I’ll be completely honest with you, I don’t even remember the very moment that I came up with the concept of The Pretty Princess Command Center, but I do know how it got its name!

I grew up with two older brothers, they’re twins. So being the youngest, and the only girl, I became very accustomed to doing whatever it was that my brothers wanted to do if I actually wanted to hang out with my siblings. Naturally, that meant playing video games, getting dirty outside, watching the movies they wanted to watch, getting super competitive in backyard soccer games and basement ping pong tournaments. And while that was so much fun, I have always had a love and interest in the more glitz and glamour side of life. I’ve always loved playing dress up, playing with makeup, shopping, doing self-care activities (before I even knew that they were considered self-care).

In fifth grade, we had a school store week where everyone in the class was told to create a product to sell at this school store. We were given full creative control of what we wanted to make and sell, and an allotted amount of fake money to purchase products at the store. A lot of my classmates decided to make little things out of clay, or sell ziplock baggies full of slime (for my younger princesses, yes, slime was indeed a thing before the pandemic). Some kids decided to bake cookies or brownies, and well, I decided to make a book full of DIY beauty and spa treatments. I probably spent a whole weekend writing down all the recipes and ingredients you would need for making face-masks, foot soaks, hair growth oils, bubble baths … I listed out the step-by-step instructions for how to give yourself an at home manicure, and I think I even added in some suggestions of ambiance, like putting on Clueless and having a cup of coffee while your face mask sits. I typed everything up on Word, printed out the pages, cut them to size, drew the graphics on to the pages since we didn’t have a colored printer, stapled the pages together, and was so ready to be a fake money millionaire… I sold one book, and it was a pity sale from my fifth grade teacher… Naturally, I chose to believe that nobody was smart enough to appreciate the value of what I was offering, never once did I think that I had a bad product… because let’s be honest, I absolutely didn’t. I mostly was just irritated that because I didn’t make sales, I wouldn’t get to buy an extra five minutes of recess, an extra 10 points on a test, or a “you can turn your homework in tomorrow instead” pass.

Anyways, all that to say that I’ve always had this unnecessary amount of strong-headed stubbornness, which I attribute to being the youngest girl of two older twin brothers, but I’ve also always had this feeling of not being able to be “girly” enough. For a very long time I believed that you couldn’t be both, and even though I myself was a walking contradiction to that logic, I couldn’t see that when I was younger. I always wanted to be the quiet, pretty, poised girl, but that was just not in my nature, no matter how badly I wanted it to be. Thank fucking God. So … Do you see how we landed on the name now? The command center is a love letter to all the girls who grew up wishing that they could fit neatly into one box without spilling over into others, but have had to accept that they never will, and it will always be the biggest blessing ever.