2020 was a year of upheaval. I gave birth to our daughter in March, in tandem with the world shutting down, in tandem with a new motherhood induced identity crisis. Halfway through that year I made the decision to amicably leave my rep group, and shortly after that- I archived all of my blog posts, quietly shuttering the space where I had been documenting and writing about food, life and home things for the better part of 8 years. I felt spread too thin creatively, and overwhelmingly lost at sea in terms of my career and the type of pictures I wanted to make. I had already been shooting still life advertising content remotely for brands, which helped keep me afloat during the pandemic when the photo industry was shut down, but with fewer outside assignments, and mom life taking center stage, it left me in a state of crisp, burned out frustration, exacerbated by our too small house. Living in your workspace, working in your living space, having a baby strapped to you while shooting brand content in your living space, it was a level of suffocation that makes me itchy just thinking about. It was around this time that I also felt a very loud, tangible pull to spend more time focusing on my Fine Art work. I knew I couldn’t be in three, four, five places at once, particularly on the internet.

Suffice it to say after some time away, I believe I will be back journaling in an online capacity, if only temporarily, to share snippets of our next renovation project. Perhaps I’ll share more than that, but for now, this feels like the perfect place to start. I have some exciting work related announcements coming later on this year, which had already given me reason to consider reviving some sort of online presence that felt more autonomous, re: beyond the confines of Instagram. If you were familiar with my blog back in the day, you might remember when we renovated our shoebox of a house in 2017. Taking it from sad neglected granny status to modern and functional (on a budget, as ever) was a huge, rewarding undertaking for us.

Back then we were featured here on Architectural Digest and two of our notable DIY projects were featured by Domino- our butcher block kitchen peninsula, and our Ikea hack nursery bookshelf. In the early spring we’ll break ground again, this time with the aim of doubling our square footage by chopping the roof off, and adding a second story. Entering 2025 with a massive renovation to our home wasn’t exactly on my bingo card. If i’m being perfectly honest, I never pictured staying in this house for any real length of time, and this type of renovation is disruptive on so many levels. If you’re still reading, you’re likely curious why we’re going this route, rather than simply moving. Me, five years ago, would be just as curious as you (if not a little perturbed). My plan, my goal, my picture perfect situation would have been moving the less than a mile jump over the border to Haddonfield where my studio is, buying a beautiful historic house and renovating it bit by bit. Ha. What a lovely idea. Have you seen this housing market?

Because we are very much on a budget (just a couple of Millennials incapable of abandoning their comically low interest rate after a refinance), and we are both in the photo industry (volatile), and we are both risk-averse (so not sexy but so very true), we realized after a lot of saving, a lot of math, and a lot of getting acquainted with reality (she might be the trickiest one to come to terms with), we can’t really go anywhere but upstairs in the foreseeable future. Regardless of this aligning with my vision of what our street or our neighborhood would look like, I’m honestly just grateful that we even have a house to renovate. A handful of things I’m nervously excited about as we get this thing rolling? Secondhand sourcing, finally having a front door, a dark moody historic vibe on the outside vs. the nondescript white shoebox we have now, layers and lived-in warmth, adding charm where we can, finally having a fireplace, sneaking a tiny slice of square footage into our small but mighty kitchen, and most of all- my deeply rooted love of vintage attempting to find balance and cohesion with Robert’s love of modern. Pray for us.

Will we run out of money? Maybe. Is this going to be insane? For sure. But for now, since we’re waiting on the final blueprints, here’s some inspiration we’ve been noodling with since our project went from sorta maybe, to buckle up here we go.

Side note- Robert’s already busy working on a mini reno, to the upstairs apartment where we’ll be staying while our house is uninhabitable. His dad owns a duplex nearby and the upstairs tenant happened to break their lease right around the time we were deciding how feasible this whole thing was. The timing of that felt like the universe screaming carpe diem in our general direction. We imagine we’ll need to live there for about 6 months before we can move back home, but of course- only time will tell.

a little (big) renovation