Zestful Productions didn't begin with a business plan.
There was no carefully mapped-out collection strategy, five-year forecast or grand vision involving children's books, vintage treasures, original designs and a tiny camper named the Zest Nest.
There was mostly coffee.
And ideas.
Lots and lots of ideas.
Looking back, that's probably the most Zestful way this could have started.
Before There Was Zestful
I've always been the person who can't leave an idea alone.
Give me a story and I'll wonder what else it could become. Give me an ordinary object and I'll start thinking about how to make it more interesting. Give me a completely reasonable plan and there's a decent chance I'll add something unnecessary but fabulous to it.
That part isn't new.
I grew up in North Dakota in a family where creativity and resourcefulness weren't hobbies. They were simply how things got done.
My parents spent decades running the White House Cafeteria in Bismarck. My dad spent 36 years in the restaurant business, while my mom had her hands in practically everything around him.
They built something people remembered.
Not because it was flashy.
Because it had personality.
There were familiar faces, scratch cooking, conversations over coffee and the kind of food people came back for because it reminded them of something.
I didn't realize it then, but I was learning a lot about storytelling.
We just weren't calling it that.
Then Came an Owl
In March 2024, I published Oliver the Owl: The Culinary Pro.
Oliver grew from those family restaurant memories, particularly my dad's years in the kitchen.
At the time, I thought I'd accomplished one enormous creative goal.
I wrote a children's book.
Check.
Done.
Except creativity is terribly inconvenient that way.
Once you prove to yourself that you can bring one ridiculous idea to life, your brain immediately starts suggesting additional ridiculous ideas.
Oliver wasn't the end of something.
He was the beginning.
By September, A Sweet Season had followed—a Christmas story carrying pieces of my mom and our family traditions.
Then life changed.
Zestful Grew at a Kitchen Table
Just weeks after A Sweet Season was published, my mom became seriously ill.
I moved in with her and became her full-time caregiver.
Suddenly my world became very small.
Home. Appointments. Medications. Meals. Her recliner. The kitchen table.
And strangely enough, that kitchen table also became one of the places where Zestful Productions began becoming something bigger.
I'd sit there working while Mom rested nearby.
We'd talk about ideas.
I'd show her things.
She'd give opinions—because there was absolutely no shortage of those.
And whenever I started shrinking an idea before I'd even given it a chance, she had a way of pushing it right back at me.
Think bigger.
During those months, I began experimenting beyond the books.
I designed shirts and mugs. I opened an Etsy shop. I created more Oliver products. I published Mix, Play, Stir, a coloring and activity book dedicated to my children.
I didn't have some brilliant expansion strategy.
I was creating.
And during an extraordinarily difficult period of my life, creating gave me somewhere to put some of myself.
Then the Story Changed Again
My mom died in May 2025.
Grief has a way of stripping things down.
Things that once seemed urgent suddenly aren't.
Things you've been putting off start looking different.
And questions you've successfully avoided have an annoying tendency to demand answers.
What matters?
What do I want to carry forward?
What am I building?
My parents had spent roughly fifty years collecting antiques and vintage treasures. Their home was filled with things gathered over decades—glassware, linens, Christmas decorations, kitchen pieces, souvenirs and objects with stories attached to them.
I could look at many of those things and remember exactly where they'd been.
Who used them.
Why Mom liked them.
What they reminded me of.
So I started adding vintage pieces to Zestful.
At first, books, original designs and antiques might have looked like three completely unrelated directions.
To me, they weren't.
They were all telling stories.
And that realization changed the business.
I Didn't Reinvent Zestful. I Finally Understood It.
For a while, I thought Zestful Productions needed to fit neatly into a category.
Was it a children's book business?
A design business?
A vintage shop?
A creative studio?
Yes.
And that was the problem only if I insisted on treating it like one.
Eventually I stopped trying to make the business smaller so it would be easier to explain.
Instead, I looked at what connected everything.
Story. Creativity. Nostalgia. Personality.
An Oliver book carries a family memory.
A vintage Christmas ornament carries somebody else's.
An original design can turn an inside joke or an ordinary obsession into something worth wearing.
A souvenir can bring an entire trip back in your mind.
Different objects.
Same instinct.
Make ordinary life a little more interesting.
That's when Zestful finally made sense to me.
So I Rebuilt It
The rebrand wasn't about inventing a more polished version of Zestful Productions.
It was about finally allowing the business to become what it had been trying to become all along.
A storytelling-driven lifestyle brand.
A place for old things and new ideas.
For books and butter.
For family history and road trips.
For things I find, things I make and stories I think are worth telling.
The categories may change.
The point of view doesn't.
Bold.
Playful.
Extra.
Not because everything needs to be loud or covered in glitter.
Because ordinary was never the goal.
What Zestful Productions Means to Me Now
Today, Zestful Productions is still evolving.
I hope it always does.
There are vintage treasures collected long before this business existed. Original designs that start as weird little ideas in my head. Oliver and the stories that began this entire adventure. Travel, collecting, creativity and whatever else I haven't thought of yet.
And underneath all of it are the things my parents taught me without ever sitting me down to teach them:
Make something worth remembering.
Give people a reason to come back.
Don't be afraid of hard work.
And put some personality into it.
They did it with cheese buttons, coffee cups and a cafeteria in Bismarck.
I'm doing it a little differently.
But I don't think it's really that different at all.
Meet the Maker
So, hi.
I'm Sonja.
I write under the name Rayna Jo Zest.
I'm an author, collector, designer, storyteller, vintage treasure hunter, road-trip taker and chronic starter of projects that probably sounded easier when I first thought of them.
I'm still figuring out exactly where all of this leads.
That's part of the fun.
Zestful Productions wasn't built from a perfect plan.
It was built from family stories, unexpected turns, things worth keeping and ideas I couldn't leave alone.
And there is plenty more story to tell.
Extra? Maybe. But ordinary was never the goal.
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