Today we’d like to introduce you to Kate Wood.
Every creative professional has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
My husband and I live in Selma, AL where we are raising our two toddlers. Long before I landed in the deep South, I lived up and down the East Coast before my parents made a permanent home in Orlando, FL. I grew up there before I moved to Birmingham, AL to attend Samford University. After a short-lived attempt at a career in food journalism, I ultimately ended up becoming a registered dietitian and even went on to get my Master’s at UAB. While I was certainly interested in health and nutrition, my passion was really rooted in food. I didn’t get to try my hand at cooking and baking much my husband and I were engaged to be married. I decided I wanted to bake my own wedding cake, so with little to no experience, I began testing vanilla cake and meringue buttercream recipes. By the time our big day rolled around, I had spent a substantial amount of time trolling food blogs and cookbooks, and it was then that my dream to be a food writer was reborn.
Throughout the next few years, I continued to work as a dietitian, and finally, three years into our marriage, my husband convinced me to start my own food blog. I saw blogging as an avenue to create beautiful food, stories, and photos to share with the world, and while I was certainly no expert in any of those areas, I had finally been persuaded to take the leap. In February of 2016, Wood and Spoon blog was born, and I have been writing it ever since!
Honing your craft (for me, that’s a little bit of baking, food styling, writing, and photography) in front of the entire world on the internet is definitely a scary thing, but I’ve also found it to be really rewarding. Opening your trade up to a larger pool of an audience means you’re almost always bound to relate with someone along the way. Throughout the past two years, I’ve made new friends, exchanged stories, and been loved by people in a unique way that I don’t think I would have gotten to had I kept all of this within the confines of my own home. I’m still really new at all of this, but I’m eager to continue to process because it has proved to be incredibly rewarding.
Please tell us about your work.
In short, I am a baker, writer, and photographer. I create recipes, bake and style said recipes, and then photograph and write about what I’ve made. Wood and Spoon is a baking and desserts blog with an emphasis on Southern-inspired dishes. The stories and recipes are intended to draw readers to the kitchen to create dishes and cultivate a community around their own tables. The mission of the Wood and Spoon blog is to captivate home bakers through beautiful photos and the honest lens of daily life and to equip them with the encouragement and know-how they need to succeed in the kitchen.
My hope is that readers leave my site being excited about food and how they can use it to love the people around them. I want people to feel motivated to create, yes, but I think the real magic happens when they share what they’ve done when they make room around their table for the people they love to enjoy it. That’s where the memory comes to life.
As a creative professional, how do you define success and what quality or characteristic do you feel is essential to success as a creative?
The most rewarding points of this journey had come when something I made or wrote impacted someone outside of my inner circle of influence. Of course, it’s special to get good feedback from your mom or your neighbor, but some of the most impactful compliments and bits of feedback I’ve ever received have come from perfect strangers. It’s so powerful to learn that you’ve brought joy or meaning to someone you’ve never even met, and for me, the internet has been a really powerful vehicle of connection. I’m so grateful for it.
The quality/ characteristic of an artist that I am always striving for is to just be genuine. Sometimes when I’m lacking inspiration or vision, I feel myself getting sucked into doing everything that everyone else is doing. I think the quickest way to kill this vibe I’m on is to try to do what someone else is doing. I want to be inspired by them, learn from them, and hone my skills as needed, but ultimately, I want to stay true to what I love and what I think is beautiful. If it’s not coming from me, I just don’t feel ownership of it.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
You can find me online at woodandspoon.com! You can follow me on Instagram @katie_clova . Follow along, engage, do whatever makes you joyful!
Contact Info:
- Website: woodandspoon.com
- Email: kate@thewoodandspoon.com
- Instagram: @katie_clova
- Facebook: @thewoodandspoon
Image Credit:
Headshot taken by Jesse Walsh of dreamtownco.com
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