About
Hi, I’m Jen.
I’m a filmmaker, actor, producer, entrepreneur, creator, mother of five and, thanks to one determined raccoon and a dog-poop bin, apparently an author too.
Before all of that, I spent more than twenty years as a pastry chef and sugar artist, which somehow ended up being one of the things that led me into the entertainment industry. Because apparently my career path was never going to be a straight line.
I have a habit of going from 0 to 100 the second an idea lands. I’ll learn whatever I need to learn, figure out the pieces as I go and, every once in a while, accidentally create an entirely new job for myself because some broken system annoyed me.
That has led to some interesting places.
One idea leads to another. Obviously.
The brain train railway yard
Apparently, I don’t do one thing.
I create and produce film and television projects. The big one I’m working on right now is Trickle & Flow.
I built CGP Spotlight so indie filmmakers and series creators would have another place to reach audiences and actually earn money from their work.
Then came CGP Indie Studio, a low-cost scriptwriting and production-planning toolkit, and CGP Creator’s Corner, where I make the filmmaking tools and templates I use myself.
But wait, there’s more.
Printable in a Pinch is where all the completely unrelated things my brain decides need to exist get to live: planners, kids’ activities, spreadsheets, printables and whatever else I’ve decided to make that week.
And then there are the books
Poop Soup started with a raccoon, a dog-poop bin and one of those ridiculous real-life moments that was too funny not to turn into something. So now you can actually buy Poop Soup as a children’s book.
And Keeping Up with Jen is basically what happens when you take all of this, the businesses, filmmaking, motherhood, questionable decision-making, brain trains and the general experience of being me, and put it into a book.
You can pre-register for that one if you’d like to be warned when it escapes into the world.
I’ve also acted, written, produced, trained in stunt performance, built websites, designed products, made a ton of cakes and cookies and learned more random skills than any one human probably needs.
For a long time, I thought all of those things were supposed to be separate.
The connecting thread is actually pretty simple though.
I like making things, and I like helping people.
Sometimes that means making something people can watch on CGP Spotlight. Sometimes it means building CGP Indie Studio because another filmmaker might need the same thing I needed. Sometimes it means creating a template for CGP Creator’s Corner or Printable in a Pinch, writing a ridiculous book about dog poop or figuring out how to get dinner on the table without destroying the kitchen.
I believe the mountain is meant to be climbed, not leapt, although I am still regularly caught attempting the leap.
My brain is also not particularly interested in doing less, so I finally stopped trying to force it into one tidy little lane and started building a proper brain train railway yard instead.
That’s really what this site is.
It’s where all the brain trains meet.
So if I’m making it, building it, filming it, writing it, testing it, fixing it or saying, “Okay, but what if we did this...”, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll find it here.
And if one of my ridiculous ideas happens to make your life easier, make you laugh, help you create something of your own or just make you feel a little less weird for having seventeen ideas at once, even better.
The occasional email
New recipes and whatever I am working on. No schedule, no pressure, unsubscribe whenever you like.