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We are:
Amy & Christy
Thank you for visiting us at 11 Magnolia Lane. We are Christy and Amy, two long-time friends who share an interest in decorating our homes, tackling DIY projects, organizing our homes and lives and entertaining friends and family. For almost seven years we’ve been sharing our projects here at 11 Magnolia Lane.
You can tour our homes HERE.
Read our five-year anniversary post HERE.
If you’re curious, here is the story behind 11 Magnolia Lane….
Our little blog started with three friends who joined creative forces to start a website. You can see part of our original gang, Terry, the brunette, pictured with us below. Terry has returned to event planning and isn’t blogging currently but you’ll still find her posts in our archives.
So here is how it all began….
I, Amy, started a {different} blog as part of my event graphic design business in 2009. Whenever I did a project for a wedding or event, I posted it on my little blogspot blog. Most of my followers were my supportive friends. I met Terry during that time, as our sons were in preschool together, and since she is an event planner there was an instant connection. We started working on weddings and events with our respective businesses, quickly becoming close friends as well. We soon needed to create a website/blog to promote the wedding and charitable event work we were doing together. As we tried to think of a name for the site, we both decided we liked the southern motif and were kicking around using “Magnolia” in the name of the event business.
At the same time, I was reading “party/event” blogs for my business, which quickly led to reading home blogs {there were fewer at that time}, and I was instantly hooked. After all, I love to work on my house as much as I love to entertain! It occurred to me at the time how segmented the blogs were—there wasn’t much crossover at the time between the party/event blogs and home décor/DIY blogs– and the idea hit me to recruit some talented friends to create a magazine-type blog covering all those things like-minded people want to read about.
I have known Christy since my first day of college when– thankfully –the computer assigned us a roommates. We couldn’t be better matched as far as our tastes {y’all probably notice similarities in our decorating, and we tend to reconvene after separating while shopping to find the exact same items in our baskets!} and have stayed close friends in the years since our college days though we haven’t lived near each other since that time. Each time I visited her I could see how talented she was at decorating her home and entertaining her house guests.
{Christy}
As luck would have it, about the time this type of magazine-type blog idea was kicking around in my head, Christy and family had just moved into this stunning home in North Carolina. Each time I visited her I felt like the world needed to see how lovely not just the home was, but the creative ideas she used to decorate and keep her family organized. Before too long, I roped her into joining up with Terry and me to work on our blog. Her pretty house became our initial “brand” and we used a {made up} address of 11 Magnolia Lane, liking the concept of the house and our readers being our welcomed guests.
We sort of played at blogging our first few months, just posting when we felt like it, making a few connections in the blog world and having fun with it. Most of our friends and families probably didn’t even know we were doing it, but it was fun for us.
Things suddenly changed for me when my husband was unexpectedly transferred across the state shortly after we got the blog rolling. This admittedly threw my life into chaos–I had to close my design business, halt the event work Terry and I were doing, unexpectedly sell our home, find a new house, and start completely over in a new area. Terry was working on a major event about the same time and Christy was also moving {since she is military she rolls with it better than I did!} so we all pulled away from the blog in the summer of 2011, not really thinking or knowing if we’d continue working on it. {Note: that summer was the time Christy remade her new kitchen which eventually got published in Better Homes & Gardens Kitchen & Bath Makeovers, lest you think grass grows under her feet!}.
photo courtesy Kitchen + Bath Makeovers
After awhile we all missed blogging; after all, we’re pretty Type A girls so we constantly have projects going, and a blog provides great motivation to keep going, going, going! By fall of 2011, we got back to posting again. I had plenty to share about the house we’d just finished having built, Christy was quickly completing makeovers on her new home and pretty soon we were back in the swing of it all.
In the spring of 2012 we planned a weekend to meet up in person to get better organized and get some photography of the three of us done. We had a great time that weekend, came back with renewed energy, and suddenly 11 Magnolia Lane became not just a hobby, but a business.
Fast forward a few more years later–we’ve decorated a few new homes, attended a few Haven conferences, and enjoyed some amazing sponsorships and growth opportunities. We never knew this fun creative outlet would turn into a business {you can read more on that HERE} but we love every minute of it.
Thanks to all of you who read us, and especially take time to interact with us via comments, email or on Facebook. As bloggers we all have many, many days where we think—“What am I doing posting my pantry on the internet or Pinterest?! This is totally nuts!” But we enjoy the relationships that we’ve built online and it’s been fun to be a part of this virtual community.
Did I answer everything you might be wondering about? If not, please leave questions in the comments. As always, thanks for stopping by!
XO,
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