As you can see we’ve remodeled our online home here at House of Brinson. When we originally started blogging it was to accomplish the goal of working together as a team, which I’m proud to say we’ve transitioned to professionally. Over the past two years we’ve both undergone serious change, including where we live and how we work. During that time we tried new things, which I think we had to do in order to discover what truly works for us.

We’ve decided the blog needed to return to a simpler visual space. We love blogging because we get to tell our own story through images, and share it with you. Simple as that. We decided to get rid of advertising because it was so distracting.

We really enjoyed the brand collaborations we’re worked on this past year, so we’ll continue to do that. The brands that we collaborate with allow us to share our point of view, in our unique way. We want to take a step back from blogging culture: the ads, the flashing side bars, looking more like media outlets and share our story in a minimalist space. I’ll be honest with you as to why we tried the advertising and brand collaborations. When we moved into Stony Ford we realized we had decent expenses when producing the blog. When we photograph a recipe, we often buy three times the ingredients it actually takes. We never photograph our dinner, the food is always prepared for the shoot. Not to mention server space, CMS subscriptions, etc. If you’re interested in blogging it can be done at a small cost, but as you start to grow, the costs creep up on you! We tried advertising and didn’t like it, and we also tried brand collaborations. Some brands provide product in exchange for a mention, while other brands have a budget dedicated to working with bloggers. This aspect of blogging we really liked. In some cases it allowed us to try and share new products, that have quickly become our favorites and go-to resources (like Frame Bridge). Other brand collaborations allow us to bring projects to our readers in a comprehensive way. Our collaboration with Pottery Barn is a perfect example of this. We’re interested in exploring more of this type of content in the future, but we have to find a way to make it work for us and you, our readers. We’d never blog about a product we just don’t like. We think of you, our reader, as our neighbors and want to share the best insider scoop with you. We’d love to do more content surrounding the house, so we’re working on ideas and partners for this next year.

Some updates! We’re going to expand our things to-do list by adding a newsletter. I know, why did it take us so long? We’ll have some more info on that in the coming weeks. One thing we’re still working on is importing our comments. We’ve lost 5 years worth of comments, and we’re working on getting those back. The technical challenges of blogging (don’t get me started on this!). We’ll be making some small updates and working out any small issues that pop up as the new site gets settled in.

We’re on social media. If you’re on SnapChat, follow us @houseofbrinson for lots of silly dog snaps and what we’re doing around the house. Periscope is interesting and we’re working on what to scope! We’ve shared a recipe and a few house tours. Let us know if you’re wondering what were up to and we’ll scope it! Of course you can always find us on Instagram @houseofbrinson.

Thanks so much for sticking with us all these years. As we were reformatting some posts, it was fun to reflect on how much our lives have changed in the past five years. Let’s see what the future holds, together.