Blogiversary III: Goal Tending: a house log

Every year when our blogiversary rolls around, we like to take a moment to outline our goals. So it is time to officially state three things that we are going to work truly hard to accomplish over the next 365 days. After all, there is nothing like a public proclamation to light a fire under the ol’ buns. So sufficient chit-chat. Here are the three biggest things on our list (speaking of big, check out my ridiculous calves).

Goal Numero Uno: Move On- As we lately shared, we are saying peace out to our lovely and remarkable casa. It is certainly bittersweet, but we cannot wait to get our mitts on something new-to-us and shine it up like a lucky penny – both so our lovely readers can follow along and so we can create something remarkable for our family. Dated wallpaper and wood paneling beware! This goal is all about tackling more projects, sharing more walkthroughs, and taking on inexpensive mini makeovers and bigger major makeovers as well. We certainly plan to journal in real time – so there will not simply be afters, there will be befores and durings and pitfalls and do-overs and everything else that real life DIYers encounter along the way. Many readers request that we share our process and want simply as much info about the how and the why as they do when it comes to seeing the polished wrapped up product. So we plan to share everything from our battles with selecting a whole house paint palette to the trials and tribulations of organizing our pantry- should we be lucky sufficient to end up with a real one of those. Oh the possibilities…

Goal Numero Dos: Loosen Up- Sometimes we find ourselves feeling a bit machine-like with our regimented post schedule. And we truly want to get back to the days when we did not have two weeks of posts saved up (we fantasize about writing something and sharing it the next day instead of sticking it in line to be published a few weeks later). Of course this means that we might not consistently have two posts a day or a big reveal every Tuesday, since some projects take longer than expected, and the post simply will not be ready in time (which is why we began stockpiling things in the first place). But while it might mean that every once in a while we will post less than twice, it also means that something could pop up on a weekend or you might simply find a 6:30am feeding post. Heck, you might even get a big reveal on a Friday instead of a Tuesday. Crazy, we know.

We also yearn for the simpler days when we occasionally wrote swift updates or shared something small as opposed to serving up 2000+ word counts on the daily. Sometimes short and sweet beats heavy and wordy, so we’d enjoy to get back to a pleasant balance of both. The beauty of this looser real-time blogging goal is that it is natural, lively, and how this whole journal began. Plus you can follow along with everything that we are taking on in a more true to life way. We are excited to get back to the spontaneity of posting about something when it is on our mind or right after we have snapped the last after photo instead of waiting until our next open slot (which might not be for 14 agonizing cannot-wait-to-share-this days later). Especially as we gear up to sell our house and move into a new place there will be plenty of little updates and what-we are-doing-now posts (about everything from trying to sell out house, touring other potential homes, packing, etc). Some weeks we will be crazy busy, others might be a bit less hectic, but our goal has consistently been to portray our real life and share our real-time triumphs (and not-so-triumphs) so that is exactly what we aim to do with this newfound free-as-a-bird blogging goal.

Goal Numero Tres: Get Real- Sure, HGTV’s 30 minute before and after shows are totally gratifying, but one reason that we enjoy blogging is because you get to see all those little moments in between. Most home bloggers, both big and small, update everyone in diary form as they take on projects over the course of a few weeks or even months. And although we got into the habit of weekly updates on certain room makeovers, it was beginning to feel a little odd. See, back in the first year of this journal we shared updates as they occurred. One day our cabinets arrived, so we told you. Another day Lowe’s sold our washer and dryer to someone else by accident, so we told you. We did not wait for our whole kitchen to come together and write a post about it, or even craft finely tuned weekly synopses. Instead we literally wrote four months of posts about every cog that fell into place and every lesson that we learned along the way. But lately we feel like we wait until projects wrap up and tie themselves into a pleasant little bow (with a clear beginning, middle, and end) and it simply feels less Real Deal Holyfield to us.

So from now on, we’d like to re-embrace the whole home makeover diary concept. If something we try to tackle sucks, we will laugh about how it sucks (like this). If we find ourselves at Lowe’s before the sun’s up in the name of baseboard, you will know (like this). If something is looking a bit less lovely than it used to, we will share that too (like this). If we are geeking out over some new purchase, we will gush (like this and this). We realize that we have lively sharing those ordinary, in-progress moments in our life too. To some readers, it might feel like “filler” to share the new faucet that we found on eBay or to talk about our strong paint debate, but those are in fact things that we have shared on this journal from the quite beginning, and we cannot wait to get back to them.

In the end, we know these good-ol’-days-inspired, off-the-cuff tweaks might make some people like our journal less while others may enjoy it more. But after three years of blogging we have learned that it is impossible to please 100% of the people 100% of the time (unless you toss money into the air at a parade, but even then someone can lose an eye). So we simply have to trust ourselves and allow YHL to grow and evolve and change in the next few years simply as it has for the last few. This journal has consistently been about following our instincts, doing what we enjoy, and sharing our lives with anyone who is interested. So we plan to continue to serve up a pleasant heaping portion of our hammer-and-paint-brush-wielding existence with anyone who’d like to drop in and see what we are up to. Our virtual door is consistently open.

Psst- First image found here and second image found here (without our heads on them of course, we brought in those).