Gretchen Nielsen

About Gretchen

Advertising specialties (promo items) has been my sole profession for over 20 years. (view my LinkedIn profile)

I live in Santa Rosa, next to Taylor Mountain Regional Park, in the beautiful Sonoma Wine Country of Northern California, with my husband and our two cats.

(they’re not child substitutes – at least that’s what their pediatrician says…)

I was born and raised in Fresno, CA, where I swam competitively from age 6 through college, at one point swimming in a qualifying meet for the Olympic trials.

Later, while I was living in Mill Valley, CA, the local high school, Mt. Tamalpais High School, was about to disband the swimming program because they didn’t have a swim coach so I thought “I love swimming, it was the best part of my high school years- I want to be the coach!”. So I was, for one year, until they got a real coach, and it was the hardest job I ever had. It was hard to imagine that so much had changed for teenagers since I was in school.

At my mother’s prompting, I recently took up the ukulele,

and now we have a Ukulele Orchestra with my husband, my Mom, my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephew. Picture seven people, all (mis-)playing the same simple, silly song (eg., Tiny Bubbles) for half an hour over and over again before the whole thing falls apart in hysterics. That’s our so-called “Ukulele Orchestra”.