you have to do is subscribe to these personalized letters, so you can be the first to hear about my latest posts and follow along on Instagram to see fun behind the scenes footage!
Lets hang out more shall we? See you around soon, friend <3
