Hello! My name is Shandee, the voice behind Coffee Table Reads. I come from a small town in Idaho, now living in Boise. I was raised surrounded by creativity — my mother showing us just how much magic can be brought into the home during each holiday, and my father taking time to sprawl across the floor with me and my coloring books. At the same time, I watched closely, trying to replicate how he used colored pencils to achieve the soft texture I wanted to master so badly. I always came home to both of them busy with new projects — Mom in the basement detailing the playroom with flowers and Toy Story clouds, and Dad at the dining table, painting and piecing together his model planes.

I was always creating something — creating dance routines with my sisters, eventually leading me to join the local competition dance team, hand-making birthday cards for her family, planning everywhere in the world that she would one day see, dreaming about the people she’d one day photograph, and spending hours in the basement with her best friends, writing and filming short horror movies.

I have always found myself overwhelmed with the endless possibilities presented to me, overloading my schedule in high school in every art, film, writing, photography, and acting class I could, only to get upset over the ones I couldn’t fit in. (I still haven’t signed myself up for a pottery class.) To this day, I still find myself incredibly overwhelmed. That is exactly where Coffee Table Reads was born — In the chaos of wanting to do it all, I have chosen to write about it.