Hello? Is This Thing On?: a house log

Well, last week marked a year since we took our big journal break. We did not truly know what to expect would happen after stepping away from the journal last fall, and we certainly did not expect all of the enjoy, support, and interest you folks have continued to show us over the last year. So before anything else, let us simply say thank you and bow down and do the “not worthy” hand motions. Truly, you folks are the best.

There have been so many questions about what we have been doing these days, and we have been mulling over the best way to share one big what-the-heck-we have-been-up-to update. Sherry suggested a Real Housewives-style freeze frame with update text next to our faces, but I pointed out that we’d be about 3,000 words over the necessary word count for something like that. #dreamcrusher

Then last month we recorded an episode for Jess Lively’s podcast, The Lively Show. It came out last Thursday, and in hearing it back for the first time, we realized it is a fairly thorough synopsis of the past year of our lives. Not only did we cover plenty of ground with Jess, but we also thought that hearing it in our own voices seemed to more fully tell the story than typed words likely could. You know, sometimes inflection & tone > punctuation & emojis.

We know an hour-long podcast is not a small commitment, but it’ll fairly much catch you up on an whole year of our lives and we tried to be truly open about everything, including:

• why we stepped away from blogging
• what our current jobs are now
• how our style and design process have evolved
• how the family is doing
• what we wish we would have done differently when we were blogging
• how making this big change has affected our family

So you can simply click on our cheesy faces below (then scroll down to the pink-ish box on that page and click the play arrow) to have a listen. Or find it wherever you like to get your podcasts (you can also download the free episode via iTunes or play it on Stitcher).

There are all sorts of lively tidbits, like why we are working on five new houses…

…why I have embraced spandex…

… why Sherry is dropping it like its hot to Turn Down For What…

(there is no way she’d let me put a picture here)

… and why the post-journal room updates we have done came together in a distinct way – and are some of our go-tos spaces in the house. Like our dining room…

… and our living room…

… along with a few other spaces like our guest room, our garage, our hall bathroom, and our half bathroom (which might be our go-to update) – all of which you will see in our new book.

Speaking of the book, we are ridiculously proud of how it turned out and we are so excited for everyone to see it, hence the sneak peeks and shameless plugs you’ve seen on places like Instagram and Facebook lately. We are also excited because it is an opportunity to reconnect with you folks, especially face-to-face when we head out on the book tour next week.

We look forward to seeing some of you on the road, and continuing to share with you here and there on social media… and perhaps even occasionally here on the ol’ journal. I do not want to make promises about what or how frequently we will post, but our home projects are still rolling along, albeit more slowly these days (there is more on that in the podcast, btw). Oh and we still have not tackled our kitchen reno, but we at last landed on a floor plan that we both like, so we are hoping to get began on that after we are back from the tour.

And now, because the past few posts got kinda heavy and serious (and the podcast gets fairly deep, too), I will simply leave you with this video. Sometimes I can be a good sport about the whole Housewives thing. Sometimes. #dreammaker