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We are:
Amy & Christy
We like good food, DIY’ing, fun parties, and things that sparkle!
Here is the story of 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.
Enter Christy…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. My visits to see her were always the highlight of my summer and it was easy to 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 start this little 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 were pretty haphazard when we started! We posted whatever we were up to, and the holidays were upon us so we had plenty of stuff to write about. WordPress picked up Christy’s chalkboard post for “Freshly Pressed” and we suddenly started getting tons of comments on it and before we knew it we were off and running. 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 house, 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 then 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
I suppose 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 Terry started the work on her “In the Kitchen series” of cooking/healthy meal plans, 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.
While we’re on that slightly touchy subject, please know that we understand that we all just want to read blogs and see beautiful room makeovers and mouth-watering recipes, and not be overwhelmed with advertisements. We are very, very careful about which opportunities we participate in, trying only to take ones that match our subject/content areas and things we actually endorse, and we appreciate our readers’ understanding about them.
Fast forward a few more years later–a few new homes, a few Haven conferences, amazing sponsorships and growth opportunities. We never knew this fun creative outlet would turn into a business {you can read more on that HERE}.
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??? 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 online community.
Did I answer anything you might be wondering? If not, please leave questions in the comments. As always, thanks for stopping by!
XO,
Please contact us at 11magnolialane@gmail.com, or follow us on social media using these links:
