Our Story

Welcome to Life of Hadley!  A bit about us…. 

I am Bridget Collins and my 20-something daughters are Lacey and Ashlyn Wooden.  We are creating this blog to share things that inspire us and hopefully inspire you as well; to plan that trip, try the cafe or just make some great memories with your friends and family.   We already have so many ideas that we can’t wait to share  with you. We will feature things we are passionate about,  which is a lot of eating, drinking, traveling and some classic and cool styles to wear when doing those things.   We also love sports, especially Cal, Boulder and UCLA, music, traditions and celebrating all the big and little things in life. We pretty much will celebrate anything.   

We make a lot of plans and sometimes we actually do them.  But, half the fun is planning that exotic vacation or incredible adventure. But, when the opportunity shows up, we are ready with a ton of saved Instagram posts and articles on where to stay, shop, eat and go for happy hour.  We love happy hour and for some reason we (well, mostly me) love toasting.  We have our own special family toasts we say everytime we go out and we also make up toasts to make each other laugh.  We especially love our rhyming toasts. 

Lacey, Ashlyn and I live in Newport Beach, California. We all live within a couple miles of each other and so does my mom, we call her Grandy.  Everyone needs a Grandy.  Smart, strong, funny, gives the best advice, and loves her dog, Rosie, Jameson Irish Whiskey and the Cal Bears.

For the story behind our name: Hadley James (our grandmother/great-grandmother) emigrated from County Cork, Ireland to Boston in the early 1900's. This is where she and her husband Patrick James owned a general store and built their first home. 

When the Great Depression hit they lost everything - the store and their home. They decided to move out West to seek better opportunities. Once they arrived in California,  they began rebuilding their life and was fortunate enough to see the need for new homes and began a home building business.  Hadley was very smart, business savvy and Patrick didn’t do anything without her advice and approval.  They were a great team and in our family Hadley has always been the one who inspires us and  we all try to emulate.   

She is the inspiration behind our business and our blog.