Nothing brings a smile to my face more than seeing photos and tweets from #createlounge members who grabbed a coffee or drink with someone they met locally through the chat. I guess we\u2019ve become a friendship matchmaker! I\u2019m more than okay with that.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been able to vastly grow my offline community in Minneapolis as well. Toward the end of 2015, I hosted a few casual dinners in order to meet more Minnesota natives that wandered into the chat. This group now endlessly inspires me and is my IRL cheerleading squad.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re ever in Minneapolis, give me a holler. I\u2019ll treat you to hot chocolate regardless of the season.<\/p>\n

Most of all, we’ve connected creatives far beyond the chat hour<\/h2>\n

During our chat on the power of handwritten letters, many members tweeted “How cool would it be to have #createlounge pen pals?” and my answer was “Super,\u00a0wicked cool.” We quickly made it happen! We paired creatives based on their niche so they could connect with like-minded creatives.<\/p>\n

And now for a special thank you<\/h2>\n

If you’re reading this and have been a part of the #createlounge community, thank you for sharing your creative heart with us over the past year. It’s been an honor getting to know you every week. You are the light of #createlounge, the fuel that keeps us moving forward. A thousand times thank you.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I write this first year recap of #createlounge, my weekly Twitter chat, I’m blinking away (happy) tears while searching for a word that accurately describes how I feel in this moment. I still haven’t found one. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":942,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[39,17,38],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-createlounge","tag-blogging","tag-community"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kaylahollatz.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}