State of the Blog

I'm finally cooling my heels for a few weeks after trips to Indianapolis, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Atlanta, and Martha's Vineyard all since mid-June.

I'm feeling sort of exhausted, but the days I spent at the Haven Conference (Atlanta) have me doing a lot of thinking about the blog, how I want to move forward, and how I want to bring new material to you guys.

My posting has been erratic lately, and for awhile I blamed it on the move into our new house. Buuuuuut...it's now been seven months since we moved so it doesn't really count as a "we just moved and I need to focus on the new house" slump anymore, does it?

I want to do a better job of bringing you regular content and here's how I plan to do it.

I'm bringing the food back.

If you've been reading for awhile you know that I used to post recipes once or twice a week. I've gotten away from that since we moved and I miss it. I miss taking pictures of food and I miss sharing my latest favorite thing to eat or an old classic I've been making for years.

Starting next week, I'll be sharing a new recipe every Tuesday.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Okay, maybe not the ugly. Do you really want to see pictures of the boxes still stacked in my second floor hallway, the water damage around my basement bulkhead door, or the stains on my ceiling from our roof leak last winter? Methinks no. But...

I always intended this blog to be about my home and all the things I do around here - the cooking, the projects, the little home improvement tips and tricks I've picked up along the way. I've gotten so caught up in the pretty finished pictures I'll skip posting sometimes just because I don't have an amazing finished product to share with you.

No longer.  At least once a week, I will show you something in my home. It might be an amazing new tutorial, a piece of furniture I've built, or a reupholstered chair.  It might be progress shots of something I'm working on. It might be a vignette or a new little something that's come home with me recently. Doing things yourself takes a long time sometimes, and I want to really pull the curtain back so you can see more of how I move through projects and what I'm working on.

Speaking of pulling back the curtain...

I had an interesting realization coming out of the Haven Conference.  I'm not very "present" on my blog.  I had a couple different people say I was different than they thought - more fun, more outgoing, more amazing and beautiful.  Okay, no one said that last one.  

So, I mean, awesome to have people like you more than they thought they were going to, but it got me thinking about my presence here.  One of my favorite sessions at the conference was taught by Jen at withHeart, about integrating video into a blog.  I am fairly certain I'll be wildly awkward and stiff if I take the leap and start trying to video myself.  I'm entertaining no delusions that I'll crank out content in the same universe as what Jen does.  But she used to be a news anchor so, come on, how could I be that good?

Point being, I will try to show you more of me here - video, photos, I'm not entirely sure what direction it's going to take, but I want you to feel like you know me!

So, to recap, here's what you can expect going forward.

1. Food!
2. Steady house updates.
3. More me.  

The rest? Whatever I've been working on, working with, discovered, or want to share. I have to keep some of the old me around, you know?

For the rest of this week, though, I'm going to be working behind the scenes - brainstorming some new recipes, testing some things I learned at Haven, and just general housekeeping on the blog and in real life.  Because after a month and a half of traveling my house needs some attention!

I will, however, see you back here in one week, and I will have a recipe :)