Happy Friday

I’ve been writing the ‘Charlie’s first birthday’ post for weeks and most of the time I just can’t get through it because it’s just so emotionally overwhelming. It’s difficult to properly encapsulate this last year, my first year of being a mom, without sounding like I’m an emotional mess that should probably be on some sort of mood stabilizer.

So I won’t yet, and instead just post a pic of this kid wishing you a lovely weekend.

Sometimes I forget that I’m allowed to write a short post; that not every post needs to be a massive, 10 page makeover narrative situation.

Please note that kid’s head is practically the same size as mine. We cut his hair yesterday (check instagram for the cutest photo ever) and now he looks even more grown up and ‘executive’ – like.

Thank you so much for all 7, 000 of you who took the survey (if you haven’t yet, you can any time – we are still reading the results). You have no idea how valuable it is. Nothing too shocking came out of it and no major changes are being made – just good tweaks and adjustments. I am in the process of rebranding and redesigning the website (offering more services for all budgets) and even an online vintage store – you heard me, so there are improvements happening that I’m very excited about.

Meanwhile all of you want more makeovers (we’re on it), you are split whether you like DIY (not surprising, although we only do one a month these days from the Redbook column) and you are split on whether you like the Craigslist posts (which shocked me, I thought those were super popular!).

You want more reader questions, which is great – I’m actually trying to do them but we need more answerable questions with better photos – it’s hard to post these tiny dark photos and have the question be about layout or something abstract because that’s really hard to answer unless you are in the space. But we’ll do our best and if you have questions just try to have the photos not be blurry, be more pulled back, multiple shots/angles of the room, brighter and with 1-2 very specific questions (it’s hard to answer a whole list).

You are open to having more content if we had the right contributors, which is exciting, but I’m still super hesitant about. Most of you ‘don’t mind’ our sponsored posts and many of you even like them. I was extra terrified about that question because frankly we need the sponsored posts to keep making daily original content so I am so glad that if we do them well, you guys are cool with it and a lot of you even said ‘I like them’ and ‘I find them useful’. Thank you. We try hard and we’ll continue to try even harder to come up with concepts that are valuable to you while still making sense for the client, and not doing so many that you guys are annoyed. I’m sure that you’ve noticed there are a lot more on the blogosphere right now because it’s December and every company is doing their last big sales push for the year, so January always slows down. Speaking of January we have 1 whole house to reveal plus lots of quick makeover projects to show you – some sponsored, some not. It’s a weird, weird world, isn’t it?

Have an excellent weekend. I have intentions of going through my 19 ‘junk’ drawers because I can’t find ANYTHING these days, plus going to a couple of holiday parties but this ‘storm’ in LA is making me want to curl up in my flannel pajamas and listen to Serial. Any of you addicted as well?

xx

E