Heeey ladies! It’s exciting to be connected with other moms in the community. My name is Danielle Gutelli, and I am a mom to two rad little dudes: Enzo (6.5) and Ziggy (3.5)…I know ya’ll get the importance of the halves. I live in downtown Plymouth with my two little dudes, my husband Michael, and our 14-year-old boxer/pit mix, Jade. We have been here in Michigan for just over five years.
I actually grew up here in the Plymouth-Canton area and went to Michigan State where I got my undergraduate degree in Early Childhood Elementary education. From there I taught one year in Southfield and then moved to Chicago for the next 10 years where I taught second grade on the North Shore while living in the city. I got my Master’s degree from Depaul as a reading specialist while working full-time and also taking on lots of kids to tutor. I absolutely love everything about teaching and being around little ones. There’s nothing better than watching the light bulb come on when a kid gets something for the first time. But after having Enzo, I found the transition from maternity leave to working mom to be incredible challenging. I struggled on the daily, often finding myself crying the entire hour drive to work while pumping, of course…girl’s got to have enough milk! That is when my husband Michael brought up the idea of relocating back to Michigan and me being able to stay home with Enzo, and I jumped right in to that!
I have been fortunate enough to have spent some real quality time home with both of my boys. When we moved to Michigan, I decided I wanted a way to continue to be creative though and not just lose myself in motherhood, which I know many of us can relate to that reality. So, during the summer of 2015, I started a little blog (my little corner of the internet, as I like to call it), Mom Wife Foodie, where I wrote about all things mom, wife, and foodie related. I wrote under that blog name for several years. At first I can promise you that my mom and Michael were pretty much the only two souls around reading it (OK, maybe I had a few girlfriends that would stop by every now and then, but you get the idea!), but slowly, one by one, people started to find me. In 2017, I realized that while I loved the blog and writing the content, I was missing out on a larger audience. The readers I did have were actually coming to my site for all renovation and home related topics that we began sprinkling in, and I felt that my blog name was no longer resonating with the content. So, in early 2018, I relaunched my blog under the name Clark + Aldine.
When we launched as Clark + Aldine, I brought my husband Michael on as a new and more prevalent voice to the blog. We were now a husband and wife content creation team. Michael still worked his 9-5 advertising role, and I continued to blog and be a stay at home mom at the same time…totally an easy task! Our content focused on home design, renovations, styling, travel, and a little bit of the everyday life here in the Gutelli household. As we pushed out more and more house content, we watched our reader and follower numbers grow. It was wild to see how we were pushing out content we were both truly passionate about, and it was resonating with others we didn’t even know! In the summer of 2018, we had our first local clients approach us to see if we would be willing to tackle some projects in their home and come quote them out for the job. We both immediately said sure!
…and the rest is history! OK, not really history, but if you are curious more about our story and how we got to where we are not, we’ve got a full content series we are launching this Fall on YouTube, and you can check out our three-part trailer here! We are also publishing content regularly over on Clark + Aldine and on all of our social channels. You can find me on Instagram @daniellegutelli and @clarkandaldine.
Now that you know all about my brand and business, let’s dive into some more personal things. I love to run; in fact, I’ve run three marathons, the last of which was when I was 23 weeks pregnant with Enzo. Not sure I’m ready to recommit to that kind of training again any time soon, but since Michael is a runner now, too, half marathons have been my jam! I I love a good book (fiction/nonfiction) and always the ones about personal growth. Bold, fruit-forward red wine speaks my language, and I love a good margarita. I LOVE food and miss Chicago dearly for this reason. I’ve found yoga helps keep me sane. I am big on finding time for me. While I am not the best at it, I am always working to have more me-time. I know the work-life balance is a complete joke; in fact, I prefer to call it the “pretend balance.” We can touch more on that later for sure!
My husband and I have been together for 13 years and married for eight. We’ve lived all over the city of Chicago (South Loop, Boystown, Roscoe Village, Bucktown, West Loop, and Uptown for anyone that’s really curious). As you already know, after having Enzo, we quickly realized having family close to us was an essential part to our life, and we made the jump to move to Michigan.
I am excited to connect with more rad women in our community!
