Hydrangea Hippo started in 2008 when I needed a name for my business and all I had was “hydrangea hippo”. In 2007 I attended a scrapbooking event in San Marcos, California organized by Scrapbook Royalty, which is now Charity Wings. A group of us, who barely knew one another, piled into Rachel Blevins' Mercedes or BMW (I can't remember which now) and trekked the few miles to a local scrapbooking hot spot, Pink Pineapple Scrapbooks in Vista, California. While in the car, we started talking about names of our potential scrapbooking businesses. “Polka Dot Potato” was thrown out as a possible name (later we learned that was an actual company). In an effort to be silly and over the top, I blurted out that I would name my business “Hydrangea Hippo”.
When I moved to a street named Honeysuckle in Hesperia, California, well, the alliteration of the letter H sealed the deal. It was kind of perfect. I later found out there is a street in my neighborhood names Hydrangea. That's okay – I don't like any of the houses on that street anyway!
I moved my blog from jenniferppriest.blogspot.com to hydrangeahippo.blogspot.com. Later, I bought the domain name hydrangeahippo.com, and then in 2013, moved to a self-hosted Worpdress site. I used the name for my etsy shop, for craft fairs, and for my booth at a local craft mall. It has served me very very well in the craft industry. People remember it. And that is what has made it oh so hard to make the move from Hydrangea Hippo being my main site to it being a part of who I am.
I heard David Tutera speak at the SNAP Conference in 2015 and his words helped me to fully accept my move and to better understand what I knew to be true but could not express. My mian company is me. And then within that are the various facets of what I do. Hydrangea Hippo is crafts. Rainmaker Media Works is my social media marketing consulting business. Paleo Priests is my journey to follow a paleo way of eating and get healthy. And Just JP is all the other things in between, from family to gardening to travel.
Now the road has been laid for Hydrangea Hippo to evolve into what it was always meant to be. It might take a few years for you to see where it goes but for me, I am laying the groundwork for it to become what I had always hoped it would be. It served me well in the papercrafting industry. In fact, it has served me better than I could have ever imagined it would, being such a memorable name and cute at the same time. People remember the name moreso than they know me, which is both good and bad. Now, Hydrangea Hippo is going to help me cross another business and life dream off my bucket list as it is reinvented and goes through a metamorphosis as I have. Stay tuned here at Just JP to see when that happens and how it all unfolds.
I have moved the most popular posts form Hydrangea Hippo here, to my new site. You can access them by clicking on my last post at Hydrangea Hippo and then using the navigation button at the bottom of the post to see the previous post or by using the search bar at Hydrangea Hippo to find posts on a certain topic. For now, you cannot reach hydrangeahippo.com directly.
To get to Hydrangea Hippo, click this link: Hydrangea Hippo
Hydrangea Hippo is not going away. I am still working through the more than 2500 posts to pull the best content, make edits, add photos and more as the site has been moved more than four times and with each move, files and text have become damaged or were lost. You will see Hydrangea Hippo come back again one day, perhaps in a way you didn't expect. Wink Wink! Until then, read the story of why I rebranded and where I am going with this new site, Just JP: START HERE