I have followed the mouthwatering feed of the Merrymaker Sister for a while now and met these two gorgeous girls a couple of months ago at a Youtube event. Their contagious, bubbly personalities and enthusiasm towards life, health and food is why I just had to invite the girls to share with our BareVitality community.

The Merrymaker Sisters run a successful business based around sharing their yummy paleo recipes with nearly 53K Instagram followers and a recently released book on the shelves ‘Make it Merry- A Healthy Cookbook’.

So lets get to know them..

Names:

Emma & Carla Papas, aka The Merrymaker Sisters

2) Your 5 favourite items:

Oh! That’s a tough one! We’d have to say our iPhones (because we run our business from them!), our unicorn lamp called Harold, our crystal collection, our Vitamixes annnnnnnd our meditation chairs! 🙂

3) How did the Merrymaker Sisters all start? What is the driving force behind what you do?

It was mid-2012 and we’d both just completed a 12 week diet and exercise plan, not designed for health, designed to lose weight. We were over the moon, we’d reached our goal weights (aka stick thin) BUT along with our ‘perfect bodies’ we were tired, moody, cold all the time and our periods completely disappeared (yes, at the same time!). Definitely not healthy.

This unhealthy way of living needed to stop, so we searched for something that would work. REAL FOOD was our answer and the catalyst to creating The Merrymaker Sisters.

Being the food lovers we always have been, we started to share photos of our healthy foodie creations to our personal social media accounts and our followers started to grow organically. We loved it so much and wanted a place to document all of our recipes and thoughts so we googled ‘How to start a blog’ (seriously!). We both studied and worked in the Communication industry and were passionate about health and happiness and so we began The Merrymaker Sisters – it was like two passions perfectly intertwined!

Our overall mission for The Merrymaker Sisters is to create a healthy, happy, more magic filled world. We do that by creating a safe and fun community where everyone is welcome to come, learn and get inspired to make positive changes to their lives.

We haven’t looked back since starting our merrymaker journey in February 2013, and feel truly lucky to have found a career path that makes us happy and gives us a sense of fulfillment. We always say ‘To Merrymake, is to follow your bliss, passion, dream’ and that’s exactly what we’re doing.

4) You have so many incredible recipes. What’s a typical day on The Merrymaker Sisters plate look like?

It really is so different every day! And trust us… our plates don’t always look all that pretty! But it is ALWAYS tasty! At the moment our day would go something like, scrambled eggs with avo and green veggies, then perhaps a delicious salad with roast veggies and for dinner, our new favourite is our chicken schnitzel from our Make Life Merry meal plan!

5) Now I have a sister & while we love each other I don’t think we would survive 2 days working together! What do you love most about working alongside each other as sisters? And are there challenges you come across?

Alot of people always say to us “you’re so lucky to do what you do.” But really, it’s a mix of hard work, passion and never accepting no for an answer. However, the only reason we are lucky is because we get to do this with each other! We each have someone who we can count on no matter what to bring us up when we’re down, to always have our back and to be that encouragement you need during those times when you’re thinking ‘What the BLEEP am I doing?!” Yep, those moments happen!

We also have different strengths and we make sure we play to those within the business, we each have our roles and we stick to those. We can’t let little things get in the way, so if we ever get mad at the other sister because it’s her turn to wash up… we just gotta let it go! 😉

6) Here at the BV community we are all about nourishment and balance in all areas of your life.

– What are your favourite ways to stay active?
Like our food, this changes ALL the time! If you’d asked us a year ago we would have said CrossFit! And before that running! Now we love to balance it up with yoga, RPM and some High Intensity Interval training… oh! And we LOVE to walk!

– How do you like to take time for yourselves?

We love spending time with our family and friends, we see that as taking time for ourselves! We also enjoy a good lunch date, in the sun preferably! But we also like to make sure we include some form of meditation during our day. Time to reflect and just be.

– Other than creating amazing food, what are your other hobbies?

Oh good question! Merrymaking is our full time passion and lifestyle! We LOVE to cook, write, take photos, make videos, interview inspiring people and eat delicious food! They’re pretty good hobbies we’d say! But we also love to get creative, with painting and colouring in! So much fun and super relaxing!

7) Now I have a very serious question girls! What is your ULTIMATE favourite recipe you ever created on your site?

Oh! There are SO many… BUT! Our favourite would definitely have to be our delicious Paleo Salmon Cakes! They are seriously delightful and totally easy to make 🙂 Recipe Here

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