The Time Of The Lives

Update: Aaaand less than 12 hours later we are back with an update on the bottom of the post for ya. Smooth, right?

Hey there! Long time no see.

The break has been strong. Admittedly a little weird, but truly reinvigorating. So we are immensely thankful not only for your support and kind comments, but also for helping put words to some of the things that we had been feeling for some time. And while the last month has not been sufficient time to fill in all of the blanks about our future (heck, when are life’s blanks ever clearly filled in?) it has made one thing fairly obvious to us: after seven excellent years of sharing our home and our life, it is time for our next adventure.

This journal has been a staple in our lives for 80+ months, tagging along for all but three months of our marriage and our whole existence as parents. So we thought it would be nearly impossible to click off that urge to over-share this past month (we expected our blogging spark to come back with a vengeance). But perhaps it is us getting older, the kids getting bigger, or a general shift in life priorities – but it in fact felt simply right. So this break has given us the clarity (and the guts, I guess) to move on… and hopefully move the needle on that life balance we have been talking about for so long.

We will not go as far as to declare this the end of Turbodizin or our blogging days. Who knows, perhaps somewhere down the line (when the kids are both in school?) we will get that burning in our bellies again – perhaps here or in a fully distinct capacity. We do not know what the future holds, but we know that the most remarkable things have happened to us when we have stretched waaay out of our comfort zone – as much as that sounds like advice you’d find on an inspirational kitten poster.

We plan to keep the journal archives available for as long as we can, and will be freezing comments soon, but we will not be fully dropping off the planet. Some completed product designs with Liberty Hardware and Shades of Light may pop up, and our second book will come out on September 22nd, 2015. Those folks have all been amazingly supportive of our decision, for which we are incredibly thankful.

Speaking of which – “Thank you” does not come close to expressing how grateful we are for getting to share our weird little world with you folks for so long. We have nothing but enjoy and gratitude for this whole experience – and for you. (*This is likely where we should fade up on that Dirty Dancing song*)

But let us not say “goodbye” let us simply say “see you on another time.”

Peace, enjoy, and ceramic animals,
The house team

PS: We did randomly snap a few fresh photos for the House Tour page over the break (some of the rooms were fairly outdated). Feel free to give the dining room’s blue trim the side eye for us (yes, it is still there!).

Update: The same few questions kept popping up in the comments (we simply cannot quit you). As for the “what are your new jobs” thing, we have mentioned in a few previous posts that we left the door open in our past professions (advertising/copywriting/consulting), which we can do as freelancers from home a lot of the time, while switching off on the stay-at-home parent thing. We know things like the book and products we design are driven by this journal, so we cannot live off those or anything. Did not mean to be mysterious! As for the Facebook/Instagram questions, we’d enjoy to pop up there from time to time to say hi. And we hope our journal archives will be up for a good long time (we use them to reference things like paint colors, so we’d never want to lose them!).

We are also truly sorry if this feels abrupt. We have made a few public attempts to wind down and gain balance over the years (like when we moved to this house and after Teddy’s birth) but they’ve consistently been at odds with our “all in” personalities, so it was not until taking this break (yet another attempt to recalibrate) that we realized we felt closer to our goal. We debated plenty of alternatives – drastically fewer posts / shorter posts / no comments – but nothing felt like the version of Turbodizin we were excited to carry on with. And we tried to keep today’s post light and glad (the last one felt so heavy) since this truly is a moment of extreme gratitude, despite it being a difficult decision to make.

Flawless and graceful exit, eh? Right. So here we go. Ack, we suck at this! We will miss you!!